There are no silver bullets in education reform. No one solution will help lift schools in America out of the 20th Century, harness the power of technology, erase the achievement gap and ensure that a quality education can be attained by every single child. Like in so many parts of life and politics, meaningful change is the fruit of wide-ranging thought and comprehensive work.
At Digital Learning Now! we believe in the power of a high quality digital learning environment to prepare students with the knowledge and skills to succeed in college and careers. We know that achieving a classroom of the future takes more than handing each child a tablet computer or ensuring that every school has high speed broadband access. Those are just parts of the recipe for digital success. When tools or ingredients are confused for the goal, success is hindered and real fundamental improvement in the classroom cannot happen.
Technology must be seamlessly and thoughtfully integrated into the learning experience of students if teachers are to be truly empowered and the benefits of digital learning harnessed.
Over the last week, the National Summit on Education Reform hosted a thoughtful and substantive discussion necessary to truly advance the interests of students and not just layer new technology over broken systems. Legislators from across the world came together, shared best practices and dug into the details of successful digital learning policy. A recap will come, but we wanted to highlight some of this type of deeper thinking about education reform in a must-read paper from our friends at AEI.
E-Rate, Education Technology and School Reform tackles the question of why the hope of technology seems to fall short in delivering on its promise. With the release of Navigating the Digital Shift: Implementation Strategies for Blended and Online Learning and our continued efforts to encourage meaningful reform of the E-rate program, AEI’s paper comes at the perfect time to continue and focus the conversation.
It would only be too easy for policymakers to focus on the relatively uncontroversial task of reforming E-Rate and fall into the facile trap of suggesting that better Internet access and technology will by themselves deliver better learning. The truth is, as two of us argue in our new book Breakthrough Leadership in the Digital Age, technology cannot and will not drive meaningful change by itself.
Digging into the history of technology in the classroom and the role of the book in the first “flipped classroom,” the paper argues that “technology can make learning solutions more affordable, reliable, available, customizable, and data-rich.” This piece explores the true lessons of Mark Edwards and Mooresville and offers sensible policy recommendations to build off E-rate reform. Mirroring many of the 10 Elements of High Quality Digital Learning, AEI pushes for states to “encourage technology-enabled reinvention of schools by loosening seat-time requirements and online-learning restrictions, revisiting school spending rules, relaxing teacher evaluation policies, and supporting innovative school models.”
Digital learning offers a new way to deliver the learning experience, but unless implementation is handled carefully and culture receives as much attention as devices, policy change will struggle to leave a mark on the chalkboard. We agree with AEI that reforming E-rate is a logical and necessary first step, but policy reform cannot stop with connecting schools to high speed internet. If we want to replicate the success of Mooresville in other school districts, there needs to be a change in how we approach technology.
Take advantage of available resources. Download Navigating the Digital Shift: Implementation Strategies for Blended and Online Learning, check out the work done by organizations like Project Red as they help ensure that districts are using technology wisely and receiving the maximum return on their investment. This is the hard work that begins before the first tablet is ever unwrapped, it continues through budget cycles and changes in leadership, and it is the only way to ensure that schools are being connected to more than just high speed internet.
Our latest video, Funding the Shift to Digital Learning, covers this broader view of technology in the classroom. Covering competency-based learning and course access, Mooresville, and Florida Virtual School, the video keeps the focus on enabling students and treats technology as one ingredient in the recipe of educational success.