NETP 5352 WK2 post #3

The National Educational Technology Plan or NETP, as propsed by the United States government is intensely aggressive and challenging. I believe that in order for our great nation to remain competitive and strong, such a rigorous plan is necessary. There are two main goals that the plan seeks to accomplish in education. First, we must raise our percentage of degreed Americans from 39% to 60% in the Associates and Bachelor levels. Second, we must “close the achievement gap” of all students, ensuring that our high school graduates are college and career ready.
The NETP is credible and as an educator I will do my part to helping our nation reach these goals. It names five areas in which to monitor, create and asses our goals for the 21st century learner; Learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure and productivity. These national recommendations can be seen in our state goals of the Long Range Plan for Technology (LRPT) for Texas. This alignment makes us more apt for success because we are moving toward same goals. Among our many duties as educational leaders, we must prepare our educators and develop our students into teaching and learning with the understanding of the significance our this technological/digital era of today and the future. As we work towards these national and state goals, we will begin to create a stronger economy because we have 21st century ready learners.
I believe that the plan is passionate and necessary. I believe that we must start with educators and the development of educator preparation and expertise. I think this is where the gap is because if educators were beyond comfortable but confident in technology, then it seems that educators would use technology more in their lessons. I wonder if we have bitten off more than we can chew by saying in eleven years (2020) we will accomplish the two main goals of the NETP (60% college graduates) I know rigor, relevance, and relationships are given factors in the likelier success of urban kids. ( I was not urban, but I had rigor and relevance in my education. I did not think about relationships with my teachers and I learned). I think there is more to just having technology and knowledge of technology in preparing our teachers to effectively engage our students. I think the plan is ideal though. As mentioned in the article, time is not an option and we must be aggressive and act now and deal with any hiccups along the way.