Announcement regarding the expansion of an initiative to bring high-speed Internet connectivity throughout American schools is expected on Wednesday during a White House Conference.
President Obama is set to discuss about the enlargement of ConnectED, the digital learning program announced last year in a North Carolina school. The White House conference in which the announcement will take place is set for Wednesday.
The plan is to put high-speed and broadband internet connectivity as well as wireless connections in over 99 percent of schools in the US, by the year 2017. More than $2 billion were committed toward the upgrade of internet infrastructure in school, through private funding.
Over 1,200 superintendents are expected to sing on Wednesday for technology implementation in schools around their districts. The goal of the superintendents will be to update broadband and wireless connection and find a way to get technology involved into the learning process. This includes finding out what devices should be available for both students and teachers and how these devices can be used to teach through technology. The group is expected to reach over 10 million students across 16,000 schools, all across the US.
Despite the need and also the availability of technology nowadays, many schools nationwide don’t have or cannot afford the Internet speed or quality to support the same type of technology that students and teachers have access to, at home. Depending on the infrastructure in some schools, certain classrooms will probably not be able to connect to the internet. Given this fact, The Department of Education will hand out an infrastructure guide to help network administrators sort out this kind of issues. They will also have to figure out which type of connectivity they need and find a way to implement it.
“What it all means is we’re helping to demonstrate that American K-12 schools are at a tipping point and this is a movement that is overtaking the entire country,”
said an official of Obama’s administration office.
An online education company, Coursera will help the teachers by providing them free professional development and also by allowing them to earn certificates that can later be used towards continuing education credits.
Among the people who are supposed to attend the conference are Arkansas School Leader, Donnie Whitten and Congressman Chaka Fattah, Senior Member on the House Appropriations Committee.
