National Education Technology Plan - Continuing the Look at Infrastructure

In a previous blog post, I looked at the first two recommendations in the 'infrastructure' section of the National Education Technology Plan. I thought I'd take a moment to highlight the other items noted in this section. The third recommendation in this section is:

Support the development and use of open educational resources to promote innovative and creative opportunities for all learners and accelerate the development and adoption of new open technology-based learning tools and courses.

Note that the word "open" is mentioned twice. From what I've seen, there's a connection that needs to be made between the wealth of freely available educational resources on the Internet and the educational standards that are set at the state and national level. There's work that needs to be done to tie resources to standards. I've heard many people point out that a whole lot of "teaching to the test" takes place in our classrooms. As it pertains to this recommendation, would you argue that a whole lot of "teaching to the textbook" takes place. I'm sure it's easier to purchase a textbook and cover the content, chapter by chapter, without paying much attention to the content standards that are expected to be covered. The log is that the textbook must cover the content; otherwise, why would I be provided with this book? The free resources are out there, but most teachers aren't going to volunteer to be the ones to tie them to particular content areas and replace a textbook that they may have. It would seem that it can be done, though. Who will take that challenge? It is being done in Vail, Arizona.

The next recommendation:

Build state and local education agency capacity for evolving an infrastructure for learning.

Part of this recommendation focuses on the need to transform from in-house data centers to more powerful cloud-based centers. It makes sense that, if you followed the other recommendations and had widespread broadband, a device for everyone and open-source teaching materials that, yes, you need cloud-based data centers. One thing we've done in Kentucky is transition to Microsoft's Live@edu for email and other collaborative tools. Kentucky's standard SIS package, Infinite Campus, is externally hosted for many districts as well. Districts have also moved to subscription-based models for several pieces of instructional software. I've heard of web-based modules for HVAC software and, if it hasn't happened already, I'd say this is the direction that library management software and transportation software will head as well.

More to come as time allows...