Educational Policy Recommendations
Recommendations for Implementation
1) Develop a State Plan for Use of Technology in Education.
States should establish a clear, long-term, strategic plan for learning technologies. The plan should provide a vision of technology's role in education services, propose effective uses of funds, ensure equitable access to technology, and maximize connections among technologies.
Provide a state vision of technology's role in education. States must communicate a clear and persuasive vision of technology's role in education to ensure that all key persons - the governor, legislators, state education agency staff, higher education authorities, school board members, administrators, teachers, parents and students - work toward a common goal for technology use.
Include certain key components in state and local plans. State and local plans for implementing the use of learning technologies should include an identification of needs; clearly defined goals and objectives; an evaluation of each selected technology's capabilities and cost-effectiveness; a description of the governance structure and systems operation; a delineation of current and future funding sources; a strategy for teacher, administrative and support staff training; strategy and schedule for implementing the plan; procedures for assisting local education agencies in the development of local technology plans; an evaluation plan; and a mechanism for modifying the plan itself. Planning is an ongoing process. Plans should be continually re-evaluated based on program outcomes, analysis of program effectiveness, new research and technology development.
Outline the responsibilities at the state, district and building levels to ensure that the technology plan is successfully developed and implemented. Each state should determine the planning process that best fits its needs; there is no single planning process for all states. With a trend towards site-based decision making, district and schools are increasingly responsible for planning and implementing technology programs to meet their specific needs. At the same time, the economies of scale derived from aggregate purchases and the use of telecommunications networks for large-scale delivery drive planning to higher levels within and among states.
While specific responsibilities vary by state, educators from different levels of each state's education system should participate in planning to achieve full integration of technology into education and to ensure clarity of responsibility and action at each level. Technology plans at each level should be developed by teams that include financial and policy decision makers, teacher and administrator representatives; post-secondary and higher education representatives; technical experts; individuals with experience in curriculum development, instructional management and assessment; and other major stakeholders in education.
Ensure that plans for other programs within state education agencies incorporate the use of appropriate technology. State education agency plans for the state and federal programs should incorporate the use of appropriate technology to ensure that technology is effectively integrated into each state education service and across the services.
Share the state vision and plan with other state agencies.
2) Ensure that the State, Districts and Schools Have Sufficient Funding to Initiate and Sustain On-Going Use of Technology as Articulated in the State Plan
Develop a bold new plan to provide steady funding for learning technologies. Technology is an integral part of education; consequently, the federal, state and local governments are responsible for providing funds to initiate and sustain the use of educational technology. Funding should cover all costs associated with the technology and the necessary support for continuing effective use, such as training, maintenance and upgrades. Avenues to decrease the cost of technology by aggregating purchases across the nation, state or regions should be developed to the full extent. To supplement federal, state, and local funds, alternative funding options, such as business-state partnerships and foundation grants, should also be pursued.
Initiate state development of learning technologies. States are in a unique position to stimulate and initiate the development of learning technology products. States should use this opportunity to undertake cost-effective funding options, such as business-state partnerships and foundation grants, should also be pursued.
Include expenditures for technology as part of capital outlay. Investments in educational technology should be considered capital expenditures, which may be depreciated over the life of the product.
3) Ensure that Students and School Personnel Have Equitable Access to Technologies for Their Learning, Teaching and Management Needs
Federal and state policies should ensure access to learning technologies. Many current federal and state policies were developed prior to the introduction of new technology into education. Such policies may now limit access to technology and, therefore, it is imperative to review them for currency and equitable access. The following issues are especially important for policy review and update.
Cost of access: To ensure that students and school personnel have affordable access to technology and information networks, it is necessary for technology providers to establish rates and other policies specifically for educational purposes. What is affordable for education may not be what is affordable for profit-making corporations. For example, state public utility commissions and the Federal Communications Commission should establish special telephone rates for education. The rates must be low enough to enable students and school personnel to take advantage of the voice, video and data services transmitted over the telecommunications systems. And the rates must also be sufficient to ensure continued investment in development of future applications for the education market. In addition, telecommunications costs should be equitable regardless of the factor of geographic location.
Information access: Intellectual property and copyright laws must be revised to increase student and school personnel access to information and provide them the flexibility to use the information for instructional purposes. These laws must also ensure that the owners and originators receive adequate recognition and financial reward. In addition, these laws and other policies should encourage development of electronically accessible information sources.
School facilities design: School facility design requirements, whether for new schools or for building rehabilitation, must support the use of learning technologies. Electrical outlets and voice, video and data lines are critical components of the modern school. School facilities must also support new instructional strategies that use technology (including individual or small-group learning, and varied workstations).
Use of federal and state funds: Federal and state policies should authorize purchase of learning technologies with funds currently earmarked for textbooks, instructional materials and learning resources.
Provide access to learning technologies both in and outside the school building just as access to textbooks is provided both in and outside school. To compensate for unequal technology resources in the home and among schools, extra effort must be made by states, districts and schools to provide all students access to learning technologies both in and outside school buildings. Schools should establish programs to loan equipment to students and school personnel for home use. Schools, libraries and other information sources should make their resources accessible during extended or non-school hours.
4) Ensure that Educators Have the Staff Support, Training, Time Authority, Incentive and Resources Necessary to Use Technology Effectively
Encourage local districts and schools to develop "technology teams." To effectively integrate technology into the classroom, teachers need to work closely with strong support teams that include principals, library media specialists, technicians and other support staff. Technology teams should include individuals with decision-making authority and expertise in technology, curriculum design, instructional design and student assessment. Technology teams should provide teachers with technical support to keep equipment operating; inform them about emerging technologies and programs; suggests ways to renew the curriculum through technology; and assist in assessing the outcomes of the learning technologies.
Provide professional development activities to facilitate full integration of technology into education. States must provide rigorous, continuous training to ensure that all educators develop the skills necessary to use technology in their work. Ongoing professional development activities should be offered cooperatively by states, local districts and vendors to provide training along with technology purchases and upgrades.
As learning technologies become more powerful and complex, teachers must increase their capacities to use technology. Teachers must learn how to operate available equipment and applications; evaluate the potential of instructional applications; integrate the technology into the curriculum; use technology for administrative and assessment purposes; and develop a willingness to experiment with technology. They must receive training to develop the group management, decision-making and coaching skills necessary to help students use technology effectively.
State and local education agency staff must be provided training that helps them understand technology's potential as an instructional, administrative, and assessment tool. They must also be encouraged to experiment with technology-based programs.
State education agency staff must join with higher education authorities to ensure that licensure requirements encourage professionals to use technology effectively in the learning environment.
Provide the time, authority, incentives and resources necessary to use learning technologies. The integration of learning technologies at the center of teaching and learning requires substantial changes from the practice of the traditional classroom. Many of the changes pertain to the role of teachers - their use of time, incentives, relationships between colleagues and the resources available to them. Examples of necessary changes follow:
Educators must have convenient access to a wide range of technologies in their schools, classrooms and homes. These include the technologies of the contemporary workplace of other professionals as well as specialized learning technologies. The more opportunity educators have to become comfortable with and competent with technology, the more likely they are to use it in teaching.
Many elements of the school day must be reviewed. Use of learning technologies may require substantially different class schedules, class lengths and class sizes. Such changes cannot be made in isolation but must be part of decisions that authorize different arrangements for cooperation and logistics.
Evaluation criteria and processes for teachers must ensure that they are fairly judged in the effective use of technology and are encouraged to use it. Current criteria and processes may effectively penalize teachers who use technology. For example, if the criteria is to require a teacher to deliver instruction, the teacher who coaches the students to use technology for "delivery" may be penalized.
5) Encourage the Development and Expansion of Telecommunications Networks
State, inter-state, national and international telecommunications networks are critical for providing students and educators equitable access to resources outside the school and establishing connections between the school and the home, the community and other outside resources.
Plan, fund and build telecommunications networks. Governors and state legislators, the President and Congress are encouraged to provide support for the coordination and expansion of current telecommunications networks and to develop new statewide, inter-state, national, and international telecommunications networks to serve education.
Advocate national standards to increase connections among and use of voice, data and wide-band video networks. Telecomputing networks should operate as national, non-proprietary standard telephone networks do. A telephone user can communicate with another user regardless of which telephone companies provide the service. A routing system is needed to communicate across telecomputing networks. National standards and policies for telecommunications are needed to ensure that the networks service education.
To expand distance learning and ensure that it meets acceptable standards, multi-state cooperative agreements are necessary for teacher qualifications and course specifications. Varying state requirements for certification and course approval currently require teachers of distance learning to meet multiple state certification and course approval requirements. In some cases, teachers are required to take physical exams and demonstrate knowledge of the state's history and government, even though they are not teaching those subjects. Multi-state cooperative agreements are needed to promote high standards for teachers in a manner that facilitates the expansion of distance learning.
Multi-state agreements on standards for courses offered by distance learning are also needed to ensure effective expansion of learning opportunities.
6) Support the Use of Technology in Student Assessment to measure and Report Accumulated Complex Accomplishments and New Student Outcomes
Learning technologies are valuable tools for strengthening the teaching and learning of critical thinking and problem-solving skills and for measuring these capacities. Technology-based assessments help educators monitor student performance by allowing for: clear statement of multiple student outcomes; measurement of complex indicators of student learning; collection of data; management of information in such forms as portfolios; and the analysis processing and timely reporting of testing.
7) Develop National Leadership for Learning Technologies
The federal government should establish leadership in learning technologies. The federal government should institute processes to develop a coordinated vision for the effective use of technology in education. This vision should be based on the Office of Technology Assessment's reports, "Power on!" and "Linking for Learning." Federal leadership is essential to the nation's efforts in research and development; to provide direction in the development of the national telecommunications infrastructure; and to ensure that all federal education programs incorporate the use of technologies as summarized below.
The federal government should provide increased investment in research and development of learning technologies. To realize the full potential of learning technologies, systematic research must be conducted on how students learn, the capabilities of current and emerging technologies, and the effect of the technologies on student outcomes and the learning environment.
A national research agenda related to technology in education must be developed collaboratively by federal, state and local education agencies with the federal government playing the primary role in providing increased and consistent funding for research and development of learning technologies and instructional strategies.
The federal government should take leadership in the establishment of an infrastructure to support learning technologies. The use of learning technologies across the nation requires the federal government's leadership in establishing an infrastructure that includes fiber optic cable and other carriers to transmit all signals throughout the nation. This infrastructure must have the capacity to handle all signals including telephone calls, data transmission, fax, graphics, animation, compressed television, full-motion television, and high-definition television.
The federal government should ensure the transfer of technologies from federal agencies to state and local education agencies. The Department of Education should lead an effort to identify and disseminate learning technologies developed and used by the Departments of Defense, Energy, and Commerce and other federal agencies. The federal investment in learning technologies in such agencies is far more extensive than in the Department of Education. State and local educational systems need access to these technologies through a coordinated dissemination program. CCSSO and other national education organizations should increase advocacy for education's technology needs at the national level. Federal policies and actions on learning technologies are critical to the availability of such technology at the state and local levels.
CCSSO and other national education organizations must increase their efforts of advocacy to ensure that federal telecommunications and technology decisions support improvement of teaching and learning. Strong appeals need to be made to the President, Congress, the federal courts, the Federal Communications Commission and the Departments of Education, Commerce and Agriculture. Specifically, CCSSO should continue to take positions on learning technologies authorization, appropriations and legislation that effect the national information infrastructure and education's access as it has on the recent legislation and court rulings concerning the Bell Operating Companies' right to manufacture telecommunications equipment and provide information services. As Congress debates future actions concerning such issues as cable interconnectivity, spectrum allocation debates and intellectual property rights, CCSSO should represent educational concerns.
from "A Technical Guide to Teleconferencing and Distance Learning," 3rd edition
