WASHINGTON – Advisors to President Obama have presented him with a plan to expand high speed internet access and other technologies to students and teachers at a cost of billions of dollars, paid for by raising fees for mobile-phone users, the Washington Post reported Wednesday, and he likes the idea, as it will not require Congress to allocate the funds to make it happen.
In June of this year, the White House reported that “President Obama is unveiling a bold, new initiative called ConnectED, which will connect 99 percent of America’s students to the internet through high-speed broadband and high-speed wireless within 5 years.
“The President also directed the federal government to make better use of existing funds to get Internet connectivity and educational technology into classrooms, and into the hands of teachers trained on its advantages. And he called on businesses, states, districts, schools and communities to support this vision, which requires no congressional action.”
The Post reported that the initiative will be paid for by raising fees for mobile-phone users. “Doing that relies on the Federal Communications Commission, an independent agency that has the power to approve or reject the plan,” the Post wrote.
Republicans have vowed to fight the plan.
FROM THE WHITE HOUSE:
Here’s how ConnectED works:
Upgrading connectivity
The ConnectED initiative will, within five years, connect 99 percent of America’s students to the digital age through next-generation broadband and high-speed wireless in their schools and libraries. The President is calling on the Federal Communications Commission to modernize and leverage existing programs, as well as the expertise of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to deliver this connectivity.
ConnectED will also provide better broadband access for students in rural areas, by expanding successful efforts to connect parts of the country that typically have trouble attracting investment in broadband infrastructure.
Training teachers
Our teachers are being asked to do more than ever, and they need to be equipped with better tools to help them succeed. Fortunately, technology can play a central role in this.
For example, new digital education tools that allow for real-time assessments of student learning, provide more immediate feedback to drive professional development, and enable the creation of interactive online lessons can empower teachers to understand each student’s strengths and weaknesses and design lessons and activities that better meet their needs.
The ConnectED initiative invests in improving the skills of teachers, ensuring that every educator in America receives support and training in using education technology tools that can improve student learning.
Additionally, ConnectED will lead to new resources for teachers from any school, at any time, to open their classrooms to interactive demonstrations, lessons from world-renowned experts, or the opportunity to build learning communities and to collaborate with other educators across the country or world.
Encouraging private sector innovation
Educational devices supported by high-speed networks are the portal to the world of online earning and interactive content, to personalized education software that adapts to students’ needs, and to breakthrough advances in assessing understanding and mastery.
These devices give students access to more rigorous and engaging classes, new learning resources, rich visualizations of complex concepts, and instruction in any foreign language. They also give students more opportunities to work at their own speed and receive additional one-on-one help they need to develop their knowledge and skills.
Leading technology companies are capable of producing feature-rich educational devices that are price-competitive with basic textbooks.And a robust market in educational software can unlock the full educational potential of broadband investment, while create American jobs and export opportunities in a global education marketplace of over $1 trillion.
15 thoughts on “Report: Obama may pursue internet access for students at a cost of billions, paid for by higher cell phone bills”
Must be fun to be so generous with other people’s money!
Peter, if you took a vacation in your own home how much would that costs you? If you had an extra house how much would that costs for extra people? You can throw all the Bush stuff all you want but he never spent a quarter per vacation that Obama is spending.
Harry Reed has proposed a ONE TRILLION DOLLAR tax hike with no spending reductions. This is the new insane Democratic party whose only plan is to give and give of all the deadbeats in exchange for votes.
Oh Ya! Those wonderful Dems…spend more all the time and if they don’t have the money…take it from YOU and don’t ask. LMFAO…You voted for it. And most of you Dems are so fn stupid, you’ll do it again in ’16.
Only because we want what is best for the country as a whole — not just a privileged few.
You realize the only difference between Democrats and Republicans is who the “priveleged few” are? Neither side cares about the “nation as a whole”
Hopefully this will get voted down. It will not hurt them at all to pay for their own phone and most places already have free wifi. He is a idiot working hard to be a moron.
LVS, sadly this will not come to a vote to be voted down, the program has been in place since Clinton and Gore were in the White House, it is called the Universal Service fund, imposed by the FCC. (Remember the comercials of those two running ethernet cables in a school at that time?) http://transition.fcc.gov/wcb/tapd/universal_service/ Schools and Libraries already file applications every year since then to recieve up to a 75% discount off their phone and Interntet service based on the % of kids on free or reduced school lunch programs. This program was expanded to Free Obama Phones and the surcharge has gone through the roof. The % of this surcharge changes every quarter and phone companies and cell companies are mandated to pay the Feds that amount. (Check your Cell phone bill and your home phone bill and you will see it on there.) There is no need to expand this program, it is out of control now.
@John-O.K. How do we get it stopped. This is nothing more than an attempt on the Great Spenders behalf to lock down the young people’s vote. It is just another scheme to divide and conquer. We must stop this guy before he ruins all of us. We have the Republicans screaming about entitlements and this Free Spending IDIOT giving away Billions.
@LVS, The only way to stop this is to vote these people out, the US Senate has a minority so it will not work there until Read is replaced and we get close to the majority. You are correct, this spending will destroy our country that I used to love. But in this case, the FCC and the President regulate the Fee’s that the FCC charges so they can screw us any way they want to on our phone bills. In Waterloo, they have stands all over the place giving away the free Obama Phones. Makes me sick, enough said.
My experience is that free wifi is disappearing. Those businesses that had “free” wifi have either stopped providing the service or they have password protected it with a rotating password so that only customers can access the system. Unless you can go someplace like the public library, or your neighbor has an unsecured wifi network, free wireless is out the door.
Mr. Tax and Spend at it again. Once again for those hard of hearing, America does not have a taxing problem, it has a spending problem. Just look at how many ways our government has to take your money, income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, phone taxes, etc. I bet if you really sat down and figured it out, even the poorest person loses at least .25 to .50 of every dollar they earn to the government. And they wonder why the economy is stagnant.
Not to mention any time the federal government controls a program, it costs twice as much, takes twice as long, and only delivers half of what it promised.
I wonder how many more ways this jerk is going to think of to screw the American people before he is out of office. He needs to quit taking all these vacation on us American and tend to business to help this country out of the mess he is making it.
Yes, yes just like that hard working congress. Oh that’s right they are on vacation too!
Number of golf rounds or Spade games when each of them should have been in the situation room Peter?