Speaking at an event for the National Educational Technology Plan (NETP)

On Thursday, November 5th, 2009, starting at 6pm Pacific Time, ISTE, Metanomics, New Media Consortium, Virtual Ability and the University of Michigan will be hosting an event on the ISTE amphitheater in the 3D virtual world Second Life (c).

This event will center around the National Educational Technology Plan (NETP).   Prior to an open discussion on technology in education, several speakers will present on a variety of topics.  The premise is “If you had five minutes to talk with President Obama about educational technology, what would you say?”  I have been asked to be one of those speakers and am scheduled at the very beginning of the event (6:10pm pst).  My topic will be about how there needs to be support for technology in education, meaning we need to make it easier for teachers and students to use technology beyond word processing and simple, filtered Internet searches.  We need to create the environment where instruction can include cool, collaborative, constructivist applications LIKE Second Life and other virtual worlds, augmented reality, and online games and environments as educational tools.

Below I have pasted information I found at the Facebook page for this event.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=163866392474&index=1

My question to you is, if you have 5 minutes to talk to President Obama about the use of technology in education, what would YOU say?  Please use the COMMENT section below to chime in.

The federal government of the United States of America has assembled an 18 person team to update and revise the National Education Technology Plan. Their report deadline is November 11, 2009. There will be a community meeting in Second Life for educational technology stakeholders to provide input into the planning process. Currently, we expect that a representative of the national team will be present as an observer at the SL event.

The event coordinator is Perplexity Peccable (RL: Patricia F. Anderson, patriciafanderson@gmail.com). Perplexity is the University of Michigan Emerging Technologies Librarian for the Health Sciences, and the community manager for Wolverine Island in SL. Contact Perplexity for more information or to volunteer support or services for this event.

Information on prior versions of the plan is available here.
National Educational Technology Plan: <http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/os/technology/plan/index.html&gt;

Information on the current planning process is available here,
National Educational Technology Plan: <https://edtechfuture.org/&gt;

The team is seeking input from the public. You can join the conversation on their website here.
Opportunities for Input: <https://edtechfuture.org/?page_id=888&gt;

Updated information about the event will be available at the Facebook event page and the Second Life at the University of Michigan wiki.
<http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=163866392474&ref=nf&gt;
<http://slum.wetpaint.com/&gt;

The key topic discussion points are these.

* Learning: Providing unprecedented access to high-quality learning experiences.
* Assessment: Measuring what really matters and providing the information that enables continuous improvement at all levels of the education system.
* Teaching: New ways to support those who support learning.
* Productivity: Redesigning systems and processes to free up education system resources to support learning.”