The National Educational Technology Plan: Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology.

The National Educational Technology Plan is at the very least, impressive. I found the plan to be well organized, beginning first with outlining what it means to be a 21st Century learner. "The model of 21st century learning requires new and better ways to measure what matters, diagnose strengths and weaknesses in the course of learning when there is still time to improve student performance, and involve multiple stakeholders in the process of designing, conducting, and using assessment. In all these activities, technology-based assessments can provide data to drive decisions on the basis of what is best for each and every student and that in aggregate will lead to continuous improvement across our entire education system." The remainder of the report talks about what it really means to build a technologically rich learning environment for this 21st Century learner that includes assessment, recognizing basic assumptions, allocation of funding and training necessary to have a technology ready work force in the classrooms. The plan sets measureable goals and recommendations for emeting such goals. Again, I am left wondering how these goals are accounted for as our district makes a lot of assumptions that we are meeiting these goals but does very little to ensure that we are meeting them. Outside of hardware/software purchasing and installation, no other attention is given to technology, especially in regards to training and/or working to incorporate it into the curriculum in a meaningful way. The plans spends a lot of time and space asking districts and campuses to discuss, define and have a common definition of critical terminology for the technology needs. This comprehensive plan is only as good as the paper it is written on if educators are not paying any attention to it outside of filling out the STaR chart, as required by the state.