the tipping point in k-12 education (eric su)

8/7/2019 The Tipping Point in K-12 Education (Eric Su)

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The Tipping Point in K-12Education

Exploring the Past, Present and Future ofDisruptive Education Technologies

ERIC H. SU, WH/SEAS 2011

ADVISOR: DR. JORGE SANTIAGO-AVILES, ESE/GSE

EAS 499: SENIOR CAPSTONE PROJECT

April 25, 2011


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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................... 2

INFRASTRUCTURE ................................................................................................................................. 4

DIGITAL TOOLS ....................................................................................................................................... 7

Learning Analytics ............................................................................................................................. 7

OpenCourseWare ............................................................................................................................... 8

Social Networking .............................................................................................................................. 9

Tablet and Mobile Solutions ....................................................................................................... 10

Next Generation Assessment Systems .................................................................................... 11

PEDAGOGIES .......................................................................................................................................... 12

Customized Learning ..................................................................................................................... 12

Distance Learning ........................................................................................................................... 14

Social Learning ................................................................................................................................. 15

Learning-By-Doing ......................................................................................................................... 16

GOVERNMENTS AND NON-PROFITS ........................................................................................... 16

Federal and State Governments ................................................................................................ 16

Teacher Unions ................................................................................................................................ 18

Non-profit Foundations ................................................................................................................ 19

Community Partnerships ............................................................................................................. 21

ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS ........................................................................................................... 21

Market Opportunity ....................................................................................................................... 22

Products and Services ................................................................................................................... 23

RECOMMENDATIONS ........................................................................................................................ 26

FUTURE OUTLOOK .............................................................................................................................. 29

WORKS CITED ....................................................................................................................................... 32


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INTRODUCTION

The U.S. education system has some urgent problems. U.S. students have

underperformed on math, science and reading assessments over the past 30 years. Today,

nearly 25% percent of students do not finish high school. Among African-Americans,

Hispanics and low-income students, the dropout rate is even higher.1

The deterioration in public education represents a huge loss of human potential.

Education prepares students to compete in a dynamic

economy that is increasingly flat and service-based,

fosters an informed citizenry who can contribute to a

healthy democracy and enriches individuals with

personal wisdom for a lifetime. The state of national

education is an issue with both personal and public

consequences.

Inadequacies of the U.S. public education

system are observable in national statistics. One

estimate states that 60 percent of college freshmen are

not ready to do college work and take at least one

remedial course.2 National measures of mathematics

and reading performance show little to no

improvement over a multi-decade period, despite large

increases in education spending per pupil over the

same time horizon.3 By some estimates, the productivity of education spending in the U.S.

has declined by 48% from 1970 to 2000.4 Today, U.S. educators spend more to get less.

Furthermore, international comparisons of educational outcomes show students in

other countries significantly outperforming those in the U.S. Once the global leader in


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education, U.S. students now place average or below-average on international reading, math

and science assessments. U.S. 15-year-olds, for example, now place in the bottom third of

OECD countries on mathematics and science assessments, below peers such as China, Japan,

the United Kingdom, Sweden, Australia and more.5 Over time and across countries, statistics

paint a picture of a public education system in dire need of improvement.

Annual Secondary Education Expenditures per Student

Source:Departmentof Education

The causes of this stagnation are multi-faceted and the current trajectory is

unsustainable. Modernizing education for the 21stcentury will require deep, systemic

change brought about with new practices and tools. As innovation expert Clayton

Christensen writes, Disruption is a positive force. It is the process by which an innovation

transforms a market whose services or products are complicated and expensive into one

where simplicity, convenience, accessibility, and affordability characterize the industry.6

Just as automobiles disrupted how people travel, or the phone disrupted how people

communicate, technology can be the catalyst that disrupts how people learn.

Todays students are engaged and enthused by technology in ways that previous

generations never were, yet there remains a deep divide in the extent to which technology

is used in our personal and professional lives and the extent it is used in school. According
http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html#1http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html#1http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html#1


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to Joel Klein, who pushed through multiple reforms during his tenure as the former

Chancellor of New York City Schools, education is the one industry where innovation has

been missing. In education, weve missed the technological revolution.7 The United States

education system continues to operate in ways that do not fully leverage the capabilities of

the digital world. This will create opportunities for policy makers, technologists and social

entrepreneurs to transform learning and improve education for the 21stcentury.

Educational technology, which refers to devices or methods used to mediate interaction

between faculty and students, needs to be a central part of the dialogue over education

reform.8

INFRASTRUCTURE

In 1996, President Bill Clinton announced a transformative vision for computing in

schools, which called for (1) modern computers and learning devices available to all

students, (2) classrooms connected to one another and the outside world, (3) educational

software integrated with curriculums and (4) teachers prepared to use and teach with

technology.

Today, the first two of President Clintons mandates are largely fulfilled. Technology

is nearly ubiquitous in todays classrooms. The number of instructional computers in public

elementary and secondary schools has increased from an average of 90 in 1998 to 154 in

2005. Over the same period, the percentage of instructional rooms with access to the

Internet increased from 51 percent to 97 percent.9 Schools have spent well over $60 billion

on equipping classrooms with computers.


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In addition, teachers reported having the following technological devices in the

classroom everyday: LCD (liquid crystal display) or DLP (digital light processing) projects

(48 percent); interactive whiteboards (23 percent); digital cameras (14 percent). Teachers

sometimes or often used the following for instructional or administrative purposes: word

processing software (96 percent), spreadsheets and graphing programs (61 percent),

software for managing student records (80 percent), software for making presentations (63

percent), and the Internet (94 percent).10

Despite the pervasiveness of advanced hardware, technology has still had a minimal

impact on instruction. Classrooms today look as they did before the personal computer

revolution. Fifth graders report using computers only 24 minutes a week in class and in

computer labs. Only 20 percent of middle school teachers report using computers for drill-

and-practice software. Computers have been crammed into classrooms but have not

changed fundamental pedagogy in a meaningful way.

In his recent book, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way

the World Learn, innovation expert Clayton Christensen writes, Weve spent billions of

dollars putting computers in the schools, but almost all of those computers have been put in

traditional classroom settings. They just support the current system of instruction. Kids use


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the Internet to write better research papersor they learn keyboarding via the computers.

But the computer has not had any fundamental impact on the way students learn.11

The problem is not a lack of technology but a deficiency in how it is used. Rather

than allowing the disruptive technology to take root in a new model that can change how

schools operate, schools have merely crammed new technologies into their existing

structures. Hardware is not the main issue. Instead, the design and implementation of useful

software, processes and models is the true challenge facing educators.

The current state of educational

technologies is based on several

sociopolitical and structural factors. First,

educational resource allocations are

typically made by technology-averse

bureaucrats who move slowly, have

entrenched interests around current

educational models, and are reluctant to embrace technology. These bureaucrats are

reluctant to experiment and are driven more by political decisions rather than market

demands. This trend has been abetted by a historical disregard for educational technology

from politicians. The educational R&D budget historically comprises only .01 percent of

total R&D expenditures.12

Structural factors within education have also been a restraining force against

adoption. Larry Cuban, an expert and researcher in the educational technology field,

identifies two additional reasons for technologys underuse in his bookOversold and

Underused: Computers in the Classroom. First, teachers lack an understanding of how

technology can be integrated into regular classroom instructional practices. A 1999 U.S.

Department of Education study found that only one-third of teachers felt well-prepared to


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use computers and the Internet for classroom instruction.13 Second, school systems have

not been restructured to fully support the integration of technology during instruction.

Curriculums treat computers as either a vocational topic, with courses on how to use

computers, or as just a special event or an add-on to regular instruction. Computers are still

treated as diversions rather than as central mechanisms for instruction.

DIGITAL TOOLS

Despite these challenges, educational technology has significant potential to

enhance the learning process. A profile of key emerging educational technologies is

provided below.

Learning Analytics

One use of technology within education is the adoption of real-time learning

analytics to monitor and track educational progress. Todays IT tools can collect data not

only on what activities students do, but also how much time they spend doing them, how

often they return to the activities and many other data points in real-time. Educators use

this data to record learning outcomes, track learning progress and set accountability

standards. Statistical evaluation of rich data sources can also reveal patterns that educators

are using to make informed academic decisions at both the course level and the

programmatic level.

Several universities have adopted learner analytics with promising results. At

Purdue University, administrators are implementing an internal initiative named Signals

(Stoplights for Student Success). This system mines institutional data from IT systems and

provides a green, yellow or red sign indicating if an individual student is at risk of falling

behind in class. These profiles have been used successfully by teachers to prompt

interventions in poorly performing students and empower students by making them more


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aware of their academic effort. The University of Alabama has applied similar learner

analytics by using data files from enrolled students in the years 1999-2001 to develop

predictive models of at-risk students.14 The private sector is also contributing solutions to

the learning analytics space. For example, IBM, underwritten by the American Recovery and

Reinvestment Act, is working with the Mobile County Public School System in Alabama to

provide educators in the district with customizable dashboards that will provide up-to-date

information on key measures of student performance such as grades, attendance and

interventions.15

Intelligent learning analytics holds great promise. Technologies like cloud

computing and analytics will be used to capture and convey critical data, gaining a real-time

perspective into how a student or school is doing, where intervention is needed and what is

working across institutions and across time. In the future, instructional decisions will be

based more on objective analysis and less on anecdotal evidence. Educators will have the

tools and insights they will need to make smarter decisions at the system level.

OpenCourseWare

In 2002, MIT decided to take virtually all of its undergraduate and graduate course

content and publish it freely and openly over the Internet, sparking a transformative

movement in open learning, now known as OpenCourseWare (OCW). OpenCourseWare is

defined by the OCW Consortium as the free and open digital publication of high quality

university-level educational materials. OpenCourseWare are free and openly licensed,

accessible to anyone, anytime via the Internet.

OCW is at the center of a new movement that leverages the sharing power of the

Internet to provide open, democratic access to education. High-quality education, once only

available to a select few, is now being shared to everyone, everywhere, thus bringing new

educational opportunities to untapped populations globally.


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MITs success with its OpenCourseWare project, whose digital catalog has grown

from 50 to over 2000 modularized courses within five years, validates the scalability of this

educational model. MIT OpenCourseWare has inspired hundreds of other elite universities

to follow suit with their own open learning programs. Today, the OCW Consortium consists

of educational material from over 250 universities, 13,000 courses, and 20 languages.16

Though the OCW movement is still mostly a higher education phenomenon, the movement

is beginning to gain root within public K-12 education. The Khan Academy

(www.khanacademy.org) has a catalog of over 2,100 educational videos and online

exercises that spans content like arithmetic, algebra, introductory biology and history. Over

45 million lessons have been accessed through its website.

OCW someday could supplant the entire educational model and reduce the labor

intensity of current educational models. As OCW course content proliferates, and the user

experience for these courses reaches parity with traditional classroom instruction, core

subjects may someday be taught entirely through pre-packaged web courses. An algebra

teacher, rather than teach the same subject over and over again, might spend a few weeks

creating an online course and package it with video, homework, tests and notes. The online

course can then be distributed to millions of students over the Internet and re-used every

year with successive generations of students.

Social Networking

Todays students are heavy consumers of social media, games, blogging, video

sharing and virtual words. Pew Research Centers Internet & American Life Project found

that 73% of Americans age 12 to 17 now use social networking websites.17 These social,

interactive technologies are pervasive in students personal lives but have yet to fully find

their way into classrooms.
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Some universities are experimenting with social networking technologies with

positive results. The Writing Center at the University of Connecticut incorporated Ning, a

social networking site, to help students learn to write and learn. Students had positive

experiences with the site, saying that it helped them prepare for class discussions, sparked

new ideas for paper topics, and exposed them to other students opinions on the material

covered in classes.18 The University of Kansas Medical Center used Second Life, an

immersive virtual world, to develop a virtual operating simulation that allowed Nurse

Anesthesia students to simulate procedures they would one day undertake on real people.

Students could enter the virtual environment on their own time and as often as they liked,

analyze data, and then complete tasks without direct supervision from an instructor.

Research indicates the unique promise of these technologies to deliver immersive,

engaging learning experiences. The National Survey of Student Engagement found a positive

correlation between student use of interactive social technologies such as social and

collaborative software, blogs, student response systems, and virtual worlds and self-

reported gains in personal and social development, due to the socially collaborative and

immersive qualities of these technologies.19 Another study found that game-based learning

technologies led to significantly better outcomes for students enrolled in its sample courses,

based on grades earned, than students who did not use games.20

Despite this promise, many schools remain wary of social networking and are

unconvinced of their educational value. Most schools still block social networking services

within their walls, due to concerns of cyber-bullying, privacy, proper management and

Internet security.

Tablet and Mobile Solutions

A tablet personal computer is a portable personal computer equipped with a

touchscreen as the primary input device. Apple revolutionized the market for tablet


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computing when it released its revolutionary iPad tablet in 2010, selling over 15 million

units over its first year, with a large portion of these sales coming from student purchases.

The success of the iPad has fostered interest in how tablets might be used in classrooms,

where they might serve as replacements to traditional textbooks and provide portals to

online video instruction, social networking sites, and interactive games.

While Apple has not aggressively promoted the iPads use in classrooms, businesses

are targeting its educational potential. Publishers McGraw-Hill and Pearson plan to make

their textbooks available over tablet based devices.21 MySpark Technologies is creating two

versions of a similar textbook tablet based on the Google Android operating system, where

students can buy digital textbooks, sync school calendars, collaborate via instant messaging

and run Android apps.22

Educational institutions have begun to take notice of tablet devices as well, which

can be both educationally valuable and cost-effective for students and schools. Executive

MBA students at the Wharton School of Business will all be issued iPads in 2011, as will

students at Oklahoma State University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Reed College, and a

number of higher-educational institutions across the countries. According to Diedre Woods,

the Associate Dean of Wharton Computing: the full-blown iPad implementation will cost

next to nothing because the iPads are not really expensive and Wharton is able to reuse

them.23

Next Generation Assessment Systems

Current assessment systems are limited. They typically measure learning after the

fact and do not help assess student thinking during learning to help them learn better. Due

to these limitations, assessments are used mainly for grading and accountability.

Digital tools have created new platforms for administering traditional assessments.

Wireless Generation, for example, has created a suite of innovative assessment systems that


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can be administered over any touch-interface mobile device, such as Windows tablets, iPod

touches or iPads and Android devices. Assessment systems, such as those created by

Wireless Generation, utilize digital devices to enable traditional assessment tasks, such as

data collection, screening, reporting and analysis, to be performed with greater

sophistication and lower costs.

In addition to new tools for the delivery of assessments, next generation systems

will also support adaptive assessments. As education moves to a model where learners have

more options in terms of how they learn, there will be a greater need for testing that helps

support and assess customized tracks in education. For example, the School of One, a full-

time concept school pioneering the theory of customized learning, uses adaptive

assessments by combining information on how a student reports they like to learn with

actual assessments of learning after various experiences. This information is then used to

generate individual playlists of customized learning activities for each student. At the end

of each school day, students are given online assessments that are customized for the days

exercises.

PEDAGOGIES

Customized Learning

In the past, scholars reduced intelligence to a single number called the Intelligent

Quotient (IQ). Developmental psychologist Howard Gardner, however, realized that

intelligence is a much more complex behavior that cannot be easily summarized by a single

number. He pioneered the theory of multiple intelligences, which posits that there are

multiple intelligences, and that each type of intelligence comprises multiple learning

preferences, and that each learning preference comprises individuals who learn at different

paces.


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Distance Learning

The Internet is also creating new delivery systems for education, allowing students

separated by time and distance to learn when they are not present in a traditional education

setting like a classroom. Distance learning refers to arrangements where the learner and

teacher are geographically or temporally separated. The history of distance learning traces

its roots to correspondence schools and audio and video classes. In its newest

manifestation, communication between learners and teachers occurs primarily through the

Internet, where instructional content is packaged into modular courses and delivered as

multimedia over the Internet. The main role of distance learning has been to increase access

to education while greatly reducing the fixed costs of a brick-and-mortar campus. Picciano

and Seaman estimate that more than a million K-12 students took online courses in the

school year 2007 to 2008.25

RAI Online Charter School is a full-fledged online school that provides a complete K-

12 education to currently 90 homeschooled K-12 students. The school is fully accredited by

the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, operates as a chartered public school in

the state of California, and requires no tuition for residents in the district where it is based.

RAI is among a new breed of cyber charters that use state charter laws to provide K-12

education completely over the Internet, signifying the growing legitimacy of distance

learning within the framework of public education.26

Distance learning has generally expanded access to education by making it more

convenient for people to learn under different work, personal and professional

circumstances. Traditional classroom designs are being replaced by more flexible designs

that enable both synchronous instruction, where all participants are available at the same

time, and asynchronous instruction, where participants access course materials on their

own time.


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Research indicates that the learning results on grades and tests using technology at

a distance are similar to those who participate in a conventional classroom setting.27 The

U.S. Department of Education performed a meta-analysis of over 1000 empirical studies of

online learning that (a) contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition, (b) measured

student learning outcomes, (c) used a rigorous research design and (d) provided adequate

information to calculate a size effect. Their meta-analysis found that students in online

learning modestly outperformed students receiving face-to-face instruction.

Outperformance was greatest with instruction that blended both online and face-to-face

instructions.28

Distance learning still faces a number of issues. Dropout rates of distance learners

are currently much higher than in brick-and-mortar classrooms. Students have expressed

dissatisfaction with the lack of personal contact in asynchronous courses and programs.

Face-to-face interaction with a teacher still provides a vital link of interpersonal

communication that increases student engagement.

Social Learning

The advent of Web 2.0 technologies - social networking sites, blogging, and other

technologies that develop and sustain human relationships - will also stimulate greater

social learning. Social learning involves a community approach to creating, finding and

consuming information. It is a paradigm based on relationships that encourage

collaborative, peer-based learning through collaborative commons.

Interchange between peers enhances learning because it fosters greater

engagement. Students reflect deeper by considering and reconciling different perspectives

from their peers. Students can also tap into each others experiences to approach problems

in novel ways and establish mutual accountability for each others learning. Technologies

are emerging to mediate these powerful social learning experiences.


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Learning-By-Doing

Constructionist learning refers to a methodology of education that encourages

learning by making. According to constructionist theory, pioneered by developmental

psychologist Jean Piaget, individual learners construct mental models to understand the

world around them. Mental models are most strongly constructed when students have the

opportunity to creatively experiment, manipulate and construct objects, rather than

passively receive knowledge from an instructor.

Constructionism and technology are highly complementary. Technology provides

design and programming tools that enable constructionist learning. Technology helps

students draw their own conclusions through creative experimentation with flexible digital

tools and making of social objects. According to Mann, the use of new technologies in an

educational setting has reinvigorated constructionism by empowering students with access

to real data and the possibility of working on authentic problems.29

GOVERNMENTS AND NON-PROFITS

Federal and State Governments

State and local governments are the main political bodies responsible for K-12

education. They are the primary providers of K-12 education funding, comprising 83% of

total U.S. educational investment in 2004-2005.


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U.S. Expenditures for Primary and

Secondary Education by Level of Government

Source:Departmentof Education

All 50 states currently have codified strategic plans for improving student

achievement through the use of technology in classrooms, which are accessible to the public

through the U.S. Department of Education website. However, most of these strategic

technology plans are token guidelines rather than actionable and enforceable strategies,

with considerable differences in the level of each states vision and commitment.30 While

most local governments directionally support technologization, few have set requirements

around their use.

Due to the compelling national interest in the quality of the countrys public schools,

the federal government also provides financial assistance to states and schools through the

legislative process. This trend has been increasing rapidly in recent years. In 1990-1991, the

federal share of total K-12 spending was 5.7%. By 2005, that level had risen to 8.3% of the

total.

The federal government has been leading the transition to a digital learning

environment. The federal government made a big push for educational technologies under

President Clinton, who spent $3 billion annually on wiring classrooms to the Internet.31
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However, federal funding for school technology was significantly cut under President Bush.

Funding for the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program, the sole source

of federal funding for K-12 technology at the time, was reduced from $496 million in 2005

to $275 million in 2006.

President Obama has restored technology as a focus point in the national dialogue over

education reform. His Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, presented the 2010 National

Education Technology Plan with the following remarks: We must dramatically improve

teaching and learning, personalize instruction, and ensure that the educational

environments we offer to all students keep pace with the 21st century. We can get there

with technology.32

President Obamas 2012 budget request seeks to accelerate the use of educational

technology through the allocation of $4.5 billion to technological initiatives in the

classroom. Specifically, his Blueprint for Reform of the Elementary and Secondary Education

Act (ESEA) has allocated funds for the following programs33:

Teacher Unions

The two major teacher unions in the United States are the National Education

Association(NEA) and theAmerican Federation of Teachers (AFT), with a collective

membership of 4.7 million members, comprised of teachers and other school-related


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personnel. With such a large membership base, teacher unions have significant clout in

shaping the political agendas that can either spur or retard the adoption of educational

technologies.

Both unions have been vocal opponents ofNo Child Left Behind (NCLB). As a result,

they have publicly expressed support for educational technologies that supplant current

standardized testing procedures mandated under NCLB. The National Education

Association, for example, has called for the development of second-generation digital

assessment systems and longitudinal data systems that (1) provide students with multiple

ways to show what they have learned over time and (2) provide educators with valid data

to improve instruction and enhance support for students.34

Both unions support technologization but have focused their lobbying around two

critical issues, which must be addressed in formulating policies that encourage adoption.

First, the NEA and AFT both support the use of online education to facilitate distance

learning. However, they have been vocal opponents against the growth of cyber-charters,

which are virtual schools that students can attend full-time under charter school state laws,

supplanting traditional classroom-based education. Second, unions are interested in

professional development for teachers, advocating that over a third of any technology

budget be allocated towards training and technical support. Unions want to ensure that

school staff is adequately trained and prepared to use technology into their classrooms.

Non-profit Foundations

Some of the major changes in education are emerging from non-profit foundations,

which are starting to play a larger role in the provision of investment capital and grants for

learning technologies. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with an endowment of $33.5

billion, has made education reform one of its biggest initiatives within the United States,

having invested $5 billion in programs and partnerships in the United States around its


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educational agenda. The foundation has two explicit goals: (1) ensure that 80% of U.S.

students graduate from high school prepared for college and (2) double the number of low-

income young adults who earn a postsecondary degree or credential by age 26.

The foundation believes that technology has an important role to play in improving

student achievementThere is growing evidence that innovative technology-based

solutions can lead to more effective teaching and learning models. Technology also holds

the promise of delivering learning solutions in a cost-effective manner. 35 To this end, the

foundation has provided significant charitable funding to various businesses, schools,

districts and non-profits, including the School of One program run by the New York City

public school system, which uses learning algorithms to match students with customized

activities that include teacher-led instruction, online modules, or one-on-one tutoring

delivered live or online. The foundation has also invested in a number of private ventures,

including Inigral Inc., a developer of applications that enable educators to create private,

branded social networks for students over the Facebook platform.36

Non-profits like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have sought partnerships that

fit their strategy as funders and shapers we rely on others to act and implement. For

example, Next Generation Learning, a major non-profitwhose mission is tap the potential

of technology to dramatically improve college readiness and completion in the United

States, has received substantial support from charitable financial backers like the Bill &

Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewitt Foundation. The organization

is a multi-year grant program aimed at applying technology into the classroom, providing

grant money in multiple funding waves every six to 12 months. Each wave involves a

select number of challenges designed to address the barriers to education success, which

in past years included challenges such as open core courseware, blended learning, deeper

learning and learning analytics.


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Community Partnerships

The adoption of educational technologies will also depend on partnerships and

teacher support through community-level organizations, which are critical agents in

fostering educational changes at the grass roots level. The Netter Center for Community

Partnerships in Philadelphia is one such community organization that focuses on

educational partnerships between the University of Pennsylvania and local Philadelphia

public schools. According to Corey Bowman, associate director at The Netter Center for

Community Partnerships, most public schools in Philadelphia have not found real use for

technology within their classrooms, despite the wide availability of computers and Internet.

Technology is rarely a key priority because educators, under the high-stakes pressures of

meeting NCLB testing standards, do not have the flexibility or resources to experiment with

technologies whose value and uses are dubious to them. Community partnerships, like the

Netter Center, have a role in overcoming these obstacles by providing grass-root support

for challenges with technology, maintenance, training and human resources. By partnering

with local institutions such as universities and research labs, community organizers can

provide public school educators with the exposure to technological practices that catalyzes

their eventual adoption. For example, the Netter Center is working with University of

Pennsylvania computer science Professor Jean Griffin to create curricula and practices for

local Philadelphia schools that use games, mobile apps, social networks and multimedia to

achieve learning goals outlined in the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics.

ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS

The private sector has had a limited role in education thus far. The private education

industry remains fragmented and sub-scale. According to Harvard Business School

Professor Fernando Reimers, Not all education entrepreneurs using technology generate


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grow to $12.9 billion by 2012. IT expenditures are also comprised of large and growing

spending on wireless telecommunications and outsourced IT services.

Products and Services

Big businesses and venture capital firms are taking notice of the profit potential

within these markets. News Corp., a large diversified media conglomerate, recently hired

Joel Klein, the former New York City schools Chancellor, to identify and provide seed money

to start-ups working on technologies in the education arena. Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News

Corp., states that When it comes to K-12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S.

alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the

reach of great teaching.39 IBM also recognizes the unique business potential within

education. Through its Smarter Planetstrategic initiative, IBM reveals its vision thatthere

has never been a better time to make our educational technology systems, both here and

around the world, smarter.40 IBM has developed a suite of enterprise products and services

for U.S. education customers around key technologies such as cloud computing, open source

systems, virtualization and analytics.

Profiles of several prominent businesses within major market opportunities are

described below:

Digital Textbooks

The K-12 textbook education market is a $6.2 billion industry dominated through a

big three oligopoly of publishers, which consists of Houghton Mifflin Co., Pearson

Education and McGraw-Hill Cos. Digital textbooks are both a threat and an opportunity to

these companies, which recognize the benefits of going digital but have been hesitant to

cannibalize their traditional physical textbook businesses. While digital textbooks have

found greater traction at universities, K-12 education remains an unfulfilled opportunity

due to structural and cultural factors. For example, textbook adoption committees typically


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have limited experience in evaluating digital learning experiences and face difficulties in

training teachers to make the switch from traditional to digital textbooks. Digitizing

textbooks and other educational material remains a large and disruptive market

opportunity.

Kno has risen over $85 million in venture financing from major media

companies and top-tier venture capitalists to develop a highly anticipated

tablet application that will disrupt the textbook publishing industry. The

application will allow students to read textbooks, take notes, and share materials with

friends and teachers. Kno was founded in 2009 by the ex-founder of Chegg.com, an online

textbook rental company, and its original plan to sell a dedicated textbook tablet device was

soon altered to focus on textbook software and services.

Social Networking

The United States spends over 6 hours a day on social networks at home and at

work. 41 Facebook currently has over 500 million active users and was most recently valued

at over $50 billion. Twitter, the micro-blogging service, has also received stratospheric

valuations, as it was most recently valued at over $7.7 billion.42 The growth of social

networking sites is inspiring emerging entrepreneurs to reconfigure the social networking

model around the education sector.

Edmodo is a micro-blogging platform used by teachers and

students in the classrooms. The service is designed to

address the unique privacy blogging needs of students and

has 1.5 million users worldwide. Edmodo is currently funded by top-tier investors including

Union Square Ventures and Learn Capital.

Grockitis an online social learning game company that currently offers

GMAT, SAT, and Advanced Placement test prep games. The company
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/grockithttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/edmodohttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/knohttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/grockithttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/edmodohttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/knohttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/grockithttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/edmodohttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/kno


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has received $17.7 million in venture financing since its founding in 2006.

Adaptive Learning Systems

Knewton is developing an Adaptive Learning Platform

that customizes educational content to meet the individual

needs of every student. Knewton works by tagging all content down to a highly atomic level,

where tags are assigned according to structure, difficulty level and media format. Knewton

then uses the tags to dynamically match lessons, videos and practice problems to each

students learning style. The company plans to soon open its platforms to major publishers,

corporations and other organizations. The company has raised $21 million in venture

financing from several top-tier venture capital firms, including Accel Partners and Bessemer

Venture Partners.

PrepMe is an online test prep company that uses adaptive

algorithms to customize the preparation curriculum for each student.

The company has been completely self-funded to date and in

February began making its services available to every high school junior in Maine.

Assessment Systems

Founded by two Rhodes Scholars, Wireless

Generation is a developer of educational tools and

systems that serve 200,000 educators and 3 million students. The company pioneered

assessment systems administered on mobile devices. The company also builds large-scale

enterprise educational data systems that centralize and analyze student data. Wireless

Generation was purchased by News Corp. in 2010 for $360 million in cash.

Bookette Software is a vendor of digital tools used to

administer and score test assessments administered

online or over software. The company was founded in
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/bookettehttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/wireless-generationhttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/prepmehttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/knewtonhttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/bookettehttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/wireless-generationhttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/prepmehttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/knewtonhttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/bookettehttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/wireless-generationhttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/prepmehttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/knewtonhttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/bookettehttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/wireless-generationhttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/prepmehttp://www.crunchbase.com/company/knewton


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1990 and was acquired by McGraw-Hill Education in 2011.

Enterprise Application Software

Businesses are also developing technologies to manage the enterprise IT needs of

schools and districts. These technologies help schools and districts coordinate their IT

processes across large and growing volumes of student data and transactions.

Founded in 1997, Blackboard designs enterprise application software

for schools through four product lines: Blackboard Learn, Blackboard

Transact, Blackboard Connect and Blackboard Mobile. Blackboard Learn

is a Web-based teaching and learning platform. Blackboard Transact is used for on and off-

campus commerce management, online e-commerce and payment management, meal plan

administration, vending and laundry services. Blackboard Connect is the Companys alert

and notification platform for its communications and notification system solutions.

Blackboard is a public company with a market capitalization of $1.30 billion and annual

revenues of over $440 million.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommendation 1: Computers should be used to transform pedagogies, not simply

used as a tool or a topic.

Powerful software and hardware often get used in limited ways to maintain rather

than transform prevailing instructional practices. Lecturing, group discussion and the

occasional video or overheard are still the norm. Schools mainly use computers as a tool

(grade entry, word processing, etc.) or as a topic (how to use computers). In the future,

computers need to be used more as pedagogical tools. Computers should be leveraged as

instructional mechanisms that can help students customize learning to their needs.

Teachers need to be actively encouraged, prodded and incentivized to experiment with new
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/blackboard


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technologies and approaches, because effective usage can only be achieved through trial-

and-error.

Recommendation 2: Procurement procedures need to be more nimble.

Innovation requires a diverse community of innovators and adopters who can

collaborate and share new ideas and solutions. Education entrepreneurs have an important

contribution to make to this ecosystem. However, public sector bureaucracies and

innovative ventures are often in conflict because a variety of restrictive rules exist around

the procurement and contracting of educational technologies. Procurements procedures

need to be more nimble, so that entrepreneurs can easily scale their solutions and investors

are not scared to put their capital at risk. Less red-tape will encourage entrepreneurs to

apply their creative forces to forge new solutions for the sector.

Recommendation 3: Purchasing educational technologies must be followed by

appropriate professional development.

Even when technologies are made available, many teachers do not feel comfortable

or prepared to use the tools effectively. Therefore, any roadmap for educational technology

must include resources for training and support, so that educators can effectively

implement new innovations. Community partnerships and universities can facilitate this

support by providing a vital link of communication between innovators and stakeholders

that can foster collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Recommendation 4: Technology cannot have a truly disruptive impact without

structural reforms in how teachers are hired, compensated and fired.

Education cannot be fixed with technology alone. The biggest problems within the

education system are still with human capital. Incentive structures do not adequately

reward good teachers or get rid of bad teachers, and teachers are not empowered to

experiment or diverge from standardized curricula set by bureaucrats. A true disruption in


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education will come from the combination of both political reform and technological

innovation. As Arne Duncan remarked, The truth is that educators can take a cue from

business: The power of technology is unleashed only when organizations decide to

make fundamental structural changes in the way they do their workwe haven't

fundamentally restructured the way our schools function. We need to stop, take a

step back, and ask ourselves some hard questions about the tenets that define our

work today.43

Recommendation 5: Educational technologies must be based on open data and

processes.

The growth in educational technologies and digital data will create conflicts around

interoperability, portability and open standards. Education should not rely on private,

exclusive or proprietary solutions. Technologies must be based on open standards and

processes so that they can be centered on students and not monopolized or controlled by

institutions. Open technologies will ultimately lead to greater interoperability, lower cost of

operations and better management of outcomes.

Recommendation 6: Pilot schools should serve as laboratories for new educational

technologies.

To provide space for disruptive technologies to emerge, politicians should

encourage the creation of non-traditional educational settings. The School of One is a

promising example of an experimental prototype school where new technologies are being

seriously vetted. These pilot programs serve as laboratories that incubate and screen

unproven technologies before they are replicated into larger settings. The United States

should facilitate the entrance of new pilot schools to create pools of first-adopters for new

but limited technologies, allowing new ideas to take root and gain scale before they can be

applied and disrupt public schools. From this base, limited technologies can get better and


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better until they perform well enough to supplant prior approaches. Schools can use small

scale implementation in these programs to build capacity of people and organizations.

Furthermore, these projects can provide a body of evidence about efficacy and cost-

effectiveness for new technologies.

FUTURE OUTLOOK

One day, all classrooms will be saturated with innovative hardware and software.

The wide availability of technologies will disrupt the current methods of instruction,

allowing for an education that is more experiential, challenging and guided by feedback and

adaptive change. Teaching atstudents will be replaced by assisting them to understand, and

to help one another understand problems in a hands-on way. Classrooms will build intrinsic

motivation by moving towards a student-centric model of learning.

Technologies will continue to improve, both incrementally and discontinuously.

Growth in the blossoming educational technology market will encourage entrepreneurship,

which will unleash the creative forces of Silicon Valley upon education. Interdisciplinary

research between engineers, researchers and education practitioners occurring at

Americas top universities, such as at the University of Pennsylvania, will incubate new

ideas and develop understanding of ways that students can effectively learn through

technology.

Attitudes are also evolving, which will benefit and accelerate the adoption of

education technologies. Students, who already interact with digital technologies within

their personal lives, will come to increasingly expect and demand the use of technologies in

their classrooms. Young and innovative teachers will replace old and risk-averse ones,

creating a new generation of educators equally engaged with technology. These

generational changes will foster a more accepting attitude towards technology, while also


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reducing the financial and organizational burdens of preparing teachers to use new digital

tools.

The biggest adoption risks are near to medium-term. Education continues to be

dominated by insurmountable bureaucracy, which prevents new technologies from taking

root. At the local level, schools are overburdened by other priorities, so investing in

technology remains a peripheral issue. However, structural overhauls of the entire

education system are now being seriously discussed at a national level.

State and local governments, the biggest funders of K-12 education, are also

straining under the pressures of large, multibillion dollar deficits.44 Wall Street research

analysts estimate that up to 100 municipalities may default in the next few years. To avoid

fiscal crises, political leaders are likely to scale back their investments in educational

technology. Without this spending and support, new and unproven technologies are

unlikely to find broad adoption within schools.

In this void, new financing vehicles may emerge. Charities and the federal

government have become active supporters of technologization in recent years,

aggressively investing in schools, nonprofits and for-profits developing promising learning

products. The support of these organizations can help mitigate expected cuts at the state


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and local levels. Venture capitalists are turning their sights on the educational technology

market, bringing with them capital, experience and networks of mentors and users.

Therefore, the greatest uncertainty around educational technology adoption today

is timing, rather than direction. Structural inertia and financial challenges may defer the

dream of technology-enabled classrooms from being realized anytime soon. Nevertheless,

technology is the future, and the conditions for a disruptive technological revolution are

forming - changing user habits, investment, innovation and emerging political consensus

from key stakeholders. Once these forces converge, educational technologies will finally

reach a tipping point in scale and adoption, creating a radical new future for learning.


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