Technology in Education: U.S. Policy Themes and Issues

Committee on Science
and
Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities

Policy Themes and Issues

by Professor Chris Dede

Fundamental Assumptions
To achieve major gains in educational outcomes and to prepare students for 21st century society, we must use information technology to support innovative models of teaching/learning rather than simply to automate conventional pedagogical approaches. These new instructional strategies include an emphasis on "distributed learning," orchestrating educational experiences and responsibilities across classrooms and homes and workplaces and communities.
Information technology can make school administration and management more effective, freeing time and resources to enhance student learning. Beyond these gains in efficiency, major changes in current organizational practices (e.g., block scheduling, authentic assessments) are necessary to attain the full benefits of technology-enhanced learning.
The advantages of using information technology in education should be equitably available to all learners and communities.
Issues That Spring from These Assumptions

1. ) Instruction
Teachers must master not only how to use information technology, but also how to create and sustain the new types of learning environments it enables into all parts of the curriculum.

2. ) Management

Administrators must master not only how to use information technology to make existing organizational practices more efficient, but also how to create and sustain innovative institutional processes that support new models of teaching.

3. ) Financing

a.) Educators must balance expenditures on hardware purchases, ongoing expenses for maintaining a technological infrastructure, staff development, and access to content and services.

b.) Without dramatically raising the cost of education, communities must find mechanisms to fund the purchase, installation, and maintenance of high performance computing and communications; the staff development necessary to develop skilled practitioners; and the ongoing expenditures needed for access to high quality content and services.
4. ) External Support

a.) Parents, businesses, taxpayers, and community groups must support the evolution of traditional public schooling into new models of instruction, organizational management, and shared responsibility for learning.

b.) Businesses, vendors, universities, and community groups must aid public schools through sharing expertise, donating equipment, sponsoring joint technology-centered projects, and raising funds.
5. ) Proper Usage of Information

Students, teachers, and administrators must implement lawful and ethical practices in the copyright, privacy, First Amendment, and moral issues associated with accessing and sharing data via information technology.

6. ) Implementation

Educators must determine best practices from prior implementations of information technology, adapting these lessons learned to their unique situations.

7. ) Assessment

Educators must develop mechanisms to evaluate the effectiveness of information technology in accomplishing instructional and administrative goals and must establish comparative guidelines for allocating resources to technology among competing priorities.

8. ) Essential Standards

a.) States must develop criteria and evaluative mechanisms for assuring that every public school provides students with sufficient learning experiences via technology.

b.) States must develop means for assuring that all learners have equitable opportunities to obtain the benefits of information technology in education.
Illustrative Policy Questions That Arise From These Issues

1. ) Instruction
--What types of policies could provide teachers with more time to prepare for using technology in instruction?

2. ) Management

--What types of policies could encourage administrators to implement changes in practice (e.g., block scheduling) important for new types of pedagogy? What types of incentives could induce teachers to support such changes?

3. ) Financing

--What types of creative financing mechanisms allow for depreciating educational technology at an appropriate rate, so that obsolete systems are replaced as part of the standard budget cycle?

4. ) External Support

--What types of tax incentives could all levels of government offer private enterprise to provide technological support for public schools?

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