Soar

An Introductory Parable
to
SOAR: Students Own All Resources
in a Knowledge Worker-model
Digital Nervous School System

Erika, a 5th grade student has just put down "The Giver", by Lois Lowry and logs into
http://digitalclassrooms.com to take the content test online. After clicking the submit button, her
web-based results are updated to her digital individualized education plan (DIEP). Erika and her
support team (i.e., parents, teachers, administrators, researchers) have 24X7 password-protected
access to her progress. Erika's teacher, Mr. Donahue, accesses her DIEP to guide her next steps. He
sees that she is ready to present a synopsis of the story to the class. She practices the presentation
with him one-on-one until they feel confident that it will be a good one. Erika invites her father to
attend the presentation and Ms. Wilson, the building principal, shows up as well. Her speech goes
well and everyone in the team gives her a round of applause.

By the way, Erika is a homeschool student from Montana, her father is working on an jack-up oil rig
in the Persian Gulf, Mr. Donahue is a online educator living on the beach in México, Ms. Wilson
works in an inner city elementary school that has partnered with digitalclassrooms to improve the
school literacy program and we forgot to tell you that she invited Ms. Lowry, who also logged on to
see her book being presented by Erika as well.

SOAR:
Student Ownership of All Resources
in a Knowledge Worker-model
Digital Nervous School System

by

Dr. Jorge Olaf Nelson

ABSTRACT

Business has, historically, been ‗The Model‘ for many educational reforms. To increase student
achievement schools today must adopt best practice from the global business leaders and leverage
the related technology that drives these successful companies into the school community.

Challenge

Moving from the current teacher/student relationship as Boss/Task Worker business model
(circa 1900‘s) where you will find today bored students, burned out teachers, drugs, bells, 40
minute class periods, desks in neat rows, violence, and increasing amounts of negative chaotic
activities to the Educational Consultant/Knowledge Worker business model (2000) found at
leading companies where you will observe flow, choice, personal responsibility, milestones,
multimedia assets, spontaneous human interaction with knowledge resources is a logical direction
to insure that students achieve what is desired from a professional standpoint as well as from a
humanistic approach to education.

Four Points to Ponder

The purpose of SOAR is to increase student achievement through tailoring individual student interest
to local, state, national and global education standards and benchmarks integrated in a core curriculum
by leveraging existing computer applications into the classroom.

This new structural framework, using a Digital Nervous School System in school communities, is to
include:

1. Student as Knowledge Worker, who creates and follows her to-do list seamlessly interwoven
with required standards and mandates in an integrated core curriculum.

2. Teacher as Educational Consultant, who acts as a ‗Guide by the Side‘, not a ‗Sage on the Stage‘;
ready to assist and encourage students individually and in teams to achieve milestones with
success.

3. An integrated digital toolset that seamlessly connects to disparate document-storage learning
systems for Just-In-Time/Speed-of-Thought (JIT/SOT) educational processes.

4. JIT/SOT student assessment which lets her, the teacher, the administration and her
parents know where, on a continuum, is she today in the quest for learning and how much
more does she have to do so she can plan her calendar and to-do list according.

Chapter 1

THE PROBLEM: HOW TO INCREASE STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT?

Internet: The Future of Business is Now

The Internet has completely taken the entire Information Technology (IT) world by storm. IT
businesses are scrambling to keep up. Paranoia in Silicon Valley and Redmond has been the operative
word in do-or-die revolutionary improvements in the IT industry. The companies that have adopted
the new philosophy of Web-based commerce, and all that it entails, have grown as never before in the
history of mankind. Those that have not, well . . . they are not here anymore.

The Internet is fundamentally changing the way consumers and businesses communicate, obtain and
share information, purchase goods and services, and transact business, and is experiencing spectacular
growth. (Bear Stearns, p. 1, 1999)

The global economy is following suit and Web-based ‗e-commerce‘ is changing how we work and live.

A Commerce Department study to be released today concludes that the digital world is driving the
nation’s economic growth, holding down its inflation rate and transforming the American workplace.
(S. Page, p. 1, 1999)

These changes have created new expectations in how communications should happen. Higher
expectations create new opportunities for growth of the Web-based lifestyle that is invading almost
every facet of life in corporate America. With such massive growth comes ‗growing pains‘, which are
sure to increase with the growth. The have‘s and the have-not‘s will be bi-polarized as never before.

Businesses are increasingly using the Internet for mission critical applications such as sales, marketing,
customer service, and project coordination. The Web is becoming an essential tool for business travelers.
As business people grow accustomed to the high-speed access that they have at work through high-speed
connections, they are seeking similar high-speed access at home or while traveling. (Henry & Waldorf,
p. 17, 1999)

A revolution is in progress and the chaos is rippling the very fabric of society. Who knows what next
improvement in technology will affect you and I, today, tomorrow and in the future? But one thing is
for certain; our children will be more affected than us as we struggle to educate them for survival in
this changing world.

Internet: The Future of Education is Now

Already the Web is impacting education in positive ways never dreamed of only a couple of years ago:

 Internet traffic leading to educational web sites has increased from March 1999 to May 1999
by 105%, leading all other web sites in percentage of traffic increases (J. Kornblum, 1999).

 School districts are adopting Internet-based communications to bring parents closer to the
school community.

School districts are using technology to promote home-school communication. Schools now make it
possible for parents to check their child’s grades, verify absences and communicate with teachers . . . all
from their personal computers. (K. J. Amundsen, 1999)

 University professors are embracing the Web-style of instructional delivery to the point of not
even showing up for class.

This fall, [James] Norwood [University of Minnesota drama teacher] will abandon mass lectures for
the tap of computer keys, promising “one-on-one” digital interaction with perhaps as many as 200
undergrads. He will ask questions, critique papers and post lectures over the Internet. (D. Brauer,
1999)

 Online degree programs are becoming so popular that financial aid funds have been
earmarked for 118 institutions in 17 states under the Distance Education Demonstration Program,
a pilot program approved last year after years of aid restrictions for non-traditional programs
(Associated Press, 1999)

 Teachers have a seemingly infinite number of resources to choose from when designing lesson
plans.

Five years ago Kent launched it’s “Teacher’s Toolbox”, an online set of resources to help teachers in
their classrooms and their careers. Today, the toolbox contains scores of topics, from staff development
programs to online attendance and grading at secondary schools. Activity calendars, personnel forms,
class rosters, lunch menus, student portfolios, district policies, and state learning objectives are available
with a few keystrokes. Lesson plans developed by Kent teachers are tailored to the state learning goals,
district textbook adoptions and local topics of interest. (D. Folkerts, p. 11, 1999)

 Even intelligent life elsewhere cannot escape the reach of the Internet as SETI is recruiting
half a million students worldwide to download a screen-saver like program that will set up a data-

gathering experiment on their PC‘s to help crunch numbers downloaded from the Arecibo radio
telescope in Puerto Rico and automatically return results to SETI@home. E.T., Phone home? (O.
Port, 1999)

Caveats for the Classroom

With the chaos of changes in communication come other distractions that are not so positive as so
many of the Web wonders available. Pornography, hate crimes, blueprints for weapons of Mutually
Assured Destruction, ethnic cleansing, militant hacking, and other dangerous sites are there for all to
see, free for the picking and uncensored. The issue of Internet filtering grows with usage of Internet
in schools.

All U.S. schools from kindergarten to 12th grade can get free Internet filtering software as a plan to
encourage participation in a two-year Yankelovich study of children’s Internet use, Websense
announced Tuesday at the National Educational Computing Conference. (USA Today, 1999)

In schools and homes throughout the nation, students are so distracted by the wealth of information
on the Internet as well as from outside pressures (e.g., video games, computer simulations, sports,
drugs, violence, sex, divorce, et al.) that this ‗fire hose‘ of information overload keeps many of them
from actively engaging in the learning process.

Teen-agers . . . have so many competing obligations that sometimes the most magnanimous impulses are
the first things to toss aside. (R. M. Henig, 1999)

We hear the cry for educational reform over and over, countless measures are taken, research findings
are reported, new strategies implemented and yet, schools are still being held accountable for most of
the nation‘s ills. Mention the word ‗Columbine‘ and you immediately understand, shuddering in the
realization that yes, Virginia, it can happen in your backyard. So who is to blame?

One group to blame is the parents. But, the reality is that many times help for children at risk is
seemingly not there, with both parents working, or single parents making do, or no parents at all there
to assist in the learning processes for academic and life skills.

Researchers say children are raising themselves; they are alone after school when the risky behaviors
surface. (K. Dwyer, 1999)

Or should we blame the kids? Where the finger pointing goes, so goes changes in legislation to keep
the votes coming in.

Gov. Mike Foster [of Louisiana] on Tuesday signed the nation’s first state law requiring pupils to
address teachers as “ma’am” or “sir” or use the appropriate title of Mr., Miss, Ms. or Mrs. The
Republican governor and other politicians said the law will help restore respect in the classroom.
(Chicago Tribune, 1999)

Or, blame the schools? The new voucher plans in the state legislatures are defining a chaotic change
that will surely ripple the fabric in public education nationwide for decades to come. And the fabric of
society ripples on . . .

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed legislation Monday making the state the first in the nation to offer a
statewide program of vouchers to help parents of students in failing schools offset the cost of private
education. (Reuters, 1999)

Or, forget the whole thing and pull the kids out of school all together? Forget all of the educational
research, academic standards, socialization of students, and let each family do it their own way – a
rugged individualist approach to preparing children for their future.

The U.S. Department of Education estimates that more than a million students in the United States
are taught at home. There are likely to be a million different ways these students are taught, experts
suggest, depending on the reasons their parents decided to homeschool. (Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development, 1999)

Follow the Leader (i.e., Don‘t Blame and Don‘t Boss)

Blaming others for our ills and a failing educational system is one way to deal with the issue of change.
But the purpose of this white paper is to deliver an answer to The Burning Question: How do we
increase student achievement in a New World of chaotic change? Why, follow the best practices of the
leaders in business and industry, of course!

About six years ago, I remember watching a televised educational conference featuring Dr. W.
Edwards Deming, broadcasted live from his hospital bed (he died shortly after). At one point during
the conference Deming, an evangelist for doing away with the ‗Normal Curve‘ grading system we all
know and grew up with, was asked how would we know how students were doing if we didn‘t ‗grade‘
them with report cards, tests, quizzes, etc? In his inimitable ‗Grumpy Old Man‘ style, he glared out at
the camera with a scowl on his face and blurted out two words I will never forget: ―ASK THEM!‖

It seemed a simplistic answer at first . . . but Deming, the prime mover of the post-WWII Japanese
industrial miracle, based his philosophy on human nature as well as Statistical Process Control (SPC)
and wrote a book, Out of the Crisis, telling everyone how to do it (Deming, 1986). People know how

well they are doing because they are the ones who ‗do the doing‘. And, if they have the proper data,
they will improve the processes that will lead to an increase in product and service quality. One SPC
evangelist posted this review on the Amazon.com review section of Deming‘s book:

Statistical Process Control is for management and educators. Anyone that has to judge others by how
well they perform on the job or in the classroom must read this book. Statistical Process Control and
the Deming philosophy should be applied in first grade elementary schools and should be taught after
fifth grade. Could improve the processes of education if tackled as a system. Could supply a quality
product (your child) with evidence of statistical control charts at minimum cost within minimum time.
Makes the 70, 80, 90 grading system obsolete. Exposes the inefficiencies of Western Type
Management. Boosts your moral if oppressed by inefficient management. (cfranz@accucomm.net,
1999)

Trusting students to do the right thing may seem to be a ‗radical‘ notion and many will feel that kids
do not know what is best for them. I argue that students will learn what we want them to learn and, at
the same time, what they want to learn, because the knowledge and understanding they need to
succeed in life is common for both ‗them‘ and ‗us‘. Everyone wants to succeed. If we allow students to
experience small steps of success on a daily, hourly, and now Speed-of-Thought rate they will follow
through and do it willingly. The following is an explanation of what needs to be done so the students
in our schools have the opportunity to receive such an educational experience. Let‘s give our children a
piece of the action, the proper toolset to get the job done, and step out of their way.

SOAR and Just-in-Time/Speed-of-Thought Educational Processes

With the confluence of high-speed information access, screaming CPU speeds to crunch the available
data and massive storage capabilities to keep the desirable, digital results at hand comes a never-before-
seen approach to education. This approach can be defined as Student Ownership of All Resources (SOAR)
learning. SOAR learning is where students access necessary academic and co-curricular content in the
moment, not having to wait for the teacher‘s delivery to the class, nor for other students to ‗catch up‘
to their peer group.

A student engaged in SOAR learning will use a digital toolset to access her own, personalized set of
curriculum standards described in her Digital Individualized Education Plan (DIEP). The DIEP is based
on milestones, described in step-by-step objectives, derived from her vision (i.e., where she wants to
go today, tomorrow and throughout her educational career) in conjunction with the consensus of her
parents, her teachers and the school administration, and following the appropriate legislative and
accreditation standards for graduation requirements.

The immediacy of the curricular content access is a Just-in-Time (JIT) approach to instructional delivery,
where the student will have instantaneous access to the ‗material‘ of education defined in the SMC.
The combination of Just-in-Time instructional delivery with Speed-of-Thought (SOT) need-to-know inquiry
methods will be the fundamental driving force in increasing the amount of flow (Csikszentmihalyi,
1991) she will experience in the classroom. Increases in flow will reinforce her active engagement in
the lessons being learned, and lessen any distractions from the SMC milestones pending in that
moment.

You have heard about how a musician loses herself in her music, how a painter becomes one with the
process of painting. In work, sport, conversation or hobby, you have experienced, yourself, the
suspension of time, the freedom of complete absorption in activity. This is "flow," an experience that is
at once demanding and rewarding--an experience that M. Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates is one of the
most enjoyable and valuable experiences a person can have. (religion-and-spirituality@amazon.com,
1999)

MS OFFICE/Internet Explorer as SOAR Toolset

The SOAR approach for Knowledge Worker-type students will need an adaptation of an available
toolset that exists in leading business and industry today: MS OFFICE combined with Internet
Explorer. The latest version of this powerful and commonly available (over 100 million licensed Office
users worldwide) toolset has experts predicting more improvements in how Knowledge Workers will
do business.

With Office 2000, we are at the dawning of what I would characterize as the third generation of tools
for knowledge workers . . . Office 2000 unleashes the power of the Web work style, the most efficient
way to work with business information and collaborate with other workers. (Ballmer, p. 8, 1999)

These current Knowledge Worker tools, which offer the seamless confluence of information access
and organization, will need to be adapted to deliver SOAR educational processes. Then, children will
be engaged to create projects and solve problems on-the-fly, and therefore, will achieve personal goals
as well as meeting global standards that are expected and needed to survive today. Not by keeping
them ‗on task‘ as the Old World Boss-type teachers would try to control them through manipulation
and reward systems, but by keeping them ‗flowing‘ as New World Educational Consultant-type
teachers will help to facilitate the process as the students learn on-the-fly – exactly what they want and
exactly when they want it.

For the SOAR educational processes to exist, Gates‘ (1999) twelve key steps to creating a Digital
Nervous System have been used here as a structural framework for describing a variation on the
theme, called the Digital Nervous School System.

THE SOLUTION: SOAR

A Twelve-Step Program to Educational Reform

In Gates‘ (1999) blueprint for preparing businesses for the future, he outlines twelve key steps in
building the Digital Nervous System (DNS) for business solutions. The following are adapted versions
of Gates‘ original twelve steps for building a DNS designed for school systems:

1. Insist that communication flow through the school community over e-mail so that
shareholders (i.e., students, parents, teachers, and administration) can act on news with reflex-like
speed.

2. Study student achievement and interest data online to find patterns and share insights easily.
Understand overall student trends and personalize instruction for individual students.

3. Use PC‘s for student performance analysis, and shift teachers into high-level thinking work
about coherent curriculum, and improved lessons designed to increase student achievement.

4. Use digital tools to create cross-departmental/cross-grade level virtual teams that can share
knowledge and build on each other‘s ideas in real time, worldwide. Use digital systems to capture
student academic achievement for use by the shareholders, when authorized.

5. Convert every paper process to a digital process, eliminating administrative bottlenecks and
freeing shareholders for more important tasks.

6. Use digital tools to eliminate single-task jobs or change them into value-added jobs that use the
skill of a knowledge worker.

7. Create a digital feedback loop to improve the efficiency of physical processes and improve the
quality of educational delivery and student achievement assessment. Every authorized shareholder
should be able to easily track all of the key achievement indicators.

8. Use digital systems to route complaints immediately to the shareholders who can improve the
educational delivery.

9. Use digital communication to redefine the vision and the boundaries around the school
community. Become larger and more substantial or smaller and more intimate as the student
population situation warrants.

10. Trade information for time. Decrease systemic lags in knowledge-of-results time by using
digital transactions with all shareholders, and transform every lesson into Just-in-Time delivery.

11. Use digital delivery of knowledge-of-results to eliminate the teacher from the student self-
assessment of achievement. Teachers use digital tools to add value to student achievement.

12. Use digital tools to help students solve problems for themselves, and reserve more personal
contact to respond to complex, high-value student needs.

A few lighthouse school districts are tapping in to the current level of technology, much like the
business world and the results are predictably positive. At New York State's Hilton Central School
District, a Digital Nervous System has been implemented and communication has increased
dramatically. Steve Ayers, Director of Business Operations for the Hilton Central School District
recently commented on how things are going with their DNS in place.

"If there was one single payoff we were looking for, particularly in our first year of implementation,
communication was it," Ayers says. "We feel that, with judicious use of these sorts of communications
tools, the frequency of meetings and the quality of meetings that we hold among staff members will
improve significantly." (Microsoft, 1999)
Ayers goes on to comment on how MS OFFICE tools are being used all over the district, due to the
newly installed DNS.

"Teachers and students are using the Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint® [presentation graphics
program] and Microsoft Excel [spreadsheet] tools everywhere," Ayers says. "Lessons that were two-
dimensional and chalk-and-blackboard in the past are now delivered with all the power and effect that
color and motion and graphics have. Isolating the benefits that are tied to technology versus other school
improvement initiatives will be a challenge, but I certainly expect it will lead to an improvement on test
score data." (Microsoft, 1999)

DNSS: One Step Further with Standards

A Digital Nervous System is a great starting point for schools to increase communications and
empower shareholders to continually improve the educational processes. A Digital Nervous School
System (DNSS) is a customized variation on a theme.

The major difference between a DNS and a DNSS is in the integration of standards. A Digital Nervous
School System (DNSS) takes the concept one step further with the integration of sets of academic and
co-curricular standards to insure that all students receive the required information necessary, through
the metaphor of a Student Digital Dashboard, for fulfillment of graduation requirements.

Student Digital Dashboard

Schools are a unique, service-oriented ‗business‘ where the ‗product‘ of student achievement is
measured traditionally by homework grades, report cards, tests, quizzes, standardized achievement and
aptitude tests--all of which have lag time inherently built in to the processes.

Students who are engaged in a SOAR program, built on the DNSS infrastructure, will have the
opportunity of knowing, JIT, what educational standard they are working towards in each academic
and co-curricular content area, how far have they come in achieving that standard, and how much
more they have to do to complete the standard in question. Picture a Student Digital Dashboard (SDD),
where students are in touch with what standards they have to master, when those standards are to be
mastered, and how far they have come in mastering said standards.

The SDD will allow for detailed analysis of exactly where the student is in regard to the milestones
pending. This accuracy and availability of pertinent information stems from the DNSS responding,
through the SDD, to shareholder needs at the Speed-of-Thought.

A Day in the Life of SOAR Students

Looking at the SDD we can see that this student, let‘s call her Maja, has her daily schedule pretty much
set as she logs on at home, before leaving for school. Maja can see that her homeroom/Math teacher,
Mr. Smith, has posted suggested Internet resources for her lesson for the day on her schedule, as have
Ms. Cortez and Ms. Gardon for Science and English. She is going to have lunch with Susie and Min
Yu in the courtyard and will order her lunch in homeroom (automatically debiting her parent‘s school
account at the business office) to be prepared fresh in the cafeteria before hand so she can pick it up

JIT. Maja has joined the skunkworks team who are collaborating with students in Anaco, Venezuela at
an international school there to study the Venezuela Rainforest and she has a 2:30 real-time video
conference to report back to Anaco her findings as well as download their‘s. She also is going to band
after school and will print up the new piece of sheet music her band teacher has left for her on the
schedule.

Maja has an inbox of several categories listing her daily messages and contact resources, in house and
throughout the world. Since she did her ‗homework‘ last night she has cleared her inbox of all
messages and starts fresh this morning, except . . .

On Maja‘s SDD she has a to-do list of her own set of standards that are in various stages of mastery.
One of the standards, Language Standard 7.3.22, has not been completed by the milestone she has set-
up. An automatic reminder popped up to tell Maja that she is ‗behind‘ in her completion date. An e-
mail was automatically sent to her parents notifying them about the situation. Her Language teacher
has posted a bright red ―!‖ message in her to-do list, also reminding her about this situation. We can‘t
tell from this situation why Maja is behind, but we can be assured that all shareholders know about it,
and have known about it since the very first moment, at the Speed-of-Thought, when Maja missed that
desired milestone. This ‗early warning‘ system helps her, her teachers, the administration and her
parents know that something is amiss. Maja might want to reschedule her classes today to finish
Language Standard 7.3.22 because when she gets home her parents will want to talk to her, if they
haven‘t already emailed her already. And the building principal, who logged on at 5:30 am from his
cellular connection in the car, on the way to work, saw Maja‘s SDD results (automatically emailed to
him as well as the teacher when the milestone was passed by unmastered) has already fired off an email
to the Language teacher, asking him if he needs help with Maja‘s milestone completion issue.

At the bottom right hand corner of Maja‘s SDD we can see the 9th grade 1999/2000 school standards.
This link takes all shareholders immediately to the entire educational program that Maja is working on
right now. This program has been developed, edited and published in Maja‘s Digital Individualized
Education Plan.

Digital Individualized Education Plan

As the SDD/DNSS is used throughout the school, by all the shareholders, improvements will happen
because all shareholders will know exactly how students are achieving.

The question of what set of standards are to be used is answered in the Digital Individualized Education
Plan (DIEP) process. In SOAR learning, with the teacher/student relationship changing by a more
efficient method of instructional delivery, value-added time will be available to custom-tailor a DIEP
for each student, no matter what ability level or talents/differences they exhibit. Paper IEP‘s have
been, traditionally, reserved for only ‗Special Needs‘ students, creating mountains of bureaucracy and
consumes huge amounts of time and money in the selection process. I don‘t know about you . . . but
my kids are special, if not only to me.

The DIEP is a digital reverse engineering process of the results of what the child will receive along the
educational path towards graduation. This process defines in detail the desired goals and objectives
that meet all mandated standards by means of a contractual agreement directly tied to a scope and
sequence of curriculum content areas supporting those desired outcomes. The process takes into
account differences in future interests after secondary school: technical or community college, Ivy
League or state universities, direct-to-work programs, travel, etc.

For example, Maja, along with her parents, regularly meet with the teachers and guidance counselors--
in person the first time and increasingly online thereafter--to go over interest survey data sets that she
has completed online, before the DIEP meetings. This data set from the digital survey questionnaire
instrument indicates what her interests currently are and points to the set of standards and milestones
necessary to achieve the goals derived from the interests.

Maja‘s DIEP, that she is successfully following right now (except for the Language issue), has been
tailored to meet her goal after graduation, with the blessing of her parents, of studying music at the
Julliard School in New York City. Maja‘s interests were noted and she met face-to-face with her
parents and teachers and guidance counselors to talk about, plan, and publish a set of standards that is
designed to exceed all of the entrance requirements for matriculation at Julliard. There are no
guarantees that she will be accepted, because she has to pass a live audition as well as meet the other
standards, but she has a good handle on what it takes to enter the school.

Susie and Min Yu, Maja‘s friends, on the other hand, have other goals that have been addressed in
their DIEP‘s. Susie wants to become a registered nurse and her DIEP reflects a more technical, direct-
to-work group of curriculum content standards that exceed the minimum requirements for entrance
into a local community college close to her parents, for she does not want to leave town or get a liberal
arts degree. Her personalized program is as challenging than Maja‘s, but in other areas of interest. She

does not attend the skunkworks or band classes as she leaves school early and works as a ‗candy
striper‘ to learn more about nursing through volunteering at the local hospital. Since she leaves school
early she works at home on her elective nursing survey courses, through her Internet connection to the
DNSS. After graduation she will enter the community college as a sophomore from all of the extra
course she completes in her DIEP in high school.

Min Yu‘s program is designed to exceed the entrance requirements for pre-medicine at a state
university and her standards reflect inclusion of advanced Maths and Sciences (using Advanced
Placement course outlines) as well as SAT preparation courses she will have to master to pass the
muster. Her skunkworks group is involved in an ‗Odyssey of the Mind‘ project that, they hope, will
win at the regional level and take them to the national competition later in the spring. This program
looks great on her transcript to round out her academic experiences with a more creative, ‗outside the
box‘ approach to problem solving. She knows that the state university admissions officers look for
well-rounded candidates for pre-med, not just brainy Math and Science types.

As Maja, Susie and Min Yu develop physically, emotionally, socially and intellectually, their interests
will probably evolve and the set of standards they have previously been using might no longer be
appropriate for desired outcomes. With this in mind the standards database automatically integrates
the already-mastered standards with the newly desired direction and updates the DIEP‘s at Speed-of-
Thought.

Less Lag Time, More Learning Time

Today most students have to wait until the teacher ‗grades‘ the quizzes and tests, or returns homework
maybe on the next day, maybe much later or never at all. And yet, since the ‘60‘s (Hunter, 1967)
educational research has reported that knowledge of results is a leading indicator of increasing student
achievement. As students achieve, the opportunities increase because they know more than before.
Therefore, the content should ‗evolve‘ around them at Speed-of-Thought so the curriculum can ‗keep up‘
with the student, not like now, in most schools, where the students, in traditional classrooms, have to
‗keep up‘ with the curriculum.

Curriculum should be a living, breathing resource in education--a dynamic ‗My Backpack of Resources‘
that supports student interest as well as integrates standards in a logical, organized manner. Textbook
publishers will probably disagree as paper-based books will become obsolete, but the ‗Hippocratic‘
oath for teachers goes something like ―What is best for the children?‖

Skunkworks: Student-Centered/Teacher-Supported Collaborative/Cooperative Learning

What is going to happen in a SOAR learning environment will be the immediate transformation of the
teacher as focal point in the educational process to the student as focal point. The student will be
empowered to take responsibility for their own work and skill sets and they will turn to the teacher for
advice and encouragement. Students will turn to each other in teams as they cooperate/collaborate, in
real time, in the classroom, in the field, at home or from another school altogether anywhere in the
world. Teachers will guide them to develop skunkworks that are independent of the traditional
classroom activities, go off on their own educational journeys, set goals, complete milestones and solve
problems everyday . . . and the results will be earth-shattering for ‗them‘, and for ‗us‘, as well.

Students will not be bored, ‗off task‘ or thinking about everything else but school in a SOAR learning
environment. They will have more rights along with more responsibilities as Knowledge Workers. This
new reality for the student, combined with a coherent, adaptive curriculum, and a digital, dynamic
knowledge of results through Speed-of-Thought assessment tools, will be a major driving force in
changing the nation‘s ills as well as improving the opportunities for continuous improvements for all.

Teachers will be considered Educational Consultants in SOAR learning--experts who ‗arrive‘ JIT to
guide the student to continued success. Consider the teacher a kind of ‗personal trainer‘ for knowledge
work, much like the types who pace the floor at your local health club. You get on a weird-looking
machine, glance down at the myriad maze of buttons and instructions for the first time and wonder
how the new fangled contraption works. Either you, a). just push the buttons to see what happens, b).
lean over and ask the person sweating profusely next to you how this thing works, c). leave the device
to the technically inclined, or d). call over a personal trainer to guide you through the initialization
process. The trainer is usually the last one to get involved in the process because she is in much better
shape than you are and, as we all know, it‘s embarrassing to ask for help. Oh, heck I can figure this
thing out by myself. Kind of like Christmas morning when the last step you take is to read the
instruction manual, after trying over and over to put it together.

Students experience this embarrassing situation everyday in the classroom, but the problem is the
teacher is so busy ‗teaching‘ that the students do not have enough one-on-one contact time to ‗get it‘
the first time. Children end up waiting, distracting others, and the teacher gets frustrated, then mad and
then gets even. ‗Go to the principal‘s office‘! is the final cry for help as teacher makes it through

another day, burned out and ready to throw in the towel and get a ‗real‘ job. Those that can‘t . . teach,
right? In a SOAR school, students work by themselves or in skunkworks until they need help, period.

SOAR teachers, with more time to actually think and read, will form their own skunkworks in cadres
of colleagues, to come up with better solutions to the DNSS, DIEP‘s and, more importantly, more
value-added time for kids. Guiding them to successes when they need a boost. Listening to them when
they have personal problems. Giving them direction when asked. Instructing them when the students
‗just don‘t get it‘. After all, it‘s easy—once you ‗get it‘.

Teachers as Educational Consultants will have the data at their fingertips in Speed-of-Thought to make
field research accessible and a reality in SOAR schools. An ‗EC-centric‘ school will publish findings
and add value to the body of research on a continuous basis. As students are off on their ‗own‘,
working individually and in their collective skunkworks teams, teachers will be also modeling these
behaviors at the same time—modeling appropriate behaviors are another strong indicator for
increasing student achievement (Hunter, 1967).

The old adage that teachers will become obsolete with the advent of the computers still holds no water
in SOAR schools today. If anything, teachers will be more effective consulting as students work in
DIEP‘s where everyone is on a different page at all times.

Teachers will gain immediate respect from students as the relationship changes from Boss/Task
Worker to Educational Consultant/Knowledge Worker and true collaboration exists as they ‗SOAR‘
together. No need for creating new laws to force respect on already-disillusioned children by making
them address adults as ‗ma‘am‘ or ‗sir‘. You can‘t make anyone ‗do‘ anything. So what will the new law
create—more criminals? Will the students who do not acquiesce to the state mandates get fined, go to
the principal‘s office, get thrown out of school, or go directly to jail? The absurdity of such legislation
only reflects how little is known about human nature by the powers that be.

Teachers will be the major influence in the third millennium for our children. Just as they were in the
one-room schoolhouses once scattered all over the nation that raised a generation of literate, respectful
children a few short years ago. Many of today‘s children, whose parents are too busy or not there, who
are attending schools that are ‗failing‘ in the public eye, who are being coerced by politicians who want
to blame everyone else so they are guilt-free and can keep the votes rolling in, need SOAR schools so
they can have true, value-added contact from teachers as both work together, learning side-by-side.

Parents as Partners

SOAR schools will reach out to parents and bring them in, virtually and physically, to the school
community on a Speed-of-Thought using the SDD/DNSS interface to communicate good and bad news.
Traditionally, bad news travels faster than good. A phone call from school usually means that Johnny
is in trouble, again. The report card shows up four or five times a year and then he gets a good lickin‘
for failing math, again. The building principal gets a phone call from home and a meeting is scheduled
a week later. And so it goes… No wonder schools are ‗failing‘ everywhere.

SOAR schools automatically notify all shareholders, JIT at the Speed-of-Thought, through e-mail, voice
mail and NetMeetings, that Johnny is or is not meeting milestones. Everyone involved knows all the
time exactly where Johnny is along the path to graduation, even if he is in first grade! And if the news
is bad there is plenty of time to implement corrective measures on a face-to-face, ear-to-ear, or
keyboard-to-keyboard basis with all shareholders as the need arises.

With this immediacy of knowledge of results comes plenty of time to develop effective strategies for
increasing achievement for every child, no matter where they are on the continuum of their DIEP.

Parents will feel and be part of the educational process in SOAR schools. They will have a direct
impact on the lives of their children, not only in the home but in the school as well. Parents will know
all the time what is happening at school. Homework will be fun and self-rewarding, not the drudgery
most parents and children have to go through to ‗finish the worksheets before dinner‘. No more,
―what did you learn in school today?‖ and the obligatory reply, ―Oh . . . nothing.‖ There will be no
doubt what goes on in the classroom as SOAR learning is transparent, immediate, and clear to all
shareholders all of the time.

Administrators as Senior Program Managers

With the changes in teacher/student relationships in SOAR comes a new definition of the role of the
administrator. Today administrators have ‗failed‘ in schools as well as the teachers and students. They
are overworked, isolated, burned out and constantly worry about job security—especially if the test
scores are not high enough! They deal with so many issues from cops in the halls to union grievances
from cafeteria workers that they have little or no time for their main reason for being: helping teachers
do what is necessary to increase student achievement.

SOAR schools offer a different set of rights and responsibilities for administration in education. The
administrator becomes the instructional leader in the Digital Nervous School System--the ‗CIO‘ in
charge of keeping teachers informed of breakthroughs in technology, checking systemic functions
using student achievement as the ultimate benchmark as well as insuring that the DNSS stays up and
running.

The mission and vision of the SOAR school, with all the systemic functions involved, is ‗tended to‘
and reported by the administrator to the shareholders at the Speed-of-Thought. No more waiting for test
results to come back from the scoring services, no more collecting report cards four times a year and
checking for D‘s and F‘s, no more once or twice a year ‗formal teacher observations‘ of teachers
performing ‗dog-and-pony shows‘ that waste both teachers‘ and administrators‘ precious time. Results
matter and only results.

With the student achievement information available at Speed-of-Thought shareholders know that the
focus of student-centered learning is or is not in tune with their expectations. An administrator can log
onto every teacher‘s classroom folder of student achievement data to see how the students are doing
on a daily basis, and, in the moment, ‗observe‘ every student in the school and their collective and
individual progress everyday along with classroom results from every teacher. When results are not up
to par the administrator is there to help the teacher, student and parents as to possible corrective
measures.

Another benefit of a SOAR school system is in the data management that haunts administrators
constantly with a mobile national population, picking up and moving from state to state at a moment‘s
notice sometimes. Report cards don‘t show up before school starts, children are placed in wrong levels
or not identified as having ‗special needs‘. Time marches on and the students who slip through the
cracks sometimes never ‗re-appear‘, failing or dropping out to do other, ‗more important‘ things.

Students who transfer in from other SOAR schools will bring with them a complete digital transcript
with them, posted on the Web and viewed by any authorized shareholder at the Speed-of-Thought.
Everyone will know where each and every child is in their educational career, what their career plans
are through the DIEP, and all the parent contacts will be automatically updated as soon as they log on
the new SOAR school website. And guidance counselors as well as college admissions officers will
welcome with open arms the free data exchange, not having to wonder about validity of test scores
and missing required courses necessary for entrance admissions procedures.

Library/Media Specialists as IT Manager

It is extremely important in a SOAR environment that the IT infrastructure of the DNSS is seamless,
transparent, online 7 days a week for 24 hrs. every day (7X24), and accessible by all shareholders on a
Speed-of-Thought basis. The whole point of a SOAR-related DNSS is to allow access to All Resources,
period. Therefore, the Librarian/Media Specialist staff need to manage the IT portion of the DNSS so
that no one is cognitively aware of its existence, except that the DNSS works every time, all the time,
and that all resources are there for the asking. Some traditional-style librarians like hoarding and
divvying out information, books, magazines, etc. as if they own these resources. The new SOAR IT
manager will realize and support Student Ownership of All Resources, SOAR, right? With the right
training and full acceptance of the mission and vision of SOAR schools this important issue will be
resolved. If not, the SOAR concept cannot work.

Technical Challenges to SOAR (Student Ownership of All Resources)

It won‘t be easy to develop, but then, the good things never are. A few areas for concern are:

 The development of such a project is labor-intensive, therefore costly.

 The concept has never been modeled before, so it is truly an ‗inventing the wheel‘ venture.

 The risks involved are great, for we are talking about children—our greatest natural resource.

 Many critics will point fingers and blame, as they do at every ‗new thing‘ in educational reform.

 The issue of saving schools is riddled with political footballs, with special interest groups
coming from all sides, because schools are ‗failing‘ society.

 There will follow a natural lag time in positive results in increases in student achievement.

Conclusion: Build It and They Will Learn

Project SOAR (i.e., A Digital Nervous School System, using Student Digital Dashboards, following the
academic and co-curricular standards chosen from the range of integrated databases available and
explicitly defined in Digital Individualized Education Plans) will prove to offer children the power, the

flexibility, the resources and the reason to always achieve at their maximum capacity, at their own rate,
using their own interests to keep it fun and creative.

One final thought: Adapting Gates‘ concept of two dimensional customer data (p. 206, 1999):

1. 1. by aggregating data from student achievement statistics that track trends and
patterns on which to base analysis, planning, and decisions, and

2. 2. collecting detailed information on the individual student,

Project SOAR will provide personalized service—the future of educational delivery . . .
. . . @ THE SPEED OF THOUGHT.

GLOSSARY 1[1]

Digital Individualized Education Plan. A digitally written contract of agreed-upon milestones, broken down into
explicit objectives, based on student and parental needs and desires as well as local, state, national and regional accreditation
agency standards and practices. Reverse engineered to structure, organize and be linked to an individualized scope and
sequence of integrated digital lessons that, if followed, will result in the achievement of educational career goals.

Digital Nervous School System. Digital processes that enable a school community to perceive and react to its
environment, to sense student needs and interests, and to organize timely responses.

Educational Consultant. Teachers whose fundamental task is to facilitate the student access to Speed-of-Thought
curriculum, based on agreed-upon standards and benchmarks as defined in the Digital Individualized Education Plan.

Flow. A state of being when students are fully absorbed in activity during which they lose their sense of time and have
feelings of great satisfaction.

Just-in-Time. A system of curriculum control based on the Japanese kanban system in which information is delivered just
in time for learning. The better the information system between a student and curriculum, the less wait time the student has
to experience, with motivational increases and less discipline issues.

Knowledge Worker. Students whose fundamental task is analyzing and manipulating information. PC systems can turn
students into knowledge workers by giving them better information about the lessons they are learning.

Skunkworks. A team of students that goes 'off task' to learn new concepts, outside of the traditional instructional delivery
techniques (lecture, testing, etc.), following their Digital Individualized Education Plan and learning how to work together on
project/problem-based learning.

Speed-of-Thought. A new benchmark for information access, where data is accessible to a student so she can get what she
needs when she needs it.

Student Digital Dashboard. A real time digital display of past, current and future academic and co-curricular student
achievement.

1[1] Adapted from BUSINESS @ THE SPEED OF THOUGHT (Gates, 1999)

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