By Randy Wilhelm, CEO & Co-Founder, Thinkronize, Inc.
If Rip van Winkle awoke in the 21st Century after his lengthy slumber, he would be shocked by some of the changes he found in the world. Unfortunately, the classroom would not be one of them. It’s true–the classroom hasn’t changed much from when our grandparents were learning. While other industries have smoothly made the transition to digital content, we’re still using textbooks and blackboards. With initiatives like this AEP forum we are making progress, but are we keeping pace with the rate at which our students’ lives are going digital? Sadly, the answer is no.
The current generation has grown up on the Internet and is playing a grand role in the transformation of education by demanding to be taught in the same way they receive the bulk of their daily information and entertainment–electronically. A recent Frontline special confirmed that 90 percent of teenagers are online and that the number will only grow.
In response, many educators are now demanding high-quality, educationally relevant digital content that they can use in their classrooms to engage and connect with their digitally native students. Where do educators turn to find the digital content they’re looking for to support their curricula and state standards? Thinkronize’s recent study “Schools and Generation ‘Net,” conducted in the fall of 2007 with input from over 1,000 principals and library media specialists, revealed that 90 percent of educators are turning to the Internet as a valuable instructional resource. Thirty-five percent of respondents also reported that “almost all” the teachers in their schools use the Internet regularly for instructional purposes, and 81 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” agree that student searching on the Internet has been integrated into the curricula.
Educators are now being charged with providing content geared toward the individual student versus the class as a whole. By using digital content, they can more easily develop lesson plans to differentiate instruction and–with the variety of media-rich digital content available–students can learn in a fashion that more naturally meets their individual learning styles. This is especially valuable to ELL/ESL students, special education students, gifted students, and students with a variety of other unique learning needs.
While educators and students are using the Internet more and more often to find digital content, serious concerns about the quality and relevance of sites found on the Internet remain. Seventy-nine percent of survey respondents expressed concern about useless or irrelevant search results, and 78 percent are concerned about students being redirected to commercial or pay sites.
As digital content becomes more of a staple in teaching and learning, it is imperative that educators also receive professional development to ensure that they know how to effectively use high-quality digital content and technology in their classrooms. Eighty-eight percent of educators surveyed agree/somewhat agree that teachers should receive more technology related professional development. Educators should not fear technology, nor should they be afraid their students will always be more tech-savvy. Instead, this can be a powerful opportunity for teachers to learn from their students, which will ultimately strengthen the connection that teachers rely on to help engage students.
What does this mean to publishers? It means that there is tremendous opportunity to provide lively and instructionally relevant digital content and Web destinations without overdone commercialization. Educators and students not only want but also need content providers to deliver digital resources that have been vetted for relevance and reliability, aligned to their standards and curricula, and delivered in a format that is fast and easy to use.
Publishing in the digital era, however, does not mean simply providing the same content in a digital format. A new opening exists for publishers to develop safe educator- and student-focused online communities built around the content they provide. The inherent nature of online communities fosters the collaboration and communication skills today’s students must master to live and work successfully in the 21st Century.
As publishers make the transition from print to digital content, we must remain mindful of the thoughtfully-created scope and sequence found in print curriculum to ensure that critical contextual anchors aren’t lost in the transition. Another task facing publishers along this journey is tackling the issues of controlled access and digital rights management surrounding the distribution and use of content. Publishers must be fairly compensated for creating quality digital content.
The opportunity for change is directly in front of us. Let’s make a promise to our children: If Rip van Winkle goes back to sleep for another five years, he’ll find a new and improved classroom when he wakes again. As publishers and education technology leaders, we have the opportunity and, I believe, the responsibility to find solutions to bring high-quality digital content to every classroom so that every student can reach his or her full potential. As we say in our Thinkronize offices, let’s “Go do something good for kids!” and, in my mind, that means let’s “Go digital!
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Randy Wilhelm currently serves as CEO of Thinkronize, Inc., an award-winning Cincinnati-based Internet development company that he co founded in 1999. Randy’s lifelong passion for helping children succeed and learn led to the development of netTrekker, now the No. 1 educational search engine in the United States, serving more than 9 million students nationwide. Under Randy’s direction, Thinkronize was named to the Inc. 500 list in 2006 as one of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S. Prior to Thinkronize, he spent over a dozen years consulting Fortune 500 businesses on how to better analyze and control costs in their benefit packages. As Executive Vice President at USI, he helped lead the consultancy of one of the world’s leading insurance brokers. Wilhelm also serves on several youth-related, not-for-profit boards, and is active in many educational associations.
In your survey, was there any differentiation in the results based on grade level?
Randy,
I think its important to distinguish between content and the context in which it is delivered. Slapping the same tired textbook content (not that any AEP member publishes such materials!) into digital form is obviously not what you or anyone else is excited about, especially students. But take a look at the textbook infrastructure – its built around the book as an object. Some schools seem to have the idea that you can just substitute ‘laptop computer’ for ‘printed book’ and you have ‘gone digital’.
The truth is, the consumer electronics you mention are slick, heavily designed systems that target consumers with all the skills the marketing gurus can muster. But think for a minute about the history of the personal computer – there were many badly designed, incompatible programs sold to consumers who put up with a lot of frustration just to type a letter or send an email 9and lets face it, there still are those programs!). People don’t really want ‘computers’ that can do many things badly, they want devices and services that work.
The education market is not nearly as nimble and consumer driven as the entertainment industry, and probably never will be. So there are going to be plenty of issues building a digital infrastructure for education that effectively exploits digital technology and the potential of the internet – 20 years will go by in a flash! The gadgets will change, but the basics wont.
Rip V.W. Answering your question. The stats collected were from the entire user population, which covers all of K-12, but is evenly split between elementary and secondary schools. It’s interesting that the top 15 terms were so “basic” or simple in light of the fact that we had over 1.8 Million unique search terms requested in the last quarter.
Hi Randy,
A thought provoking entry. It leaves me thinking that the rush to digital, much like the swinging pendulum, is an “either, or” scenario.
Why not provide as many different modalities to students as possible? The ability to deliver, prescriptively, content and services that work for all students, starting with the the individual student’s need first, seems to be a more appropriate approach.
I believe there is research available that indicates online learning doesn’t have any more significant increase in areas, particularly early childhood literacy. What is needed, in my opinion, is a prescriptive approach that uses as many content delivery tools as possible, and empowers the teacher to customize the content and delivery to meet the individual needs of her/his students.
Just my two cents…