Education Technology Think Tank (ET3) is a nonprofit organization committed to improving the conditions of the growing digital divide throughout America.

ET3 works nation-wide to promote forums for information exchange and to catalyze private-public partnerships as the strategy for change at both the national and local level. ET3 is looking forward to expanding its technical assistance to communities interested in affiliation with NetGeneration of Youth, and successful approaches to building Technology Partnership Capacity to Achieve Sustainability.

With the increasing frenzy over NCLB, the school modernization/facilities cause, which had reached a crescendo near the end of the Clinton years, is in serious need of a political blood infusion. Based on contemporary research, the quality of physical plant and facilities-related components of school environments, has a measurable impact not only on health and safety of students, but also on academic performance.

As MLEP celebrates its seventh year as host organization for the Education Technology Think Tank, we commend ET3 for the renewed spotlight it is turning on new concepts in the corporeal learning
environment -- the context in which learning occurs. This latter group of reform components--facilities planning, design, construction, and equipment--plus related finance, is a critical complement to ET3’s advocacy for technology as a tool for enhanced learning and
educational transformation.

As with any presidential election year, 2004 offers an opportunity to
breath new life into the educational reform movement. Through electioneering, one of a dozen or more classes of techniques by which policy is indirectly influenced, an avenue is available to all of us, as appropriate to our organization, to influence the educational policy process. As stakeholders, we must ride the wave of opportunity now in creating an informed, mobilized electorate.

As a nonprofit, education organization, MLEP/ET3 is doing its part by conducting an (educational) awareness initiative, facilitated through a new website/portal. The initiative incorporates broad ranging perspectives on the concept of modernization. A starter list of campaigns linked to (and including) the ET3 website, and to which numerous other modernization groups and campaigns will be added, includes:

• Constructing Equitable Futures Initiative
<et3online.org> and <schoolmodernization.org>
• School Building Week
April 16-2005 <www.cefpi.org>
• National Mobilization for Great Public Schools
September 22, 2004 <www.greatpublicschools.org>
• Student Net Day, Speak Up Day
October 22, 2004 <www.netday.org>