We had a good meeting on education technology directions last night in Belmont. Participants included over 20 people from all three communities in my district — Arlington, Belmont and Cambridge. They included school committee members, teachers, administrators, parents and technology developers.
The goal of the meeting was to gather input and assess interest in possible legislation to help make Massachusetts a leader in independent and virtual learning. There were many good ideas raised in the meeting and fuller notes will be posted on this site soon.
For me though, the strongest take away was that we need to think mainly about liberating creative energy. If the state tries to dictate technology direction, the odds of failure are overwhelming — things are moving much too fast. A cumbersome statewide development process will only lead to something that is obsolete before it reaches kids. We have to consider how to liberate the most energy from all potential sources — students, teachers, administrators, school districts, charter schools and private companies.
Send a note to postmaster@mywillbrownsberger.com if you want to be sure to be included in notices of future meetings on this subject.