A Call to Action for Closing the Digital Access, Design, and Use Divides. 2024 National Educational Technology Plan

Technology can be a powerful tool to help transform learning. It has the potential to empower students to expand their learning beyond the confines of the traditional classroom, support self-directed learning, help educators tailor learning experiences to individual student needs, and support students with disabilities. Technology also has the potential to allow students and educators to collaborate with peers and experts worldwide, engage with immersive learning simulations, and express their learning creatively. Furthermore, it has the potential to collect student performance and engagement data, providing insight into student progress and allowing educators to deploy targeted support. Yet, as researcher Justin Reich noted, "Predictions of imminent transformation are among the most reliable refrains in the history of educational technology." And, across that history and present-day classrooms, it has failed to realize this full potential. Where technology has realized its potential, it is often for a small minority of learners and contributes to growing inequities. Similarly, educational technology (edtech) tools sometimes claim (without independent, research-based evidence) that student assessment results will soar if school systems adopt a given digital resource. Such claims are not only misleading, but they can undermine the true potential of edtech. Reliance on a specific tool to accelerate learning or deliver a comprehensive and rigorous education for every student places all responsibility on the content. It ignores educators and students and the relationships between all three. Somewhere between the promise of transformation and the barriers to realizing that promise lies the potential for states, districts, and schools to build systems that better ensure that edtech's promise is afforded to all students, no matter their geography, background, or individual context. This 2024 National Educational Technology Plan (NETP) examines how technologies can raise the bar for all elementary and secondary students. It offers examples of schools, districts, classrooms, and states doing the complex work of establishing systemic solutions to inequities of access, design, and use of technology in support of learning. The identification of specific programs or products in these examples is designed to provide a clearer understanding of innovative ideas and is not meant as an endorsement.