Digital Discourse / Archives for innovation

Anticipate the Puck – A Hockey Legend and Lessons for Predicting the Future

April 20, 2011 By

By Avinoam Nowogrodski, Co-Founder and CEO of Clarizen

Wayne Gretsky, the hockey great, once said, “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” It’s been said that Gretsky’s success came from intelligence and reading the game, rather than from his strength. Gretsky was adept at dodging checks from opposing players, could consistently anticipate where the puck was going and execute the right move at the right time.

Like Gretsky, a company doesn’t have to be the biggest or the strongest to win, but it does have to be the smartest and most responsive to truly succeed. Guiding a company through a set of strategic decisions towards a long term goal is often guesswork with some finger crossing for good luck. Identifying the right types of projects to take on, the staffing is necessary to execute and the concrete goals and timelines to expect, are just some of the questions executives face every day.

To make these decisions, management can go one of two ways. Either management can take its best guess with little to no real understanding of its own processes. Alternatively, management can spend excessive amounts of time and money digging into a plethora of reports and numbers that will most likely be out of date when they are extracted. Most organizations react too late or ineffectively, leaving room for the agile to swoop in and get to the goal first – winning and keeping the customer’s business.

In a world where bottom-up information is at your fingertips, where you have confidence that the information you look at is accurate and timely, decisions happen spontaneously and reflect the current trends your business encounters. This is the difference between the hockey player who hits the puck as it comes to him and the hockey player that can anticipate the puck and other player’s movements and then guide the puck towards the goal.

The starting point for true visibility into any organization is bottom-up information. When end-users to contribute up-to-date information about tasks as part of doing the work, organizations have a foundation of accurate and dependable information. With accurate information acting as the foundation, management gains visibility into processes and activities and can use that information to accurately affect the company’s direction.

When an organization is confronted with a mission-critical decision, such as expanding or shifting strategic direction, the need to accurately predict their ability to execute becomes critically important. The ability to accurately predict resource load, budgets, timelines and deliverables ensures that management brings on the right level of staffing at the right time of the project, that timelines and deliverables are realistic and that projects stay on budget.

Resembling Gretsky’s ability to anticipate a puck’s movement across the ice, the right software, intuitively integrated with work gives a company the tools to consistently anticipate and execute the right move at the right time.

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Filed Under: All About the Cloud, Cloud Computing, Software Tagged With: , ,

Pending Federal Budget Cuts Would Stall Technology-Based Education Innovation

March 18, 2011 By

The use of technology and digital learning in education has reached a tipping point — the conversation has shifted from “if” to “how,” and education leaders are touting digital learning’s power to improve productivity, personalize learning, and expand learning opportunities. Yet, just as the nation’s education system is poised to accelerate technology-based innovation and improvement, a critical U.S. Department of Education program is on the chopping block. House-passed and Senate-proposed bills would zero out funding for the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT; NCLB II-D) program for Fiscal Year 2011 (i.e., 2011-2012 school year).

Advocates are mobilizing to respond, contacting their Members of Congress by e-mail and phone and advocating in-person April 13 (at SIIA’s Ed Tech Government Forum, which will also include speakers on government programs and policies of interest to digital learning providers).

SIIA and several education groups (ISTE, CoSN and SETDA) expressed strong concern in a recent statement: “We are deeply disappointed that despite many Members’ understanding of the vital role technology plays in K-12 education in their states and districts, Congress is on the verge of eliminating funding for this critical program. Elimination of the program also is the surest way to devalue the billions of dollars invested over the last two years on improving broadband access to K‐12 schools and directly undercuts ongoing state and federal efforts to deploy education data systems, implement new college and areer‐ready standards and assessments, and address the well-documented STEM crisis. Our educators and students deserve better, and we urge Congress to reverse course and fully fund the EETT program.”

[3/22/11 Update: 14 U.S. Senators called on the Appropriations Committee to restore funding for the EETT program to the FY10 $100 million level. See their letter, along with a supporting statement from education groups including NEA and NSBA.]

EETT is the only federal education program designed to leverage innovation and technology to adequately prepare all of the nation’s children for the competitive 21st century global economy. Integrating technology among all programs is necessary, but not sufficient, while public R&D supoort is needed but not an alternative for directly supporting schools. This targeted investment is needed to provide leadership and professional development, and to increase the capacity of educators to redesign education to further personalize learning and engage students.

Spread the word to educators and colleagues! Contact your Member of Congress now!

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Filed Under: Ed Tech Government Forum, Education Policies, Education Policy, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

SOTU address emphasizes key IT industry priorities

January 31, 2011 By

With the heavy focus on job creation and innovation in the President’s SOTU address last week, it was no surprise that several priority issues for the IT industry also received a shout-out from the President as key National priorities.

Consistent with the sentiment on Capitol Hill, the President emphasized the need for tax reform. While it was reassuring to hear his call for a lowering of the corporate tax rate, he also called for this to be offset by closing “loop-holes.” The devil is always in the details of the definition of a “loop-hole,” as this term has frequently been used to refer to tax incentives that help U.S. companies compete globally.

The President also reiterated the need for a bipartisan effort to finalize the Columbia, Panama and Korea trade agreements. Keeping with the innovation theme but taking efforts to steer clear of hot-button term like the H-1B visa, the President renewed the call for immigration reform that keeps “talented, responsible young people” in the U.S. to meet our critical workforce needs. As timing would have it, the H-1B cap for FY 2011 was met on Friday, just days after the speech.

And in what might have seemed like a direct nod to SIIA and some of its members–who were in New York discussing the transition from “wired to wireless” at the Information Industry Summit (IIS)–the President called for wireless connectivity to be provided to 98 percent of the country over the next five years. Given the discussions at IIS re: the tremendous growth in the wireless market, this would provide even more demand for mobile applications and content delivery over the next five years.

With the dust now settled on the SOTU, we’ll continue to keep you posted as these and other key priorities play out in the weeks ahead.

For more SIIA policy updates, including upcoming events, news and analysis, subscribe to the Digital Policy Roundup, SIIA’s weekly policy email newsletter.

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Filed Under: Content, Information Industry Summit, Policy Tagged With: , , , ,

Balancing Technology Standardization and Innovation in Race to the Top Assessments

January 31, 2011 By

The U.S. K-12 public education system continues to lag in both adoption of technology and related innovation as well as in leveraging technology and digital resources through interoperability standards. The two are closely connected: technology standards provide a base for cost-effective, value-added innovation; but if carried too far or adopted too early, such technical standardization can also inhibit desired innovation and competition. 

Their appropriate balance is therefore critical to advancing both important goals. The challenges in finding this delicate equilibrium point are being tested (pun intended) now as the U.S. Department of Education and its two Race to the Top Assessment (RTTA) grantee consortia — SBAC and PARCC – consider the scope and form of their deliverables and technology (interoperability) standards.

The $350 million RTTA initiative promises to bring important technology-enabled innovation to assessment — including many long available but not often implemented by states — through the online delivery of more robust (i.e., comprehensive, authentic, timely and adaptive) measurement of student knowledge and skills to inform teaching, learning and accountability. Leveraging this innovation will require changes to teaching and learning, technology investment, interoperability development and adoption, and limits on the scope of RTTA development.

In response to an important RFI by the Department regarding the technology standards to be employed by the RTTA consortia, SIIA supported the requirement that RTTA grantees “maximize the interoperability of assessments across technology platforms and the ability for States to switch their assessments from one technology platform to another.” RTTA could provide the tipping point to K-12 education’s adoption of data and content interoperability standards (see SIIA Primer) that would, for example, enable and maximize our ability to personalize learning.

But these benefits will only be realized if interoperability is properly implemented, and if standardization is balanced with innovation. SIIA’s recommendations to USED (and the RTTA consortia) elaborated on both points. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Ed Tech Government Forum, Education, Education Policies, Education Policy, Policy Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Digital Learning Now!

December 1, 2010 By

SIIA is pleased to be a part of today’s announcement of the Digital Learning Now! campaign led by former Governors Jeb Bush (R-FL) and Bob Wise (D-WV) to advocate for state policies aligned with 10 Elements of High Quality Digital Learning. The 10 elements were identified by a Digital Learning Council of education leaders, including SIIA’s Mark Schneiderman and senior executives of several SIIA member high-tech companies.

Announced Bush and Wise: “We are grateful to the council members for forging a path for education’s historic shift from print to digital, from age groups to individuals and from seat time to competency. . . . Digital learning can transform education. Technology has the power and scalability to customize education so each and every student learns in their own style at their own pace, which maximizes their chances for success in school. It offers teachers an effective way to overcome challenges and better educate students of all learning needs. Digital learning is the great equalizer. It holds the promise of extending access to rigorous high quality instruction to every student across America, regardless of language, zip code, income levels, or special needs.”

The 10 policy recommendations include both access to technology infrastructure, digital content and online courses as well regulatory reforms to shift from seat-time to competency-based learning and remove many policy barriers to online learning. They focus on the opportunity to personalize learning through technology and include among key resources the SIIA-ASCD-CCSSO report on Education System Redesign for Personalized Learning. And they call for enhanced support for digital-age teaching through data systems, online assessment and professional development. As such, Digital Learning Now is perhaps the most comprehensive set of such policy recommendations in recent times, and represents a growing recognition among education leaders and stakeholders that transformational systemic change through technology is needed, including in light of the nation’s educational funding, teacher and performance shortages.

SIIA appreciates the leadership of Governors Bush and Wise, and the opportunity to be part of this important effort. We look forward to supporting the campaign’s next steps of helping states benchmark against these 10 elements and make changes to state policies and practices needed to advance this comprehensive vision for digital learning.

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

Education Leaders Identify Top 10 Components of Systemic Redesign to Personalize Learning

November 15, 2010 By

The nation’s education stakeholders increasingly recognize that the fundamental redesign of our preK-12 system around the student is required for our future success. Calls for (e.g., Secretary Duncan) and examples of (e.g., Kansas City) innovative, personalized learning models are growing.

To help give voice and support to this movement, 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 education leaders convened at an August Symposium in Boston, MA (See archive of presentations, summaries and videos). The report provides a primer on personalized learning with definitions and examples and identifies the following essential practices and policies as voted on by Symposium attendees: [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Education, Education Policies, Education Policy, Personalized Learning, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Design Fix

July 15, 2010 By

[From a Symposium on Personalized Learning interview series by New Media Partner edReformer.com]

Joel Rose, CEO of School of One in New York City, addresses how personalized learning provides equity of student outcomes, and the need to address the design flaw of the traditional classroom model with with personalized systems and technologies.

Where does technology fit into [personalized learning]?
I think we need school designs that accomplish that personalized vision by integrating, instruction, professional development, leadership, options and technology. It’s one of the necessary components of an integrated design that serves that need. It doesn’t end or begin with technology, but technology is a piece of it.

What are some of the challenges being faced by the effort to bring personalization into the education system?
There is one big challenge, and that’s how nearly impossible it is for an individual teacher to personalize learning for 28 kids, during five periods a day. Even if we do that, it’s not enough. We have to complement the work of great teachers with systems and technologies that can enable personalized learning. It’s a design challenge. [Challenge is] the way we designed our schools, by putting 28 kids in a room, calling that sixth grade and putting one teacher in that room. And making that assumption that a kid can make that one year of growth . . . that’s a design assumption that is incredibly flawed. We are so accustomed to think of school in this way, the idea that there’s a different way of doing it doesn’t really enter into our minds. How we narrowly redesigned roles in school that have kind of calcified how we think about school. A lot of things we have done have just cascaded on top of this system. Until we fundamentally get to this design question . . . “This is where we want kids to be at the end of the year,” “This is the best way of doing that,” until we start asking these fundamental questions, we are going to stay where we are.

Read More from Joel Rose on how personalized learning and technology can address the design challenge of our school model, a roadmap for redesign, and how personalization flips the pursuit of equity from inputs to outcomes.

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Filed Under: Education, Education Events, Education Policy, Events, Personalized Learning, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,
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