February 27, 2012 - Presidential FY13 Budget Released
President Obama recently released his FY13 budget request to Congress. His education request highlights $850 million for Race to the Top, which implements systemic education reforms in five critical areas, including early learning and care; $300 million in new resources to improve child care quality and prepare children for success in school; and a request for a new $5 billion competitive program that will challenge states and districts to work with their teachers and unions to attract, prepare, and reward great teachers to help students learn. The educational technology fact sheet breaks down the Administration's request in more detail. As has been the case with past Obama Administration requests, however, when one gets down to brass tacks there is little for educational technology advocates to cheer. Many of the proposals are already allowable under current law or are part and parcel of the Administrations ESEA reauthorization proposal, of which prospects for passage are quite dim for 2013. Case in point: the Administration included no funding to support technology readiness for states participating in the Race to the Top Assessment program (under which the forthcoming PARCC and SBAC assessment systems are being developed), which is foundational to the implementation of college and career-ready standards.
February 13, 2012 - Administration FY13 Federal Education Budget
Later today, President Obama will release his FY13 budget request to Congress. His education request highlights $850 million for Race to the Top, which implements systemic education reforms in five critical areas, including: early learning and care; $300 million in new resources to improve child care quality and prepare children for success in school; and a request for a new $5 billion competitive program that will challenge states and districts to work with their teachers and unions to attract, prepare, and reward great teachers to help students learn. The education fact sheet breaks down the Administration's request in more detail. As has been the case with past Obama Administration requests, there is little for educational technology advocates to cheer, and it is unclear how the Administration plans to support state technology readiness for the forthcoming PARCC and SBAC assessment systems, which are foundational to the implementation of college and career-ready standards.
February 13, 2012 - FCC Releases Universal Service Digital Literacy NPRM, Proposes E-rate Changes
The FCC is proposing to provide support for digital literacy training and seeks comment on dedicating a certain amount of annual funding for training at libraries and schools that do not currently offer this service in order to help these institutions develop ways to reduce the digital literacy skills gap and to assist Americans who have not yet adopted broadband technology gain the necessary digital skills. Specifically, the FCC is investigating the possibility of adding digital literacy training to the E-rate program’s Eligible Services List, or possibly re-allocating a portion of the funds set aside for E-rate into a separate digital literacy USF program. Access the NPRM report.
February 13, 2012 - Office of Educational Technology Releases New Paper on Online Learning and Productivity
This new report provides foundational knowledge needed to examine and understand the potential contributions of online learning to educational productivity, including a conceptual framework for understanding the necessary components of rigorous productivity analyses, drawing in particular on cost-effectiveness analysis.
February 1, 2012 - FCC announces Digital Textbook Playbook
On February 1, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) unveiled the “Digital Textbook Playbook” to help accelerate the K-12 transition to digital textbooks. FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski challenged state leaders and the digital textbook industry to make national adoption of digital textbook a reality in five years. He also announced a meeting in March 2012 with CEOs of companies in the digital learning space to drive national adoption of digital textbooks in the next five years. Challenges identified to digital textbook adoption include state textbook procurement rules, device and content interoperability, connectivity costs and managing the transition. This federal effort is expected to help advance SETDA's ongoing work in promoting digital and open content. For more details visit http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/digital-textbook-playbook.
January 27, 2012 - EDEN Data Collection
All data groups for educational technology will be dropped from the EDEN data collection for the 2011-2012 school year. Therefore, files N071, N117 and N162 and the data that is collected in them will not be collected, nor will this data be collected again in the foreseeable future. This is also true for DG524 from the 131 file, which will not be collected in SY 2011-12 or beyond. The complete file due dates list for SY 2011-12 can be found on the EDFacts web page, www.ed.gov/edfacts, under EDFacts System Documentation.
January 27, 2012 - Office of Educational Technology Launches New Initiative on Educational Technology Effectiveness
This research project will explore how vast amounts of data generated by new learning technologies can be used to inform educational decisions. This work will expand thinking about sources of information and evidence, leveraging new technologies and learning analytics. Access more information at http://evidenceframework.sri.com/.
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