Although funding concerns remain, the National Ed-Tech Plan is a promising start, ed-tech advocates say.

The new National Education Technology Plan, released March 5, sets an ambitious agenda for using technology to transform teaching and learning, ed-tech advocates say–and a call to action that is long overdue.

The plan, called “Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology,” calls for engaging and empowering learning experiences for all students; standards and assessments that measure key 21st-century skills and expertise; a shift to a model of “connected teaching,” in which teams of interconnected educators replace solo classroom practitioners; always-on connectivity that is available to students and teachers both inside and outside of school; and a rethinking of basic assumptions, such as seat time, that limit schools’ ability to innovate.

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Schools are struggling not just to maintain the technology they have in the classroom, but to train instructors how to use and implement it.

Given that most school IT departments already are working in reactive mode most of the time, "that's a recipe for disaster," said Betsy Graham, K-12 IT marketing manager for SchoolDude.

But "technician" wasn't even the most popular response when we asked where school leaders could use more IT help.