White House Targets Innovative Education Technologies

[Robb]

http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/leadership/231601689">White House Targets Innovative Education Technologies

http://www.digitalpromise.org/about">Digital Promise, a collaboration between the government and the private sector, will identify breakthrough technologies to improve student performance

The White House has formed a nonprofit organization aimed at creating innovative learning technologies to transform education in the United States.

The National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies, aka Digital Promise, will engage exclusively in research and development (R&D) to use the most advanced technology to improve learning at all educational levels, according to the organization's website.

The organization's ultimate goal is to equip American students better to compete in the global economy, already a key focus of the Obama administration through the Educate to Innovate Campaign. That campaign--also a partnership between the federal government and private sector-- is specifically aimed at increasing the competitiveness of American students in science and math.


(snip)

The Department of Education, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation are providing startup funds and support for the nonprofit, which brings together a coalition of business leaders and educators....

Read More: http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/leadership/231601689

[DevonRex]

1. That's really cool. Thanks Robb. KnR nt

[Ian David]

2. I like this one...

[saras]

3. You need to read this stuff carefully before getting excited...

"equip American students better to compete in the global economy"

Note that no one ever says we're competing for high-level positions, because we're not.

"Better compete" means to underbid Chinese workers without complaint or protest.

We don't need new technologies. We don't need to "transform" education. We need to remove the artificial difficulties we've imposed on it, so it can be functional again, even in the difficult places.

[Robb]

4. Please don't assume I haven't been following this initiative.

It is a terrible disservice to students to deny them access to educational technology -- especially based upon some notion that were we to remove "artificial difficulties" our 19th-century educational structure would somehow ever qualify as functional.

I'd point out that in 1969, teachers railed against Children's Television Workshop with the same argument you've just made. Notably, DOE (then USOOE) and Carnegie were on board with that initiative, too.