Updates: 

Arizona eLearningi [0] Task Force meets Tuesday December 12, 2007 from 10-12 at AZ Department of Education, room 417. 

The task force will address evaluation of the Middle School eLearning Mathematics RFP submittals. Work will be done on the draft application form to be used by schools when they apply to participate in the three year Middle School eLearning Math pilot. Representative Andy Tobin will talk to the task force on his legislative proposal for online learning. Herb Dwyer will review the Technology Assisted Project-Based Instructional Program (TABPI) consortium Report presented to the State Board of Education on 12/10/07. 

Next meeting will be on January 7, 2008, same time, same place. All meetingsi [0] are Open to the Public. You have the opportunity to address the task force at meeting’s end. 

The Governor’s P-20 council will meet on the same day on second floor tower at 1700 West Washington 10:30 to 12:30. 

eSATSi [0] 2008 proposed legislationi [0] has addressed the realities of the lack of tax revenue crisis of $1 billion but removing funding requests. The rewritten bill requests the Arizona eLearning Task Force to make recommendations to the legislature on eight critical areas that address eLearning transformationi [0] of Arizona schools. One the bill has a number I will email a copy.

Outside Forces Driving Transformation: 

My son Adam and I attended in late November the Interservice/International Training, Education and Simulation Conference in Orlando. Five hundred exhibitors had an incredible array of toys for boys from aircraft, battle field, ship, truck and crane simulators to small arms and serious games. We attended to garner customers for Adam’s startup company’s revolutionary high fidelity facial motion capture technology. Check out captivemotion.com [1] for short demos. The vendors were very interested in our being able to produce realist faces with full emotions for training for culture and anti-terror methods; and education with real avatars, realistic games and synthetic foreign language teachers. 

Military, security and industrial are leading the way with significant researchi [1] investment and implementation funding. We expect simulation technology to trick down to K-12, but when is continues as an issue. The benefits are huge. The old meta-studies on computer based training from the 1980’s showed 30% increase in learning rate. This grew to 40% in the 1990’s with online learning. Andy Schermuly of TraCorp recently told me that his simulation training products for business must reduce student time to learn by 75% to be competitive.  www.tracorp.com [2] His most recent product replaces 40 hours of classroom work to 6 hours on a desk top computer and access to a remote instructor. 

Anticipating the post Iraq era our military is going through radical transformation on two fronts. As I talked to people at I/ITSEC I heard over and over again the phrase “non-force non-escalation.” This describes a third means to protect our people and nation from violence. The two current ones are policing that works in a stable society and warfare that works with tanks on the plains of Europe mode where nations attack nations. This third means is for civil affairs teams or small  teams of soldiers (4 or less) who work in a communityi [2] to prevent escalation of violence before it happens. The challenge includes not getting themselves killed in the process. This training demands huge amounts of language, culture and interaction training delivered by simulation. 

The second is to create new commands in the services that deal with Cyber threats. This form of warfare is brand new and deadly. Resources and systems to be effective in this form of combat have to be invented and people have to be trained and educated. 

Although this model for transformation of huge organizations to respond and capitalize on emerging technologies exists in the military does it apply to K-12? 

The need for eLearning is the same, but system is totally different. Along with inherent accessibility and accountability, eLearning has the powerful ability to individualize and interactively engage of the K-12 student. The resulting acceleration and increased retention allows even the faltering student to master our required K-12 curriculum. A most compelling attribute of eLearning is that it mirrors both the child’s increasingly digital rich home and graduate’s information technology rich workplace. The same can be said for the soldier. 

Every aspect of our society has taken a turn onto the freeway, while education is still putting along on the access road. Maybe itsi [2] time to embrace change models like the military and acquire knowledge, products and service outside of normal K-12 channel to change our schools.