Taking Down the Digital Divide in Schools

By John Merrow

Education Correspondent, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

I vividly remember a physician friend of mine, Dr. Karen Hein, saying that, for AIDS, asthma and other health problems, geography was destiny. She meant that poverty and the problems associated with it were key determinants of health. Poor people got the short end of the stick: less access to preventive care, more diseases, and fewer resources to help them recover.

Now a new report sponsored by the Knight Foundation suggests that geography is also destiny for our democracy. The just-released report, “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age,” suggests that we now have what it calls ‘second class information citizenship.’

Many of us suffer from information overload, but some communities—geography again–have a very different problem: not enough information and insufficient skills to separate the wheat from the chaff.

In an era when many of us are embracing Twitter, Facebook and other ‘virtual communities,’ we may think that walls are breaking down everywhere, but this report tells us that real (geographic) communities matter more than virtual ones. Technology itself is inherently democratic—a computer doesn’t know (or care) whether you are rich or poor; able-bodied or not; black, white or brown—but access to technology is a different kettle of fish. Who has access to technology is crucial—and access often comes down to geography.

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Connecting: Rigor and Relevance

By Paige Kuni Johnson

Past Chair, Partnership for 21^st Century Skills

K-12 Education Manager, Intel Corporation

Recently, at a conference on education reform, I heard a state superintendent from one of the country’s highest performing states share a comment I found concerning. He said he believed there would be a tension between meeting more rigorous common core standards and personalizing learning for students to make schools relevant and engaging to learners.

While I have a lot of personal respect for this man, I think his comment reflects a common misperception that our country has to overcome in order for school improvement to succeed. As I sat in the conference room, looking around at a sizeable crowd of over-40-somethings, it occurred to me that educational, corporate and government leaders need to be promoting exactly the opposite message. I think the only way we will have all students meet rigorous standards is to make the learning completely personal, relevant and engaging.

At a time when an overwhelming number of students feel disconnected from school – according to a recent Time Magazine article, the national high school dropout rate currently exceeds 30 percent – we need to find a way to connect with students, to engage them and keep them in the classroom. Technology will be a critical component of this endeavor.

In this digital era, students are connected as individuals through cell phones, the internet and many participate in large virtual on social networking sites. Technology is so integrated in their lives that, according to a recent factoid, nine out of ten students no longer wear wristwatches as timepieces because they can now access the time through a plethora of other technological devices close at hand. Content is available online, critical analysis and application of content has become more important than content itself as the body of published work available online doubles seemingly overnight. If students check in online but checkout at school-, why are we not doing a better job at using these tools to motivate students in rigorous learning experiences?

Intel is investing in helping teachers become better at technology integration for learning. We offer free professional development to states and districts all over the country. We also have supported the development of technology standards for students, teachers and administrators in the US. Our most recent project is collaboration with Intel, Microsoft and Cisco on how to do a better job of assessment of 21^st Century skills in students.

However, I fear that philanthropic efforts by Intel, Cisco, Microsoft, or Oracle will not have the systemic impact we seek until education leaders embrace the opportunity that technology presents in making our students more engaged, and more successful in school. If you need a reason for why that is important – check out a recent McKinsey study that said the United States’ GDP would have been 9 to 16 percent higher – that is, $1.3 to $2.3 trillion higher – in 2008 had U.S. high school graduates attained the average skills of their peers in Canada, Finland or South Korea. In our current economic situation, we can’t afford not to have an educational system where all kids succeed.

Education 1.0 and the Desire to Upgrade

By Scott Traylor

CEO and Founder of 360KID

A new high school is being built near my office. The old high school had served its function well over time, but in recent years the level of maintenance necessary to keep the school functioning translated into diminishing returns. School committees, planning committees, state and city officials, community members, and advisory groups came together to define a new future for the students of this city. Their passionate debates about the new school’s physical construction mirror discussions that are taking place on a national scale about how best to teach our students inside these structures. Our educational practices are showing their wear, with its own version of peeling paint, cracked walls and leaky ceilings.

Being a former teacher and having spent the last 20 years running a digital learning company that specializes in media creation, I see the potential for a revolution in education through the use of technology. Learning games, social media, mobile technologies, virtual worlds; all of these advances in computing offer greater opportunities for student engagement and improved literacy learning. What is clear to me and my colleagues is that there are many vested interests in the education world that don’t see this moment quite as clearly as we do, or if they do see it, don’t know how to advance its cause.

Let’s take a look at the kids we’re trying to reach today. They are the first generation that will have never known a time without the Internet, Google, or mobile phones. They are connected to the world through a variety of different digital, gaming, and communications tools. They are comfortable with many aspects of media creation. Every day they are presented with an unlimited menu of informal learning opportunities by simply following their passions online and choosing tools that suit their learning styles. How can schools compete with a similar level of engagement and interest through digital media inside the classroom?

Teachers and teacher training are certainly a critical part of using technology to support improved outcomes, but what elements outside the classroom influence the successes we wish to create inside the classroom?

Administrators and superintendents play a key role in purchasing decisions that impact schools. How do these leaders learn what technologies are best to bring into their classrooms? Should their ed tech purchasing decisions be driven entirely by the requirements established by policies such as No Child Left Behind? How can their purchases instead address a variety of different learning styles? How can they anticipate which digital media will appeal to the interests of their students?

Pulling back the curtain to shed light on the business of education we discover two areas that impact the quality of ed tech for schools, the first being new product creation. Publishers who create instructional materials for schools are, by and large, traditional media businesses that rely heavily on print. Most publishers are eager to play a part in the digital age, but historically their development efforts are driven by an editorial process that understands linear communication through the medium of print better than two-way communication and interactive engagement through digital media. How can these professionals better address the needs of a transmedia framework?

Secondly, the process of how new learning products are approved for school usealso has great influence over the quality of ed tech products that are marketed at the state level. Publishers often find their biggest opportunities selling instructional materials to states through what is referred to as an “adoption.” During the adoption process state advisors review educational materials to see if they meet state learning requirements before these materials are blessed for purchase by schools. Could it be that the adoption process itself, or the interest of publishers, places greater emphasis on print media than digital media because it is a business they understand? These adoption processes are very competitive, and not easy for smaller and more digitally advanced companies to compete with. The large publishers who vie for a state’s adoption often include sweeteners to convince adoption boards to select their materials over another, often times giving away the technology component as a free incentive. If a technology product is given away, it usually means it is not supported financially within these organizations during development thus reducing incentives to create real breakthroughs in digital learning. How can publishers shift their business practices to treat ed tech as its own successful, revenue generating profit centers? How can states adoption boards be encouraged to place greater emphasis on learning that is facilitated through innovative technologies?

And finally, what sort of commitment should we expect on the side of government? States rely on federal dollars to help with teacher training and the purchase of technology products. One specific area within the No Child Left Behind mandate offered to accelerate the use of technology in schools is a section of the law called Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT, Title II, Part D). Since its introduction in 2002 funds earmarked to support this commitment have declined. What is the true commitment of the federal government through this arm of NCLB?

Other federally-funded opportunities, such as Department of Education and National Science Foundation grants, have a hard time keeping up with the rapid pace of technology change. The process of reviewing a grant request, awarding and completing a grant, can take years. How can the entire grant process, from review to completion of a marketable product, be accelerated to keep up with the rapid advancements in technology? Can some amount of these grants also be directed towards smaller, more nimble, for profit ventures that are better able to chase a moving target?

Aside from the efforts described above, a long-standing opportunity to advance digital learning may be found in the promise of the CAMRA Act, also known as the Children and Media Research Advancement Act. The thinking behind CAMRA is that the federal government would fund research related to the use of electronic media to better understand its benefits to children. This bill was introduced in 2005, passed unanimously in the Senate in 2006, and has been stalled in the House ever since. Wouldn’t it be great if all organizations interested in using digital media for the advancement of children’ learning had a solid body of research to best guide not only new product development decisions, but also purchasing, implementation, and best practices of ed tech in the classroom? Wouldn’t the passing of CAMRA also put a spotlight on the need to bring together many disparate federal agencies interested in the research CAMRA would facilitate, and promote a more coordinated research agenda for the benefit of all? Combined with a sizable appropriation for the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies, the passage of CAMRA would help realize the long awaited formation of a central oversight group for the advancement of digital media and learning research.

If we could in some small way address these questions in each of these areas of education outside the classroom, we would begin to see a new version, an enhanced version of education that would drive classroom success. Much like that new high school being built next to the older one, the visual difference between the two structures is striking. Maybe it's easier for all parties involved to demonstrate a greater commitment when a clear vision of the new is offered alongside the old. The choice would be immediately clear to most. The time and effort required to make such changes may be greater than what many are willing to invest and there is comfort in keeping the status quo, but to ignore defining something new comes at our own peril. Key sectors must work together in earnest to provide us all with untold opportunities for the learners of tomorrow. Let’s start building that new structure, the future of education, and let’s place that Education 2.0 cornerstone down right now.

Literacy 2.0: The Potential and the Pitfalls

By Lisa Guernsey

Director, Early Education Initiative

New America Foundation

A young girl, age 5, sits down at her family’s computer and logs into Webkinz with some help from her mother. She’s got a plush toy on her lap. It’s a Clydesdale horse named Mirabelle who, seconds later, appears reincarnated as a pixilated horse on the screen. The little girl grabs the computer mouse, points to the screen, and shouts, “look Mom!” A three-dimensional room is now before her eyes, and she can fill it with whatever furniture she thinks her horse might like. A catalog of food items appears too – marshmallows, carrot sticks, hamburgers, you name it. The little girl knows that she is supposed to buy whatever will make her horse happy and healthy. She clicks on the carrot sticks and feeds them to Mirabelle. A little thought balloon appears over her horse’s head with tiny text inside. Maybe it says “that’s delicious” or “thank you!” or “now can you buy me some apples?” But we’ll never know, because it appears for only a second and then it disappears.

“What did it say?!” the girl screams. Her face is in a panic. “I couldn’t read it!”

She couldn’t read it. Why? Two reasons. 1) the little girl is not yet a fluent reader. 2) the digital media did absolutely nothing to help.

I offer this story not to bash Webkinz or to chastise her mother (who is me, as many readers have probably guessed by now.) Nor do I tell this tale to lead you into a sermon on the value of reading a book versus sitting in front of a computer.

I tell this story to highlight the disconnect between digital media and children’s literacy today. Consider the elements in place: We have a highly motivated child sitting in front of a highly motivating piece of software. We have text on the screen. But we have no recognition anywhere that this is a moment that could be harnessed to pull her forward in reading, to help take her to the next level. Something as simple as enabling the words to appear on the screen until she took an active role, until she clicked a button to close the thought balloon, could have helped. But much, much more could have happened as well. Imagine a Webkinz world populated by characters who love to read and urge their owners to check out virtual books to stock virtual libraries. Imagine a moment in which my daughter might have been invited, first through an audio prompt, to read more about horses and how to care for them, and then led her to a page of non-fiction designed for her reading level that she could print and read later with the help of parents and teachers? Imagine the richer literacy possibilities that could be infused in the games, email exchanges or printed bulletin boards on the virtual world’s walls.

The opportunities to encourage reading through digital media are endless.

And so are the pitfalls. I’m not alone in having dozens of questions about when, why and how to use digital media in a way that doesn’t divorce children from reading instead. Here are just four that are on my mind:

1) How can we prevent the power of digital media become overpowering, from doing so much for children that reading seems unnecessary to them? We think of the screen as a place to tell stories visually, and as we all know, a picture speaks a thousand words. So where will children learn to read those words if they so rarely appear before their eyes? Can the “printed” word become more infused in our multimedia experiences? How do we give kids a reason to read?

2) Digital media has been held up as a motivator, but is that enough? We see children excited about using a Nintendo DS or logging onto an online game, and we say we need to use these platforms as a launching pad for introducing reading. But what happens when the novelty wears off? Can these games produce such a love of reading, or even simply a fluency in reading, that it becomes deeply embedded in children’s approaches to learning no matter what technology they use in the future?

3) What can digital media do to improve comprehension, to move students beyond a rudimentary ability to decode words? Can we use multimedia and immersive gaming to introduce students to vocabulary and concepts from history, science and literature so they recognize words and ideas when they come across them in texts? And if so, will that be enough? Can digital media become a bridge to better comprehension for children from non-English speaking households? Or is that something that can only come from reading text in the first place?

4) What is the relationship between creating and reading? Digital media is renowned for its ability to spur creativity, motivating children to create videos, develop games, mix and produce music, write messages. Do we know empirically whether this might help them learn to read or propel their reading to new levels? And is one necessary for the other?

Until we find answers to some of these questions, skepticism will remain over whether digital media can play a positive role in raising reading achievement among today’s young people. And parents and teachers will continue to nag their children to log off Webkinz and go read a book.

The Purple Potty Theory of Passion

By James Paul Gee

Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies

Arizona State University

“Grit” is required for success today in the United States. “Grit” is passion plus persistence. Jobs that require basic or even higher, but standard, skills will often be low paying, done overseas, or automated. Success will more and more require high-level mastery and the ability to innovate. And that, in turn, requires grit. There are no short cuts.

There is no persistence without passion. How do people grow passion? We really don’t know near enough about passion, but let me tell you a story that shows one route to passion and then to grit. Tabby Lou is a woman who retired in her 60’s in ill health and became homebound. In the old days that could have been the end of the story: a retired shut in. However, Tabby Lou’s daughter and granddaughters played The Sims (a life and community simulation), the bestselling video game of all time, and she got hooked on playing the game.

One day, one of her granddaughters told Tabby Lou she wanted a purple potty to put into her Sim houses. The game doesn’t come with purple potties. But what grandmother would disappoint her grandchild? So Tabby Lou decided she just HAD to build one for her. But that meant she had to learn to make digital content for The Sims; she had to become a designer and not just a player. How could she do this? She needed help and some good, but complicated, digital tools to work with. This, too, in the old days could have been the end of the story: no help, no tools or the tools are too hard to learn on one’s own.

However, communities of people exist on the Internet passionately devoted to designing clothes, houses, furniture, landscapes, and stories for The Sims. These communities offer sophisticated digital 3D design tools and lucid mentoring. They are organized, when they are at their best, in interesting ways: Everyone is accepted in (newbies and experts are there together); no age grading (old and young are both there); everyone is helped to achieve mastery if they want it; everyone is allowed to get mentored and to mentor others, to learn and teach; everyone is expected to take a proactive individually dedicated stance towards learning that does not, however, exclude asking for help, but help that never undermines one’s proactive stance towards learning.

Tabby Lou used the community’s resources and made a purple potty. She had a very happy granddaughter. But her granddaughters today are not just happy, they are proud. Tabby Lou got hooked on the community and developed a passion for their passion: for design, not just designing purple potties. Today, over 13 million people have downloaded her designs. People have thanked her for her work over one million times in her guest book on the The Sims Resource site. She is internationally known.

Tabby Lou’s story gives a theory of passion, what I will call “the purple potty of passion”: The passion starts local and small: Tabby Lou is passionate about making a purple potty for her granddaughter. She found a community she came to love and its tools to realize that passion. The community is organized in such a way that she becomes passionate about the other people in the community and their shared passion (designing for The Sims). Energized by the community, wanting to rise in the community and to serve others in it, she persists through thousands of hours of practice with complex digital tools. She gets grit. She becomes a rock star.

Tabby Lou is a shut in, but she is not shut out of the global world. But many of our school children are. They are not getting grit for 21^st century design and digital skills. One way we can solve that problem is to apply the purple potty theory of passion. Get them passionately hooked on something local and personal, something THEY really want to do; lead them to a well organized learning community that has the tools and help they need; get them passionate about the community and its passion; within the community, their local and personal passion becomes more global. Their desire to rise in and serve the community leads to persistence in mastering the skills behind the community’s passion. Now they have grit in the service of 21^st century skills. They will become rock stars.

But school as we know them would be utterly changed if we applied the purple potty theory of passion. Different people have different passions. So everyone cannot have the same curriculum, though people with different passions can teach and collaborate with others to pool skills for larger endeavors. Communities that are very different from school are required. No age grading, no one single time scale for success for all. Members both learn and teach. Learners are proactive, but collaboration and help is not cheating.

So school reform—really learning reform for society, since learning today is 24/7 in and out of school—would be about helping people find their purple potty, the thing that, with the right tools and communities, will make them rock stars.

Sesame Street at 40: A Revolution in Early Learning Embraces the Digital Age

By Gary E. Knell

President and CEO, Sesame Workshop

An article ran in the New York Times the morning after the 61^st Primetime Emmy awards titled “Television Thanks You for Watching.” The article punctuates a theme throughout the broadcast of comments alluding to the shift of notable programming to cable networks and other media platforms. The television community is clearly seeing a movement to where viewers are seeking quality programming, but not on standard broadcast television anymore.

When Sesame Street started out, public television was pretty much the only choice for us. It was one of the handful of stations in existence, accessible by anyone with a television and dedicated to quality educational programming. Today, the landscape is overflowing with a multitude of channels and series of every variety. And the choice extends beyond the television set – to multiple screens and a wide variety of formats, from webisodes to video blogs.

The shift in the television community echoes the slower transformation in the way we educate our children. Technology in the classroom is not a new concept but its integration has been limited. It seems ironic considering the kids are usually the ones first in line to adopt the newest media and technologies available. They are engaging with media more and starting earlier than ever before.

The creators of Sesame Street recognized this 40 years ago. Early research on the way children viewed television, showed that they could remember advertising jingles better than information in the programs they viewed. Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett set up an experiment to use television to help children, particularly at-risk inner city kids. The program aimed to prepare children to enter school, ready to learn, and to channel their natural attraction to TV in a positive and purposeful way.

The show continues to be an experiment, responding to the ever-changing educational needs of children and the media environment. The model it was built on enabled it with a unique flexibility to be adapted for other countries but also other platforms, allowing to reach audiences wherever they are and to deliver specific content in a direct way.

Today’s preschooler is just as likely to have their first encounter learning the alphabet with Elmo on a parent’s iPod or laptop, as on television. Following the path our founders set, we continue to seek out the power of new media platforms and use them to help children learn life skills - build literacy, develop healthy habits, appreciate nature and cope with the unexpected and difficult situations like economic insecurity or military deployment.

The success Sesame Street has had in making a difference in education and the results it continues to see is one of the reasons why we must begin to seek out how we can put new technologies to use in progressing education in and outside the classroom. We are only beginning to see how putting devices like an iPod Touch in the school environment can change the dynamic of lessons, how video games can get children exercising or social networking can build respect and understanding among cultures.

We have just scratched the surface of the role new media can play in advancing education. We need to further research the ways they are currently being used as well as seek out new educational models that incorporate these new media devices.

Sesame Street will celebrate its 40^th birthday on November 10. To some that may signal that we’ve reached middle age. In television years, it’s well over a lifetime, but to us, it is yet another beginning. Just as the television community is in the midst of a revolution, we too are at a crucial point in this media evolution; where technology can set us on a better path or maintain the status quo. Sesame Street was an answer to a call to change the media landscape into a productive medium. Now is the time to build out a neighborhood to benefit our children and keep the audience tuned in and watching.