WASHINGTON — An Obama administration official stressed on Wednesday during The Atlantic’s “Technology in Education Forum” that as educators move to infuse technology into the classroom, they should do it to transform how learning takes place and not to simply “digitize” conventional methods.
“Technology has an important role,” said Richard Culatta, acting director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education. “But by default, if we don’t make better choices and better decisions about how we use it, it will be used to digitize the traditional mode.
“So instead of chalkboards, we’ll have digital chalkboards,” Culatta continued. “We need to make some really conscious decisions and say there’s a better route to reinvent learning.
Culatta made his remarks at a panel discussion titled “Reimagining Educational Opportunity: College and Workforce Preparation.” The discussion ranged from the “moving target” of technology skills that students need to access jobs in the technology sphere to how corporate partnerships with institutions of higher education can help provide more real-world learning for students.
“School needs to look and feel much more different, more relevant and tied to what students are able to do when they leave school,” said Culatta.
Among other things, Culatta touted the emergence of “learning positional systems,” a GPS, so to speak, of a student’s educational journey.
