Introduction
Advances in both cognitive science and information technology have the potential to transform education and training in ways previously unimaginable.To lay the groundwork for Federal leadership in learning technology innovation, in September 2002, the Commerce Department published Visions 2020: Transforming Education and Training through Advanced Technologies. For Visions 2020, a number of distinguished individuals and teams from a wide range of technology and education fields were asked to look out into the future, and describe what technology-enabled learning experiences could be like. They responded with a rich collection of visions, some of which are excerpted in this report. Visions 2020 identified potential technologies, their application for learning, and how the learning environment would need to change to take full advantage of them. With a future vision in hand, the Commerce Department convened a Summit on the Use of Advanced Technologies in Education and Training. At the Summit, stakeholder groups identified ways to encourage technology-enabled transformation in U.S. education and training. The U.S. Departments of Commerce and Education (who co-chair the NSTC Working Group) and Net Day formed partnership aimed at analyzing K-12 student views about technology for learning. These views are analyzed in this second report, Visions 2020.2: Student Views on Transforming Education and Training Through Advanced Technologies. In October-November 2004, NetDay sponsored its “Speak-Up Day for Students” which offered online questionnaires, which asked K-12 students across the country about their use of technology.
Collapse of the information float
Not only is information growing quickly, the time lag between discovery and application — the information “float” — is rapidly shrinking. For example, it took many hundreds of years for the steam engine to move from being a curiosity to a commercial product. In contrast, recent discoveries in science and engineering show up in products virtually overnight.