The Latest Development of Education Informatization in North America and Its Implications

North America took an early start in education informatization, and with its rapid development holds the world's leading position in this area. This review, taking USA and Canada as examples, summarizes the policies, development plans and major projects concerning education informatization that are recently established and carried out by the governments. The work can help us understand the developing background and essence of education informatization in North America, and aid us in predicting its future. After chronologically comparing all policies and projects, we find four significant features about the two countries' education informatization: 1) constantly promoting the development and transformation of informatization infrastructures, 2) focusing on the enhancement of teachers' ability of informatized teaching, 3) paying attention to the research of education informatization standards, 4) and employing strategies of education informatization inclined to equality. Through summing up the two countries' successful experience and effective methods, we suggest a prior attention paid to the development of teachers' abilities of educational technologies, an enhancement in the specific assessment of education informatization, a long-acting compensation mechanism for education informatization, etc., for China to better develop a comprehensive education informatization.