National and State Technology Standards

The purpose of the National Education Technology Plan is to help equip all students to be able to help facilitate our country’s development as a global competitor. Through this plan, the government wants to increase student graduation rates. It affects teachers in that they will be rewarded on how their students perform and more training will be required. Teachers will need to be flexible and willing to collaborate with higher education, businesses and organization in order to aide in student learning. Students will be affected in that it will open them up to more opportunity by gaining the necessary skills for today’s economy. Everyday people will be affected in that taxes could increase to offset the cost of implementation.

The main assumptions under which the National Education Technology Plan are outlined below:

·         “Many of the failings of our education system stem from our failure to engage the hearts and minds of students.”

·         “What students need to learn and what we know about how they learn have changed, and therefore the learning experiences we provide should change.”

·         “How we assess learning focuses too much on what has been learned after the fact and not enough on improving learning in the moment.”

·         “We miss a huge opportunity to improve our entire education system when we gather student-learning data in silos and fail to integrate the information and make it broadly available to decision-makers at all levels of our education system—individual educators, schools, districts, states, and the federal government.”

·         “Learning depends on effective teaching, and we need to focus on extended teams of connected educators with different roles who collaborate within schools and across time and distance and who use technology resources and tools to augment human talent.”

·         “Effective teaching is an outcome of preparing and continually training teachers and leaders to guide the type of learning we want in our schools.”

·         “Making engaging learning experiences and resources available to all learners anytime and anywhere requires state-of-the-art infrastructure, which includes technology, people, and processes that ensure continuous access.”

·         “Education can learn much from such industries as business and entertainment about leveraging technology to continuously improve learning outcomes while increasing the productivity of our education system at all levels.”

·         “Just as in health, energy, and defense, the federal government has an important role to play in funding and coordinating some of the R&D challenges associated with leveraging technology to ensure the maximum opportunity to learn.”

“The plan also assumes that with technology we can provide engaging and powerful learning content, resources, and experiences and assessment systems that measure student learning in more complete, authentic, and meaningful ways. With technology-based learning and assessment systems, we can improve student learning and generate data that can be used to continuously improve the education system at all levels. With technology, we can execute collaborative teaching strategies combined with professional learning strategies that better prepare and enhance educators' competencies and expertise over the course of their careers. With technology, we can redesign and implement processes to produce better outcomes while achieving ever higher levels of productivity and efficiency across the education system.”

With the implementation of this plan, administrators, educators or even students might have concerns about these assumptions. Administrators might be concerned about the budget they will be given to implement the plan. Educators might be challenged with handing over precious classroom time to businesses and organizations. They may also have difficulty with the additional training that will be required as well as the competition it could create between staff. Students might feel overwhelmed by what is expected of them.

Below is list of the five goals for our educational system. They are directly quoted from the NETP. Technology will help to support the growth of these competencies through the increased accessibility of technology for more people and by utilizing it to measure academic learning. It will be used to create teams of professional educators that funnel support to one another with the goal of creating lifelong learners. Additionally, it will be used to manage resources efficiently.

“1.0 Learning: Engage and Empower”

“2.0 Assessment: Measure What Matters”

“3.0 Teaching: Prepare and Connect”

“4.0 Infrastructure: Access and Enable”

“5.0 Productivity: Redesign and Transform”

As I read The State of Ohio's Educational Technology Plan's "purpose and mission" (page 6), I believe it aligns with the National Education Technology Plan in that both work to utilize businesses, agencies and other resources that can be made accessible for improving the technological skills of students. Both plans purpose to make technology more easily available. The two plans are not aligned in that Ohio’s plan is flexible so that it can be adapted as technology changes. Ohio’s plan also seeks public input.

As I read Ohio’ s State Educational Technology Plan outlined on page 8, I believe this outline aligns with the "model of learning powered by technology, with goals and recommendations in five essential areas" proposed by the National Education Technology Plan in that it gives specifics on how it is going to meet those goals. It narrows in and identifies the strategies it will use to accomplish the goals at the State level. The areas where the two plans are perhaps not aligned are the difference in emphasis on assessment. The NETP strongly focuses on assessment to help drive instruction, however the OSETP puts a focus on data collection to determine educator’s professional development. OSETP makes mention of “short-cycle student assessments.”

                As I read Ohio’s State Educational Technology Plan's "measurements of success" (page 16), I see the amount of funding necessary to support this plan and the time it will take for educators to get trained as  barriers to seeing the fulfilling of this plan. I also see the collaboration between the educational system and outside agencies as being a challenge. I think it would be difficult to get everyone on the same page. Not every professional is a teacher. It might be hard for teachers to have outside professionals coming into the classroom without having experience with children or a background of child development. Another barrier in reaching the "measurements of success" in the state of Ohio is regulating the data tracking system for both students and teachers.