1. INTRODUCTION

• students prepared for a future workplace in which a key to success is the ability to access, interpret, analyze, and communicate information in a meaningful fashion
• teachers and students who become partners in learning, enjoying the benefits of mutually energetic discovery opportunities to the development of wisdom
• schools that are energized centers of learning, available to all members of the community for a vast array of functions.

1.3 Technology for Teaching, Learning, and Managing in 21st Century Schools

The 21st Century school is envisioned by Mississippi educators to be one that is more of an activity or state of mind than a place. The infusion of technology into the learning environment empowers citizens to use it as a teaching, learning, and managing tool. The following components, as stated in Senate Bill 3350, are essential to the transformation of learning environments and the implementation of the vision and the mission for Mississippi education in the 21st Century:

• an efficient, effective and equitable use of technology at all levels, including pre-school through higher education, vocational and adult education
• a well-planned and efficient statewide network of technology services designed to meet the educational and informational needs of schools
• an environment receptive to technology infusion in education throughout the state that accommodates connectivity and future growth and development
• the improved delivery of professional development
• a process that promotes district acquisition of technologies and applications to enhance student learning
• a climate that encourages the development by the private sector and acquisition by districts of technologies, and applications appropriate for education.
• Within the new learning environment, new roles for all participants must be developed and nurtured. Students, teachers, administrators and communities will reshape their responsibilities around the changing learning environments of the future.

Students

The effective use of technology will require students to develop new roles in learning, living, and working. In order to become responsible citizens, workers, learners, community members, and family members in the new Information Age, students will need to be able to:

• navigate information
• think critically and analyze using technology
• create knowledge using technology, media, and telecommunications
• communicate effectively through a variety of appropriate technologies/media
• master technical abilities in order to interact with technology
• succeed as problem solvers, processors, and manipulators of information.

Teachers

The classroom must become a place where teachers create a learner-centered environment for students while maintaining their identities as teachers. The role of the teacher changes from a "deliverer" of information to a facilitator and mentor who guides students through their educational journey. They must be prepared to interact with technology in new ways. They must:

• navigate information in order to create knowledge using technology, media, and telecommunications
• be effective communicators through a variety of appropriate technologies/media
• use technology to foster the critical thinking and analyzing abilities of students
• provide technical support
• evaluate the uses and applications of technology
• create a learning environment with curriculums infused with technology and its applications
• engage in the planning process for future technologies and their applications.

Administrators

The school itself will change under the influences of technology and its applications. School administrators must be able to foster and support a new learning environment that is learner-centered. Those who are responsible for the administration of education must also become learners in the new technology environment in order to fulfill their partnership with teachers and students. Administrators will embrace more effective, increasingly efficient techniques that challenge traditional methodologies and philosophies. They will model technology use in their own daily life. Interaction with technology will require administrators to:

• plan for and implement technology and its applications
• provide leadership in the infusion of technology in the classroom
• create efficient and effective administrative processes using technology.

Communities

Communities will support vigorously the novel, energetic activities of the newly empowered students, teachers, and administrators. They will be afforded new opportunities for education as technology helps change the environment. A learning community will no longer have to be located wholly in a room or a building or a town or even a country. Learning communities will be able to span continents, and cultures as connectivity makes the world one large neighborhood. As community members become more diverse, communication patterns and learning behaviors will change drastically. New partnerships within the learning community will prepare students to meet vocational and societal demands. These new patterns of learning and living will take time to establish.

Summary

Technology will enable educators to respond to the needs of the citizens of the state of Mississippi by making it possible and practical to provide education outside the bounds of seven periods a day, five days a week. The "classroom" may be in the home, the library, the city hall, an auditorium, a shopping mall, or a school. The "teacher" may be in the room, in the city, in another state, or in another country. This will enable education to reach all individuals and will break down the barriers of time and space that get in the way of citizens becoming involved in the educational process. The vision of a well-informed, responsible, caring, educated citizenry that values innovation and is committed to consistent growth and improvement is achievable through the use of technology "anywhere, any time, for everyone."

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