As an American expat living in Canada I am often caught between and betwixt the argument about why I live here and the long-term Canada/USA socio-political relationship. I must say I am still proud to be an American and have my family and many friends still there. Yet, over these past few years when I travel to the states I cannot help but be thankful I live in Canada at this point in my life. Yes, I could undoubted make more money in California or Boston (as I work in IT) and pay less in taxes, but would these offset some of the things I just worry (much) less about here. But I have already completed my education.

As a parent of two young girls (who are dual citizens), one of which has just started school, I look at the opportunities they have here to become world-class citizens. Over the years my thoughts have been more around the ‘family values’ of maternity leave (parents should have ample time to be a part of their kid’s first year) and healthcare (not having to worry about deductibles, insurance policy fine print, high costs of pharmaceuticals, “whether that is just an ear ache or not”, etc.) benefits we have here. But over the past few months, I have really been entranced by the changes going on directly and indirectly in US education.

I am not a total outsider when it comes to education, my mother-in-law was a teacher for 20+ years, my aunt is a teacher, my sister-in-law works for Emory University, and my sister works at Harvard, and my own Mother was also involved in education for over a decade. As for myself, I am a college grad who is employed as a market analyst and consultant in the hi-tech industry – so life long learning is important to me.

With all of this said, I cannot express my concern enough about the changes going on in the U.S. with regards to the neutering of the education system! This is all happening at the same time that employers are trying to recover from a significant economic downturn and are clamouring for workers that have 21st Century skills and a strong education background. This isn’t a new phenomena, a quick search took me to this article from the LA Times in 2008, “Shortage of skilled workers looms in US” and has continued in recent articles like, “Ageing workforce creates skills shortage…” Yet I watch as teachers and the education system is vilified as underperforming and overpaid babysitters.

In his Op-Ed for the NY Times, Paul Krugman wrote a “Leaving Children Behind” looked that impact of spending cuts by federals government on education, students and teaches. And in a recent TED Talk, Microsoft founder Bill Gates discussed the impact on State budgets on Education. In my opinion this is a potential ‘one-two’ punch that combines cuts from federal and state for education and will have a significant impact on the long-term education of US children, the workforce, and the economic prosperity of the nation as a whole.

The following was taken from the McKinsey&Co. report. “The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools”, while its from 2006, the report was published in 2009 and should really concern parents who are expecting improvements in education and thus their children’s future in America.

These current changes are not reflected in a recent study where the US rankings have fallen to average when compared to 70 other countries. Yet they will undoubtedly accelerate this decline in the rankings. And I can only assume that the on-going changes that I have mentioned above will continue as states look to bust more teacher collective bargaining agreements and teacher unions. This study by McKinsey & Company supports this train of thought.

While I won’t say that the schools in Canada are the best in the world, I do feel after looking at the short sightedness in the U.S. at the federal and state level, I cannot help but be concerned about how ready the next generation of Americans will be in terms of leadership, scientific, and economic skills. Of course if you are rich in the U.S. you can continue to send your kids to private schools. And companies can always petition the government for more HIB Visas to get the best ad brightest Indian, Chinese or Canadian minds to manage the average under skilled American worker.

And for the rest of America – well I am sure their kid will be the next Michael Jordan and education really doesn’t matter anyhow.

Overview

As the province of New Brunswick moves quickly towards a 21^st century learning model, educators are being called to re-evaluate how, and what, information will be delivered to students. This Info-Tech Research Group, sponsored by D-Link, white paper will look at many of the issues arising from the deployment of disruptive technologies in the classroom environment and the corresponding cascade of implications for society, the education ecosystem and across the technology infrastructure. Based on our research of schools, educators and technology deployment this document offers insight and guidance as to how technology can be applied as a disruptive force capable about bringing a pedagogical shift in educating K-12 students.

Future of Education

As this province of New Brunswick moves quickly towards a 21^st century learning model, educators are being called to re-evaluate how, and what information will be delivered to students.

In the one-room schoolhouse of the 19^th and early 20^th century, successful teachers worked individually with many students at different grade levels, advancing each as far as they could base on their personal accord and the students’ abilities. Everyone was exposed to the basic 3Rs, gained a sense of nationalism, and learned to transact equitably with neighbours. Beyond that, there was little uniformity in what had been learned in the classroom; rather a balance was struck between basic skill and the needs of the real world.

The advent of the industrial revolution in the 1920s required evolving the business of education to ensure a standard skill set was taught to amplify our students’ capabilities in science, math, and social studies to produce professionals capable of exploring natural resources, conquering diseases, leading nations through international crisis, and even landing man on the moon.  Teaching became one-to-many and the gauge of success became how high the under-achievers could reach on standardized tests.

Now we find ourselves at another juncture that requires urgent introduction of technology to keep the educational experience aligned with how information is absorbed outside the classroom.  Otherwise the technology initiatives of both K-12 and higher education will trail behind the tools its audience has moved to that are more conducive to how students learn and interact with the world they live in and must serve as members of the 21^st century workforce. The New Brunswick experience suggests that student usage of the internet for on-line learning, communication, collaboration and entertainment is nearly equal to the time each child spends in the classroom being educated. Consequently, teachers must shift from their role as “sage on the stage” (instructor-led) to a “guide on the side” (instructor–assisted) paradigm. This pedagogical shift will be accelerated as students increasingly communicate in real time with information sources and individuals around the world.

The opportunity presented is enormous. If the three parties involved in the education process (administrators, educators, and students) share the effort to re-define the education system, achievement will not be constrained by the proverbial lowest denominator but rather optimized to accelerate the learning smaller groups collaborating via technology can achieve.

This may in fact lead to a redefining of the ‘3Rs’ to resources, research and rights (the acknowledgement of intellectual property, reference, and privacy) that enables more efficient study of the humanities, sciences and trades. By aligning instruction with the pace and capabilities of individuals, and moving beyond measuring average achievement to success oriented accreditation and advancement, the full potential of those being educated can be reached.

To achieve this future state of education it goes without question that technology must (and will) play a defining part.  Based on the work of a number of forward thinking K-12 school districts across Canada and the United States, success-oriented accreditation is not an individual metric. To achieve this technology will be implemented as a disruptive force and herein lie the problems and challenges we face today.

While it is often the device, a computer, iPod, smart phone, net book that is deployed to facilitate a shift from towards a new era of education, it’s the network that becomes the backbone of group collaboration that allows accommodating different learning with multiple approaches, driven by educators guiding individuals into the appropriate eLearning streams to maximize their potential. This is a common mistake made by many case studies of K-12 schools across North America, including the MLTI, illustrates this when one looks at what the school board and educators where attempting to create disruption, but were in fact focused on a technology (the PC or notebook) that was only a piece of the puzzle.

An Example of Achieving Connected Learning: New Brunswick School District 16

To provide evidence of the importance of the network in the 21^st Century classroom we don’t need to look further than some of the experiences documented by New Brunswick’s School District 16. As SD-16 began rolling out end-user technologies, from laptops to smart boards, to enhance the classroom learning experience it became quickly apparent that managing, securing and maintaining these devices was paramount to their distribution.

With the exponential growth of devices on the network the finite amount of technology support staff and budget made the team re-examine the role of technology in the classroom and across the schools of SD-16. Kelly Jacques, SD-16’s Information Systems Manager, cited the growing need for fast, dependable connectivity solutions as critical to handling the needs of students and educators to develop, deliver and distribute digital content from email to IP-video and voice across the school and district. In addition, the growing needs of schools to become increasingly wireless while provisioning enhanced storage and security meant the network would form the foundation for growth and success. As such, the ability to procure and deploy sophisticated, yet affordable networking technology and its ability to then meet the demands of the growing number of devices would dictate the rate of hardware and software deployment.

By concluding the network and its ability to provision software and services to educators and students, Kelly’s team at New Brunswick’s SD-16 supported the deployment of solutions to over 400 instructors and nearly 7,000 students. In April 2007, SMART Technologies Inc. recognized this district’s leadership in the adoption and use of technology that improves student outcomes and teacher effectiveness. It named School District 16 to its SMART Showcase School Program and first global Smart District.

School District 16 has only begun its role in the shift that is happening globally in education. But its focus on the network as the fundamental foundation for creating an interconnected learning experience for all of its stakeholders is a critical step in the road to success. The paper will argue that the stewards of education will be better served by engaging in discussion about the methods of delivering the learning experience (in a manageable and secure manner) rather than becoming too enamoured with the devices used for learning. By embarking in this discussion now we may possibly avoid many of the pitfalls of the past (and well documented) experiences of our peers across Canada and the United States.

The Business and Stewards of Education

Our schools and the stewards that lead them are faced with a task not fully appreciated in private enterprise, the challenge of developing skills not for today’s tasks but those skills, habits and aptitudes that individuals will need for many years in the future – far from the hallways and classrooms and instructors tasked with their education. Moreover, with the changing dynamics of the family nucleus these institutions are relied increasingly to provide moral, emotional and intellectual guidance as well – thus not only forging the skills a person needs to succeed in life but the manner in which they’ll do this as well. Based on trends observed in research for this paper one can conclude that those most responsible for guidance are often trying to do so while in perpetual motion, and all the while their target is also moving in an inexact manner.

Once this superset of the many challenges is grasped one can then begin to formulate a plan for the inclusion of technology as a tool educators can use to formulate and deliver the new and changing paradigms that will enable student achievement for the 21^st Century. These stewards are also responsible for the changes in the education system and how they impact society, their organization and those entrusted into their care. As this group juggles the increasing inclusion of technology into the classroom school they must ensure technology is aligned with their business.

The “business of education” and the role of leaders in this professional can be narrowed down to three critical areas, these are:

1. Enabling student achievement;
2. Facilitating collaboration across the education ecosystem; and
3. Financial accountability.

The implementation of technology as a successful toolset must address these roles and metrics must be put in place to ensure that this new toolset continually improves each of these roles individually and collectively. In the following section challenges of each of these roles will be discussed and guidance will be offered as to how they can be applied to effect the changes they were intended and empower educators and students to excel in today’s classroom and tomorrow’s society.

Enabling Student Achievement

Studies from ESRI, The International Society for Technology in Education and the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario indicate that computer aided learning is expected to make up nearly 50% of coursework in the United States by 2019. Given Canada’s proximity and geographic distribution of students and educators is not expected to be far behind on this trend.

While this document talked about a pedagogical shift in education taking place that would change metrics around achievement to success-oriented paradigms, equality of access to education for students will still be paramount to this and any future government. Thus we can assume that the pressure for technology to interconnect students with educators and peers will continue to proliferate.

In the 21^st century classroom the administrators, educators and support teams will need to work together to redefine the skills developed in their classrooms and the tools in which these are taught, catalogued and shared. Public Private Partnerships between school boards, private industries and technology players will need to be forged to deduce how technology and education can be deployed in a manner that allows young minds living in a stable, modern economy to tackle the challenges they will face in their lifetimes. One expects the result to be a combination of contributing to the local and national welfare of the state, yet at the same time addressing green and sustainability trends that will potentially lead to the next industrial revolution, all the while learning to cohabitate in an increasingly interconnected global village.

Investments being made, like the one in New Brunswick, will require educators to understand technology and the complex multitasking student they have been presented with. Rather than periodic testing of standardized materials the savvy school will invest in educator and student tools geared toward staged learning that students can master at their pace or in stride with technology augmented course and educator interaction.

The reason for this is simple. People learn differently and thus we achieve milestones at different times. The role of the school board is to facilitate learning, not govern (e.g. limit) the speed at which people learn based on intellectual, social or other dispositions. Rather, schools should empower those that are learning to proceed in a constructive manner that covers the core tenants of education, but in the 21^st century classroom, also allows for creativity, collaboration and construction of new ideas that add value to future generations.

Collaboration across Boundaries

From a business standpoint the classroom of the 21^st century is about facilitating collaboration across and within administration, educators and students. As we see growing interest in students learning from one another and learning from peers locally, nationally, and globally, we must invest in a network that supports access to a proverbial walled garden of virtual meeting places where information can be securely shared, authored, and amended by individuals and the community.

In many schools this has begun with virtual notice boards, classroom portals, school intranets and provincial or state portals. These have been an important first step, but like in private enterprise these quickly turn from watering holes of knowledge into marshes of aging or incomplete data. In fact, if one reviews many of the challenges faced in the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, these sites quickly became quagmires that are avoided equally by all parties. Technology that is tied solely to these becomes shunned or set aside.

With over a decade of research in the MTLI, the Florida technology initiative as well as other documents across the internet, the province of New Brunswick should look to a combination of structured open-source tools for content management and collaboration as well as emerging Web-based productivity tools, such as Google Apps, to drive the acceptance further accelerate the interconnectedness of the education with the educated.

Financial Accountability

The success for schools can rest on their ability to provide world class education on a budget. Spending the time to think creatively and leveraging relationships across the education ecosystem to overcome physical and financial challenges is critical.

Too often many of the case studies reviewed for this paper based their 21^st century classroom strategies on enabling students and educators with devices. While devices are critical (e.g. paper and pen) the deployment of them without proper thought being given to the delivery of the software, remote management, and proliferation of network access often resulted in mid to long-term disillusionment.

Schools are entrusted with limitless expectations in turning out the future of society. The finances needed to achieve this, however, can be paltry. Therefore, while an equitable distribution of technology devices is crucial to success, schools should ensure that proper time is spent budgeting for tools that provision, manage, secure and interconnect these devices with the applications needed to deliver the investments being made.

Finally, educating the educators and staff on the use of technology is critical. One of the best practices cited in many case studies is the empowerment of students to support not only each other but also the school’s staff on technology issues and problems. While this is attractive from a cost and user motivation perspective it still relies on an unstable human element. Depending on that support person to have the answers, be in attendance and to “do the right thing” all the time is a bit of a gambit. Rather it is advisable to encourage this, but also empower a centralized team to manage, support and allocate resources and technology needed to deliver a consistent and dependable experience.

There are many lessons that can be learned around financial accountability and the deployment of technology from the private sector. In a recent case study of the Blue Mountain Resorts in Ontario, a billion dollar resort with a flexible staff ranging from 600-1600 over the course of a year was supported by seven IT staff. In the case of the Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board in Mississauga, over 6000 users are supported by less than four full-time people.

The message here is simple. To conquer financial accountability must be applied by tasking the same IT steering committee developed to define, design and deploy the 21^st century classroom. This committee should also investigate the costs associated with many of your peers in public and private sectors and balance the need for technology with the costs of deployment, management and sustaining the experiences it may bring.

Technology for Good

As teachers prepare to set students free on the Web, to develop virtual global networks, and pursue interests ranging from Michelangelo to Einstein, the discussion quickly turns to access to technology. In New Brunswick, educators are discussing how computers, such as netbooks, can be applied in the classroom and at home to allow students to develop, interact and collaborate on multimedia projects, on coursework, and explore not only their surroundings but the world at large via the World Wide Web.

New Brunswick is not alone in this venture. As previously discussed, the research that went into this document looked at initiatives like the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, Florida’s Technology Initiative, Quebec’s Eastern Township laptop initiative, and more. What was commonly deduced was that while it’s important to discuss how technology can advance research skills, the adoption of technology hinges on many factors that are often assumed rather than planned.

Some of the most overlooked questions were:

• How will we build an environment that will foster this delivery method?
• Where will the access to school and external social networking sites fit?
• How can we manage the applications, security, storage and networked communications?

In the following sections, this paper will attempt to discuss each of these in more detail and postulate solutions and methods that can be used to overcome them in a practical and tactical manner.

Technology Environment of the 21^st Century Classroom

Some of the key trends in education are virtualization, distance learning, group collaboration, and e-learning. All of these rely on different technologies to achieve the proposed benefit for students and teachers alike. Based on research on school districts that deployed technology, too often their projects began with end-user devices in mind. With costs continuing to plummet, user savvy interfaces, and form factors that can easily be adopted, it was often easy to displace classical technology (e.g. books) with devices that merely replicated the services that books (and pens and paper) have addressed for centuries.

It quickly became apparent that devices alone could not have a demonstrable affect if they were not enabled with software that aligned to the goals of the educational institution and its courses. Yet even there, many of the pilot programs studies that were used as a reference for this document showed that software only digitized the current curriculum and did little to innovate, disrupt or meet the changing learning habits of the target audience.  While there was a call for learning software that was as interesting as the computer games that children play on a regular basis, these have been slow to market and often are considered cost prohibitive to most educational institutions and their students. Nonetheless, over the past decade the movement to open-source software, delivered via the Internet, has begun to change this. Yet, many instructors and school boards who invested in hardware solutions as a first have found themselves wary of renewing technology-driven education initiatives.

It’s with this in mind that school boards that are embarking on current 21^st century education efforts need to be careful to consider all the aspects of the technology ecosystem and the direct and indirect costs associated. That ecosystem is made up of three categories those being:

1. Software
2. Networking
3. Devices

Each of which vary in criticality of empowering all the stakeholders of the education ecosystem; this includes administrators, educators, students, parents, public sector and private enterprise, in achieving the desired result of evolving and impacting future society.

There are sufficient reference studies available to discuss both software and devices and this paper links to many of these in the reference section, therefore this document will focus on a critical aspect often overlooked but which has immediate and measureable impact on the success and outcomes of any 21^st century education efforts. That is the network and its role in delivering, protecting and interconnecting devices, people and information.

The Interconnected Experience

The growth of interconnected devices has multiplied at staggering rates since the end of the 20^th century. It’s hard to imagine life without smart phones, Wi-Fi, social media, email, YouTube, Wikipedia or Google, yet most of these technologies are not even as old as today’s teenagers.

Without a robust network, information cannot be shared, stored, or communicated. Without a manageable network the limited IT staff of any organization cannot support their users, devices, and prioritize the flow of information and data between people, places or machines. Without a secure network, ideas may become lost, trust does not exist, and privacy cannot be maintained. Without a wireless network, the freedom to engage, transact, and collaborate becomes contained and limited.

The most critical challenge in deploying technology tools for the 21^st century is building a network infrastructure that melds cost effectiveness with robust scalability and flexibility to change with the needs of its users.

The majority of the studies of 21^st century education talked to challenges that arose from devices not being used to support the curriculum, enable students with timely resources, and enable educators with access to new ideas and tools. Another was the failure to deliver administration with documented milestones being met. In many of these, including the MLTI, this was a result of the computers not having delivered consistent user experience and not being online when they needed to be. Not being connected was a larger issue than not having power, hardware failure, theft, damage, or dated software.

By deploying technology, typically laptops, schools are willing to risk damage, theft, and depreciation because they understand the value a computing device can bring. Surprisingly in many cases (at least based on the documentation) the criticality of interconnecting users with one another where the computer was just an aspect of the learning experience was missed. Too many times computers were replacing books. Yet there is nothing wrong with books and they fit the existing education model better then computers. So when educators, students and/or administrators applied computers in this manner the pedagogical shift expected did not happen.

Herein lays the wisdom of early adopters and frontier schools of the 21^st century. Computers are not disruptive if they are not connected. The network is the disruption! Much like books were not disruptive before the printing press, computers and like devices can only enhance the education experience if they are used to communicate, collaborate and instrument change across boundaries. Those boundaries are between individuals, organizations and nations.

The 21^st century will see these young minds evolve based on how an education system prepared them to converse, transact, and invent based on new rules and new requirements of a changing world. Educators will adopt tools that help them engage those entrusted to them in these conversations and will embrace a success-oriented model rather than an achievement –oriented model based on their experiences in seeing tangible results from their students, classes and schools. Parents will seek these advantages to ensure their children are equipped to thrive in a world that does not have a history and in markets that extend beyond the horizon. Finally, both private and public sector institutions will benefit from an age where students are graduated with the social, moral and technology constructs to contribute and lay a foundation for future generations.

Summary

As we touched on in the document, our future leaders are growing up in a connected world. They are sharing ideas globally by the age of 6 and continuing to learn at their own pace throughout their lifetime.

As discussed earlier, Kelly Jacques and School District 16 came to the early realization that deploying, managing and sustaining an increasingly diverse technology infrastructure is complex and costly. With limited budgets many hard choices had to be made around the technology used to facilitate the classroom experience equally for students and educators which led to many innovative uses of software and hardware to meet needs and expectations.

One compromise that could not be made was the quality and flexibility of the network. Provisioning wired speeds of gigabit speed, managing multiple locations that included both wired and wireless access, and deploying redundancy for real time back-up and security were all critical service features.  The School District turned to D-Link to provide expertise and tools needed to address these and still connect to the provincial back bone. By doing so Kelly and his limited IT resources have positioned themselves and their schools well for the adoption of the 21^st Century Classroom initiative in New Brunswick.

References, Resources and Recommended Reading

• The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE®) http://www.iste.org/
• HP’s Teacher Experience Program http://h30411.www3.hp.com/?jumpid=ex_r33_go_teacherexperience_EDU
• D-Link and Education: http://www.dlink.ca/category/solutions/?cid=68
• Eastern Townships School Board Launches Canada’s First Board-wide Laptop Program http://www.etsb.qc.ca/news/eastern-townships-school-board-launches-canadas-first-board-wide-laptop-program-7.aspx
• Disrupting Class http://www.claytonchristensen.com/
• Maine Learning Technology Initiative http://www.maine.gov/mlti/index.shtml
• Overview of Technology in Florida’sK-12 Public School System School http://www.cepri.state.fl.us/pdf/K-12%20Overview%2001-02.pdf
• 1 to 1 Learning: A Review and Analysis by the Metiri Group http://www.metiri.com/
• Laptops for Learning Final Report and Recommendations of the Laptops for Learning Task Force March 22, 2004 http://etc.usf.edu/l4l/report.pdf
• Global Higher Education Report 2005 http://www.educationalpolicy.org/pdf/Global2005.pdf
• The Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario http://www.heqco.ca/en-CA/Pages/Default.aspx
• ESRI Canada http://www.esricanada.com/en_education/default.asp
• Canadian Network for Innovation in Education CNIE http://www.cnie-rcie.ca/?q=node/148
• A Snapshot State of the Nation Study: K-12 Online Learning in Canada http://www.inacol.org/research/docs/NACOL_CanadaStudy-lr.pdf
• Youtube.com/21stCenturyNB’s Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/21stCenturyNB
• Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy
• http://nbbusinessjournal.canadaeast.com/journal/article/1064838
• http://blogs.itbusiness.ca/2010/06/new-brunswick-releases-21st-century-learning-plan/
• Canadian School Library Association (CSLA)  http://www.cla.ca/casl/literacyneeds.html
• Education Evolving http://www.educationevolving.org/content_view_all
• Wireless Generation http://www.wirelessgeneration.com/
• Democracy in Education http://www.yale.edu/terc/democracy/media/mar27.htm
• Joel H. Spring (multiple sources) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Spring
• A Nation at Risk, U.S. Department of Education http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/intro.html
• U.S. Department of Education http://www.ed.gov/
• Council of Ministers of Education, Canada http://www.cmec.ca/Pages/default.aspx