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by Kevin Carey on September 26, 2011 "Under the category of "policy stuff that doesn't involve grand controversy and/or vast sums of new spending, yet might actually make the world a better place," the other day I attended a White House event announcing the launch of Digital Promise, a "new national center founded to spur breakthrough technologies that can help transform the way teachers teach and students learn." The rationale for the initiative is contained in a Council of Economic Advisers memo ..."

Council of Economic Advisers memo: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/unleashing_the_potential_of_educational_technology.pdf

Executive Office of the President Council of Economic Advisers Unleashing the Potential of Educational Technology September 16, 2011 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Educational technology holds the promise of substantially improving outcomes for K-12 students, but there are significant challenges in bringing new educational technology products for this population to market. It is difficult for producers of these technologies to demonstrate the effectiveness of their products to potential buyers and market fragmentation creates barriers to entry by all but the largest suppliers. The spread of broadband Internet and Common Core State Standards have improved the landscape for educational technologies, but these factors alone are likely insufficient for a "game changing" advance. Working together, stakeholders can form a plan of action to provide local school systems with easy access to good information about the effectiveness of various educational technology products and give prospective developers of these products access to customers on a scale sufficient to make it worthwhile for them to enter the market. The payoff - in the form of more effective and more widely utilized educational technologies, leading to better outcomes for students - could be enormous.

A paper by George Siemens and Kathleen Matheos