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.

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.

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.

Flat Lining Schools; Tinkering Won’t Work

This week the “The Nation’s Report Card” showed no progress.  That’s really quite disturbing given aggressive federal policy (NCLB), a handful of cities like New York making real progress, states like Louisiana and Florida pushing hard, and national foundation efforts.

It suggests that tinkering won’t come close to the President’s goal of leading the world in college completion by 2020. We have 1950 schools (age cohorts slogging through textbooks) and employment bargains (job protection with back loaded benefits) struggling with 2010 students aiming at 2020 goals—just doesn’t add up.  We’d need to see fulfillment of all the promises made in Race to the Top applications and then some to hit the target.

Flat line achievement and attainment suggests that we need an innovation agenda—one quite different than the President’s education Blueprint which falls short on the national ‘good school promise’ (a common baseline school accountability system) and adds some competitive grants.  Sadly, it may be the only deal this Congress could cut—more flexibility for states and more money for things that a few key Republicans and Democrats like.

We’ve dug a big hole—15,000 districts have really bad policies intertwined with really bad employment bargains.  We need to work on fixing and replacing simultaneously.

I’m a big fan of Race to the Top—already the most successful grant program in history before a dime is spent.  It encourages high common standards, stronger data systems, and better teacher preparation and evaluation.  While the President and Secretary deserve a lot of credit for taking on historical alliances around teacher quality, their plans will require local renegotiation several thousand times over.

But this is all ‘inside baseball’ stuff that may bump the curve but won’t hit the target.  Missing ingredients in the President’s blueprint include:

1. A sense of imagination for how personalized learning technology and new school formats can improve learning and financial productivity (there’s a nod this direction in the national edtech plan but I don’t see it in the Blueprint for reauthorizing federal policy).

2. Encouragement for private investment in new tools, schools, and services.  Every other public delivery system relies heavily on private sector capabilities for producing and scaling innovation.  Other than textbooks, testing and technology, education largely excludes the private sector.  Rather than expanding private sector investment, the President’s Blueprint suggests killing a successful private sector initiative providing free tutoring program serving 500,000 low-income students effectively putting hundreds of education entrepreneurs out of business.

3. An innovation agenda that encourages online learning options—there is no way to offer high quality science and math options to every American student without full access to broadband and next generation online learning.  There are still states (including the three I visited this week: NY, NJ, and CT) that virtually outlaw virtual  learning.  Others stop the Internet at county or district lines or limit competition from private providers.

In the last few years, the capability has been developed for anyone to learn almost anything online.  Any prepared student anywhere in the world can go online and earn a college degree from a respected institution.  Why do we still have 1950 schools with most teachers laboring in isolation?

Leading the world in college completion will require a new generation of tools and schools; that will require an education sector open to investment and innovation.  But perhaps even more important, it will take a sense of imagination.

Mobile Learning Maturing (Slowly)

Article worth reading in EdWeek on mobile learning.  I particularly like what Seth Weinberger at Innovations for Learning is doing with the $100 TeacherMate, a cool primary reading and math handheld game pad. See feature in next months Fast Company. Getting close to the device and price point for low cost blended solutions for the developing world.

Games Will Change Everything

Games (and other smart adaptive learning media) will be part the core instructional program for most kids in a few years because they are:

• Adaptive: continuous performance assessment identifies and targets a student’s instructional level and provides instant feedback–it’s personalized learning;
• Engaging: good games use creative media to teach key instructional skills (rather than using learning tasks as gateways to more fun)–it’s fun;
• Motivating: good games build persistence through increasingly levels of challenge and incorporate a variety of reward and recognition systems–it’s addictive.

Other learning media that are incorporating game-like elements include simulations and virtual learning environments.  These are currently most common in supplemental learning but will increasingly be incorporated into core curriculum and will populate next gen learning platforms (i.e., learning objects, learner profiles, smart recommendation engines, learning communities, and aligned services).

Development incentives have been weak but promising experiments with freemium platforms with subscriptions for premium content and related analytics will lead to increased investment.  Lagging tax receipts and tight budgets are also increasing interest in technology produced productivity.

Education is a generation behind consumer games and military simulations but the sector is poised to make up a little ground in the next 36 months with a new generation of personalized digital learning tools.

Building a Better Teacher (the Online Version)

New York Times Magazine got the title right but the story wrong.  Doug Lemov is great and his book, Teach Like a Champ, will be a big contribution to the sector.  But we’re still trying to solve a 1990 question—how does one teacher lift the achievement level of a diverse group of students?

Here’s the problem: we need to make 3.7 million teachers a standard deviation better—fast.  Lemov will do for classroom management what Madeline Hunter did for lesson plans, but it won’t fix the problem.  A good teacher in command of his/her classroom will reach some kids but not all kids.  The standards are high and the needs are great—this is not a technique question, this is a design problem.

Here’s the 2015 question we should be focusing on: how do we build personalized learning experiences to help diverse students graduate from high school college and career ready. If you start with that question, you get a different solution than current ‘teacher effeteness’ initiatives.  You start with great diagnostic tools, then you add engaging adaptive curriculum, then you add powerful application, guidance, and support functions.  With a powerful core instructional technology, you can begin to imagine a new set of interesting roles for learning professionals.

By 2015, most high school students will be doing some of their learning online.  By 2020, most high school students will do most of their learning online.  Progress will be lumpy—some folks will work the old question instead of the new question.  The ‘tech-as-air’ generation is ready to go to work in our schools; we should be preparing them to teach online and support online learning.

We can’t reform our way to excellence and equity.  The Building a Better Teacher story should have been a description of the emerging tools and personalized supports that will redefine education.

National EdTech Plan Pushes Productivity

The Department released Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology (the national EdTech plan).

The most interesting additions are on productivity

To achieve our goal of transforming American education, we must rethink basic assumptions and redesign our education system. We must apply technology to implement personalized learning and ensure that students are making appropriate progress through our K-16 system so they graduate. These and other initiatives require investment, but tight economic times and basic fiscal responsibility demand that we get more out of each dollar we spend. We must leverage technology to plan, manage, monitor, and report spending to provide decision-makers with a reliable, accurate, and complete view of the financial performance of our education system at all levels. Such visibility is essential to meeting our goals for educational attainment within the budgets we can afford.

and

Redesigning education in America for improved productivity is a complex challenge that will require all 50 states, the thousands of districts and schools across the country, the federal government, and other education stakeholders in the public and private sector coming together to design and implement innovative solutions.

Also interesting to note Grand Challenges

1.0: Design and validate an integrated system that provides real-time access to learning experiences tuned to the levels of difficulty and assistance that optimizes learning for all learners and that incorporates self-improving features that enable it to become increasingly effective through interaction with learners.

2.0: Design and validate an integrated system for designing and implementing valid, reliable, and cost-effective assessments of complex aspects of 21st century expertise and competencies across academic disciplines.

3.0: Design and validate an integrated approach for capturing, aggregating, mining, and sharing content, student learning, and financial data cost-effectively for multiple purposes across many learning platforms and data systems in near real time.

4.0: Identify and validate design principles for efficient and effective online learning systems and combined online and offline learning systems that produce content expertise and competencies equal to or better than those produced by the best conventional instruction in half the time at half the cost.