Arizona’s Place on the eLearning Map

Encouraging:

• Wilson Elementary District, the most disadvantaged in Maricopa county, adopted one-to-one elearningi 12 years ago. They have steadily progressed from dead last to academic leadership among the 13 feeder districts to Phoenix Union High School district. Empire High School and several charter schools have adopted one-to-one eLearning with growing success.
• All schools are wired (a National first), and there are many eLearning experts throughout the state.
• Arizona has one of the largest clusters of eLearning enterprises, including the Corporate Headquarters of Pearson Digital Learning the largest K-12 digital curricula company in the world.

Challenges:

• The Cox Education Network sunset in June 2005, due to lack of state level funding.
• Arizona has a history of frugal spending on K-12 education, and eSATSi eLearning design requires new investment.
• eLearning is a new, transformational concept in an industry that is not designed for rapid change nor rewarded for risk taking.
• No state has yet initiated total eLearning transformationi of K-12 education, Arizona would be the pathfinder.