National Ed Tech Plan- Articles

National Education Technology Plan- I am skeptical about this website. It is a federal government controlled website. You can tell by the "Impact of NCLB" segment that it is pro-current administration policies. What I see is a lot of broad ideas, but no real guidelines for educators to follow. Are they leaving this to the states? If they were there would be no NCLB. I really hate when people throw out an idea and call it a "plan". Plus, there are several success stories, but no real debate on what works and what doesn't. We need to know both to make a real difference in the curriculum.

Edutopia- This article has things I agree with and also disagree with. I also started to rethink some opinions. In the past, I have lamented the loss of handwritting. But this article makes a good point about longer, more thought out papers being the product of keyboarding. How students express themselves shouldn't be the issue, as long as they DO express themselves in some way. I long for this expression with the experiences I've had at the high school the last two days. Nothing but contempt for any attempt to get them to think about something new, think about something at all.
I'm not sure I completely agree with asking the students for their opinion. You might get some new ideas, but the students lately seem so disinterested in any type of education. It's kind of like which came first, the chicken or the egg? I think we're going to have to do the research, using our eyes and ears to study the kids and come up with new technology-based forms of instruction on our own. If they work, we can share that, if they don't we start again.
The idea that the standard curriculum would be gleaned faster doesn't bother me. I believe most kids have that ability given the right use of technology, but the following does bother me:
"To get everyone to the good stuff, the faster kids would work with and pull up the ones who were behind." This quote from the article was a little utopian for me. I'm not quite sure that would happen.

High School.com- As a student in a Virtual College right now, I can agree with a lot of things in the article.
I see the idea of a freedom to speak an opinion that might not be accepted in a traditional classroom. The anonymity does provide a more open forum for differing opinions when you know you're not going to run into that person in the cafeteria.
I also see an advantage in being able to take classes not normally offered in the traditional school. That freedom to take what interests a student might lead to a better idea of what to focus your study on in college, leading to less students wasting time taking classes blindly while trying to declare a major.
The only problem I see is with the students totally abandoning the traditional school. The social aspects of a high school, while difficult to navigate, I believe, are essential to the development of a well-rounded person. The jobs these students are going to hold are going to require people skills that would not be as developed when a student has kept themselves in an all digital world. Even if a students does find work in a completely digital world, I believe this leads to a downfall in the society of our world. People become insolated and isolated, unable to empathize with the outside world, because they don't have the skills to live in the real world. Because if they're high school experience was better online, they're probably going to be more likely to attend college online. And there is where the pattern of isolation could begin.

The sites for USA Today, and the CNETS article both say they are unavailable as of 4-20-07.