Education is probably the area where we have failed to innovate the most. This morning we talked about creating clusters of innovation, bringing in various communities, etc. But before we got there, we talked abit about the problem. I want to frame first the opportunity: we often talk about the competitiveness frame in education, that the US used to be number one, and now we are “falling behind.” The trust is that other countries are passing us by.

The good news is that the myth that you can’t make systemic change quickly is just that, a myth. We are seeing the proof in other countries. The countries who are out performing us now are doing what we did before, but better. They do school, the way we do school; they just do it better. People haven’t reinvented school yet. The reality is that it is going to happen, because it has to happen. It has to happen outside this country because so many countries realized that education is the way to economic prosperity. They can’t build the schools and they can’t train the teachers fast enough to replicate our model. They are going to look for innovation solutions.

Here in the US we have had the luxuary of assuming education spending would go up every year, until we hit our limits. And we’ve realized we have to find new and better ways of doing things. And we don’t need to do it for some of our children, but for all of them. Individuals needs to have real opportunity. Our competitiveness as a nation allows us to bring in people to the knowledge economy.

We have to reinvet what we have been doing because we have to do more with at least the same resources if not less. So how do you do that?

You are in the business every day of figuring out how to have people engage, have fun, and build skills – change their behaviors through games. That’s teaching. Fundamentally that’s what teaching should be. Young people should enjoy the educational process. They should want to achieve not just to get a good grade but because they feel the gut feeling of winning.

We have to figure out how we build things that are dramatically better than the status quo and how we take them to scale. That’s innovation.

Discussion

What do you mean about innovation and improvement with education?

I think about innovation and the work about innovation in education in two ways: first, if you have something that is significantly better than the status quo and you are doing it with a few kids, that’s an invention. If you have something that everyone is doing but it isn’t really working, that isn’t great either. It’s where they come together.

What inititiaves are availabiel for funding?

There’s the Dept of Ed and the programs we run, but we are working to align resources across the administration from us to NASA and the Dept of Defense. For example, we just closed an RFP to solicit proposals to build a game for kids k-3 to better understand STEM.

The fact that many people do not understand basic science harms public discourse and makes them rely on ideologies. Helping people understand science will help us as a country. We want to stop wasting the great talent we have and keep people’s interest in science and math going.

What evidence do we need to influence politicians that games can help extend learning of science beyond schools?

There used to be a focus on setting high levels for evidence in evidenced based policy making. But we are seeing that we need to move more things into the category of moderate to strong, not just very strong, evidence. The reality is, though, that it isn’t how decisions are often made. People and policy is often first influenced by compelling stories.

Some have said that coming decades will bring a game layer to the internet. What are your thoughts?

I think that we have a lot to learn about where gamifying is most helpful, but we are so far from the saturation point that we should push ahead with full speed so we can evaluate what works and what doesn’t and make adjustments. I have no future in being a futurist, but I will say that genie is out of the bottle for people being able to be developers. The long tail is very real. I think the cross section of everyone getting into the development and gaming means we will need to evaluate what is quality and what isn’t.

How do you evaluate organizations that you invest in that develop games to support learning?

We currently don’t have any programs that are games focused. We have games that make it into a search for something that helps a kind of learning, etc. I’m now in the process of trying to build requirements that let many different people apply to participate. Scaleability, cost-effectiveness, capacity, etc. So you can judge any kind of organization and the gaming piece is just how well it fits in.

Big initiatives to big corporations – what can small groups do?

Ready to learn, prior to this year, had 3 or 4 applicants. This year, it had 30. Many of them are small development shops in partnership with small public media stations, etc. Among the top winners there were a couple that were not big players. With that program, the goal is to get syndicated but the opportunity is there for anyone.

For I3, you do have to be in partnership with a school, etc. but anyone can be that other partner. And we do see independent and small groups winning those funds.

What do you think of the 20 Under 20 Fellowship?

I think it’s cool but I don’t know what it proves. You read the bios and you see this really incredible people, but you’ve taken them out of college track and give them resources to see if they can still succeed. I’m not sure that proves a point. The more interesting thing for me is if he was to take a set of folks who had just gotten into community college and see what kind of opportunities it could create for them.

Innovation requires risk and failure, how might we address the bifurcation with that and politic’s focus on safety?

When I leave I will write a book that is called the 100 Things We Do to Make Government Worse. We create systems to mitigate all risk. But what that means is that you’ve created a space where you’re unlikely to fail and you’ve also capped the upside opportunity for dramatic improvement, but youv’e also taken the system and created something that doesn’t let professionals exercise judgement.  When you systematize these things they become formulaic. That said, there are structures within government that can handle risk. And it’s in that context that the expenditures are justified with the upsides. We need more of that so we can attract the kinds of people and resources we need for education that we have for war (ie DARPA).

How can you pursue innovation with games when teachers have the kinds of tests and classroom requirements now?

There’s a myth that the best way to get higher test scores is to do more standard practice on those subjects. Spending more time on the same old thing hasn’t shown to make that impact. When have you ever gone to a great school, not a good school, that wasn’t engaging kids in the school in interesting and well-rounded ways? If in fact we are striving for greatness, we need to get passed that myth and that opens up the door for gaming and more. The current environment is ripe for this to happen. There’s still going to be assessments but hopefully better models. And we can broaden the conversation to talk about having lots of tools to get there. And with limited resources, we will have to find ways to keep kids engaged in school when they aren’t there. Things that can connect home and school with the learning objects are really needed.

Turns out that people on disability insurance who go to college and get degrees, half of them don’t go to work – largely because of expectations. Have you considered using games to change expectations?

The reality is, as a Dept, we have an underdeveloped focus on motivation, confidence, expectation, etc. We don’t spend a lot of resource or research on. Therefore, a sub-portion of the nalsted is a smaller portion of nothing. Where we see the opportunity is to leverage games as a way to reach a broader spectrum of things beyond just the education. I think we will see a lot more of it.

Learning outside the classroom, what’s your opinion of games that support tangential learning?

I can’t give you an answer in my job, but I can as a dad: I love it. I had one of the best educational moments with my son after watching Fight Science this passed weekend when they talked about the blow dart. I think we need to be smart about wrapping things around the things they really want to learn about, and then bridge that to where they can apply it. The broadest challenge we face is that we ask teachers to do something incredible every day and we give them very little to do it – we need to provide teachers the tools they need so that all of them are as great as the greatest teacher and games can play an incredible part in that.

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Openness or How Do You Design for the Loss of Control? | Blog | design mind – "Openness is the mega-trend for innovation in the 21st century, and it remains the topic du jour for businesses of all kinds. Granted, it has been on the agenda of every executive ever since Henry Chesbrough’s seminal Open Innovation came out in 2003. However, as several new books elaborate upon the concept from different perspectives, and a growing number of organizations have recently launched ambitious initiatives to expand the paradigm to other areas of business, I thought it might be a good time to reframe “Open” from a design point of view."
• The internet: is it changing the way we think? | Technology | The Observer – "American writer Nicholas Carr's claim that the internet is not only shaping our lives but physically altering our brains has sparked a lively and ongoing debate, says John Naughton. Below, a selection of writers and experts offer their opinion."
• Emergency Social Data Survey Results – americanredcross's posterous – Check out the slides and data from the American Red Cross's survey on Emergency Social Data!
• In Case of Emergency, Update Your Facebook Status | Beth’s Blog – "In January, after the Haiti Earthquake struck, if you were participating on social networks, you couldn’t help but notice the many, many Tweets and Facebook status messages about the Haiti Earthquake. The messages included pleas for support or retweeting the news, but beyond that the stream included pleas from people on the ground in Haiti asking for emergency assistance or letting loved ones and friends know they’re okay. A new American Red Cross survey shows many web users would turn to social media to seek help for themselves or others during emergencies—and they expect first responders to be listening."
• Monitoring and Evaluation NEWS » Most Significant Change (MSC) – "The most significant change (MSC) technique is a form of participatory monitoring and evaluation. It is participatory because many project stakeholders are involved both in deciding the sorts of change to be recorded and in analysing the data. It is a form of monitoring because it occurs throughout the program cycle and provides information to help people manage the program. It contributes to evaluation because it provides data on impact and outcomes that can be used to help assess the performance of the program as a whole."
• Transparency: Where the Stuff on the Internet Comes From – Transparency – GOOD – "Every day, thousands of stories are passed around the internet on blogs and via Twitter. A new study by Journalism.org has examined the source of those stories. It turns out, most of them come from old-school media. We may like to share information via Twitter, but the information we share comes from the morning's newspaper. This is a look at where blogs and Twitter users are getting their stories, and what kind of stories their users are most likely to link to."
• Marshall Ganz: Why Stories Matter « Friends of Justice – "Learning skills and practices is not like learning a formula; it’s more like learning how to ride a bicycle. You can read 10 books about it or listen to someone lecture about it all day, but how do you really start learning to ride a bicycle? You get on. And you fall. That’s how you learn practices. That’s how you learn organizing." Thanks to Joe Solomon (@engagejoe) for the link!

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• HOW TO: Turn Slacktivists into Activists with Social Media – "Throughout the non-profit world, organizations struggle with social media’s impact on the volunteer and donor cycle. The rise of “slacktivism” — doing good without having to do much at all — challenges organizations to rethink the way they cultivate their core volunteers and donors. There are some important social media strategies for transforming those one-click “slacktivists” into fully engaged activists. Here are five tips from some of the best in the non-profit business."
• In Effort to Boost Reliability, Wikipedia Looks to Experts – Digits – WSJ – "Wikipedia is teaming with universities in a bid to entice professors and their students to beef up its coverage of complicated public-policy topics — part of a move by the online encyclopedia to strengthen editing and fill in gaps in its articles. The Wikimedia Foundation, which finances and oversees the nonprofit site, received a $1.2 million grant from the Stanton Foundation to work with academic experts on Wikipedia articles related to public policy, which could include everything from political theory to legislative history and issues such as health reform and science. The goal is to get professors — and, in turn, their students — involved in producing more articles on public policy and improving the quality of the articles that already exist."
• The Next Generation of American Giving – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – Here is a great guest post from Jocelyn Harmon on the Care2 Frogloop blog: "“Our donors are aging-out.” “We need to attract younger donors.” “We need to be on Facebook.” These are some of the common refrains I hear from nonprofits. It seems that everyone is trying to bring younger donors into the fold. But what does younger mean? Does it mean connecting with the Baby Boomers, creating a gateway to the Millenials, or both? And, how do you do it? Should you buy a list of 50 – 60 year olds, or should someone on your staff become savvier with email marketing and social media? A new study, by Convio, Edge Research and Sea Change Strategies, The Next Generation of American Giving: A study on the contrasting charitable habits of Generation Y, Generation X, Baby Boomers and Matures, answers these questions, and more. See an overview of the findings below."
• ChatRoulette : Web Ecology Project – "This paper represents an initial study of ChatRoulette.com, conducted between February 6th and 7th, 2010 by researchers in attendance at Web Ecology Camp III in Brooklyn, NY. We sampled 201 ChatRoulette sessions, noting characteristics such as group size and gender. We also conducted 30 brief interviews with users to inquire about their age, location, and frequency of ChatRoulette use."
• Twitter tactics – Louder.org.uk campaigning resources and info – "Twitter is growing at gigantic rate, experiencing 1,500% growth in the last year (for more stats see The State and Future of Twitter 2010). For those who are not converts it does seem to be the latest in a line of social media tools that everyone thinks you should be using. But what is in it for campaigners trying to bring about social change? Below sets out three main ways in which campaigners have already been using Twitter in their work to get you thinking and there are also three great examples to illustrate. Please add any experiences or thoughts of your own."

Education and it’s discontents are being changed by new ways of learning – much of it by new ways of creating, sharing and validating information and knowledge online. Tools and methods are being customized, adapted and remixed for various educational contexts. Classrooms are no longer bound by geography. But there are still barriers, still challenges – some of which we may not be able to predict. How can we attend to these?

This chat will cover the changing role(s) of teachers, institutions and learners – and how they are affected and transformed by new/social media.

Details

• Date: December, 10th 2009
• When: 2 – 4 pm US Pacific Time, 5 – 7 pm US Eastern Time, 10pm – 12am London, UK (Late!)
• Where: Twitter (search for #4Change)
• Topic: Education: How is social/new media affecting the future of education?

Check out some of the questions we’ll be discussing and resources about the topic here.

Join the Conversation!
If you want to contribute to the conversation, you’ll need to have a twitter account (it’s free).

• To follow the conversation (whether you are planning to contribute or not), use http://search.twitter.com or another application to search on Twitter for #4Change
• Jump in to the conversation by adding #4Change to your Twitter message
• Feeling brave? Check out TweetChat – it’s a great application that integrates with your Twitter account and makes chats more fun! You can turn it off after the chat.

The Virtual Village

When you visit the Unwrapped Virtual Village, you are given three different villages to help:

Hovering your mouse over one of the villages in the circles gives you a dexcription of what issues face that village and how you can help.  Clicking on one transports you to the village where you can click on items throughout the area that can help the local village members.

Clicking on one of the dots lets you see what it is with more detail and to “get the item” for the village.  So far, the experience has been like that of an educational game: finding and helping but also learning the real world side of it all.  Once you click on “get the item” though, you are give the opportunity to move from playing a realistic or educational game to actually buying an item and supporting the village in real life.

You can now click to get the item for the village in the game, or you can buy the item as gift via Oxfam.  What I like most is that the educational side of the scenario doesn’t stop: you’re given a case study about how, in this example, solar panels are actually impacting the lives of others.

It is really important to me that organizations continue to educate their supporters about the work they are doing as well as how they as an organization as well as the supporters are helping and positively impacting the service areas.

Telling stories of impact comes both from the organization as well as from those supported…and even comes from those who support you!

A Little Story

I have a very close friend who came to me with a “problem” a couple holiday seasons ago.  The problem was that her family was very excited about doing something for the holidays that was going to really impact people around the world who were struggling more than they were and that they were really excited about an opportunity they had heard about to buy a goat from Scotland that would be taken to a village or a family in Africa.  She was thrilled that her family was excited to be philanthropic and support others, but she felt like they had made their decision of how to help without investing any time or due diligence into who they were helping and if what they were doing was really something needed.

She challenged them to investigate other options, who they wanted to help, and what could really do the most for them with the amount they had to donate or invest.  It turned out that they did not end up purchasing a goat from Scotland.

This story isn’t to say that people should stop funding or supporting programs that deliver livestock to needy areas, not in the least!  The lesson here to be sure you are educated about the impact you want to make and how best to make it.

I think Oxfam’s Unwrapped Virtual Village is a fun way to get the whole family involved in investigating and learning about issues in other parts of the world and choosing the gifts that they care about and know will also make a good impact.

What do you think?

About DonorsChoose.org

DonorsChoose.org grew out of a high school in the Bronx where teachers saw their students going without the materials needed to learn.  Our website provides an easy way for everyday people to address this problem. Public school teachers post project requests that range from a $100 classroom library, to a $600 digital projector, to a $1,000 trip to the zoo. People like you can choose which projects to fund and then get photos and thank-you letters from the classroom.

Steve and 3 self-funded volunteers (found for free via Google Grants!) are headed to Zambia to document a community who doesn’t have a school, in as close to real-time as possible.  They plan to ask the community what they need and give them a platform to share their story with the world.  They will tweet constantly and upload their photo-led blog stories every day between May 11-22.  You can ask members of the community questions via blog posts, @replies on Twitter and via email (zambia@learnasone.org).

Before they head home, they will train the local community and the NGO partner how to use a Flip video and digital camera so update can continue.  Longer-term, the plan is to become similar to Kiva.org, but for schools.

Follow along and connect with the community!

• Follow LearnAsOne on Twitter
• Follow the blog updates or the Flickr photo stream
• Email the Zambia LearnAsOne team

Learn more about LearnAsOne:

What is LearnAsOne?
LearnAsOne is a charity that works with local partners and communities in Africa to fund schools and support their running costs.

What do you need?
This is the key question we will continually ask to every community we meet.

No imposing western ideas. No impractical solutions. Just listening to the communities real educational needs and helping to provide the funds and training so they can meet them themselves.

It could be teacher training, classrooms, a feeding programme, sanitation and clean water, books, school fees or teacher’s accommodation. Whatever the need we’ll give the community a way to tell you. Plus we’ll provide a breakdown of the costs of every project in the form of a simple shopping list.

What I am most interested in with LearnAsOne’s trip and engagement in Zambia is testing the idea in practice of helping answer the needs of a community without directing or dictating the response.   This will certainly be an interesting project to follow!  What do you think?  Will you be following along or asking any questions via the methods above?  What would you ask?

I browse through the many projects on the DonorsChoose.org website, take the time to select ones I think you all would like to support (as I explained in an earlier post, I’m selecting projects that focus on technology in the classroom), and add them to the challenge page.  But, by the time I come to blog about the challenge or encourage donations about a specific project added to the list, they are already funded!  This is great news, that so many projects are successfully reaching their funding goals, but it does make it difficult to inspire donations from readers!

The Bloggers Challenge widget is in my sidebar, so that readers who come to the site, any time, can see the challenge information and participate.  But, it isn’t very compelling to donate any amount of money when the highlighted project is fully funded already.

I have edited, refreshed, and selected new projects for the challenge many times this month, but the same thing keeps happening.  Now, I’m certainly not mad or frustrated.  Quite the opposite – I’m thrilled to know that so many projects I found insteresting and deserving of the spotlight have been funded!  That’s the goal of the challenge, right?

Here’s my question, and I do hope you’ll weigh in: How could I do a better job in the future of 1. inspiring you to participate and 2. keeping up with the ferocious turn over of funded projects?

I’d really love to hear your thoughts!  And, if you have a minute and five dollars, here’s a great project that you can help support!

I teach kindergarten in a low income neighborhood. My students do not have a lot of parental support at home. I have to provide for all their education needs.

I am currently allowing my students to use my big CD player to listen to books on CD. The problem with that is the whole class has to listen to the book being read. It becomes very distracting for some and the noise level makes it difficult for me to work with small groups. Therefore we are not able to listen to the books very often. Listening is a important part of reading instruction. It allows students to follow along and develop word recognition and fluency.

Being able to provide my students with a kid friendly CD player and headphones would allow them to listen to books independently. The headphones would allow for a quieter classroom which would be appreciated by all.

By supporting this proposal you are providing my students with a kid friendly CD player and headphones. You are also helping my students develop fluency and the word recognition that is important in learning to read.

My students need a CD player and 4 headphones to use in the listening center. The cost of this proposal is $160, which includes shipping for any materials requested and fullfilment.

Help support the Bloggers Challenge and this great project!

Thanks so much for your ideas, thoughts, and participation!

Last year, the BloggersChallenge raised $500,000 through the help of nearly 50 bloggers!  I’m excited to see the impact we can make for classrooms looking to use technology in the way they learn, share, and collaborate together.

Why Technology?

I use technology every day, and can’t really function effectively without much of it.  Just think about the impact simple tools like a digital camera or headphones make on the way we are able to share with my family, friends and colleagues on a daily basis by sharing photos or using the internet to make a call and connect personally—don’t you want those simple tools available in classrooms?  I’ve selected proposals from teachers integrating technology into their classrooms to make learning exciting and effective.

Why DonorsChoose?

DonorsChoose.org is an organization and an idea that I really like: the simplicity and the purpose.  Connecting teachers directly with people who could help them in their classroom, whether they are interested because they share a geography, a subject matter, or just an awesome idea for igniting learning in students.  I also added the DonorsChoose recommended actions from Social Actions earlier this summer.

What can I do?

Please participate this month in the BloggersChallenge, here’s how you can get going now:

1. Support classroom projects by donating!
2. Find more projects you think should be added to our Challenge, just put a link in the comments and I can add them to our challenge page!
3. Send this link to others to participate and donate!

I’m excited to tackle this challenge together.  Let’s make a difference in classrooms across the US!