Conference Presentation, Panel, Fireside Chat
Textbooks, Tablets and Teaching: Reinventing How We Learn
- Nolan's educational software, currently utilized in hundreds of schools with globally contributing teachers, is expected to remain free and become addictive like video games; the platform predicts students will learn approximately ten times faster, rendering the experience fun.
- Roger anticipates students will connect to world experts and research labs to form corporations and publish in scientific journals while still in high school, accessing leading scientists and researchers who were previously unavailable to youth aged 14 to 16.
- Joel forecasts a major effort by News Corp to customize learning for millions, increase engagement through emotional content, and empower teachers with real-time polling tools; he emphasizes that success requires putting tablets in students' hands rather than letting them sit unused in boxes.
- Joel's division currently serves over 3 million students across thousands of schools, with plans to deploy 20,000 tablets in Guilford, North Carolina, this fall, and roll out 150 days of integrated curriculum and games in a controlled small-scale pilot.
- A shift from annualized education to competency-based models is predicted, where time varies to keep performance constant, contrasting with static textbooks in favor of live, day-over-day content updates accessible for current events like the Arab Spring.
- John expects a major shift in public education through individual and collective tutorial sites where multiple adults guide students, altering the adult-student dynamic from knowledge transfer to collaborative content creation and rapid curriculum adjustments based on real-time class struggles.
- Jim predicts a fundamental market shift away from expensive physical textbooks toward on-demand, lower-cost content similar to changes in the record industry, with several districts already utilizing SIM cards and 3G data paths in tablets.
- Infrastructure expansion estimates suggest wiring 95% of schools could cost approximately $10 billion, potentially funded within three to four years via an FCC-expanded E-Rate program charging a penny daily on phone bills; the ConnectED initiative aims to wire 99% of schools within five years.
- Roger foresees high schools transforming in less than a decade, with students earning credits from external online institutions like Stanford, leading to high schools curating diplomas rather than owning them while students engage in post-secondary work.
- Joel predicts significant economic benefits for students entering employment based on skills rather than loans, citing the Georgia State model of online degrees costing $7,800 versus $55,000 to allow pacing at the student's own speed.
- Joel highlights a six-year partnership model combining four years of high school and two years of community college ending in an IBM certification, a concept expanded to Chicago after a New York pilot, while warning that MOOCs require validation through multiple stages of completion to succeed.
- Joel expects universities to adopt flipped classroom models and interactive classes to remove access barriers for international students and those from poverty, while noting South Korea's plan to eliminate paper textbooks by 2016 poses a workforce competitiveness risk for the US.
- John Dacey reports that the LA School District lost fewer than 17 devices out of 47,000 attributed to customization features and instant brick capabilities; he warns that students must be allowed to store personal music, photos, and apps to maintain respect for the devices.
- John Dacey anticipates that allowing students to take devices home will create a center for community and family learning, driving higher parental engagement through portals and giving a voice to 900,000 students previously silenced by poverty.
- Joel projects that within the next few years, students perceived as slow will become "super performers" by moving at their own pace, using e-reader features to identify specific vocabulary struggles and triggering four to six targeted lessons per word.