Tuesday, May 29, 2007

A Significant Opportunity: Feedback to U.S. Secretary of Education Spellings

For those in the U.S., Secretary Margaret Spellings has asked for ideas on the integration of technology in education. There is a form on the ed.gov site, but no ability to dialog or even leave your contact information if you fill it out. Therefore, I have created a forum thread for each of Secretary Spellings' questions at Classroom20.com, and propose that we discuss them there and invite her office to view the dialog on this website and even participate.

This is a terrific opportunity to not only respond but to also show the benefit of Web 2.0 technology in addressing this kind of issue. Please invite your friends and colleagues to join Classroom 2.0 and participate in this important discussion.

Here are the questions, each linked to their own forum thread:

1. In what ways has technology improved the effectiveness of your classroom, school or district?

2. Based on your role (administrator, parent, teacher, student, entrepreneur, business leader), how have you used educational data to make better decisions or be more successful?

3. In what ways can technology help us prepare our children for global competition and reach our goals of eliminating achievement gaps and having all students read and do math on grade level by 2014?

4. What should be the federal government's role in supporting the use of technology in our educational system?

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:13 AM

    Steve, this is a great idea.

    Think it would also be a great idea to offer up alternative questions that were not asked by ED, but perhaps should have been. That is, would answers to these four questions yield actionable information for federal regulatory staff/policymakers OR are there better/bigger questions that should be driving policy discussions?

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  2. Douglas:

    I think you're right on target, and this is another advantage to a "forum dialog" that could be brought out. We can create any questions that we might like and add them to the discussion.

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  3. Anonymous11:30 PM

    Since I am choosing to research this issue for my dissertation and have investigated educational technology policy, I would like to share some thoughts.
    I think it is critical that all teachers consider and define the role of technology for their learning, their teaching and their students' learning. Teachers may also need to determine what they can do to extend their skills and knowledge about technology integration.
    Additional questions which speak to ethical use, strategies which empower users, evaluating what technology has done for students and teachers are equally important.

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