Feds review progress on National Ed-Tech Plan

The second day of the International Society for Technology in Education’s annual conference featured an hour-long presentation and Q&A session with Karen Cator, director of educational technology for the Department of Education. Cator reviewed the nation’s progress toward implementing ed-tech projects and highlighted some of the National Education Technology Plan’s top priorities.

The plan focuses on:

• Learning: Personalized learning and true engagement can make for a powerful learning environment, the plan says.
• Teaching: Technology has the opportunity to really augment teaching capacity in every single classroom, it says.
• Assessment: For feedback and better understanding, educators must understand how people learn, and they should be able to take that feedback and improve teaching and learning.

But to execute the plan, several essential components must be in place, she said -- such as broadband Internet access, devices in all places where learning can occur (including school, homes, and libraries), and the human infrastructure necessary to support such a system.