Guest Commentary: Boston Consulting Group Report 'Unleashing the Potential of Technology in Education'

The Boston Consulting Group, a management consulting firm that specializes in business strategy, issued a report called Unleashing the Potential of Technology in Education.
According to the report, "We are at the dawn of an era in which educators have the potential to harness technology to produce a ... change in student achievement. Although visionaries have been promising for years that technology would transform primary and secondary education--and despite the billions of dollars spent networking schools and equipping them with computers and other devices--the actual impact on student outcomes to date has been disappointing. Even where educators have succeeded in introducing devices and software into the classroom, they've often failed to leverage that new technology to improve student performance. Yet when technology is strategically introduced into every step of the educational value chain, it does, in fact have the potential to enhance every aspect of instruction and learning.
"To fully realize the promise--and dramatically improve student outcomes in primary and secondary education--technology must be deployed in support of what is known as a closed-loop instruction system," the report continues.
The closed-loop instruction system:
-- Establishes educational objectives focused on 21st century skills.
-- Develops relevant curriculum offerings by using open source content.
-- Delivers instruction virtually.
-- Embeds frequent assessment with rel-time, continuous feedback
-- Provides appropriate intervention with immediacy and customization
"This approach will increasingly separate the best education systems from the more mediocre counterparts," the report concludes. "We recognized that there are risks--from making the wrong investments to failing to execute a technology strategy--and thus a need for careful execution. But we are also persuaded that the rewards will be enormous."
Click here for the complete report.