Digital Learning: Changing the Curve

National Journal highlights the work of the Digital Learning Council today.  Here’s my take.
Digital learning is the first chance in history to change the learning curve and extend access to quality education.  Personalized digital learning is engaging students and boosting achievement.  As learning tools become more powerful and personal, it will boost persistence and performance.   Digital learning will make public education more efficient; it will allow us to rethink how and where learning takes place.
Digital learning is extending options to students and families through online learning.  Virtual options will double in enrollment in the next few years, but most students will learn in blended settings that combine the best of multiple learning modalities.   Blended learning hold the promise of extending quality affordable secondary education to more than 500 million young people worldwide.
The Digital Learning Council, chaired by Governors Bush and Wise, will create policy recommendations for digital learning and will consider questions of program and Internet access, curriculum and instruction, quality and accountability.  Teleconferences with about 100 council members begin today.  Recommendations will be presented at Foundation for Excellence in Education conference in November.
Most folks start with schools (and the adults in them) and think about how technology will effect how we’ve always done things.  The opportunity in front of us requires us to start with the students—what tools and experiences will prepare them for their future?  The answers are disruptive but extraordinarily productive.

Tom Vander Ark

Tom Vander Ark is the CEO of Getting Smart. He has written or co-authored more than 50 books and papers including Getting Smart, Smart Cities, Smart Parents, Better Together, The Power of Place and Difference Making. He served as a public school superintendent and the first Executive Director of Education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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