Help! Save schools from Massive Ed Tech Budget Cuts!

By heather on July 15, 2009

As a teacher concerned about the future of education, and as a blogger who has jumped whole-heartedly into an online collaborative existence as a means to help teach her students, I am astonished at the oxymoronic message coming for our government.

One the one hand, we are to help our students function and advance in their use of technology. On the other hand, our budget to do so is constantly cut and slashed in a bloody display of shortsightedness.

I have blogged before that if you have any involvement in technology in the school, or even if you just see the writing on the wall, that using technology as a tool is the future for our students, then we all find ourselves in a special interest group.

Members of our group cross political boundaries. The use of technology and providing the tools to learn it are of the utmost importance to our country’s future. But once again, the funding to teach these vital skills is being threatened.

As a member of the national Ed Tech Action Network, I receive emails when key bills are about to be passed so that my voice can be heard. I hope that you too will lend your voice to this battle.

ETAN says,

Last week, the House of Representatives’ Appropriations subcommittee approved a 63 percent cut in the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) Program. If this cut becomes law, it will leave many school districts without funding for hardware, software and technology professional development, placing our students at a distinct skills and knowledge disadvantage when they enter the 21st century job market.

In order to get your opinion out there, please click on the link below (or cut and past the URL into your address bar). ETAN makes it all easy to get your stance out there. You can sign and send the existing letter or change it up in your own words. The representatives rarely read the letters, but they do count the number that they receive. And that determines their vote. So if we send enough letters, they will represent us.

http://capwiz.com/edtech/issues/alert/?alertid=13735446

Help education and technology’s role in it. Help our students to achieve in the 21st Century. Write your representative today.

ETAN’s made it easy.

Thanks,

Tweenteacher