Investment in Educational Technology Crucial for Nation’s Economic Future, SETDA Speakers Say
It’s important to invest in the future, said Cecilia Muñoz, assistant to the president and director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, “especially in challenging economic times.” She was speaking at the State Educational Technology Directors Association conference Monday. “In the same way that a family may go out to dinner less but still keep contributing the college fund,” it’s important for the country to stay focused on long-term goals, she said. “This is all achievable. You can be fiscally responsible and invest in the future."
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"This is about our economic future,” she said. “This is not altruism we're talking about here.” America is falling behind compared with other countries, but “there’s no reason we can’t, or shouldn’t be leading the world,” she said. Investments in the nation’s broadband infrastructure will pay dividends in the long run, she said. And unlike a lot of big funding projects that depend on reauthorization by Congress, this spending can happen administratively, she said. “When we leave office, this is going to be one of the things that we're proudest of having accomplished."
E-rate differs from stimulus projects, said Michael Steffen, FCC director-digital learning. “Rather than funding the network, we are working toward the school and library purchasing the connectivity that they need,” he said. But to do that effectively, the FCC has to think about the most efficient way to disburse the money, he said. “How do we make sure our funding is smartly coordinated with the BTOP funding?"
From the 800 comments the FCC received from around the country, there has been “some very helpful consensus,” Steffen said. First, everyone agrees “we are at a transformative -- a potentially transformative moment for education,” he said. Second, schools and libraries need “better, more robust bandwidth” to keep up. Third, the FCC has heard from diverse voices that “in order to seize this moment,” the agency needs to ensure connectivity goes into the classroom and to individual students’ devices, not just to the school or library.
"Flexibility is very important because there’s no one-size-fits-all solution,” said Anthony Wilhelm, associate administrator of the NTIA’s Office of Telecommunications and Information Applications. NTIA hopes to draw lessons from the broadband infrastructure improvements it made along with the Rural Utilities Service, he said. Investing $7 billion in projects to advance broadband availability and adoption in every state and D.C., the agency learned some lessons, he said. “The lessons from our investments can help inform strategies."
The Department of Education is working on designing best practices so teachers can effectively take advantage of classroom technology, said Sujeet Rao, special assistant in its Office of Innovation and Improvement. His office is focused on “sustainable access,” encouraging consortia-purchasing to drive down prices, and giving teachers a way to curate all the content available online, he said. Technology is an “equalizer,” Rao said, and this is a moment when teachers are “rethinking how they approach the job of being a teacher.”