The Media Spot

In his weekly Youtube.com video address,President elect Barack Obama announced that he is planning, as part ofhis economic recovery plan, to "put new computers in our classrooms" andgive every child "the chance to get online", to enable our students to"compete in the 21st century (global) economy".

This is encouraging to those of us in education who believe that"21st century schools" must expand the traditional curriculum to developstudents' ability to critically analyze and communicate in new forms ofmedia -- the same tools that the president-elect himself is using tocommunicate with the American people ¹.  All of these ways ofcommunicating are available for free to our students if teachers havethe equipment, know how to access them, and have the support tointegrate them into their curricula.   Connected computers provideteachers with access to those media, and opportunities for students tocommunicate and collaborate with their global peers as they will becalled on to do in today's job market (and as they can using [your]interactive school websites!)

However, as many schools have learned over the past decade,adding technology to a school building is only the first step intransforming learning environments to address the changing needs of ourstudents.  To successfully utilize technology to provide meaningfullearning experiences that teach 21st century skills while enhancing thetraditional curriculum will require teacher training, curriculumdevelopment, tech support and computer maintenance.  It will beinteresting to see how this is addressed by Obama and his new Secretaryof Education.

I'll be watching closely for how this plan takes shape, and offering my ideas through the education page at Change.gov, the administration's website, where they invite input from "the people" in the spirit of democracy -- but a democracy that requires some 21st Century Skills for participation! ;)

¹This administration is already looking pretty "21st Century": Change.gov has an active blog, is offering all meeting documents to the public, and inviting feedback through the web, and Obama is posting weekly video addresses on the web (using Youtube.com, which incidentally is blocked by the NYCDOE!)