Guest commentary: The Atlantic's 'Project Classroom: Transforming Our Schools for the Future'

Rebecca J. Rosen is an associate editor at The Atlantic and spearhead's the publications "Project Classroom" feature. She recently used Duke professor Cathy Davidson's new book Now You See It, as a jumping off point to write about digital learning and the future of education.
"In 2003 the iPod was a relatively new gadget for listening to music. Billboard ads showed young people dancing, iPods in hand. Few people would have pinpointed this newfangled Walkman as a powerful teaching tool," Rosen writes.
"Cathy N. Davidson, a professor at Duke University, believes that classrooms aren't keeping up with the kids. She thought, what is the untapped educational potential of the iPod? She and her Duke colleagues worked with Apple to give every entering freshmen an iPod, and then they sat back and watched as students and teachers developed innovate and collaborative ways to incorporate iPods into their work: med students could listen to recordings of heart arrhythmia, music students could upload their compositions and get feedback from other students, environmental studies students interviewed families in a North Carolina community about lead paint in their town, and then shared their interviews online, for other students to download," Rosen continues.
"No one could have predicted all the ways the iPods enhanced learning once they were in the hands of students and teachers -- and that's a central point of Cathy Davidson's new book," Rosen adds.
Click here to read the complete article.

Tom Vander Ark: Take a Look at gettingsmart.com

Getting Smart: How Digital Learning is Changing the World (Jossey-Bass) is my new book. In it, I explore educational innovation in the United States and abroad. I try to make the case for a blend of online and onsite learning. I also highlight education innovation success stories.
The new book, which debuts in October, has led to a new website, gettingsmart.com. The site focuses on innovations in learning. We plan to keep the spotlight on K-12, but will but explore community based organizations (CBOs), early, and adult learning as well. We will cover developments in research, technology, learning entrepreneurs, and strategies.
Our first posts include two provocative articles. One, by Kentucky schools chief Terry Holliday, bluntly outlines the situation in his state.
"Kentucky was one of the early leaders in virtual learning. Today, we are struggling to find the appropriate methods for funding, support and innovation.
Over the past two years, we have been working first through the Transforming Education in Kentucky task force and now through an “innovative pathways to graduation” committee to define how we can create more opportunities for students and teachers to engage in digital learning," Holliday writes.
The other article is written by Indiana schools chief Tony Bennett. Here's what he said about innovation and education: "At a structural level, the freedoms we have pursued reflect my belief in local school corporations as centers of innovation. To level the playing field, every school — big or small, rural or urban, public or private — must have the freedom and flexibility to innovate on behalf of students."
Click here to see more of the new site gettingsmart.com.

Guest Commentary: Education Next's Michael Petrilli on 'One Size Fits Most'

Michael J. Petrilli is the executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and the executive editor of Education Next. Recently, he published a column on the Huffington Post which he challenged two competing views of education reform to join together and create a system in which "One Size Fits Most."

On one side, Petrilli says is "the Coherence Camp. Its argument, most recently made in David Cohen's 'Teaching and Its Predicaments,' is that America's teachers are being set up to fail by a system that is fragmented, divided and confused about its mission. Teachers are given little clear guidance about what's expected of them: Even when goals are clear, they lack the tools to succeed, pre-service training is completely disconnected from classroom expectations, and never-ending 'reform' pulls up the roots of promising efforts before they are given time to flower."

"Dynamism Devotees, " Petrilli continues, "on the other hand, look at America's private sector (and especially Silicon Valley) with envy. They envision an education marketplace full of can-do problem-solvers, myriad options for parents, and lots of customization for kids. They don't even want a 'system' per se but a raucous 'sector' that welcomes new entrepreneurs and washes away legacy operators if they don't keep up with the times. To them, the American higher education sector looks like a much stronger alternative to our K-12 system, what with its rise of new competitors (many of them online), flexible, student-centered funding, and responsiveness to consumer demand.

"So you hear Dynamism Devotees chanting the 'every school a charter school' mantra, and preaching the exciting potential of customized digital learning, the rise of upstart providers of teacher training and the imperative of 'backpack funding for schools," he adds.

Click here to read Petrilli's complete post.

Michael B. Horn: Edtech Market is Growing--If You're Disruptive

An article by Katie Ash in Education Week about a new report by the investment bank, Berkery Noyes, caught my eye recently because of its analysis about the education technology market. According to the piece, “companies focused on technology-based instruction and tools for data collection and analysis are thriving in the K-12 market.”
But beneath this, there are some important layers of nuance that seems to clarify what many education technology companies are seeing on the ground.
On the one hand, a whole series of education technology companies say the current budget crises are hurting their businesses. According to the article, if you are in the business of providing such things as supplemental content, then that is indeed the likely reality of your world.
On the other hand, several digital learning companies report to me that the budget crises seem to have driven an up-tick in their businesses.
Click here to read the complete article I posted on the Education Next website. And take time to read Rocketship Education's John Danner's comment on my article. He says the era of accountability is coming to online learning.

Guest Commentary: Education Next Columnists Says Florida Got it Right When it Comes to Hybrid Learning

William Mattox is a resident fellow at the James Madison Institute in Tallahassee and the father of a "hybrid student."
My son Richard "took classes from an online provider, a small private school, and a performing arts program," Mattox writes.
"The rise of hybrid schooling bodes well for students whose needs, gifts, interests, and learning styles do not align with the factory school model of the 20th century, and for parents who know that no school can maximize the potential of every child every year in every way," Mattox continues.
Click here to read more about the Mattox family's experience with hybrid education in Florida and why William Mattox believes Florida got it right.

Tom Vander Ark: Former. Gov Bob Wise and I Talk about Gallup Poll and Results on Digital Learning

The 2011 PDK/Gallup Poll asked some important questions about digital learning. The results are heartening to anyone in or interested in the virtual education movement.
Former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and one of the co-founders of Digital Learning Now, and I sat down to talk about the poll results. We believe the responses point to the public's increasing awareness that a blended learning environment is the best way to provide students with customized learning and provide them with 21st century skills.
Please take a look at this short video.
Click here for the video.
Click here for a pdf of the report on the poll.

Guest Commentary: EdSurge Takes a Look at Former NYC School Chief Joel Klein Review of Terry M. Moe's 'Special Interest'

A recent edition of the email newsletter from EdSurge, which calls itself "a community watering hole and resource for those of us engaged in the emerging eco-system of education technology," contains an interesting post and links to two new book on teachers unions and education reform.

"Joel Klein does a dandy job of summing up two recent books, Steven Brill's Class Warfare: Inside the Fight To Fix America's Schools and Terry M. Moe's Special Interest: Teacher Unions and America's Public Schools. Brill so believes that unions must be part of any plans to revamp schools, he suggests American Federation of Teachers' Randi Weingarten should be the next chancellor of NYC's public schools. By contrast, Moe contends that the unions are crippling education but technology can help. Klein sees a role for everybody: parents "must become more engaged and enraged," reformers need to enlist the next generation of teachers and treat them like professionals, the public needs to back aggressive reform and the politicians who go for it."

The EdSurge Post adds, " Galvanizing public sentiment is a stiff order, particularly because a new PDK/Gallup poll (based on a survey of about 1,000 Americans 18 years and older) suggests that half of Americans seem to think their local schools rate an "A" or "B," even though only 17% would give that grade to other schools around the country. And there's widespread ambivalence around technology in schools: 2 out of 3 Americans think e-books are appropriate for high school students; half want to see them in middle schools and only a quarter approve of ebooks in elementary school. See the whole report here."

Click here to read the complete Klein review.

Click here to learn more about Liberating Learning's Terry M. Moe's new book Special Interest: Teacher Unions and America's Public Schools.

Tom Vander Ark: More Foreign language, Math & Science Possible with Digital Learning

A new advocacy group is forming to support second language acquisition. It’s a great idea for young people to learn several languages growing up. Selective colleges make studying a foreign language an entrance requirement. It’s easy to make a case for it in a global economy. Lots of educators are sympathetic to the idea but it has been difficult and expensive in practice to make it part of every school day.
There is growing demand for graduates with technical training but that requires high-level math and science courses in high school. But upper division STEM courses are particularly difficult for high schools to staff. It can also be a challenge to recruit students to what often appears to be difficult and/or boring courses.
Digital learning can help with both problems. It can make language learning an engaging, ubiquitous daily experience. And it can help bring science to life and tailor math instruction.
Click here to read my complete post.

Guest Commentary: Former NYC Schools Chief Joel Klein on School Reform, Teachers Unions and Customized Learning

Joel Klein has been paying a lot of attention to what Liberating Learning's Terry M. Moe has been writing about teachers unions and their impact on school reform and the impact of information technology on education.
Here's what Klein wrote about Moe's new book Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America's Public Schools earlier this year.
"America's public schools are broken, and Terry Moe sets out to explain why. In a bare-knuckled and brilliant account, he shows how the teachers unions use their unmatched political power to control virtually every aspect of educational policy and practice. The result, not surprisingly, is a system that protects the interests of employees at the expense of our kids."
Klein recently took a second look at Special Interest when he wrote a review of the book for the Wall Street Journal. In the review, Klein also critiqued Steven Brill's book, Class Warfare, which also takes a tough look at the impact teachers unions have had on education reform.
"At their core (Moe and Brill) share the reformist perspective and conclude that teachers unions—fueled by the manpower and money they can mobilize and the enormous political power they enjoy as a result—are the major obstacle to solving the education crisis. But they make their arguments from different perspectives, citing different evidence," Klein writes.
"Class Warfare, by Steven Brill, is an extremely well-reported survey of the modern reform movement that is likely to have a big impact and will appeal to a wide audience. Special Interest, by Terry M. Moe, is a carefully researched analysis of the power dynamics underlying today's policy disputes," Klein adds.
Click here to read all of Klein's review.
Click here to learn more about Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America's Public Schools.

Guest Commentary: Edtech Overload--Too Much of a Good Thing

Brad Flickinger is a technology integration specialist who teaches technology at Bethke Elementary in Timnath, Colo., and is founder of SchoolTechnology.org. Recently, he wrote an essay for Digital Learning Environments.
"Yesterday I spent a few hours reviewing my notes from all of the edtech conferences that I attended this past summer. While going through my notes I kept a list of the ideas that I wanted to try with my students this upcoming 2011-2012 school year," he wrote. "By the time I was done with my review, my list of was over 38 items! How do I incorporate 38 new ideas into my classroom this year?
"One of the general problems with today’s society is information overload," Flickinger continued. "But how do we cure it? How do we stay up-to-date with our lessons without feeling like we are just chasing our edtech tails?"
Click here to read all of Flickinger's essay and find out why too much of a good thing isn't always bad.

Terry M. Moe: Will Young People Reform Teachers Unions? Drean On

Andy Rotherham is an astute observer of American education reform, but in his latest article in Time.com he engages in a flight of wishful thinking. He waxes eloquent about "renegade groups" of younger teachers who are rising up to demand a new brand of unionism--one in which the unions disavow seniority provisions, insist on serious teachers evaluations, make it easy to get bad teachers out of the classroom, and otherwise do whatever is best for children and effective schools. He strongly suggests that big changes are in the offing for America's teachers unions. A revolution from within.

This kind of argument is quite common and has a long lineage--although in the past, the agents of change were "progressive" union leaders rather than young teachers.

Click here to find out why I believe these arguments are so common and to read my complete post on the Public Sector Inc. blog

Guest Commentary: The Digital Natives are Coming

In a post on the Silicon Valley Education Foundation blog, Kathryn Baron shared her experiences during a conference featuring edtech guru Bernie Trilling. Trilling, according to Baron, "has been advocating for better integration of technology in schools for a few decades."
"When my son was about four years old, we got him a children’s science program for the computer. I put in the disc and ran to the laundry room saying I’d be right back to boot it up. Minutes later I returned to find him sitting at the desk, legs dangling a foot off the ground, as he happily clicked the mouse and sorted animals into piles of mammals, reptiles, birds, and slimy things. Unfortunately, when he started school, technology pretty much stayed behind at home, Baron wrote.
"I was reminded of that incongruity," Baron continued, "when ... Trilling posed a challenge question to a room full of teachers, principals, and superintendents. 'How can you leverage technology to create more meaningful, effective learning experiences to prepare your students for the 21st century?' "
Click here to read more about the discussion

Michael B. Horn: Why Digital Learning Will Liberate Teachers

I spend a lot of time writing about how digital learning can transform our education system into a student-centric one. In my last blog, I wrote about why parents—of all stripes—matter for digital learning and make it fundamentally different from past “reform” movements. Digital learning should similarly be a game changer for teachers.
Teachers will be critical to our nation’s future in a world of digital learning. Of course, teachers’ jobs will also be quite different from the way they look today—and if we do this right, they should not just be different, but they should also be a whole lot better, as it liberates them in many exciting ways.
Basically, as software increasingly handles direct instruction, this will create big opportunities for teachers to facilitate rich and rewarding project-based learning experiences for their students to apply their learning into different contexts and gain meaningful work in the so-called 21st-century skills. And as software increasingly simplifies administrative tasks and eliminates a significant need for lesson planning and delivering one-size-fits-none lessons, there will be significantly more time for teachers to work in the ways that motivated many of them to enter teaching originally—to work one-on-one and in small groups with students on the problems where they are in fact struggling.
Click here to read more on why I believe digital learning will liberate teachers.

Terry M. Moe: 'Special Interest' Ed Next Book Club's August Selection

My latest book, Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America's Public Schools is the August selection for the Ed Next Book Club.
Michael Petrilli, education analyst and executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, interviewed me about the book which looks at the impact teachers unions have had on the education reform movement.
Click here to learn more about the book club and to hear a podcast of my interview with Petrilli.
Click here to learn more about Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America's Public Schools.

Guest Commentary: Boston Consulting Group Report 'Unleashing the Potential of Technology in Education'

The Boston Consulting Group, a management consulting firm that specializes in business strategy, issued a report called Unleashing the Potential of Technology in Education.
According to the report, "We are at the dawn of an era in which educators have the potential to harness technology to produce a ... change in student achievement. Although visionaries have been promising for years that technology would transform primary and secondary education--and despite the billions of dollars spent networking schools and equipping them with computers and other devices--the actual impact on student outcomes to date has been disappointing. Even where educators have succeeded in introducing devices and software into the classroom, they've often failed to leverage that new technology to improve student performance. Yet when technology is strategically introduced into every step of the educational value chain, it does, in fact have the potential to enhance every aspect of instruction and learning.
"To fully realize the promise--and dramatically improve student outcomes in primary and secondary education--technology must be deployed in support of what is known as a closed-loop instruction system," the report continues.
The closed-loop instruction system:
-- Establishes educational objectives focused on 21st century skills.
-- Develops relevant curriculum offerings by using open source content.
-- Delivers instruction virtually.
-- Embeds frequent assessment with rel-time, continuous feedback
-- Provides appropriate intervention with immediacy and customization
"This approach will increasingly separate the best education systems from the more mediocre counterparts," the report concludes. "We recognized that there are risks--from making the wrong investments to failing to execute a technology strategy--and thus a need for careful execution. But we are also persuaded that the rewards will be enormous."
Click here for the complete report.

Tom Vander Ark: Strategies for Starting a Virtual School

Do students in your district have access to online courses on a full and part time basis? Is your district offering them? A recent survey suggests that more than half of U.S .districts claim them are developing online options.
States and districts are approaching digital learning in different ways. Iowa is way behind in online learning in terms of statewide options, but has one of the highest percentage of 1:1 districts in the country (about a third of the 357).
It may be time for your district to develop an virtual school or build an online learning partnership. Click here for a half a dozen strategies that you can mix and match.

Guest Commentary: Oklahoman Editorial Says 'Flap Over Online School Stokes Long-Simmering Feud'

"Twentieth-century school policies met 21st-century technology. The result wasn't pretty."
That's the opening of the Oklahoman editorial on the recent controversy over the launch of Oklahoma's first virtual school charter.
The school, Epic One, has been plagued with a series of problems that delayed its opening by more than a year.
Now, while it is enrolling students from throughout the state and getting ready to open this fall, another problem cropped up.
"Dozens of parents had their children's school plans disrupted and were left scrambling to make alternate plans. Oklahoma City schools Superintendent Karl Springer complained about a virtual charter school possibly trying to “franchise” all over the state in violation of its contract. The charter school in question — Epic One on One Charter School — maintains its on-site plans weren't actually schools. And state education officials were left to referee two issues pertaining to charter school law and school transfer policy, apparently to the full satisfaction of no one," according to the editorial.
"Sooner rather than later, either the state Education Department or lawmakers need to revisit the transfer and charter school laws with an eye toward online schooling trends," the editorial added.
Click here to read the complete editorial and read more about "the uneasy relationship" between Oklahoma's charter and traditional schools.

Guest Commentary: Oregon Catlayst Asks Why the Union-Backed Oregon Virtual School District is Student Free?

Oregon’s major teachers union, The Oregon Education Association (OEA), is seen by many observers as the big loser coming out of the recent legislative session in Salem. Why? Because it failed to convince enough legislators to stop some modest school choice bills from passing. It also couldn’t stop Gov. John Kitzhaber, whom it endorsed and financially supported, from agreeing to sign these bills as part of a larger education reform package, according to Oregon Catalyst.
The highest profile bill in question was House Bill 2301, known as the virtual public charter school bill. The union has been trying to shut down online public charter schools ever since they started making inroads several years ago. This year it had hoped to cripple these schools, which it sees as competition to the brick-and-mortar schools in which its members teach. Instead, the legislature agreed to let these online schools expand from teaching about one percent of the state’s K-12 students now up to at least three percent of students in any and all school districts around the state, the statewide group recently posted on its website.
In 2005 the union backed a bill to create a state-run competitor to these innovative online schools. Known as the Oregon Virtual School District, it has since been funded to the tune of more than seven million dollars. Legislators appropriated the funds with the intention that the district would “provide online courses.” But as Nigel Jaquiss reported in his recent Willamette Week exposé, “…after six years and the appropriation of $7.1 million, including another $1.5 million lawmakers just approved for the current biennium, the Oregon Virtual School District has yet to provide a single ‘course.’”
Click here to read more about the union-backed school district that doesn't have any students.