Reconceptualizing Technology Integration to Meet the Necessity of Transformation

Abstract

Our society can no longer afford a labor-intensive model of education that uses expensive human resources inefficiently; this is a permanent sea change that has already happened in many other service sectors of our economy. To meet this challenge, we must reconceptualize technology integration not as automating conventional classroom processes - or even as innovating within the structure of industrial era schools - but instead as bridging to ways of teaching/learning so different that integration is no longer an accurate description. The U.S. Department of Education's 2010 National Educational Technology Plan presents an affordable, transformational vision for 21 st century education, infusing technology into every aspect of learning in school and out. In classrooms, Digital Teaching Platforms (DTP) seem a promising, scalable approach for attaining personalized instruction with large class sizes. Researchers in learning technologies should develop design-based innovations that support various aspects of the Plan and are practical at scale. Our society can no longer afford a labor-intensive model of education that uses expensive human resources inefficiently; this is a permanent sea change that has already happened in many other service sectors of our economy. To meet this challenge, we must reconceptualize technology integration not as automating conventional classroom processes – or even as innovating within the structure of industrial era schools – but instead as bridging to ways of teaching/learning so different that integration is no longer an accurate description. The U.S. Department of Education’s 2010 National Educational Technology Plan presents an affordable, transformational vision for 21 st century education, infusing technology into every aspect of learning in school and out. In classrooms, Digital Teaching Platforms (DTP) seem a promising, scalable approach for attaining personalized instruction with large class sizes. Researchers in learning technologies should develop design-based innovations that support various aspects of the Plan and are practical at scale.