The National Educational Technology Plan: Continuing the Dialogue

The members of the working group on National Educational Technology Policy continue to base their formulations around entrenched conceptions of education, retaining the language of teachers, students, curriculum standards, specified objectives and the like. Several of those participating in the panel examining the policy report in an earlier issue (Volume 8 Number 2 2011) of E-Learning and Digital Media worried that these conceptions hamper imagination about new educational possibilities already bubbling up around the edges of conventional educational practice. The working group authors, in their rejoinder, have defended choosing and building on the older framework as a more practicable avenue for rapid change. Here Raymond Rose and Leonard Waks respond by (a) teasing out deep conflicts about this choice within the working group report, and (b) demonstrating the heavy costs of sticking with what Rose and Waks see as an outmoded approach to learning and education in the age of the Internet.