Digital Discourse / Archives for education policy

New Federal Legislation Supports Technology Readiness for Digital Learning and Online Assessment

February 5, 2013 By

U.S. Representative George Miller (CA) today introduced “The Transforming Education Through Technology Act” (H.R. 521) to help ensure the nation’s elementary and secondary schools have access to the technology infrastructure, applications and professional support needed for digital learning and online assessment. Congressman Miller is Ranking Democrat on the U.S. House Education & the Workforce Committee, coauthor of the No Child Left Behind Act, and was recently recognized for his leadership in education technology.

“The Transforming Education Through Technology Act is an important step forward in providing our students and educators with the technology supports they need for success in school and in the workplace,” said SIIA President Ken Wasch. “We look forward to working further with Congressman Miller to provide the leadership and investment needed to modernize our educational practices and instructional resources through technology and digital learning.”

SIIA is pleased to be part of a coalition of organizations endorsing the bill, representing K-12 teachers, technology officers, administrators and high-tech companies.

The Transforming Education Through Technology Act would:

  • Support and prepare teachers and principals to use technology to redesign curriculum, effectively use real-time data to drive classroom practice, individualize instruction, and increase student engagement;
  • Help school districts ensure equitable access to, and effective use of, the technology infrastructure and applications all students need for expanded learning opportunities, online assessment and computer-based curriculum;
  • Seed new models of digital learning that help personalize learning, including through curriculum redesign, online communities of practice, and interactive learning simulations; and
  • Help states to support their school districts to improve student learning, upgrade assessments, and improve educator preparation and support around technology.

The legislation comes at an important time for the role of technology in education. Common core state standards and online assessments are among the factors driving the need for technology, and educators are asking “how” not “if.” However, the continued budget crunch has left too many schools and students without adequate access. This new bill would go a long way toward addressing those gaps, and SIIA will continue its advocacy for this and related public investments.

Mark SchneidermanMark Schneiderman is Senior Director of Education Policy at SIIA. Follow the SIIA Policy team on Twitter at @SIIAPolicy

Share|
Filed Under: Ed Tech Government Forum, Education, Education Policies, Education Policy, Legislation, Personalized Learning, Policy, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , ,

10 Reasons Why the Ed Tech Bubble will Continue to Float

January 24, 2013 By

Fueled in part by socially-conscious investors and tech entrepreneurs, investment in the educational applications market has exploded to an extent not seen since the dot-com boom more than a decade ago. While some analysts are predicting this is an era of irrational exuberance that could collapse like the bubble burst in 2000, there are at least 10 reasons why this time is different:

  1. Lower Development Costs: Hardware and software tools have improved and costs lowered, and the savings in application development and delivery means reduced prices and higher marginal revenues. Improvements include simpler and more powerful authoring tools, many of them open source, as well as cloud and other hosted models that enable schools and companies to more easily outsource and scale.  
  2. Apps Market Dynamics: The proliferation of Apps on various mobile devices provides a more welcoming market environment for educational technology companies. Among these factors is the reduced cost of development and distribution on the various mobile operating systems such as Android and iOS and their app stores (though some revenue sharing models do challenge the equation).
  3. Increased Hardware Access & Connectivity: While a digital divide still exists and too many classrooms still rely on a single computer station, student and teacher access (at home and school) has grown many fold over the last decade. Reasons for this include the reduced cost of hardware (driven by Moore’s law), growing support for BYOD (student’s Bringing their Own Device), and recent investments in tablets, electronic whiteboards and other devices.
  4. Touch Tablet Ease of Use: Many educators view the touch interface as a game changer for student learning through technology. School (and home) spending bears that out. The platforms provide a simplified user interface for students, a simplified operating system that eases school technical support costs, and a tactile functionality that is both beneficial to younger learners and provides a key pedagogical differentiator from other print and digital mediums. 
  5. Educators Asking How, Not If: Educators have crossed the tipping point from asking “if?” technology to asking “how, how much and what?” While luddites still exist and we are a long way from robust integration and effective use, teachers, administrators and policy makers recognize the upside of technology and digital learning and are focused on how to realize the power and promise.
  6. The New Normal: Our education system is charged with doing more with less in light of the recent recession and enhanced common, college and career readiness standards. Technology has increased productivity in other sectors, and K12 education is finally looking at technology to supplant and transform, rather than simply to supplement. At the same time, many are leveraging technology for data analytics, customized interventions, and blended learning that shift us from mass-production teaching to the more efficient, mass-customization personalized learning model.
  7. Educators as Digital Natives: Interestingly, in the past, it has been more veteran teachers that have gravitated to technology than younger teachers who grew up with technology. This is likely starting to change as the technology use by the young teachers and administrators in their personal (and learning) lives is much more prolific in today’s world of mobile apps, virtual communities and online everything. The education workforce is shifting over rapidly post baby-boom generation, and their technology use will follow.
  8. Digital Native Students: Not much need be said. Students are too often disengaged not by the lack of technology but instead by rote lectures and static text. They understand they must be engaged and challenged, and allowed to explore and personalize their learning. They see how technology supports them outside of school. Educators are responding to their demand to bring that robust learning environment into their curriculum or risk losing too many more students to boredom.
  9. Expanded Distribution: While the proliferation of channels — technology platforms as well as consumer forums — can be a challenge for developers, these will be outweighed by the benefits. Mobile devices and app stores are increasing access and reducing consumer risk. Formal and informal learning are blending as parents and non-school learning providers gain access to new tools. Teachers are no longer reliant on slow, one-size school or district-wide purchasing decisions, but instead can use a debit account to download a product for just one or a few students. And a number of repositories and social networks are providing single points of information (if not yet a point of sales) for all products (and marketing).
  10. Parental Advocacy: Increased parental exposure to learning technologies at home is driving their demand for use at school. While parents were sometimes the road block to school board investments, they are more often now leading the charge.

These differences do not imply that every new product and company will succeed. For better or worse, there are probably too many products on the market relative to the number of average users required for product success. Whether investment is all flowing to the right solutions and the right entrepreneurs is still an open question, but it is undeniable that there is growing demand and opportunity for technology in education.

It is also important to note one related potential market challenge — vendor lock-in of content and data. A dynamic market requires minimized barriers to entry such that (school and individual) users are empowered to seamlessly move among existing and new products with minimal risk. SIIA therefore encourages education decision makers and application developers to invest in interoperability. By creating and demanding applications built on common data, content and API standards, information and resources can be more easily shared and exported among any number of proprietary or open applications, thus reducing the risk to educators of a failed product or company. Such standardization is critical for the maturity, and therefore the growth, of the digital learning market, and will ultimately best serve both education and education providers.

These 10 important developments should encourage today’s developers and investors. While the ed tech bubble may not float ever higher, a burst is not likely this time around.

Mark SchneidermanMark Schneiderman is Senior Director of Education Policy at SIIA. Follow the Education Division on Twitter at @SIIAEducation.

Share|
Filed Under: Ed Tech Business Forum, Ed Tech Government Forum, Ed Tech Industry Summit, Education, Education Policies, Education Policy, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

SIIA Testimony to NY Education Reform Commission Calls for School System Redesign to Personalize Learning through Technology

October 17, 2012 By

I had the opportunity yesterday to provide invited testimony to the “New NY Education Reform Commission” appointed by NY Governor Andrew Cuomo to study and make recommendations for the reform and improvement of the state’s education system. My submitted written testimony describes a comprehensive vision for redesigning education to pesonalize learning through technology, and then makes dozens of reccommendations around each of the Commission’s seven objectives.

My October 16 oral testimony is provided below and video archived (at 02:02:40):

On behalf of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) and our 500 high-tech companies, thank you for inviting me today. I am Mark Schneiderman, SIIA’s senior director of education policy.

SIIA agrees with the Commission that, “Future generations of students cannot compete unless we dramatically reform our education system.”

Our industrial-age education practices are largely unchanged over a century or more:
- Too many students are disengaged, not due to lack of technology, but from undifferentiated resources, rote one-to-many instruction, and lack of attention to 21st century skills.
- Time and place are constants, but learning is variable.

Instead, our education system must be fundamentally reengineered from a mass production, teaching model to a student-centered, personalized learning model to address the dramatic change in student daily lives, diversity and expectations.

The mandate is not for marginal change, but for: redesign to free learning from the physical limitations of time, place and paper; and instead customize instructional resources, strategies, and schedules to dynamically address each student’s unique abilities, interests and needs.

The redesign of education can take place without technology and digital learning, but not at scale.  Technology is a teaching force multiplier and a learning accelerator.

This doesn’t mean computers replace teachers, or that all learning takes place online.

It does mean that we use the technology:
1. to collect and analyze extensive student learning data to a degree not otherwise possible;
2. to provide a differentiation of interactive, multimedia teaching and learning resources and student creativity and collaboration tools not possible from one teacher, book or classroom; and
3. to free teacher time from rote and administrative activities to redirect to more value-added instruction.

The result is a more effective teacher, a more highly engaged and better performing learner, and a more productive system.

SIIA’s 2012 Vision K-20 Survey of 1,600 educators found that interest in digital learning is high at about 75%, but only about 25% rate actual technology access and use as high by their peers and institutions.

Here are 10 SIIA recommendations to the Commission and state:

1. Eliminate the Carnegie unit (credit for seat time) as the measure of learning and replace it with a competency-based model that provides credit, progression and graduation based upon demonstrated mastery and performance.

2. Eliminate fixed, agrarian-age definitions of the hours of the school day and the days of the school year and instead provide flexibility for 24/7/365 learning as needed for student mastery.

3. Ensure all teachers have access to a minimum slate of digital tools and supports provided to other professionals, including instructional technology coaches and virtual peer learning networks.

4. Ensure all educators have the skills needed to personalize learning and leverage technology, including by updating the curriculum of teachers colleges as well as teacher licensure and certification requirements.

5. Encourage and support a shift from print-only curriculum to instead provide students with anytime, everywhere access to interactive digital content and online learning.

6. Create a statewide online learning authority for approval and oversight of virtual learning providers to New York students and schools, and loosen arbitrary limits.

7. Invest to ensure equity of technology and digital learning access to change the education cost-curve and provide opportunity to learn, while providing increased local flexibility in the use of state grant funds to meet unique local needs.

8. Set minimum expectations for school/teacher electronic communication with parents and families and support home access to student performance data, assignments and curriculum.

9. Support more flexible higher education policies that end seat-time requirements, allow students to demonstrate prior learning and complete course modules that fit their learning gaps, and receive student aid for study toward skills certifications valued in the job market.

10. Finally, recognize the role of the private sector, which invests hundreds of millions of dollars each year to develop and deliver educational technologies and digital learning. Support public-private research partnerships, and reform the RFP process to enable the private sector to share their expertise, vision and innovative business models.

Our nation’s continued success will require that our educational system adopt modern methods and means to remain not effective and relevant in the 21st century.

On behalf of SIIA and our member high-tech companies, I look forward to working with the Commission to further identify and advance a reform plan for New York education.

Mark SchneidermanMark Schneiderman is Senior Director of Education Policy at SIIA.

Share|
Filed Under: Digital Policy Roundup, Ed Tech Government Forum, Education, Education Policies, Education Policy, Legislation, Personalized Learning, Policy, Postsecondary, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Testing College and Career Readiness

October 9, 2012 By

Addressing the high levels of remedial coursework in higher education and better preparing students for college are important national challenges as the United States works to improve its educational and economic standing. Both are high on the agenda of PARCC (Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) and SBAC (SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium), the two assessment options for the Common Core State Standards implementation.

On a recent Alliance for Excellent Education  webinar, SBAC and PARCC leaders provided a good overview of their tasks, deliverables and timelines. Both will pilot their computer-based assessments in the 2013-2014 school year and fully implement in 2014-2015.

SBAC and PARCC are focused on the challenge of testing college and career readiness as defined by CCSS.  SBAC’s goal is to have their high school assessment qualify students for entry level, credit bearing coursework in college or university.  SBAC is working in collaboration with 175 public and 13 private higher education systems to ensure their assessments meet the rigor required by these institutions.

PARCC has established a 5 point assessment scoring scale to address college and career readiness. Students who score a level 4 or 5 will be exempt from college placement tests and will be able to immediately begin credit bearing coursework. A detailed description of the 5 levels can be found on slide 8 of the PARCC presentation.

SBAC and PARC leaders and states acknowledge that collaboration with Higher Education is key in developing accurate and constructive examinations for the common core curriculum, and securing their buy in for placement.

SBAC is releasing new samples on October 9th that give a better idea of the upcoming assessments.  To learn more about the samples and the implications for curriculum publishers and technology developers, SIIA members are encourage to attend SIIA’s October 11 webinar  that will help companies prepare for the assessment future.

 

Lindsay HarmanLindsay Harman is Market and Policy Analyst for the SIIA Education Division.

Share|
Filed Under: Education, Education Policies, Education Policy, Policy, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Leaders or Laggards: The State Role in the Shift to Digital Content

September 7, 2012 By

The focus at the recent annual meeting of the State Instructional Materials Review Association (SIMRA) was the shift from print to digital. While paper weight and book binding standards remain on their agenda, the shift is symbolized in part by this group’s recent name change that replaced “textbooks” with “instructional materials.” I had the opportunity to present at the meeting, and had some timely discussions about the evolving state role in the digital world. Texas (see SIIA webinar), Florida (see SIIA summary) and West Virginia are among the states most proactive in helping lead their schools into the digital content future, while many states (with leadership from their SIMRA-member adoption director) are trying to catch up with their districts and understand their evolving roles and rules. A parallel but accelerated shift to digital is underway in state assessments with the leadership of PARCC and SBAC.

As background, SIMRA members administer the process used in 20+ states for instructional materials adoption, including identifying curriculum and technical requirements, soliciting publisher submissions, managing the peer review criteria and process, and coordinating the school procurement of approved materials (including with state funds to buy materials in states such as Texas, California and Florida). SIIA has advocated for years the need to update legacy rules that often create barriers to adoption of digital and online resources, and therefore limit local choice. While often this is simply about correcting for unintended consequences of legacy print rules, the issues are often far more complicated and reflect the still evolving views of instructional materials in the digital age. A leading example is dynamic content: State policies have traditionally required that content remain unchanged over the course of the six year adoption cycle, while digital resources can be seamlessly updated to remain current, accurate and meet evolving curriculum and pedagogical needs. Not surprisingly, SIIA has long advocated the flexibility for content to be updated and improved during the period of adoption.

Here are a few other trends identified at the SIMRA meeting:

  • State budget shortages continue, causing many states to delay adoption cycles or reduce funding and leaving many teachers and students with increasingly outdated materials.
  • Common Core State Standards are central to the process, but many state cycles are not aligned and adjustments are often not possible given the overall budget shortages.
  • Fewer states are funding instructional materials. In the traditional model, states paid for instructional materials, providing them the leverage to determine which materials are to be used. That is often no longer the case.
  • States are increasingly providing local control such that school districts can buy state approved materials, but can also buy any other instructional resources as well.
  • Some states are asking whether they should continue to target only single, primary tools of instruction (i.e., textbooks or their digital equivalents), or whether they should also adopt, for example, digital learning objects and modules to support teachers in dynamically assembling resources to differentiate instruction and personalize learning.
  • Some states are allowing the use of instructional materials funds for the purchase of the technology hardware needed to access those materials, though priority in general still for content.

States are working with SIIA, publishers and other stakeholders to address new challenges in reviewing adaptive instructional software and other robust digital content. For example, how do they review the full resource in cases where each student may be provided a unique, dynamic pathway through the content (compared to the relative ease of reviewing a more linear (e)textbook).

Also, as digital content shifts from supplemental to primary, format and platform are also increasingly of concern. State agencies, on behalf of local educators, seek to ensure the content they purchase is accessible from multiple platforms, as well as increasingly from their students’ personal/home devices. Some have floated the requirement that digital content must be accessible from every platform through a common format. While interoperability is a key goal, SIIA recommends for industry evolution of common standards and against regulatory mandates that could block use of many widely used technologies. SIIA instead encourages that states focus on ensuring publishers disclose system requirements to empower local decision makers with the information they need to determine what platforms and resources best meet their needs. This will enable technology innovation and competition, enhance education choice, and ultimately ensure the needs of teachers and students are best addressed.

SIIA encourages states to further lead the print to digital transition. In doing so, they must recognize that there is not yet any single best technology, curriculum or instructional practice solution for the use of digital content. Therefore, most importantly, SIIA encourages states to provide the investment, regulatory flexibility and technical assistance districts need to innovate as educators collectively and individually determine the best path forward.

Mark SchneidermanMark Schneiderman is Senior Director of Education Policy at SIIA.

Share|
Filed Under: Digital Policy Roundup, Ed Tech Business Forum, Ed Tech Government Forum, Education, Education Policies, Education Policy, Legislation, Personalized Learning, Policy, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

A Digital Learning Framework for Systems Change

June 20, 2012 By

I had the great opportunity last week to speak to the CIOs of the Council of Great City Schools, representing the nation’s largest school districts. While their agenda and roles are traditionally focused on enterprise technologies, their summit focused last week on “Transforming Education through Digital Learning.”

Most CIOs recognized that their school systems were not adequately meeting the needs of students, and that technology and digital learning must be a core part of the solution. Many talked of a shift from print to digital content. Some highlighted the blending of formal and informal learning. Others were focused on online learning. All seemed to agree with the need to redesign the system through technology.

I presented on the opportunity to shift from a mass-production to a mass-customization model of personalized learning, whereby technology enables teachers and schools to vary the curriculum and instruction – as well as the time, place and pace of learning – to better meet the unique needs of each student.

As the educational challenges and digital opportunities were discussed in Minneapolis last week, a few lessons emerged for managing the systems change to digital learning.

  • PD, PD and more PD: The shift to digital is increasingly embraced, but most teachers and administrators struggle to internalize what it looks like and how to get there. They are hungry for examples, and for professional development to grow their skills and change their classroom practice. It is not possible to over-invest in good professional support.
  • Vision: Technology and Curriculum/Instruction must create a common vision and operate as a team. Silos must be replaced by communication. IT investment should not drive educational decisions, but can empower them. IT investment must be tailored to specific teaching, learning and administrative processes and be linked to key performance goals and benchmarks.
  • Focus: Along with a clear, coordinated vision should come a clear focus. It is critical to identify core learning goals, then the related changes in practice, and then the technologies and related support network necessary for effective implementation. Districts can do anything, but not everything. Technology is evolving quickly, but that should not mean a district shifts its plans simply to have the newest, shiniest technology.
  • Leadership: Identifying a vision and maintaining focus requires a sustained leadership effort. Any significant initiative to transform practice and integrate technology will require a five-year business plan that includes the key learning goals, changes in practice, core technologies, teacher supports and benchmarks. This plan must be able to survive any turnover in administration, and perhaps only when it does extend beyond one superintendent will it have the staying power to create meaningful and lasting change. Community support and leadership is therefore critical to sustain initiatives over time.
  • Balance Scale with Flexibility: As technology shifts from supplemental to core in teaching and learning, one-off programs will no longer be feasible if the result is isolated data or a requirement for point-to-point systems integration. The solution is an enterprise architecture that empowers teacher and school building decisions to adopt disparate digital resources to meet each of their student’s unique needs, while providing the district-wide platform and standards for their seamless integration into district data and other systems.
  • Staged Deployment: Large technology enhancements, as well as changes to policy and practice, must be achieved in sequential phases. Large initiatives cannot and should not be executed in short order. A staged implementation allows piloting to test and refine plans, time for educator training and adoption, and the building out of technical capabilities over time in lieu of resource limitations. Innovation of practice, people, processes, and technologies must all operate simultaneously through a plan that allows for continuous evaluation, modification and improvement.
  • Automate & Redesign: Gains can be had from shifting from paper to pixels, from physical to virtual, but most important is to accompany those with a redesign of practice that leverages the new technologies to make more efficient use of people, time and space. Students will be engaged and motivated in their learning not simply by digitizing and virtualizing, but instead by meeting them where they are, helping them understand where they need to go, and empowering them through technology and other tools to get there.

I do not expect these lessons are necessarily new for many. I do hope their reinforcement here will provide educators with a framework of principles to guide the exciting, challenging and necessary digital evolution of our education system. As you continue on the journey to make every day a Digital Learning Day for your students, be sure to pause along the way to ask: How well is my teaching and learning community applying these principles? And please share back any of your own guiding principles.

Note: This blog was first published on June 20, 2012 as a guest blog for the Alliance for Excellent Education’s Digital Learning Day, for which SIIA is a core partner.

Mark SchneidermanMark Schneiderman is Senior Director of Education Policy at SIIA.

 

Share|
Filed Under: Ed Tech Government Forum, Education, Education Policies, Education Policy, Personalized Learning, Policy, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

District Race to the Top Appropriately Prioritizes Personalized Learning

May 22, 2012 By

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today announced a new federal Race to the Top District competition, providing nearly $400 million in school district grants to “personalize and individualize” to “take classroom learning beyond a one-size-fits-all model and bring it into the 21st century.” The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) has long been a leading voice for redesigning education to personalize learning, and applauds the Obama Administration for providing this leadership.

Nearly two years ago, SIIA, in collaboration with ASCD and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), released Innovate to Educate: System [Re]Design for Personalized Learning, based upon the insights and recommendations of some 150 visionary education leaders convened at a 2010 Summit in Boston, Mass. The report provides a roadmap (and examples) to accelerate the redesign of the current, mass production education model to a student‐centered, customized learning model that will better engage, motivate, and prepare our students to be career and college ready. At that time, CCSSO Executive Director Gene Wilhoit noted: “The industrial‐age, assembly‐line educational model – based on fixed time, place, curriculum and pace – is insufficient in today’s society and knowledge‐based economy.”

The Summit attendees identified the following top essential elements and policy enablers of personalized learning:

Essential Elements
1. Flexible, Anytime, Everywhere Learning
2. Redefine Teacher Role and Expand “Teacher”
3. Project‐Based, Authentic Learning
4. Student‐Driven Learning Path
5. Mastery/Competency‐Based Progression/Pace

Policy Enablers
1. Redefine Use of Time (Carnegie Unit/Calendar)
2. Performance‐Based, Time‐Flexible Assessment
3. Equity in Access to Technology Infrastructure
4. Funding Models that Incentivize Completion
5. P‐20 Continuum & Non‐Age/Grade Band System

Ninety‐six percent of Summit attendees identified access to technology and e‐learning as a critical or significant
cross‐cutting platform to implement personalized learning and bring it to scale.

SIIA is pleased to see many of these ingredients included in the draft RTTT guidelines, including to:
- “create student centered learning environment(s) that are designed to: significantly improve teaching and learning through the personalization of strategies, tools, and supports for teachers and students”
- ”allow students significantly more freedom to study and advance at their own pace – both in and out of school”
- “create opportunities for students to identify and pursue areas of personal passion”
- “use collaborative, data-based strategies and 21st century tools”
- “deliver instruction and supports tailored to the needs and goals of each student”
- Provide “The opportunity for students to progress and earn credit based on demonstrated mastery, not the amount of time spent on a topic”
- Provide “The opportunity for students to demonstrate mastery of standards at multiple times and in multiple comparable ways.

SIIA had called for similar priorities in the original State RTTT, proposing then “that the RttT be leveraged to further incentivize a shift from a seat-rime, assembly-line education model to a more flexible, student-centered model built around individual learning needs and pace, anytime-anywhere learning, and differentiated instruction . . . that goes beyond the education reform infrastructure of the four assurances and emphasizes further the transformative reengineering of education service delivery models needed for our students to compete in this digital age and global knowledge economy.”

SIIA is pleased to see education leaders in Washington, DC recognizing the opportunities of a student-centered learning model, and for providing the resources and leadership to support and scale up dozens of locally designed programs that are empowering students and improving student engagement and outcomes. SIIA looks forward to reviewing the proposal details and providing comment on program improvements, as well as to working with education leaders to design and implement personalized learning that leverages technology.

Mark SchneidermanMark Schneiderman is Senior Director of Education Policy at SIIA.

 

Share|
Filed Under: Digital Policy Roundup, Ed Tech Government Forum, Education, Education Policies, Education Policy, Personalized Learning, Policy, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,
« Older Posts