The FCC is still welcoming comments on its national broadband plan to connect everyone in the country to high-speed Internet, and I wanted to weigh in before the deadline on July 21.

I’m particularly excited about the prospect of how widespread Internet access can transform education. But as someone who has worked with children and literacy issues, I know that any attempt to connect education reform with the Internet must go hand-in-hand with digital literacy efforts.

Last week, two top Obama administration officials, Jim Shelton and Aneesh Chopra, talked about education and technology in a meeting with state educational technology directors. Their message, summed up in an article from The Journal, was: “Technology is core and essential to the strategies we are using to reform education.”

Both Shelton and Chopra see technology as a solution to the current ailments in public education. While I admit that any serious look at education ought to be welcomed by the public, this kind of rhetoric – technology will fix education, and ergo, our future economy – overlooks a more complicated understanding of what access means for our schools, and calls for a deeper analysis of technology’s role in education.

I’m not only speaking about material access, like installing current computer hardware and software into our K-12 schools, although I admit that the lack of access to technology is a major part of why too many students in our nation are falling behind. I’m speaking about another facet of access that is just as important as the physical screens and keyboards: digital literacy.

All too often, what’s missing from the discussion is the question of how our education system can use technology in meaningful ways, rather than the question of what technology can do for schools. The latter logic fails to reflect the training and knowledge that teachers require in order to teach technology to their students, as well as the learning that students need to be successful citizens in an increasingly digital world.

This kind of learning can’t be done merely by placing a computer in front of every grade school child, pressing the “on” button, and then expecting that student to automatically absorb technology skills. A posting on The Northwest Progressive Institute Advocate makes a relevant analogy: “We don't put drivers behind the wheel without training. Likewise, we shouldn't give away Internet access without providing the tools & training to take advantage of it in productive, responsible, beneficial and entertaining ways.”

If the Obama administration is looking to technology to ensure the future success of our schools and our nation, then the administration also needs to seriously consider how to support digital literacy. The know-how ought to complement the technology so that technology can serve the people, and not the other way around.

Linh Dich is a volunteer at FreePress, and a graduate student and instructor in Composition and Rhetoric at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.