Blog #3 NETP

The National Educational Technology Plan has five goals that have been identified to transform American education. These goals include: 1.0 Learning: “All learners will have engaging and empowering learning experiences both in and outside of school that prepare them to be active, creative, knowledgeable, and ethical participants in our globally networked society (NETP, 2010). 2.0 Assessment: “Our education system at all levels will leverage the power of technology to measure what matters and use assessment data for continuous improvement” (NETP, 2010). 3.0 Teaching: Professional educators will be supported individually and in teams by technology that connects them to data, content, resources, expertise, and learning experiences that enable and inspire more effective teaching for all learners” (NETP, 2010). 4.0 Infrastructure: “All students and educators will have access to a comprehensive infrastructure for learning when and where they need it” (NETP, 2010). 5.0 Productivity: Our education system at all levels will redesign processes and structures to take advantage of the power of technology to improve learning outcomes while making more efficient use of time, money, and staff” (NETP, 2010).
The plan’s learning and teaching ideas are similar to many school district tools that are already required to make students successful. According to the plan’s learning goals, the 21st century learning model is used to make sure all learners are engaged and empowered when they are learning, that the information provided to them is relevant, and that learning is opposite of the cookie cutter idea, it is individualized (NETP, 2010). Teaching is expected to be connected instead of alone so that teaching is more beneficial to evoking student learning.
The plan’s professional development and training ideas suggest that learning should take place when educators are preparing to become educators, and training does not always need to be formal, but can happen “in the very act of teaching” (NETP, 2010).
My concern is that the requirements that are placed on teachers to learn and apply technology and to work collaboratively are increasing, but the amount of time that teachers have to learn new skills and collaborate effectively does not provide the opportunities for these improvements the way that others do in other countries (NETP, 2010). Contrarily, I believe in order to collaborate effectively and learn new technology, more time is required other than teaching time.