Today, a number of education and business organization called upon Congress and the Obama administration to invest heavily in classroom technology and teacher training as part of the forthcoming economic recovery package. These organizations, including the Consortium for School Networking, the International Society for Technology in Education, the Software & Information Industry Association, and the State Educational Technology Directors Association, have asked the new administration to spend roughly $9.9 billion on installing and upgrading the technology in America’s most disadvantaged schools.
As this additional technology would definitely raise the demand for bandwidth in these schools, these education organizations have also called for an upgrade of these schools’ networking infrastructure. They would also like to see a good part of the funding go to educating teachers in the use of this new technology – technology in the classroom, after all, is only as good as the teachers who use it.
President-elect Obama has always made technology in the classroom a central focus when discussing education policy, and there is clearly a pressing need for bringing more technology to the classroom to train students for a job market where these skills are now mandatory. It should be noted, though, that technology is often the leastpressing of all the problems faced by some of these disadvantaged schools.
CC-licensed image used courtesy of Flickr user Extra Ketchup.
