An Introduction to Digital Learning: What's New?

Editor's Notes

• #2: 08/01/12
• #5: 08/01/12
• #11: With 30 years of history since the introduction of the personal computer, we have a pretty a good sense now of how it’s changing labor markets.
• #13: Early theory that computers would complement high skilled workers and replace low skilled workers, but more complicated Computers are really good a rules-based tasks Airline check in as an example of rules based task- only a limited set of possibilities, communication ins simple and can be scripted
• #14: This is where humans have a comparative advantage over computers…
• #15: Big decline in routine cognitive: the filing and bookkeeping are being done to a large extent by computers and to a lesser extent work is sent off shore. The cognitive demands of the labor market are greater than at any time in U.S. history.
• #16: Not just job composition that is changing, but the jobs them selves.
• #17: These ideas form the basis of the 21 st century skills movement, which argues that education needs to prepare students for the increasing cognitive demands of the workplace.
• #64: Here’s a simple model of the underlying hypothesis of this conference. As technology innovation increases, “learning,” which we can define as the number of neurons in young brains rearranged for pro-social purposes, goes up. But how does this model change if we introduce our profoundly inequitable educational system.
• #65: One story we could tell is that of Closing Gaps, that the widespread availability of new free and Open technologies available on the Web will disproportionately benefit poor students, especially since affluent student have long had access to expensive proprietary products rendered obsolete by free tools.
• #66: Another story we could tell is of “Rising Tides” from the John Rawls inspired phrase a “Rising Tide Lifts All Boats.” Even though so many new technologies are free, we might assume that affluent schools have more human, social, and financial capital to take advantage of these innovations.
• #67: I’ve spent a good part of the last five years trying decide which of these models best represents reality. So I want to share with a few findings of a study that I conducted on how one class of freely-available Web 2.0 tools, wikis, are used in schools.
• #68: I took a random sample of U.S., K-12 wikis from a population of nearly 200,000 publicly viewable education related wikis, and my team read every change on every page on every one of 255 wikis used in U.S., K-12 public schools. Here’s what we found. First we found more wikis created in affluent schools than we should have. 60% of U.S. public schools are designated as Title I schools, serving large proportions of low income families. Only 40% of wikis are created in Title I schools.
• #69: We measured opportunities that wikis provide for 21 st century skill development, and using these measures, we classified wikis in four categories, failed wikis, teacher-centered content delivery devices without student interaction, individual student-owned wikis, and collaborative student-owned wikis.
• #70: We found that wikis created in low-income schools were significantly more likely to fail or otherwise serve no possible purpose for students. By contrast wikis created in affluent schools were much more likely to foster student involved and the development of 21 st century skills.
• #71: Moreover, wikis created in Title I schools typically persisted about 6 days. Wikis created in affluent schools persisted 33 days. So freely-available wikis are more likely to be created in affluent schools, and those wikis are more likely to provide meaningful learning opportunities to students and persist longer. The availability of free wikis disproportionately benefits the already-advantaged.
• #72: Until we have further studies, we won’t know for certain whether wikis are somehow unique, but my strong hunch is the patterns that I found with wikis would be found with Khan Academy videos or any other free tool or resource on the web.
• #73: I think the evidence suggests that most likely scenario happening in our schools is that of a Rising Tide, where technology innovation, nearly every new free Web tool and platform, accelerates the deep inequalities in our educational system.
• #74: Ask teachers which classes they use technology with and a troubling majority will tell you that they pour their creative energies into designing technology opportunities for their most high achieving students, and we know that tracking in honors and AP classes reproduces social inequalities.
• #75: What we need are teachers and districts and developers who pour their creative energies into designing for the margins, for the students who need us the most—like the partnership between CK-12 and the Leadership Public Schools to design Open Textbooks that embed academic language support for ELL students in their textbooks for math and science. Its not a coincidence that the highest achieving school systems in the world have a fundamental commitment to equity, because designs for the margins ultimately benefit all students.