National Educational Technology Plan

In the introduction of the National Education Technology Plan 2010, (NETP) states: “Our education system also should help learners set goals, stay in school despite obstacles, earn a high school diploma, and obtain the further education ... [for] the workplace, and their communities” (National Educational Technology Plan: Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology 1).

In order to accomplish these statements, the plan suggests that schools should be more than a house of information and educators need to be more of collaborators along with students in learning new skills.

There are two main goals within the NETP

1.    Raising the percent of college graduates from 40 percent (now) to 60 percent so they hold a two or four year degree by 2020.

2.    To close the achievement gap so all students graduate high school prepared to college in college and further.

The plan goes ahead to say that these goals are aggressive and it may be a challenge to accomplish them. Due to cuts across states in education the plan proposes to find cost-effective strategies to improve learning outcomes.

For learning, the plan asks educators to focus on how and what they teach to match up with what is needed to know and how learning is taking place. It suggests students should be placed in non-traditional classrooms and require students to take control of their own learning.

Teaching becomes a team activity within the plan and classrooms are fully connected so teachers have 24/7 access to resources and information. Teachers become facilitators and collaborators in the student’s self-directed learning.  Professional development will become learning environments that work with colleges and other institutes.

The plan suggests we dive right into this information provided and allow making corrections as they go. The problem I see with this is although this plan is well laid out and detail oriented it still seems there is a lot of predicting what should happen. Rather than trying to start all “projects” at once, take it one step at a time and see how it works before moving on to the next step.