A recent Wall Street Journal article written by Arne Duncan, the U.S. secretary of education, and Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix and former president of the California board of education, outlined the Digital Promise initiative, a joint project between the Department of Education and a number of private investors that aims to improve access to technology in U.S. schools.
Students with access to state-of-the-art technology in the classroom, like a document camera, tablet computer or
DLP projector, tend to be taught in more engaging and comprehensive learning environments.
Duncan noted that many other countries in the world surpass the United States in classroom technology. South Korea, for instance, has a plan in place that will replace textbooks with digital alternatives by 2015. Countries that integrate advanced classroom technology into lesson plans see higher academic achievement in schools and a high percentage of college enrollment.
By partnering with private investors, the Digital Promise project will strive to improve public educational access to emerging classroom technology while simultaneously encouraging innovation in the private development sector.
The authors also said that they hope the initiative improves educational investment in technological development, noting that currently, education commits just 0.2 percent of primary and secondary school spending on technology, while other industries dedicate as much as 10 percent of their budgets to funding emerging technology.
