eLearning and the New Economy

o1/08/07

News Flash: AZ Republic page V6, 1/7/7. Editorial on Managing Arizona’s Growth. “Running Faster Just to Keep Pace” Item # 1 Educating our Kids:

Along with all the funding issues and teacher salary imperatives, we see for the first time “making sure that technology is integrated into the classroom to keep our kids competitive…”

Maybe the eLearning buzz has started and will grow over the year.

New Economy:

Governor Napolitano included capitalizing on the new economy in her acceptance speech at the inauguration last week. Let’s see what this really means for Arizona. In 1999 there was a major planning process by Governor Hull with many hundreds of participants statewide to study the new economy with the Arizona Partnership for the New Economy (APNE).

The final report, January 2001, “An Economy the Works for Everyone” http://www.arizonatele.com/atic/docs/APNE%20Final%20Report%202001.PDF addresses the importance to Arizona’s future and how Arizona can position itself as a leader. Immediate implementation was kicked of by participants in two of the five “hot teams”: eLearning (with Co-Chairs of Gregg Holmes of Cox Communications and Roy Herberger of Thunderbird, AGSIM); and Building Connections (with Co-Chairs of Mary Upchurch AT&T and Sergio Carlos, Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.)

Members of these teams immediately founded the Greater Arizona eLearning Industry Assoc. an economic cluster of eLearning enterprises with combined revenues of $3 billion. GAZEL was soon sanctioned as an official Arizona cluster organization by the Governor’s Strategic Partnership for Economic Development.

Other APNE participants took the Building (broadband telecommunication) Connections challenge to heart. They have been working hard within the Arizona Telecommunications and Information Council and Government Information and Telecommunications Agency to bring cost effective broadband to all of Arizona. Rural and underserved urban schools are expected to be anchor tenants in their communities.

Both GAZEL and ATIC soon realized that the third piece was missing: accelerated adoption of effective eLearning within Arizona’s K-12 classrooms. In 2003 some of these APNE participants spun off once again into a new task team: eLearning System for Arizona’s Teachers and Students (eSATS). This 20 person team has designed the next generation statewide K-12 eLearning system based on teacher-student interaction in the classroom. They had success in garnering legislative support last year and expect a major increase in support for all students this year.

It looks like our Governor and governance-business-education leadership have decided to renew their efforts to put Arizona on the New Economy track. If so, they should be delighted that the eLearning and broadband telecommunications train has left the station with a full head of steam.