Do ISTE’s “Top Ten in ‘10” Ed Tech Priorities Reflect Your Issues?
Welcome to 2010 and to this ISTE Connects conversation! From my home base in Washington DC, it looks to be a New Year full of possibility and challenge. We face daunting budget deficits at all levels of government and find ourselves struggling to maintain robust funding for classroom technology.
As part of ISTE’s advocacy efforts this year, we’re launching a campaign, ISTE’s Top Ten in ’10. Our goal is to raise awareness about the centrality of education technology to real and lasting school improvement, and its role as a key driver in innovation.
You can read the press release here, and the full Top Ten in ’10 document here. But for conversation and learning from your peers, stick with ISTE Connects, where we’ll be counting down ISTE’s Top Ten in ’10, two at a time, over the coming weeks.
So let’s get the ball rolling! ISTE’s #10 and #9 ed tech priorities for the New Year are as follows:
10.
Promote global digital citizenship. Growing competition in a flat world means technology is a great equalizer. It breaks down artificial barriers to effective teaching and learning, and provides incredible opportunities for collaboration across borders.
9.
Invest in ongoing research and development. Solid investment in education R&D, particularly if focused on innovation in teaching and learning, ensures that we remain a global leader in this strategic domain.
Now it’s your turn. Do these two ISTE priorities reflect key issues in your region? What is your school or district doing to promote digital citizenship and invest in R&D?
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5 Comments
William Zaggle, CAO - GlobalScholar
Wednesday, 13th January 2010 at 3:07 pm
It is obvious that the scope of even the smallest economic cycles of a community have now been elevated to a global scale. The ability to effectively use technology to leverage this new expanded cycle by our next generation is of huge importance. As for breaking down artificial barriers, technology does stand poised to become one of the greatest equalizers of knowledge delivery ever known. Thus the reason Google may choose to end its operations in a country like China that strives to carefully control the distribution of knowledge. Removing these barriers also provides an opportunity for other equally important aspects of teaching and learning to gain attention, such as differentiated instruction and profiled collaboration.
Research and Development obviously walk hand in hand with the concepts of Insight and Innovation. For just as quality innovation can only follow quality insight, quality development only follows quality research. If we are going to follow USDOE Jim Shelton’s mantra of “Find It, Prove-It , Scale-It”, we will need a sustained significant investment in educational R&D in this decade. Otherwise we are only continuing to follow along our current evolutionary path of Random Selection, hoping only to stumble upon effective, scalable solutions while other countries are investing in much needed educational research and innovation.
GlobalScholar is firmly dedicated to both of these two Top Ten of ’10, ISTE tech priorities both in our own products and within ISTE’s global leadership, and why we will continue to remain a firm supporter of ISTE and its mission in the foreseeable future.
Jean Tower
Thursday, 14th January 2010 at 8:57 am
These are both good priorities, but funding R&D can’t be on the backs of school districts. The reality is that this is a year of budget reductions and staff cuts. For effective R&D programs to exits, we need a reliable funding stream. Just yesterday I wrote about defending budgets http://k12edubuzz.com/is-technology-considered-a-critical-element-in-your-school-district/ and I read on Blue Skunk blog a similarly themed post. So I wonder where the investment in education R&D come from.
Join the Conversation on ISTE’s “Top Ten in ‘10” | ISTE Connects - Educational Technology
Friday, 15th January 2010 at 9:10 pm
[...] Do ISTE’s “Top Ten in ‘10” Ed Tech Priorities Reflect Your Issues? [...]
Patrick Riccards
Tuesday, 19th January 2010 at 10:34 am
The issue of education R&D is essential to lasting efforts for school improvement, yet it is a topic that is often neglected in both policy and instructional debates. By highlighting this important topic — in the light of all of the other issues educators are grappling with — ISTE makes the importance of R&D front and center to the debate.
More importantly, though, ISTE’s top 10 makes clear that such research and development efforts hinge on making sure that teachers, administrators, and others in the school community are trained, supported, and encouraged to both adopt new technologies and utilize them effectively and knowledgably. All the technology in the world won’t boost student learning if educators don’t have the knowledge and skills to maximize the tools made available.
Larry Goldberg
Tuesday, 9th February 2010 at 8:41 pm
Briefly…
Very disappointing to see not a word about accessibility, inclusion, disability, special ed in any of the top ten. Once again ed tech and accessible technology are siloed and kept separate.
I couldn’t see supporting this top ten list without at least a nod from ISTE that ALL of these goals must support the needs of ALL students, which would mean as a bare minimum, that technologies purchased by schools should be accessible to all.
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