"In an age when more youth are dropping out of school at alarming rates, yet research is consistently showing the high levels of engagement youth are exhibiting in various media platforms, it is incumbent upon educators to take notice and indeed redirect teaching methods to meet the needs and interests of students."
Last night I attended the Startl technology boost at the Hub Soma in San Francisco. Statrl, is an educational innovation incubator, distinct from the Race to the Top Department of Ed approach, in that they are working from the outside in, focused on the edge of innovation and not institutionalizing transformation. They are looking for ideas, new tech products, hybrid teams of educators/business/technology entrepreneurs that have the capacity to turn big ideas into pragmatic solutions. They have the support of non-profit foundations like Gates, Hewlett, Pearson and MacArthur and for-profit partners like IDEO, and DreamIt Ventures. This is the cutting edge and they have the money, or can at least create the space to bring entrepreneurs and funding together. Here's what I saw and what I didn't see at their November Design Boost.
The 10 mobile learning products in the competition crossed the spectrum from math, literacy, language, and the environment. There were some really cool innovations like Coursebook's use of "duration" to help learners filter for web content in a chosen interest area, and Motion Math's use of tilting, wii style total physical response for math games. Voxy focused on super sexy high interest media for language learning and Bygone has a concept to make history immersive by tagging stories to city blocks. Each is in its development phase, and is going to grow and change as long as they can drill down on their concept and find the support to keep going. Most of the teams came from university's (Stanford, NYU, UC Irvine), or established non-profits. A couple were for-profit start-ups.
I like where Startl is going with their approach to bringing new ideas to the market. Here is what I thought was missing:
Mobile learning is ultimately about connecting people. Hand held games that get learners interacting with software is okay, but ultimately empty. None of the business start-ups had any people on the other side. The only concept that had a real world social focus was Powershift. Without the social component this platform is not reaching its potential.
Cultural competency is a huge part of 21st Century Learning, and I did not see it in the products or the audience. The middle class, college bound student is doing fine in the current system. The 50% of urban kids who drop out of high school and the entire developing world are the real market for mobile learning. The story lines of most of the products were set for a generic white audience, when learning needs to be much more local and global. Focusing on I-phone Apps and Ted talks, the Western canon of fairy tales or the crazy engagement factor of technology and gaming is cool, but who is the audience for these products?
A social purpose is key to making learning interactive and meaningful. Teaching math or literacy in isolation, without a context, is not engaging. Problem posing education needs to be more than drilling discreet skills. It is about creating solutions to complex problems using interdisciplinary information, real people and real resources.
Implementation plans for how to get products to learners is a huge hurdle. I-tunes and the App store are good for a certain class of folks, but there needs to be another way to reach the masses. Expecting teachers or parents to be hip to the e-revolution, or pay out of pocket for innovations is not reasonable, especially when the digital divide means student access to hand held technology is not ubiquitous. Schools need to work on their tech policies for this revolution to take off, and companies need to continue to bring down the cost of signing on. Knowledge needs to be shared, and innovations institutionalized. If digital mobile technology is made with only the well resourced class in mind we will not close the achievement gap, but exacerbate it.
Digital mobile media is the technological tool that is going to break wide open the factory model of schooling. Young people now have tiny computers in their pockets that can connect them to the wider world. It's being harnessed in affluent pockets around the country, but this social innovation is not reaching the majority of young people or educators. Adopting innovations is not easy, and what's currently being offered does not do the medium justice, but it is only going to get better, especially if more folks join the conversation.
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