interactive games online. (A key demographic for these games, like teaching, is
actually middle-aged women.)
So I think we need to get beyond
calling teachers digital immigrants, as
if technology holds a certain code only
young people can decipher. We can
let that go. Now we can focus on using
technology to support learning goals.
And the technologies we focus on need
to improve teachers’ opportunity to be
successful. If a product requires a chunk
of time for professional development
just to know how to use it, then it may
not be well-designed.
When we interviewed some of our
college-age interns who worked for us
this past summer (see p. 44), they told
us that their high schools often had
blocked sites, which in a sense blocked
their learning. What is your take on
that practice?
computer scientists to create seriously
intelligent filtering systems and search
technologies to empower learning, not
just blocking.
I certainly understand their frustration.
It is really important that we do everything we can to make sure children
are safe online. This requires strong
policies and rules; better information
and education for teachers, leaders, and
students; and much improved technologies to sort the appropriate from the
inappropriate. Many filtering programs
today use what I call brute force. They
are not intelligent enough to distinguish one You Tube video from another.
We should be able to get our smartest
EL author Mark Bauerlein (p. 28)
argues in this issue that technology can
affect learning negatively—that it’s
taking away from students the ability
to read deeply. He also says that it
encourages kids to respond to complex
content before they understand it. Do
you see ways schools can counteract
that potential downside of technology
use?
What kinds of collaborations are
needed among classroom teachers,
online teachers, and media specialists?
In the technology plan, we talk about
the highly connected teacher.
Teachers can connect with data,
resources, content, and the
people who can help with their
students’ learning—to people
providing after-school programs,
to students’ parents, to content
and domain experts.
Getting better at developing
meaningful connections is really
important. We are working on
a new project on the design of
online connected communities
of practice where people can
grapple with a problem together,
share what they have learned,
develop a solution together, and
connect with experts who can
provide research, information,
and strategies. Communities of
practice are not new, and there is
evidence that they are incredibly
helpful, so we are focusing on the
best ways to leverage online environments and technologies to
connect professional educators.
National Technology Goals
Because our theme is called
“Teaching Screenagers,” I want
to talk more about students.
When you add any new technology—
whether it’s a printing press, a pencil,
or a computer—something is amplified,
and something is reduced. Part of being
literate in the 21st century (or probably
any century) is being able to
make careful decisions about
technologies and their uses.
Students really need the
wisdom of adults, as they always
have, to figure out what they
need to learn and how they
should go about it. The challenge
for teachers is to understand the
opportunities new technology
provides (something that is hard
because of rapid changes in what
is possible) and then make deci-
sions about how to manage the
learning environment. Teachers
have a tremendous opportunity
to create compelling assignments
that require their students to
read a lot and to think deeply. If
we value the abilities that Mark
suggests we are losing, then we
need curriculum to support their
development.
We have had a tremendous
shift in culture with the rise in
mobile devices that provide fast
and easy answers to the kinds
of questions we have always
spent a lot of time teaching and
testing. To me, this provides
n Use technology to help raise the percentage
of young people with two- or four-year college
degrees from 39 percent to 60 percent by 2020.
n Provide “broadband everywhere” to serve
learners inside and outside schools.
n Put a computing device in the hands of every
student.
n Make connectedness the hallmark of effective
teaching.
n Create an online learning registry of content
developed by federal government agencies.
n Fund the research and development of open-source educational resources.
n Fund research about how online communities of
practice can improve teaching and learning.
n Create a national initiative that defines productivity in education and establishes metrics for
measuring it.
Source: Office of Educational Technology, U.S. Department of
Education. (2010). Transforming American Education: Powered
by Technology. Retrieved from www.ed.gov/sites/default/files/
NETP-2010-final-report.pdf
20 Educational lEadErship / FEbruary 2011
