DEPARTMENT OF ED ISSUES GUIDANCE ON RIGHTS OF STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES WHEN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS USE TECHNOLOGY

from TCEB - June 2, 2011 - Volume 17, Number 21

On May 26, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued guidance through Dear Colleague Letters to elementary and secondary schools and institutions of higher education along with a Frequently Asked Questions document on the legal obligation to provide students with disabilities an equal opportunity to enjoy the benefits of technology. This guidance is a critical step in the Department's ongoing efforts to ensure that students with disabilities receive equal access to the educational benefits and services provided by their schools, colleges, and universities. All students, including those with disabilities, must have the tools needed to obtain a world-class education that prepares them for success in college and careers.

The guidance provides information to schools about their responsibilities under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The guidance supplements a June 2010 letter issued jointly by OCR and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. The June letter explains that technological devices must be accessible to students with disabilities, including students who are blind or have low vision, unless the benefits of the technology are provided equally through other means. The new guidance highlights what educational institutions need to know and take into consideration in order to ensure that students with disabilities enjoy equal access when information and resources are provided through technology. More details are online.

The US National Education Technology Plan - Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology

Just published at
http://www.wwwords.co.uk/elea/content/pdfs/8/issue8_2.asp

E-LEARNING AND DIGITAL MEDIA
Volume 8 Number 2 2011 ISSN 2042-7530

SPECIAL ISSUE
The US National Education Technology Plan -
Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology
Editors: MICHAEL A. PETERS & DANIEL ARAYA

Michael A. Peters. Introduction. Transforming American Education: learning powered by technology

Robert B. Kozma. ICT, Education Transformation, and Economic Development: an analysis of the US National Educational Technology Plan

Kathleen Scalise & Mark Wilson. The Nature of Assessment Systems to Support Effective Use of Evidence through Technology

Michael B. Horn & Katherine Mackey. Transforming American Education

Leonard J. Waks. Transforming American Education: revolution or counter-revolution?

Nalova Westbrook. Media Literacy Pedagogy: critical and new/twenty-first-century literacies instruction

Raymond M. Rose. The National Educational Technology Plan Doesn’t Live Up to its Call for Revolutionary Transformation

RESPONSE
Dan Atkins, John Bennett, John Seely Brown, Chris Dede, Barry Fishman, Barbara Means, Roy Pea, Candace Thille & Brenda Williams. Response to the Articles on the Draft 2010 National Educational Technology Plan

Access to the full texts of articles is restricted to those who have a Personal subscription, or those whose institution has a Library subscription. However, all articles become free-to-view 18 months after first publication.

don't depend on LMS providers to understand pedagogy

There's an interesting post on Edutopia by Heather Wolpert-Gawron talking about the need for some synchronous F2F communications in order to have effective online learning. Of course, I don't agree.

One of the things I found interesting in her post was this line:

So, I asked a basic question to all the [LMS] vendors who were pitching their wares to my district: where are the teachers? I was told that we could always record our classes and post them for students to watch at their leisure.

I found it interesting that Heather would not only ask a vendor that question, then accept the response as knowledgeable. My comment about that was to compare her question to asking a school building architect where the teachers were, or if group instruction would be possible.

The LMS is the structure that holds the content -- the instructions, resources, and discussions, etc. There are some features of an LMS that restrict they types of content but what happens inside the LMS is under the control of the teacher/facilitator and course designer, and my experience in dealing with the sales folks is they know how to sell, not how to use the product they're selling.. Asking the LMS sales person about pedagogy is like asking the school building contractor about teaching.

I think I need to put Heather in the same category with most educators, of being bias toward the approach they're most familiar with, and the one they have the most experience with, that of face-to-face instruction. We need to find ways to expose more educators to high quality online learning experiences.

Our need to increase the number of folks doing cybersecurity

Yesterday (April 9) I attended the Third Annual Cybersecurity Caucus in San Antonio. San Antonio is now officially CyberCityUSA, with the website to prove it. The Caucus was very eye-opening for me. Dr Fred Chang from UTSA presented information that was designed to wake people up:

• There's a programming competion sponsored by ACM and called the "Battle of the Brains" that the US hasn't been on top in this decade.
• He stated that 73,000 new strains of malware have been identified every day this year, and that these are the bullets in the cyberwar taking place today.
• The Department of Homeland Security wanted to hire 1000 folks with cybersecurity skills and thus far has only been able to find 300.

Major General Richard Webber Commander, 24th Air Force is in charge of the U.S. Air Force's Cyber Operations. And he provided evidence that the cyber domain is the new battleground.

What I got out of this was the clear need to grow the pipeline for getting students interested in cyber security. There are a number of degree programs available through the academic institutions in San Antonio. There is a national high school competition called Cyber Patriot

CyberPatriot is the National High School Cyber Defense Competition created by the Air Force Association (AFA) to excite, educate, and motivate the next generation of cyber defenders and other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates our nation needs.

I learned that while there's a desire to attract high school students to cyber security education and careers, no one had given thought to what could be done to prepare elementary students to become aware of the careers or to develop skills that would help them pursue careers in this field.

When pushed, one college educator thought the emphasis in computational thinking (see previous post) would help, and so might getting elementary students interested in, and participating in computer game design (that will be the topic of a future post).

My request to you is to broaden your thinking about 21st Century learning to include, not only computational thinking, and supercomputing, but computer game design and cyber security. The 21st Century is here, and has been here for a decade. We need to prepare our youth to be productive members of it.