America has long promised equal opportunity. Our public schools were to be the portal to a productive and secure future for each American and for America. Unfortunately, since their inception, our public schools have been handicapped by the same social inequities that infiltrated the businesses, homes, and hearts of the communities they serviced. As bungled as it seems, No Child Left Behind attempts to rectify this inequity by demanding that all schools provide all students with a solid foundation in reading and math. Unfortunately, success in a “flat world” requires so much more than being competent and consequently more and more children are being left behind – without even knowing it.
The gross inequities in our public school system as well as the growing concern over our global competitiveness have initiated a call for change. Educational technology may be the catalyst that makes such change possible. When intelligent, reflective, and determined teachers utilize educational technology to transform learning into a highly critical and productive experience for students, we begin to deliver on the promise of equal opportunity for security and success. Technology allows for efficient and productive means of networking, communication, analysis, creativity, and achievement of most competencies. The teacher still remains the most important variable to student learning and when technology is used to enhance a teacher’s understanding of content and pedagogy, we are able to efficiently improve the quality of education.
According to an online report published by Time Magazine, students need to think globally and in innovative ways to remain competitive both as individuals and as a nation. They also need to learn to process information in new ways while developing proper deportment and interpersonal assets. Appropriate and innovative use of educational technology has the potential to achieve those goals by reaching digital natives through instructional methods that appeal to their rewired brain structure. Teachers and everyone else involved in education must reevaluate what our vision of a successful student looks like in a world where information is ubiquitous and genuine thought is a commodity. We must promise to improve education for all students and we must deliver.
