Who Will Build the iPhone for Edu?

ASU is hosting an Education Innovation Summit this week.  I’ll be moderating a panel exploring next gen learning platforms called “Who Will Build the iPhone for Edu?”  Should be a fascinating discussion on one of my favorite subjects.

It feels like we’re approaching a Grand Unifying Vision for next gen learning platforms.  The six components include: 1) adaptive content, 2) content management system, 3) learner profile and smart recommendation engine, 4) social learning communities/capabilities, 5) aligned student, teacher, school services, and 6) data warehouse and analytical tools.

Folks in each of these categories think they have a clear path to the grand vision, but big questions remain:

• How will ascendant platforms combine open and proprietary content?
• Who will define the ‘shipping container‘ and tagging standards?
• Will comprehensive virtual and ‘black box’ solutions from K12, Connections Academy, Time to Know and other gain early market share in traditional schools?
• Will the space continue to mature organically from multiple directions or will we see early Big Bang announcements where big players stake out the territory?
• Will winners be device specific (e.g., iPhone ecosystem)?
• Who will organize market demand to promote investment?  Will big initiatives track federal assessment grant consortia or will big social learning communities become dominant drivers?
• Will any of these get big/credible enough to develop ‘app store’ energy, enthusiasm, and investment?
• With the explosion of keystroke data, what gets aggregated from class to school to district to state?  Where does all this data sit?  How will it augment traditional assessment measures?

Wireless Generation’s services around FreeReading.net give us a small early picture of how some of this could play out.  But Pearson’s LearningStudio is another approach.  Dreambox has an adaptive engine for K-2 math; is that a starting point?  Will some of the LMS folks make the leap to adaptive content?  Will virtual school operators see enough opportunity to invest in next gen content and market to traditional schools?

Some clarity of vision, but lots of questions about how this plays out.  I’ll report back after the Tuesday panel, but in the mean time I’d be happy to take your questions and comments to Scottsdale with me.

The New Learning Landscape

This week I talked to:

• an education author, a blogger, and consultant;
• two districts executing a multi-provider portfolio strategy;
• a charter management organization, a charter network and an online provider;
• a former state commissioner and two state education officials;
• an impact investor, a venture investor, and a private equity investor;
• a social learning platform, a learning game platform;
• an equity advocate, a choice advocate, and an innovation advocate;
• and a handful of teachers.

These two dozen conversations (and a few thousand others) lead me to the conclusion that we’re at the beginning of a golden age of the edupreneur—a time when the options for learning and learning professionals and learning investors is blooming. There is an expanding array of options for people that want to learn and those that want to help young people learn. Teachers are at the heart of this expanding ecosystem.

These days, for many teachers it’s not a great job—except when you retire. Starting pay is lousy, first assignments can be awful, the job is daunting, support is weak, resources are lame, and there’s little time to work with other adults. This is not a good system. But there is an emerging picture of the new employment bargain for learning professionals–one that President Obama and Secretary Duncan are pushing–and it includes:

1. Great opening offer: an attractive starting salary;
2. Competent leadership: fair and thoughtful with a sense of urgency;
3. A supportive and collaborative environment that provides rich team, online peer-to-peer, and whole-school learning experiences;
4. Rational working conditions and assignments including an equitable distribution of teaching talent;
5. The opportunity for rapid advancement based on demonstrated performance (measured by all available means) and initiative leading to a year round contract;
6. Tiered staffing structure where master teachers make a great salary and aren’t forced into administration if their gifts are better used teaching;
7. Differentiated pay based on skill set that recognizes that a talent market exists;
8. Reliable and responsive human resource systems;
9. The use of anywhere anytime talent—the right person for the right role regardless of zip code delivered just in time for the learner.

And here’s #10: if that doesn’t work, start a company, consult, build digital content, advocate. The sky is the limit for learners and professionals committed to helping young people learn.

The unions cling to the 1950 style back-loaded minute-by-minute, lowest common denominator bargain but the world has moved on. It’s time to learn.

Just Do It

My friend Leslie Rennie-Hill calls this her “just do it” poem.

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?

How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?

What scent of old wood hovers, what softened

sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world

than the breathing respect that you carry

wherever you go right now?  Are you waiting

for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this

new glimpse that you found;  carry into evening

all that you want from this day.  This interval you spent

reading or hearing this, keep it for life –

What can anyone give you greater than now,

starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

William Stafford

Thought about this poem today when talking about the difficulty of building a coherent instructional program utilizing lots of first gen components.  Stuff will obviously be better in a couple years but “What can anyone give you greater than now?”

[See Leslie's story that goes with the poem in Teaching with Fire.  Proceeds benefit teacher development.]

More Widgets, Less #2 Pencils

With last week’s launch of the $350m federal grant program last week, National Journal is hosting a conversation about student assessment.  Here’s my contribution.

Students should be assessed all day every day but not the way we do it today.  We currently attempt to use 1950 tests for instructional improvement, student progress, school accountability and increasingly for teacher evaluation—all over weighted toward reliability (i.e., cheap) rather than validity.  Assessment should be largely invisible and incorporated into learning experiences and performance demonstrations.

The exciting opportunity right in front of us is the potential for assessment frameworks flexible enough to incorporate the flood of keystroke data to come from learning games, simulations, virtual environments, adaptive assessments and online end of unit quizzes. This world of instant feedback will be especially useful for students and teachers—if we don’t get in the way.  Here’s a couple postcards from 2015 if you want examples.

A comprehensive online assessment system, possibly including merit badges, would also take the pressure off end of year exams.  Key will be using these grants to build something more like a widget platform with a lot less #2 pencils and bubble sheets

Catherine Gewertz, EdWeek, wrote a good summary of the federal grant program that has forced states into the 1) lock in gains with cheap/uniform tests group, or 2) there must be a better way to incorporate student work group.   The problem with the grant program are the intended recipients—states are broke, under pressure to adopt new standards, and don’t have the capacity to innovate.  Let’s hope there are a few interesting assessment consortia in the i3 applications.

Making Data Matter

Interesting day at the EdWeek Leader’s Forum on Making Data Matter.  Dan Katzir, Broad, did a great job kicking off the event with lessons learned over 10 years.  Amiee Guidera did a great job outlining the Data Quality Campaign agenda.

It was disappointing only 6% of the participants responded that most or all (60-100%) of their teachers were data savvy (and 38% said that almost none were).  It strikes me that all schools need to have 100% data savvy teachers fast, and if you agree, that has serious implications for hiring, training, and evaluating in the coming year.

This stuff is complicated, but school/system leaders need to boil it down to a few important goals (all kids readers; college/career ready), picking metrics, providing tools, and pushing hard for consistently strong execution.  We heard about a good examples from Elgin IL and Ontarioville Elementary.

With all of the cool stuff coming down the pipe–adaptive assessment, learning games, second gen online learning–school leaders need to strike the right balance between execution and innovation.  High performing schools execute at high levels–consistently high quality standards-based instruction over time across the curriculum. But after easy gains, schools need to innovate to personalize learning and build better support systems (for kids & teachers). Managing change in doable chunks so that staff members feel confident about their work is a real art; teachers can focus on doing something well or doing something different, not both.

I’ve very enthusiastic about a new generation of learning tools.  They will allow existing schools to evolve and new schools to be formed.  Budget cuts will make the transition more difficult, but it’s forcing us to ask tough questions about what’s really important.  Data-driven instruction should be at the heart of that conversation.

Book of Work

Had an encouraging conversation at College Board this morning about the potential for a new AP assessment system that would allow several testing times each year (eventually many times or anytime) and reduced reliance on the end of course assessment but considering a ‘book of work’ during the course taking period.

The reason this would be a breakthrough is that this country could double the number of AP courses taken by expanding online offerings.  Districts could double the number of courses offered, ensure instructional quality, and reduce costs by moving all AP online (or a blend of online and onsite).  This would best be facilitated by 1) eliminating seat time requirements, 2) adding flexibility to certification requirements, and 3) making it easier to take the test when a student is ready.

Most teachers already incorporate a variety of factors into a student’s grade: homework, quizzes, projects, and a final exam. College Board has already identified core knowledge and skills for each course; these could be turned into ‘merit badges’ that I’ve been writing about in this  blog and others.  By creating competency bundles around core knowledge/skills, CB could create a marketplace for assessment, or even better content-embedded assessment, that would certify competence.  A string of these merit badges could offload the summative assessment thus making it easier to offer a slighly lower stakes exam on demand.

The consortia of states lead by Maine and West Virginia working on comprehensive approach to assessment could pick this idea up and run with it.  The opportunity to expand access to rigor and quality is too good to pass up.

Read Friedman on Start Ups

Please read Tom Friedman’s post on start ups.  Here’s the most important sentences:

Good-paying jobs don’t come from bailouts. They come from start-ups. And where do start-ups come from? They come from smart, creative, inspired risk-takers. How do we get more of those? There are only two ways: grow more by improving our schools or import more by recruiting talented immigrants.

The one area of the economy where we should be most focused on innovation is education, but it’s the one area where the federal government refuses to engage the private sector–it’s tradition, it’s bizarre, it’s dangerous.

I told an impact investor (e.g., seeking high social return and high market return) this week that I’m confident that a $65m learning fund of funds would create more impact, more jobs, and more leverage than the $650m i3 grant program that will be doled out primarily to school districts in the coming months.  I deeply respect the folks running the program, but they are saddled with bad legislation that does not allow private sector grants/investments the way Energy, Transportation, Health, and Defense do on a regular basis.

A fund of funds could include six $10m investments in funds focused on innovations in learning.  Alternatively, an updated SBIC approach using debt instruments could serve the same purpose.

This all may sound self-serving given my interest in Revolution Learning, the only dedicated early state learning venture fund, but it’s really about the most important sector of the economy that spends next to nothing on R&D.  We need to quickly and dramatically increase public and private investment in learning innovation or we will give up our leadership in the innovation economy.

Step Function Improvement

As the learning revolution matures, it is likely to be turbocharged by lessons about the neuropsychology of learning and motivation.  I don’t think we know much about this and don’t use what we know very effectively, but we are likely to learn far more than we know in the coming decade. Evaluation of keystroke data and use patterns from the digital learning tools will power the next learning revolution.

Howard Gardner’s book on multiple intelligences spread like wildfire through education in the middle 90s.  Well intentioned misapplication of the theory resulted in quashed enthusiasm for learning styles (e.g., smart friends like Andy Rotherham dismiss the subject as untested at best).  Renzulli is still selling a learning styles assessment; School of One uses it to help create a unique playlist for every student.

Persistence appears to be the most important education (and perhaps life) variable. As a result, I believe learning styles is a bit too narrow a view–I think in terms of ‘best learning modality’, a combination of style and motivational scheme.  Persistence for some students can be improved by simply applying a motivation overlay.   Examples:

• Classroom management systems reinforce rules with rewards/punishments
• uBoost recognizes positive classroom behavior
• The League provides rewards for service

Some students are motivated by recognition, some by competition, some by collaboration, some by interest area, some by goals–a smart profile based on a wide variety of experiences should help us pinpoint persistence-improving experiences.

The reason I’m so bullish on adaptive content is that we have a chance to get mode and motivation right for every student.  We’ll soon be able to use keystroke data from smart platforms to queue learning experiences at the appropriate instructional level that leverage interest, learning style, and motivation.

These questions help answer, “how do we get kids to do their math homework?” but there is another important overlay, “how do we teach kids to do school and life?” We assume kids come to school with a sufficient degree of self-management and for most that’s simply not the case.  The ability to focus on a task linked to a long term goal–project management plus delayed gratification–is learned but not frequently taught skill.  That’s why I’m enthusiastic about guided decision-making taught in Navigation 101, a program adopted stateside in Washinton State.  It’s the advisory content I’ve been looking for for 15 years.

As online learning becomes the predominant delivery mode, we’ll have the opportunity to learn far more about the best mode, motivation, and management approach for every student.  And that’s when we’ll see step function improvement.

The 3×5 Learning Revolution

Twenty years after technology began transforming every other sector, there is finally enough movement on a sufficient number of fronts—15 to be precise—that, despite resilience, everything will change.   New and better learning options are inevitable, but progress will be uneven by state/country and leadership dependent.

The 5 Drivers. These Web 2.0 forces are benefiting the learning sector, emerging economies, as well as every other sector:
• More broadband: increasingly ubiquitous high speed Internet access is enabling a world of engaging content including video, multiplayer games, simulations, and video conferencing.
• Cheap access devices: netbooks, tablets, and smart phones have dropped below the $100 per year ownership level enabling one-to-one computing solutions.
• Powerful application development platforms: rapid application development and viral adoption have radically reduced cost and increased speed of bringing solutions to market.
• Adaptive content: personalized news (iGoogle), networks (Facebook), purchasing (Amazon), and virtual environments (World of Warcraft) have created a ‘my way’ mindset that will eventually eliminate the common slog through print.
• Platforms: Apple’s iPhone illustrates the elegant bundling of an application, purchasing, and delivery platform.

The 5 Shifts. Learning is being transformed by five complementary changes:
• Age cohorts to individual learners: the old model of grouping student by age and teaching them all the same stuff in the same way is slowing giving way to individualized instruction and progress.
• Textbooks to digital content: print is slowing giving way to digital content as access improves
• Sequential to adaptive: the one way slog through flat content is giving way to customized learning where students move at their own pace and learn in a mode most productive for them.
• Annual tests to instant feedback: like games, digital learning provides instant performance feedback and motivational reward mechanisms.
• Institutions to networks: purpose-built learning networks are replacing and partnering with schools that evolved over time.

The 5 Contexts. It’s different this time, really:
• Global markets: online learning applications can quickly be adopted worldwide making investment more attractive in cross border opportunities.
• Social networks: the viral adoption of non-institutional connections has changed how we interact and communicate and is changing how we learn.
• Emerging economies: The drive to expand educational access to a billion underserved youth is creating an appetite for learning solutions.
• Financial pressure: a lingering recession and crowding-out effects of health care are finally raising productivity questions—can students learn more faster and cheaper?
• Digital natives: new teachers never lived without the Internet and share their student’s distaste for the powered-down 1950 classroom; both quickly adopt new technology and invent uses on the fly.

The coalescence of these 15 forces produced promising new business models including “freemium,” a Fred Wilson term for viral adoption of free capabilities with incentives for subscribing or purchasing premium services.

Technology drivers, shifts in delivery, emerging context variables, and new business models are attracting the one thing that matters most to innovation and scale—money. While there is still a dearth of government and foundation investment in learning research and development, the private sector is finally stepping in. The education market has been so unattractive for so long that for the least few decades there have been few venture-backed startups and, with the exception of career colleges, little growth capital has been aimed at learning. Global markets and consumer learning have, in particular, spurred investment leading. There is finally gas in the tank education entrepreneurs.

Postcards from 2015

Here’s a couple snapshots of high school a few years from now using currently available tools and a few in development.  These pictures are student-centric; there are obviously a number of teachers and learning professional involved in the success of each of these students.  Comments, suggestions, alternatives welcome.

##

While getting ready for school, Maria opens her netbook at 7am to check her schedule for the day:

• 9:00am language lab
• 10:00am civics seminar (check three sites before attending)
• 11:00am video conference with deputy mayor
• 1:30pm math lab
• 3:00pm band
• 4:00pm volleyball

Marias’s civic seminar is an English/Social Studies block. As part of the course, she is the deputy editor of website attempting to illuminate the immigration debate. Maria has interviewed a dozen local and national politicians and activists on both sides of the issue and has produced article and opinion pieces judged by online peers and advisors. All of Maria’s contributions are filed in an electronic portfolio.

During the 60 minute language lab, Maria enters a virtual village market where she interacts in Mandarin with native speakers.  The 90 minute math lab combines self-paced online learning with occasional individualized online tutoring she gets stuck.

An online guidance system has helped Maria develop self-management skills, select the right high school courses, decide on a double college major—journalism and political science—and select a college.  With her Advanced Placement credits, Maria can finish college in three years including a semester abroad.  Her early acceptance letter included a work-study offer to write for the college web site.

##

At midnight, Mario is still contributing to a discussion stream with his virtual learning team comparing two opposing views of tax policy. He checked a Harvard resource, How to Write a Comparative Analysis, in preparation for his classroom work the next day.

He is nearly through his homework playlist that included a math game, a biochem simulation, and a virtual environment recreating the Battle of Bull Run. From his game score, Mario knows he’s got more work to do on quadratics. His smart recommendation engine has already queued a new math game that may be a better learning mode for Mario—the system determined that his persistence improves under competitive situations with public recognition of his point status.

Mario has nearly enough merit badges to complete Lower Division (what used to be 9^th and 10^th grade).  His culminating project and successful public demonstration will mark a midyear transition to Upper Division where he will begin earning college credit and begin working on a career concentration including an internship.

##

Monique is enrolled in the upper division of a virtual high school.  She visits the office at least one day a week to meet with an advisory group and project team.  Maria laughs at folks that are concerned about her lack of social interaction—she has 800 friends on her social network, a dozen mentors, five learning teams, four project teams, and three academic advisors that she regularly interacts with. She plays in a youth symphony and is on a year-round club soccer team (which takes care of her required PE credit).

Monique takes two online college credit courses and works 30 hours each week. When she graduates from high school, she plans to continue working and attend college online so that she can graduate debt free.  She plans to execute the online services business plan she wrote for a high school business class—she may just leave college with money in her pocket.

All of these school models blend online learning and onsite support; all are highly personalized and engage students as individuals and team; all utilize a tiered staffing model and a variety of tools.  You could do most of this today, but like School of One or NYC iSchool, it would be a challenge.  In a few years the content, assessment, management systems, and learning platforms will make learning experiences like these relatively common.  It will just take a little imagination, some focused investment, and a little room to innovate.