It’s rare for me to be blogging about a policy report that is not specific to Higher Education, but Transforming American Education: Learning powered by technology has caught our attention on the Talis Aspire team. Published in March, it is the draft National Educational Technology Plan 2010 of the US, and it begins by noting that education has become an urgent priority under the Obama administration, but becomes really interesting early on by advocating a revolutionary rather than evolutionary approach to educational change – it is this that should really command our attention. Budgetary challenges and the need for innovation are apposite here, and provide the drivers for a sustained argument throughout the report in favour of the extended application of technologies into the educational sphere, as we have seen in the workplace (from which Education can learn lessons) and at home. This is the key argument of a report that is positioned right at the centre of US educational policy.

The report focuses on 5 areas as it works through this argument.

Learning

All learners will have engaging and empowering learning experiences both in and outside of school that prepare them to be active, creative, knowledgeable, and ethical participants in our globally networked society.

Assessment

Our educational system at all levels will leverage the power of technology to measure what matters and sue assessment data for continuous improvement.

Interestingly, the report emphasises the need to mine student data in order to improve learning outcomes. We should all be thinking about the value of data in existing systems that will help shed light on student learning, and what data would add further value. The report foresees “a system of interconnected feedback for students, educators, parents, school leaders, and district administrators”, for example.

Teaching

Professional educators will be supported individually and in teams by technology that connects them to the data, content, resources, expertise, and learning experiences that enable and inspire more effective teaching for all learners.

The report recommends a “connected teaching” approach, where individual educators build online learning communities consisting of a wide range of stakeholders from students, teachers, libraries to  professional experts in diverse disciplines, who may or may not be part of the same institution.

Infrastructure

All students and educators will have access to a comprehensive infrastructure for learning when and where they need it.

Productivity

Our education system at all levels will redesign processes and structures to take advantage of the power of technology to improve learning outcomes while making more efficient user of time, money, and staff.

The report urges everyone in education to rethink the very basics of current practices in Education, which has not, to date, “incorporated many of the practices other sectors regularly use to improve productivity and manage costs, nor has it leveraged technology to enable or enhance them.”

Is the report over-prescriptive?

Despite ample references to personalised learning and generic skills interwoven in all academic disciplines, there is a highly prescriptive flavour in parts of this report, for example,

The challenging and rapidly changing demands of our global economy tell us what people need to know and who needs to learn.

Mmm – not what you’d call open. Of course, there is a prescriptive element to education – we would not be developing our Talis Aspire resource list management tool if students at all levels didn’t require considerable guidance, but that guidance is a starting point to setting the mind free.

How soon is now?

This is a report in a hurry, which provides further interest

The NETP accepts that we don’t have the luxury of time – we must act now and commit to fine-tuning and midcourse corrections as we go.

And although the Elearnspace blog has pointed out with justification that the report

…reads like a somewhat random mix of concepts that have been discussed in various blogs and forums over the last decade: connected learning, 21st century skills, data-driven improvement, learning networks, life-wide learning, etc. Nothing new here.

… like us, they see the significance of these ideas finally being picked up at policy level by the US Department of Education. British educationalists, especially those working with learning technologies, should be watching developments in the US policy space with interest.