If you’re like most ed-tech enthusiasts, I’m sure you’re watching closely the economic stimulus packages proposed by the House of Representatives and the Senate, both of which include $1 billion for education technology. (Here’s a story written by my colleague Alyson Klein about the details of those plans.) The question now is whether that money is going to make it through the conference committee (when the Senate and the House hammer out the differences between their plans), and what will it look like if it does.
I listened in today on a conference call, sponsored by ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), all about that question. Unfortunately, at this point it’s hard to tell what’s going to happen, although it is clear that ISTE as well as many ed-tech advocates are working hard to ensure that the $1 billion stays intact and is specifically slated for education technology—not lumped in with other school modernization projects. ISTE has created an Ed Tech Action Network to make it easy for supporters of ed tech to write to Senators and Representatives about this topic.
To read more about the economic stimulus plan and what its effects could be on ed tech, check out the story I wrote for the latest issue of Digital Directions. Or listen to an audio interview with Keith Krueger, the CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, about how ed tech can help fire up the economy.