eLearning a Leapfrog?

In January 8th 2006 Sunday’s Arizona Republic Viewpoints our Mary Jo Waits and Jon Talton teamed up to talk about frogs, Leapfrog in particular. And I thought the AZ state animal was the Horney Toad!

“Outthinking and jumping way ahead of competition vital to Arizona’s future” was the tag line.

They circled around eLearning but never quite identified it as a recommended Leapfrog for Arizona. Bill Gates was mentioned as saying that you can’t teach kids about today’s companies on a 50 year old mainframe. Their quintessential leapfrogger was picture of young Steve Jobs holding an Apple II. Their five “Big O’s”: bio, nano, info, cogno and condo hinted at the intersection of digital curriculum and systems (info) and the cognitive process of teaching and learning (cogno).

Leapfroggers pick their shots. They are often followers of the “first movers” by building on a pioneer’s idea and initial experience by grafting on their own ideas. Leapfrog players pursue big jumps in performance with single minded focus.

Every state, district and school has “pioneered” in using digital technology to support education. No state and less that 1% of the schools have adopted the eLearning systems to leapfrog K-12 learning out of the 100 year old legacy education design. The research and meta-studies from many sources show the “big jump” in academic performance is for the C student to learn at a B student level, and the F student graduates with a C.

eSATS certainly has a “single minded focus“ and we are proud of it. “Outthinking” the rest of the “competition” we “picked our shot” in the early 1990’s. Strong support has been building over the past two year. This Arizona leapfrog has left the ground and while the rest of the 49 states are still enjoying their pond.