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The US education system is at a cross-roads, and "education technology" is part of the national dialog - again. In the nearly one decade that has transpired since the last national discussion about the role technology should be in US schools, the technologies themselves have evolved many times over. Perhaps more exciting is that the innovations related to the educational use of technology has generated new and compelling "emerging evidence".

For those of you involved in these innovative projects, it's time to speak up - the US Department of Education wants to hear from you...

Barbara Means at SRI is leading an effort to gather input about the NEW National Ed Tech Plan for the US. Below is their email invitation to all of us to participate in the dialog and submit our feedback. Now is our chance to speak up and make a difference! The input period begins now, and continues into October. Please take a moment to share your story, your data, and your recommendations...

Jim Vanides

Jim Vanides, B.S.M.E, M.Ed.
Worldwide Education Programs
HP Global Social Investment
Hewlett-Packard
Twitter @jgvanides

For information about the HP Global Social Investments, visit www.hp.com/hpinfo/grants

******************************email from SRI*************************

The U.S. Department of Education is developing a new National Educational Technology Plan to provide a vision for the use of information and communication technologies in transforming American education with technical support from SRI International and a Technical Working Group. We are seeking public participation in the development of the Plan to ensure that it reflects the experience and expertise of the educational community. With this goal in mind, you and your organization are cordially invited to share your input through the new National Educational Technology Plan development website at www.edtechfuture.org.

The site is designed to collect public contributions that will be used by a Technical Working Group of education and technology scholars, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners from the field that has been organized to support plan development. In particular, the Working Group is seeking written resources, technology tool recommendations, short videos and exemplary cases related to four focus areas in which technology has the potential to transform education:

Learning: Enabling unprecedented access to high-quality learning experiences. 

Teaching: Implementing new ways to support those who support learning.

Assessment: Measuring what matters and providing the information that enables continuous improvement processes at all levels of the education system.

Productivity: Redesigning systems and processes to free up education system resources to support learning.

You may share your individual input, as well as work with your community and professional networks to generate collective input for submission to the site. In addition to contributing resources ideas, you can rate and discuss others' submissions, with the goal of identifying particularly innovative and relevant resources.

To focus participants' discussions, website sections devoted to each of the four focus areas will be launched one by one, beginning with Learning (September 9) and followed by Assessment (September 18), Teaching (October 5), and Productivity (October 19). We hope you will visit the site frequently to share your expertise in the areas that interest you.

Please join us in this important endeavor and forward this invitation to other colleagues and organizations that you think would be interested in this opportunity. To learn more about the National Educational Technology Plan and to participate in this important national effort, please visit www.edtechfuture.org.