Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology

The National Educational Technology Plan was released in March 2010 to serve as a guide and model for state educational agencies to set or adapt their standards. An important facet of this plan is the implementation of Universal Design for Learning. UDL is a system of principles and guidelines designed to make content and learning equally accessable to all students. By designing curriculum with UDL guidelines and using communicative technology, we will be able to meet the needs of students who may not have equal access to the content, such as low-income students, English language learners, and learners with disabilities. By using the "always on" nature of the internet, all learners will have 24 hour access to content to be learned.

The National Educational Technology Plan makes important suggestions to thate educational agencies, including:
*Revise, create, and adopt standards and learning objectives for all content areas that reflect 21st century expertise and the power of technology to improve learning.
*Use advances in the learning sciences and technology to enhance STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)learning and develop, adopt, and evaluate new methodologies with the potential to enable all learners to excell in STEM.
*Design, develop, and adopt technology-based content, resources, and online learning communities that create opportunities for educators to collaborate for more effective teaching, inspire and attract new people into the profession, and encourage our best educators to continue teaching.
*Provide pre-service and in-service educators with preparation and professional learning experiences powered by technology that close the gap between students’ and educators’ fluencies with technology and promote and enable technology use in ways that improve learning, assessment, and instructional practices.

Because most teachers are digital immigrants, it is very important to provide teachers with professional learning experiences that bring the teachers' fluency with technology closer to that of the students. When this report is boiled down, we as teachers are called to do two things: 1.) teach our students problem solving skills using collaborative and communicative technology and 2.) Assess these problem solving skills in collaborative, performance based projects that utilize all available content and communication with peers and experts within the fields of study.

If we can get this accomplished, secondary schools will produce students that are autonomous and marketable. However, we must get away from the high-stakes objective measurements that drive our lives currently.