{"id":619,"date":"2012-11-20T12:44:19","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T19:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=619"},"modified":"2013-05-08T10:16:49","modified_gmt":"2013-05-08T17:16:49","slug":"three-modest-suggestions-about-technology-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=619","title":{"rendered":"Three Modest Suggestions About Technology Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Friday, I presented some of my thoughts about educational technology at the Policy Analysis For California Education seminar at Sacramento.\u00a0 I began by asking the same question that I\u2019ve asked myself and others over the last couple years: \u201cWhy should California, the headwater of the digital revolution, be stuck in the eddies of early 20th<\/sup> Century school design?\u201d<\/p>\n

There is no good reason, only political will, and the inability to find a clear enough vision to create public policy that will work.\u00a0 That, as it turns out, is a tall order.<\/p>\n

People are more afraid of giving up control than they are excited about the possibilities of technology.\u00a0 Although educators frequently denigrate standardized testing, they remain wedded to standardized learning: a single scope and sequence, age and grade leveled.\u00a0 It will take some doing to disturb the existing grammar of schooling.<\/p>\n

Technology to change learning does not yet have a champion.\u00a0 This is not to say that there are not advocates for technology usage, particularly among the companies that manufacture hardware and software.\u00a0 But we miss \u201cthe city on the hill vision\u201d connected to the political vision to bring it about.<\/p>\n

I made three policy suggestions at the seminar:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Improve those places in the existing system that are most troublesome and expensive.\u00a0 In California, as in most of the rest of the country, these include the education of English Language Learners, Special Education, remediation at all levels, and the transition from high school to college.<\/li>\n
  2. Start to build a web-based educational infrastructure available to all students, teachers, and families in the state.\u00a0 It would do three things.\u00a0 It would create access at school and at home thus partially bridging the digital divide between rich and poor.\u00a0 It would broker and rate lessons and teaching resources.\u00a0 And it would allow students to take examinations and get credit when they are ready.<\/li>\n
  3. Tweak regulations in order to create a more open system with greater incentive for participation and innovation.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The slides from my talk are available <\/a><\/strong>along with a video of the PACE presentation<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Last Friday, I presented some of my thoughts about educational technology at the Policy Analysis For California Education seminar at Sacramento.\u00a0 I began by asking the same question that I\u2019ve asked myself and others over the last couple years: \u201cWhy should California, the headwater of the digital revolution, be stuck in the eddies of early […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,6,11,8],"tags":[101],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=619"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":719,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions\/719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}