Technology is The
Global Education Equalizer. Quality teachers and
courses can be offered regardless of location. The
classroom can now be wherever communications exist.
This is a watershed time for education. The teaching and
learning process of prior centuries is being challenged,
and change is not always being easily accepted.
Competitive advantage will accrue, as it always has, to
the country that best applies its capabilities to the
challenges at hand.
Today, a
universal challenge deals with the significant change in
demographics and all that this impacts for future generations. The nation that can raise its students'
desire to learn, and their teachers' ability to transfer
knowledge will maintain a significant advantage over others.
Leadership must come from all levels of government, but
exciting the student, the parent, the educators and the
community needs to be driven and delivered locally.
The World
of the 21st Century
• Increasing global population with greater demands on
and for limited resources
• An increasing number of school age children, and
an
increasing number of adults over 60, resulting in a
potential inter-generational conflict over limited
financial resources
• Ease of access to global sources of information at
an ever decreasing
cost
• Remote business ownership and management, and
multi-national employers
• Increased economic competition from an
increasing number of
countries
• Increasing links between global trade and economic and
political stability...or possibly instability
• Accelerating use of telecommunications and computer
based systems in all aspects of daily life
• Increased dependence on technology in support of
military strength
• Over a billion students in K-12 schools world-wide (but
only 50 million in the US)
To Successfully Respond to these Challenges and
Assure Continued US Prosperity & Leadership We Require:
• Pro-active leadership, a highly educated populace, life
long learning, comfort with technology and
personal
willingness to suggest and accept change.
• Improved student outcome, and a continuing increase in
the number of students who attend and graduate from
college
• Increased interest in science, technology,
engineering and mathematics (STEM), and related
subjects at all levels of schooling
• A national willingness to shift limited resources
to support education at all levels
Today’s Students Will Make the Decisions that Guide Our
Nation’s Future
...and technology properly and efficiently integrated into
the curriculum can provide the incremental advantage that
our
students will need to adapt to and excel in a globally
competitive environment.
The National Challenge
• Increase public support at all levels for an increased
and sustained investment in education - Reinforce why it
is necessary!
• Increase opportunities for adult education (with emphasis on
language, math, financial, and job retraining skills)
• Define our education objectives in a way that
allows quantitative measurements of success and failure,
and international comparison
• Emphasize student needs and outcomes; Use
technology to decrease administrative overhead
• Adopt technology where appropriate; increase its
use where validated by data
• Integrate experiences of the business
community into the education community without adversely
affecting the attainment of the education goals
Education is a Global Offering -
11/16/11
