Sunday, March 28, 2010

national broadband plan

indispensable infrastructure for the 21st century




click here (or picture) for national broad band plan video and info.

a platform for opportunity, innovation, solutions to many major challenges facing our nation.

many don't have:
connections, 
subscribtion,
skills, 
worldclass speeds,

every person should have on public destination, access to broadband at 1 gig or higher

current 65% have this

universal digital literacy, kids have tools they need, and literacy needed.


broadband can then help solve all other problems

(esp if we unleash it to students first)

pivot from planning to action.

more of info here: http://www.benton.org/  

to note from here
With broadband, students and teachers can expand instruction beyond the confines of the physical classroom and traditional school day. Broadband can also provide more customized learning opportunities for students to access high-quality, low-cost and personally relevant educational material.


I think we all agree this screams - personalization, which is what we need most and the ultimate beauty of web access. We just need to keep from falling back into our traditional method of assessing it's success. 
From a first hand experience this year.. that was one of our major take-a-ways. As much as the kids wanted to learn and try innovative activities, etc, the rest of "school" where grades and testing drives the loudest, always trumped their prime time. 
Until we also determine a new means of standardized testing - that is voiced 10 years ago by Alfie Kohn, and that we share here, learning and thinking and creating and innovating will continue to be sold out to the ability to recall skills you know on a given test.
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