The Consortium for School Networking formally announced Tuesday the launch of Access4Ed.net, a site devoted to the development of ways to give K-12 students online access, as well as a mobile learning leadership program.
The Access4Ed site, which ideally will host strategic communications that lead to new methods of allowing student access, was unveiled in conjunction with a preliminary draft of a report on the state of online communities of practice, virtual destinations for educators with common professional development needs. The report is the first issued during a three-year collaboration among the American Institutes for Research, CoSN, four other organizations with ed-tech ties, and the U.S. Department of Education, which includes communities of practice as a priority in its National Education Technology Plan.
Despite a heavy influence of ed-tech advocates in the creation of the site, CoSN Chief Executive Officer Keith Krueger said Access4Ed must pull from an audience beyond chief technology officers.
“It will not be just a CoSN sort of audience of CTOs,” Krueger said at a press briefing. “If it is, we’ve failed.”
The mobile learning leadership initiative aims to help schools understand how best to use mobile devices for learning, identify policies that hinder or foster such use, and ensure successful implementation of mobile learning programs.