The ConnectED initiative announced by the President on June 6, 2013 aims to connect 99% of students across the country to broadband in 5 years. The initiative consists of three main efforts:
Upgraded Connectivity: ConnectED will, within five years, connect 99 percent of America’s students to the digital age through next-generation broadband and high-speed wireless in their schools and libraries.
Trained Teachers: ConnectED invests in improving the skills of teachers, ensuring that every educator in America receives support and training to use technology to help improve student outcomes. The Department of Education will work with states and school districts to better use existing funding through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to strategically invest in this kind of professional development to help teachers keep pace with changing technological and professional demands.
Build on Private-Sector Innovation: These investments will allow our teachers and students to take full advantage of feature-rich educational devices that are increasingly price-competitive with basic textbooks and high-quality educational software (including applications) providing content aligned with college- and career-ready standards being adopted and implemented by States across America.
Public-Private Partnerships
“[F]or us to be as effective and efficient as we want to be, we need great public-private partnerships. There’s a huge opportunity for the private sector to step up. We want to make sure every child–whether it’s in the inner-city, whether it’s in a rural community, or a remote community, or a Native American reservation–that they have access to knowledge and the chance to learn 24/7. The idea that [a child] could just sit in [her] desk, 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, 9 months a year to learn? That simply doesn’t make sense anymore.”
—Secretary Duncan, June 6, 2013, aboard Air Force One.
Additional information is available on the White House ConnectED Fact Sheet [PDF]
For more information please visit: http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/technology/connected/