In an effort to boost achievement and better prepare students for the workforce, President Obama is spearheading a program that will bring high-speed Internet access to 99 percent of America's K-12 schools.
Dubbed ConnectED, the program aims to accomplish its goal in the next five years. In addition to bringing Internet speeds of at least 100 Mbps and as high as 1Gbps, the program will provide comprehensive training to teachers so that they are up-to-speed on best practices for using the Web in class.
A particular focus of ConnectED will be rural schools that have difficulty accessing the Internet. In a statement, Obama was clear that getting students connected and teachers trained is a priority. "We are living in a digital age, and to help our students get ahead, we must make sure they have access to cutting-edge technology," he said. "So today, I'm issuing a new challenge for America -- one that families, businesses, school districts and the federal government can rally around together -- to connect virtually every student in America's classrooms to high-speed broadband Internet within five years, and equip them with the tools to make the most of it."

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“We dared to say out loud that our current education system was not generating the expected results, that the role of the teacher should change, that memorization is not the way to consolidate learning, that grading is not evaluating, and that there is no learning without emotion.” – Karime Pulido Ramzahuer
UNOi, based...
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You don’t have to go far to realize that we are facing a major shortage of teachers in U.S.schools. News reports show that school districts across the country are scrambling to find qualified teachers to meet fast-growing enrollment at public schools.
The National Education Association has described the situation as “worse than we thought.”
Reasons for the shortage stem from retirement of teachers and teachers leaving the profession.
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In my last blog, I wrote about the concept of deep learning and how k-12 teachers might work to become the type of teacher that facilitates this type of deep learning.
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