Rubber, Meet Road

Regardless on which side of the political fence one may reside, or even if one chooses to sit squarely on the fence itself, there can be no doubt that Barack Obama is the first U.S. President to take full advantage of the power of the Internet. The hiring of Chris Hughes, one of the founders of Facebook, as the Obama campaign’s main New Media Strategist can only be described as a stroke of genius. Through the use of Web 2.0 & Social Media tools such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and the campaign’s flagship site My.BarackObama.com as a means of organizing potential voters, the Obama campaign became an unstoppable media and fundraising machine. Opposing candidates did eventually try to mount their own web-based strategies, but in the end, none could match the reach, expertise, or organizational skill of the Obama team. Obama’s Internet strategies have been an unqualified, unequivocal success, now brought home in the recently revamped White House website beginning on his Inauguration Day of January 20, 2009.

To anyone who followed the 2008 Presidential Election with any degree of seriousness, the above paragraph may exhibit a rather keen sense of the obvious. Untold millions of voters used the World Wide Web to learn both positive and negative arguments about myriad candidates before they entered the booth on November 4. However, the nearly infinite capabilities of the Internet as a tool for communication, teaching, and learning seem to remain lost on a critical, perhaps oddly stubborn group—Educators. We in Education at all levels also have access to the same tools used by the Obama campaign, more often than not at no monetary charge, and with full staffs available to assist us in any efforts to integrate the Internet into our lesson plans. Yet a surprising number of Educators, and sometimes entire institutions of learning, choose neither to design and develop Web-based curricula nor to bring Technology into the classroom. This lack of will to work as hard as possible to provide our students with updated, interactive, engaging curricula powered by Technology may be one of the ongoing critical failures of the American Educational establishment.

To be sure, many K-20 schools have made the commitment to providing students with the most cutting-edge technologies available. R.H. Dana Middle School in Los Angeles was named a California “School to Watch” and National School to Watch in 2006 due to the work of then-principal Dr. Matthew Wunder and his staff, which included the construction of a $36 million state-of-the-art facility including the latest computer hardware and software under his guidance (now administrated by the new principal Mrs. Aileen Harbeck). As of late 2008, Dr. Wunder has moved into a new position as the Executive Director of the new Wiseburn Charter Schools in Los Angeles, slated to open in Fall, 2009 and dedicated to the development of 21st Century Skills, including Media & Technology Literacy. High Tech High in San Diego, CA has received funds from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to ensure the integration of Technology into the curricula. A growing number of private and public institutions of Higher Education are also committed to effective Technology Integration into their curricula. One of these schools is Full Sail University, where Educators such as Dr. Holly Ludgate, Director of the Education Media Design & Technology Master’s Program along with her Instructors, including Joe Bustillos and others offer students the hands-on experience to necessary to become true Instructional Design professionals. Other college programs committed to Technology & Web 2.0 integration include MIT’s Open Courseware Project and Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child Project, Indiana University’s Department of Ed & Ed Tech, and Pepperdine University’s Doctoral and Master’s Programs in Educational Technology, where students like Kai Ajala Dupé and Robin Worley endeavor to bring the power of Technology to even the most underserved populations.

Certainly, other Educators too numerous to name here are also working diligently toward these goals. While hope indeed springs eternal, the pace of Technology Integration into American Education at large remains painfully, frustratingly slow in many sectors. In a 2005 report, the Pew Internet & American Life study found that about 21 million US teenagers had used the Internet at school. However, this only represents about half of the teenage population counted in the 2000 U.S. Census. Researchers such as John Seely Brown and Marc Prensky wrote about the “Digital Natives” and their affinity for Technology nearly a decade ago.

Now that the entire world has witnessed how Barack Obama harnessed the power of the Internet to go from a rather new and relatively unknown U.S. Senator to President of the United States in the course of two years, perhaps more and more Educators at all levels will finally see that Technology, and largely those powered by the Internet, contribute greatly to how people learn and communicate—NOW. Whether today’s Educators, along with the Obama Administration itself, make Technology Integration a priority remains to be seen. Only time will tell.