Lead with Digital Curriculum

Eb60128LeadWithDigitalCurriculum

Most current K-12 state initiatives are still focused on the computer or online aspects of eLearning. Texas tried for $400 million for computers but failed. Minnesota will use $55 million for computers and software from Microsoft court settlement. Florida Governor Buss proposes $180 million ($45 per student) for laptops for all teachers (164,000) to help recruit and retain.

Over the next ten years computers and connectivity will ramp power and plummet in price. A most of student and teacher homes will have a computer for online learning. Teacher education and professional development is well understood. The critical remaining factor to delivering a K-12 eLearning solution to every Arizona student is digital curriculum. That is why the Digital Curriculum Institute is the first item in Senate Bill 1512.

Digital curriculum for early grades reading and math, and algebra and physics is pretty good, and there are lots of choices. But there are over 130 courses within ten major academic standards groupings of the full K-12 curriculum. For many courses the accessible eLearning offerings are less than satisfactory.

For the next ten years Arizona needs to be currently cognizant of what digital curriculum is available. Not only aware but be able to sort it into the “good, not so good, bad and ugly” categories with data supported decisions. Here is where the Digital Curriculum Institute comes into play.

Digital Curriculum Institute- would be a statewide K-12 support organization within our state university system that will:

1. Research: Survey all sources of existing digital curriculum. Determine which have educational effectiveness for specific courses and grade levels and which align with Arizona academic standards.

2. Provide Knowledge Access with a web portal for the data and knowledge base to support acquisition of digital curriculum to school administrators, staff, teachers and parents to support their decision.

3. Support: Develop and field a cadre of specially trained education technologists who work as on site agents with school administrators, staff, mentors, teachers and parents.

If Arizona is to lead this K-12 transformation two more actions are needed: focused advocacy and mapping the future.

DCI leadership will target K-12 courses that are inadequately supported by current digital curriculum. They will not only specify requirements but apply advocacy pressure to and form alliances with sources to accelerate delivery of effective digital curriculum for all of Arizona K-12 education.

There will also be great changes in the digital curriculum over the next ten years. Arizona will stay in the forefront by track emerging technology and methods in many eLearning areas. Current wisdom (The Horizon Report 2006) suggests the following will improve academic performance will above the current eLearning levels:

1. Cooperative learning through social computing;
2. Personal broadcasting (text-audio-video) for sharing media;
3. Portable access devices such as iPods and cell phones;
4. Education gaming for engagement, comprehension and retention;
5. Augmented reality and enhanced visualization for 3-dimensional experience to transform understanding.

The strategy is to lead with digital curriculum and complete the system with eLearning savvy teachers, awesome computers and bandwidth, many layered data and decision systems and professional technical support.

Others will surge in the short run, but guess who the leader will be in the long run?