The adoption of technology by education has always lagged behind the same technology's widespread use by other segments of society. The pace of technology development, and the impact this pace has on society, coupled with the massive problems of science and mathematics education in this country, has made this time lag no longer tenable. As a society, we can not afford inefficient and limited use of the capabilities of technology to help educators attack the problems of education for all citizens. The full participation of educational professional associations in defining a policy along these lines is a fundamental component of planning how to accelerate the pace of adoption of technology by education. The presence of many such associations in the Washington, DC area offers a good opportunity for taking first steps towards assessing teh state of knowledge by educational leaders, and for creating a forum to help coordinate their activities. The outcome of this project will be a clearer definition of who are the stakeholders for the incorporation of technologies in education, a membership profile of the associations, their leaders, and their technology awareness and plans, and a series of targeted forums and discussions where educational leaders and NSF program officers can interact and explore policy issues related to the adoption of telecommunication technologies in education.
