[DDN] Using wikis to craft federal edtech legislation collaboratively

[Andy Carvin]

Hi everyone,

Yesterday I attended an event hosted by the DC chapter
of NetSquared regarding the role of wikis in crafting
public policy. Justin Hamilton, a legislative aide
from the office of House education committee chair
George Miller (D-CA) spoke about how his office is
exploring the possibility of setting up a wiki to
encourage the public to participate more directly in
the legislative process, not unlike what Steve Urqhart
is doing for the Utah house of representatives at
www.politicopia.com. 

Some of us in the audienced joked about having Rep.
Miller use a wiki to invite teachers to rewrite No
Child Left Behind, but later on I suggested they might
wish to try a very focused experiment, inviting
educators to use a wiki to comment on the section in
NCLB that requires all students to be "technologicaly
literate" by the eighth grade." Since the notion of
making our students tech literate is a bipartisan goal
and not regarded as divisive, it might serve as an
interesting test case to bring together educators with
first-hand experience and expertise to advise Congress
as to what role it should or shouldn't play regarding
achieving tech literacy, however one defines it, for
all students.

Anyway, it was a fascinating discussion, and I blogged
about it here:

http://urltea.com/kcr

thanks,
andy

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Andy Carvin
andycarvin at yahoo  com
www.andycarvin.com
www.pbs.org/learningnow
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