What role should the Fed Government play in the ed tech policy process?
I may have this a bit off, but I feel like right now the Federal Government is playing the role of both the stick and the carrot. Every policy that is in place right now has schools struggling to meet the demands of the policy in order to get certain funding and without this federal funding these schools risk loss of funds... or worse.
My mental picture of the education system with the carrot symbolizing extra monies.
Or maybe its more like this... because funding is both the carrot and the stick and our poor education system has no option but to run.
NCLB, ATTAIN, ARRA, and all of the other policies that I have been looking into may be important to the success of education in a technologically advancing society, but I believe the most important Federal policy is being overlooked...
PTDAL
Preparing Teachers for Digital Age Learners
Okay, so technically PTDAL is just a program that is part of the Higher Education Act, but still it needs to be addressed on a much larger scale. I mean for pete's sake if you read through the Higher Education Act you can barely find any mention of PTDAL, which is probably why it is so overlooked. Teachers need to actually learn how to teach and in all reality the Federal Government needs to implement policies that will do just that, because the ones we are trying now are just not working.
PTDAL is not being accomplished, even though it was established in 1998! According to ISTE this program is supposed to "arm new teachers with the knowledge and skills to infuse modern digital tools and resources into the learning environment." But new teachers are still joining the workforce "unarmed." If PTDAL was reauthorized in 2006 and is supposed to be a strong compliment to NCLB then how is it that in 2014 there are still teachers, both new and experienced, who do not have the knowledge they need to teach digital age learners?
When reading up on all of these policies and programs I stumbled upon another blog that I found extremely informational. This blog discusses some of the politics of educational technology and the problems that the education system is facing. It is almost an overwhelming amount of information but one piece struck me more than anything... the video. The school system is failing these students! As a whole students want to learn, but many teachers are blaming the students and falling into bad habits.
If the Federal Government wants to "fix" our education system we have some serious changes we need to make in the teachers and the way teachers are treated.
