Notes from the ‘Education in the Digital Age’ conference

These are edited notes taken during the Education in the Digital Age conference sponsored by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs on Friday, July 29, 2011 at the Oklahoma History Center.  Links have been provided to websites that have more information on that subject.

Lee Baxter (Retired Army General, member Oklahoma State Board of Education):  Had the opportunity to sit in on training session of Great Expectations that prepares teachers for classrooms. They took me into a room with 15 principals. Subject of technology came up: iPhones, iPads and cell phones, should we have them in the classroom. A third said no way, a third said they’re expensive, a third said you don’t know what kids will use them for. None of them talked about the good they can do. the time will come when these cost five bucks.

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Michael Horn (co-founder of Innosight Institute)

Disruptive innovations transform things that were expensive and complicated into products that are simple, convenient and inexpensive. Mainframe computers filled a room and cost a couple million dollars.  The mini-computer was the size of a podium and cost $200K. then the personal computer came along which cost $2,000. Now there are handheld devices that are about $200.

Toyota disrupted GM and now the Koreans are disrupting Toyota. Indian and Chinese companies will probably disrupt them.

This is happening in education as well.  State universities are being disrupted by online universities.  For K-12 education, online learning looked like it had the same characteristics to disrupt and transform. But it had to plant itself in areas of non-consumption.  Those areas include credit recovery, drop outs, tutoring, AP or advanced courses, homeschooled or homebound students.

Substitution follows S-curve pattern.  At first, just a few people are using it, followed by rapid adoption and a leveling off when the market gets saturated.

By 2019, 50% of HS courses will be taken online.

We all have different learning needs at different times. Â  Wouldn’t you expect the school system would individualize for these differences? They don’t because it’s built on a factory-based model. It’s incredibly good at standardizing. We have to transform from factory model to individual model. Online learning does this.

Technology predictably improves.

Skype means it’s free to communicate online.

39 states have some form of online learning initiative. Districts increasingly getting into the game. Will we take off the shackles to let individual learning take form?

Online learning not beholden by old metrics. We regulate it by seat time rather than on competency. That’s measuring the wrong end of the student.

In Florida, virtual schools only got bulk of funding if the student completed the course.

Teachers are absolutely critical, but the job will change in many ways and rewarding ways. They will be able to work one-on-one and become a mentor.  But preparation needs to change.

We need to think about broadband infrastructure.

We have created a system that uses data as an autopsy at the end of the year. But data comes in constantly with online learning which can keep students on track.

Petrified by policy landscape and training of teachers. It’s like universities are preparing for a brick and mortar world based on classroom management.

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Andrew Coulson (Director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute)

Khan Academy is a website offering lessons to students with 2400 lessons, 2M visitors/month, 66M lessons taken.

The Khan model has been around for 50-years. The technology has been around for 20 years.  Could easily have been implemented on a 1991 PC or Mac.  What took so long? Why didn’t public schools produce a Khan Academy? $600-billion/yr and six-million employees.

Make innovation the norm in education by doing what engineers do: cheat!  Is it happening in other places? If so, copy them!  Japanese and Koreans use tutoring centers. Chile has had school choice since 1992. This has led to chains of private schools forming which not only out-perform public schools but also independent private schools.

So the recipe is Education as a free enterprise. Education is the only field in the US that doesn’t operate as a free enterprise.

How to create an education marketplace? Just wait… plummeting prices lead to disruptive change.  Policy solutions include vouchers and tax cuts/credits. Â  Voucher programs tend to have far more regulations than tax credit programs. Scholarship tax credits seem to be the better option.  Can you get market outcomes without an education marketplace? Historical record says no and that doesn’t seem likely to change.  “Teachers who’ve seen the Khan Academy presentation and loved the idea wondered whether they could modify it ‘to stop students from becoming this advanced.’”

Diplomas shouldn’t be issued by schools but by a third party that tests the subject field.

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Dr. J. Rufus Fears (OCPA Distinguished Fellow)

The greatest thing we can do is read Free to Choose by Milton Friedman. People are worried about civic illiteracy but I think students learn about the constitution. I worry about the slanted view that lowers the achievement of our Founding Fathers. But it’s economic illiteracy that I worry about most.  Reforming education is most difficult task in the world. That’s because those who control education do not want it reformed and no state legislature is brave enough to take them on.

When technology takes the lead, learning can be transformed. But you never know what direction that transformation will take. There have been 3 great transformations: invention of writing, printing and the printing press, technology. The first occurred in ancient history.

Nothing changes a bureaucrat. Writing serves many purposes: it records poetry, but it came into being as a way to make despotism stronger.

Go back to October 31^st, 1570 in Wittenburg, Germany in the newly created university. Universities were the key to success. It was the only way priests were trained to save your soul. There were also faculties of law and medicine where you could study. There was a young teacher named Martin Luther. He was a monk and head of the department of theology. The university was subsidized by Duke of Saxony. That summer he was brought into the dean who said you have to teach the Letters of St. Paul. Luther read the works in Greek rather than Latin. In Greek it said by Grace alone you got to heaven, not by deeds lest any man should boast. Luther was outraged over the sale of indulgences so he nailed his theses to the door of the church.

All over Germany, people were reading the Bible in their own language. And that was possible only because of the new technology of printing.

It will be for us to decide if technology will be used to spread freedom or just a means of cheap communication and advertising that cheapens the soul. We’re the people to make the choice.

When books first came into use, teachers at the Sorbonne made a rule that would expel you if you had a copy of a book. They felt if you had a book, they would not be needed. All over this country, languages can be taught more efficiently by things like Rosetta Stone. Superb courses exist on economics. You sit down at your own pace and when you’ve learned the material, you take the test. History and chemistry can be taught that way.  education is an economic enterprise. Whole towns depend on universities and public schools. There would be massive unemployment if you closed these campuses. There are three reasons to go to college: to learn, to get the college experience and to get a credential.

A movement needs to get underway by which a for-profit degree is as valuable as one from a not-for-profit one. Is there a will to make education a free market enterprise?

Back in the 50’s, television was going to transform education and everyone was going to learn that way. But it never happened.

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Dan Lips (Senior Fellow with the Goldwater Institute)

I’m optimistic about the state of American education and education reform.  It was 1955 when Milton Friedman came up with idea for school vouchers. We’ve seen a decade of progress in education reform. Consider the trends: opponents of reform are starting to lose influence. Teachers unions are losing in places like Wisconsin and New Jersey, partly due to taxpayers recognizing interest groups aren’t looking out for the kids. Secondly, we’re running out of money, so throwing money at the problem isn’t an option. There is bipartisan support for school choice. Even the Obama administration is talking about changing the way teachers are hired and paid. And the Right is getting its act together. Oklahoma is following the lead of Florida and Indiana. Jeb Bush says digital learning will make everything change.

Why do we need digital learning and how do we get it?

We’ve heard examples about schools like Khan Academy, we see students learning more and at a cheaper price. But the key is that every child can benefit. Carpe Diem is a blended school in Arizona. Half the time is regular school, the rest is online.

Digital learning can help children from all backgrounds. This opens up opportunity for reforms that were thought impossible. In the past, programs were aimed at helping a segment of students and it was seen as a zero-sum game that helping them would hurt others.

There are two strategies to implement digital learning: supply side reforms and demand side reforms. OK has two statewide virtual schools and an online virtual charter school that is opening. That’s a great start. Expand virtual schools to allow part-time enrollment. That allows rural students to maybe take an AP course or a homeschooler to take Mandarin. Strengthen the charter school laws. That would attract schools like Carpe Diem and Rocketship. If you don’t reform, you’ll miss out. For teachers, you don’t have to wait for the legislature to act. A growing number of schools are using Khan Academy lectures as homework and then do problem sets that used to be homework in class.  There’s no reason schools can’t do that.  Take advantage of resources at universities, making it online for the public.

Expand school choice opportunities in Oklahoma. Let parents make the decisions. Consider Education Savings Accounts like Arizona enacted. The idea of publicly funded ESAs is to take percentage of funding per child and give to parents.

While tax credits have less regulation, they also have less purchasing power.

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Lauren Marshall (Tulsa woman whose two sons attend Oklahoma Virtual Academy): when my oldest was in 3^rd grade we were dealing with bullies (he has Asperger’s). coming home crying became a weekly norm. so I wanted to see what he was experiencing in the classroom. That’s when I found he would go to a quiet place when things were tough, sometimes in a hallway where he wasn’t learning. He wasn’t turning in assignments, but was going to be promoted. With my youngest it’s the opposite, he was bored in 1^st grade. We pulled the boys out and home-schooled them for two years. A friend who is a teacher helped me develop a curriculum.

Sheryl Tatum (OK Virtual Academy faculty): we love OK public schools, but there are limitations in brick and mortar schools. We can’t give individualized instruction all day long.

Audra Plummer (OK Virtual Academy faculty): what I found is this is a rich curriculum and it builds every grade.

Tatum: I can see every student, every lesson, every question they got right and wrong. Parents, teachers and students can see all the communication back and forth. There are more online and offline components. More offline with the younger children.

Tatum: we do periodic checks and if the student doesn’t show they have mastery of the topic, they get live instruction.

Plummer: I’m meeting with parents at least monthly if not weekly rather than not until the first report card at nine weeks. I  can adjust the progress to make sure the child is getting the education they need.

Tatum: everything is recorded, so I can watch everything if I wanted to. That’s accountability.

Tatum (on salary): we don’t have steps. There is no automatic raise every year, it’s based on performance.

Rose Hernandez (Board member of the National Coalition for Public School Options): superintendents, if they’re honest, will say the classroom is not the best place to learn for every student. What works for one child in one year may not even work for that same student the next year. The freedom to access the education for each child is what we’re all about.

Tammy Shepherd (Principal,  Oklahoma Connections Academy): every child has to have access to a high quality education that is right for that child. We’re not at odds with brick and mortar schools, we’re all working towards the same goal.

Related posts:

• Notes from the House Conference Committee on Education 5/16/2011
• Notes from the House Conference Committee on Education 5/11/11
• SCORE Conference Accents Connection Between Education, Economic Growth
• Notes from the House Conference Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety 5/10/11
• Memphis or Bust: Education Reform, Debt Management Among Issues on Agenda at Lawmakers’ Conference

Posted by Oklahoma Watchdog on July 31, 2011. Filed under Oklahoma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry