Is It A New Day for Technology in Education?

The potential for technology to unleash disruptive change on K-12 education has thus far gone unrealized in most of the world.  Despite the ubiquitous presence of computers, along with a rush by many independent and international schools to become fully laptop environments, not much has changed about teaching and learning in ways that threaten to transform the educational business.  This immunity may not last much longer.

A draft National Educational Technology Plan (available on the Department of Education web site for a few more weeks) calls for an increased role for technology as a facilitator and accelerant for teaching and learning in K-12 schools.  Notably, the plan recognizes that change will likely happen with the influx of digital natives expected into the teaching workforce across the next decade.  In this spirit, the plan encourages technology integration to teacher education--and this affects higher education, too--in hopes that future teachers will expect to teach differently based on technology.

While the NETP focuses, of course, on public education, one can expect fallout for independent schools as well.  After all, the previous Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, launched an initiative on accreditation reform that will be affecting independent and international schools that accredit in the United States for years to come.

Maybe the authors of this plan have found the tech missing link: that it will take a new generation of teachers, themselves digital natives, to finally use technology to transform teaching and learning.