K-12 eLearning is Big Innovation

When I studied innovation management at UCLA during my late 1970’s MBA program my research reveal three levels. One is intra-organizational where a champion drives changes in product or process. The second is innovation diffusion within society where a new product, idea or process is launched with early adopters. These early adopters become the vectors in the rollout to the rest of society. The third is massive innovation projects like the transcontinental railroad or commercial air transportation require a different innovation approach.

These Big Innovations which transform society usually start with ideas of the champion and initial diffusion through early adopters. But at some point they require two additional drivers:

First is a system design that will assure that all aspects are built in a coordinated, timely and adequately funded manner.

Second is full backing of governance leadership.

K-12 eLearning adoption has reached the “Big Innovation” point.

The intra-organizational innovation for eLearning is happening. Example: Vail District with 1:1 computing in Empire High School.

The innovation diffusion is happening. Example: MIT Media Labs’ $100 laptop initiative.

eSATS has created the Arizona systems design for adoption of eLearning in units of eLearning Centered Schools within a fully developed statewide infrastructure. But what about the other half of Big Innovation?

The news is certainly abuzz with our governance leadership’s interest in education. Some recent news articles:

Downtown (Phoenix) Forum to Focus on Education (Business Journal 11/11/05) -- $200 million new investment for university campuses, with P-20 plan.

Researchers Tally Costs of Education Failings (11/2/05 Education Week) $200 billion in economic losses and future economic an educational leadership will be lost if we do not invest in and fix K-12 education.

(Michael) Crow Leads Forum on K-12, Costs (11/21/05 Arizona Republic) In NYC, university leaders met and proclaimed that they must use their influence to improve K-12 education (educated teachers) and produce more science, math and engineering majors.

Janet Napolitano -- Message of the week (11/16/05 – weekly email letter) Our governor joined dozens of governors in an education summit in North Carolina – Hunt Institute. Teacher quality, partnerships, full day kindergarten and integration of education preschool to post graduate work (P-20).

Twenty years into the information age and eLearning “small” innovation our governance leadership continues to delivering familiar imperatives about K-12 education problems and espousing well developed legacy solutions.

But at a certain point in time Big Innovation reaches the tipping point.

At that tipping point an innovative governance leader embraces Big Innovation. After 30 years of rocket research John F Kennedy proclaimed, “Before the end of this decade (1960’s) we will put a man on the moon and bring him home safely.” United States seized leadership of the space age and has kept it for 50 years.

Some time this next month, this next year, this next ???, a state leader somewhere will proclaim that eLearning is the future of K-12 education and commit to statewide implementation. eSATS or a similar systems design will be rolled out on John Kennedy’s 10 year time schedule. That state will leap so far ahead in teacher quality, student graduation rates, university performance and workforce competitive advantage that it will lead the world for decades.

That is what “Big Innovation” is all about.

eSATS - Elevator Speech in Ad Format

Dance of Digital Curriulum and Teacher Education

This week I received a message from a group of K-12 innovators developing New High Technology High Schools (Napa California model - http://www.newtechhigh.org/School/about/about_default.asp ) of 400 students for each of North Carolina’s 100 counties. Their response after reviewing the eSATS design, “The technology portion is amazing and we are all wish the same for NC students! The NC educators that I shared this with found it very interesting and requested more specific information about the curriculum.”

I met last week with director of curriculum for a major university’s college of education. He works closely with K-12 digital curriculum enterprises. He lamented that they focused on transforming legacy text based curriculum into digital format instead of using what meager eLearning based pedagogy that exists to create more effective digital curriculum.

Two years ago I interviewed most of the thirty presidents of Arizona’s eLearning enterprises. As a group their major concern was their current offerings were based on adaptation of “office technology to legacy education processes” which was severely limiting their prospect for future innovation. They wanted GAZEL (www.gazel.org) to work on creating eLearning research specific federal funding and advocate for building of eLearning research infrastructure.

I have been conversion for 15 years with Henry Kelly of now president of the Federation of American Scientists (then of the White House Office of Research) (http://www.fas.org/main/content.jsp?formAction=297&contentId=69). His series of analyses starting in 1988 in the defunct Congressional Office of Technology Assessment show that research in the application of technology to the learning process is (now) about $200 million a year while the research in the application of technology to the health care process is about $50 billion a year.

Within the eSATS design we have seven major components:

Teacher and staff education and professional development;

Digital curriculum for each student with integrated formative assessment;

Assessment, accountability, access to instruction, decision support data system;

One broadband Internet computer interface per student in the classroom;

Full onsite technical support – 99% up time;

eLearning Centered Schools funded for student mastering a curriculum year;

Innovation Central to manage the ten year transformational process.

Expect for the first two, all can be readily implemented with customer acceptance, innovative zeal and startup funding. And these two are caught in a three way virtuous circle inherent within any innovation life cycle:

eLearning digital curriculum is just now emerging from an agglomeration of “other” technologies to being developed with rudimentary K-12 student eLearning pedagogy. Pedagogy for education eLearning teachers will always lag the emergence of K-12 student eLearning pedagogy. But the development of student eLearning pedagogy requires field testing in an environment rich in the use of eLearning digital curriculum.

Fortunately the past twenty years has produced digital curriculum for K-12 education that provides a significant academic performance boost (effect factor over 0.45 [i.e. C student starts getting B+’s] -- A Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of Teaching and Learning With Technology on Student Outcomes, Learning Point Assoc. [NCREL] www.learningpt.org ) when integrated with legacy education.

Full statewide implementation of eSATS will take ten years. As eSATS rolls out 1:1 computing to all Arizona schools a rich eLearning environment for eLearning pedagogy research will be created. Teachers will become savvy on how to use the current digital curriculum. eLearning pedagogy based digital curriculum products will begin to emerge just about the time Arizona schools will be ready for them. With eSATS funded continuous education and professional development Arizona teachers will be to rapidly adopt the emerging eLearning pedagogy in the classroom.

By embracing the virtuous circle with eSATS, Arizona will serve its K-12 student needs. The global eLearning research community and eLearning enterprises will find Arizona K-12 system a very attractive place to conduct research and product field testing.

This virtuous cycle will accelerate Arizona K-12 eLearning success and provide a model for the rest of the country. We also become the driver for unleashing the global research community to address eLearning based digital curriculum.

Peter Drucker and eLearning ecology

Peter Drucker has died at age 95. From reading his books, hearing him lecture and even a private conversation – I grew to consider him the most creative and insightful business mind of the 20th century. He was viewed as political economist who pioneering social and management theories focused on innovation of big business and nonprofit enterprises. www.nytimes.com/2005/11/12/business/ .

He liked the label social ecologist well before ecology became a household term. My favor saying from Peter Drucker was “There is nothing more practical in business than a good theory.” He also declared in a Lincoln lecture at ASU in 1982: “Over the history of mankind there have been two long term investments that provide a return far above any other. They are fine art, and education.” He may have been influenced by his passion for Oriental art, but viewing the Antiques Road Show – I tend to think he is right.

Since eSATS is advocating education as its investment vehicle for Arizona, we decided that we also needed a theory. Then last year Greg Hickman, of the Center for the Future of Arizona (now with the Rodell Foundation), presented the theory of Human Ecology of the K-12 student to the Governor’s Council for Innovation and Technology -- Education Subcommittee. We knew we had found a “good theory” that served our eLearning system design with the student-teacher as the nexus and the State of Arizona as the scope.

For you interested in details, the Human Ecology of education addresses the workings of five sub-systems:

• Microsystem—the student’s family, home, school, peer group, church, immediate neighborhood…are all microsystems;
• Mesosystem – is two or more microsystems linked together. The interaction between home and school will reinforce behaviors within both systems;
• Exosystem— delivers indirect but powerful effects as outside forces. These include board of education, parents work conditions, state academic standards, department of education, employer needs…;
• Macrosystem--includes cultural beliefs, values, attitudes, customs, national government, laws – propagated by the cultural memes and structure of society;
• Chronosystem -- the student is influenced by different systems at different times over the years.

So to Peter Drucker’s social ecology lets integrate human ecology and apply civic entrepreneurship as the grand theory to drive the pragmatic adoption of eLearning within Arizona’s K-12 education.

eLearning System for Arizona Teachers and Students

Hi!

This is the first message on our new blog. We have a short description that we are about and and skeleton outline of our design for transforming K-12 education. We look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers

Ted Kraver

tkraver@qwest.net 602-944-8557(h/o)

Our K-12 initiative - eLearning System for Arizona Teachers and Students (eSATS) - is building support this fall for the upcoming 2006 legislative session. To keep informed you may want a now-and-then email of what’s happening. Just email us at tkraver@qwest.net and we will put you on the list.

Our Elevator Speech:

eSATS is leading the charge to *transform* K-12 Education in Arizona with the first-in-the-nation systematic rollout of eLearning across an entire state!

That means a computer on every desk, in every classroom, in every school.

Before we rollout that physical infrastructure, we need to put in place the intellectual infrastructure that will maximize its effectiveness.

eSATS will transform Arizona from 50th in K-12 education to the one of the top five States in just 10 years!

How about exchanging business cards and make an appointment to meet and discuss?