Meeting the Challenge: 21st Century Cyberlearning

The ASTA Group, LLC (ASTA) received EAGER funding (National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant No. 094077) to conduct comprehensive planning for a National Initiative on Cyberlearning in K-12 Education. To ensure success, ASTA invited a diverse group of experts and stakeholders to participate in the planning process. Planning tasks included individual meetings and combined planning sessions. The planning process culminated with a 1-day workshop to synergize the preliminary information collected. ASTA produced a Summary Report synthesizing participants' ideas and recommendations to guide the development of the national initiative. The intent of this initiative is to create a national program to transform K-12 education through increasing the scale and sustainability of technologies for education. Workshops attendees, including visionaries, educators, researchers, policy makers, and industry and government leaders from around the country, recommended solutions to the challenges of incorporating proven technology into formal and informal educational settings. To further advance the national initiative, it is recommended that a multiple-agency task force, led by NSF and the U.S. Department of Education, devise comprehensive and inter-related strategies to overcome the barriers of wide-scale implementation. It is also recommended that the task force seek and include input from experts in cyberlearning, technology, and education, as well as the myriad of stakeholders with vested interest in K-12 education.