National Educational Technology Plan

The National Educational Technology Plan (NETP) is the nation's vision for integrating educational practice and technological skill together to produce an educational system of public schools in which American students learn the skills to be successful in the 21st century. To accomplish this goal, the NETP describes essential areas which the nation's state education agencies will need to focus on and put in place to assure successful outcomes for students in the U.S. Those essential areas are learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure, and productivity (NETP, p. vi). Learning is not about what specifically to teach students. Rather it is about learning what to teach to students that matches each student's learning style as well as what to teach them. In this plan differentiation is the key to ensuring student success. The plan calls for assessments that take into account modern technology skills and competencies. The success of these measures are to be determined by data based on research. Teaching and learning are to be a connected process that is shared by both the teacher and the student. Furthermore, both teachers and students should make learning a 24 hour, 365 days activity. Through the use of online resources like blogs and wikis as well as other more traditional tools such as on-site professional development. Other tools include the various ideas available for consumption from educational technology sources. The NETP is a good vision for implementing technology into the nation's educational system.

Some issues with the NETP include an infrastructure that is incomplete in many local districts. Finding funding to improve that situation is also a great challenge facing the nation and many of its districts as well. In my local school district, the availability of computers for classes to use as a natural part of the instructional day is very limited. Instead of having computers in a classroom, they are use on a sporadic basis. There are C.O.W.'s  (computers on wheels) which are available on an inconsistent schedule. Teachers seldom use that technology for classroom projects. Students may use their personal computers at home to complete projects and papers, but they do not have such tools in their classrooms during the day. Many teachers have interactive white boards with projectors at their disposal, but of those there are still many who seldom, if ever use them. While in theory they have been trained how to use the technology, in reality, they are not comfortable using it. Hopefully, in the coming years we be able to realize the goals of the NETP, but there is still a lot to do to see that through.

U.S. Department of Education (2010). National educational technology plan:

          Transforming American education (Draft). Washington D.C.