Smart Cities: New York

"Smart Cities: New York" needs an introduction. A long, cluttered PowerPoint presentation, it presented the pedagogical rationale for an astonishingly ambitious RFP issued late Spring, 2000, by the New York City Board of Education, notorious as a hotbed of bureaucratic drift. Nine months earlier, the Board had spawned a 19 member Teaching and Learning Cyberspace Taskforce, charged "to develop a vision for integrating technology into instruction throughout the New York City public school system."

We might easily pass the project by as it sits in the dust bin of history. It failed, first financially, as the collapse of the Dotcom bubble undercut the revenue expectations at its foundations, and then politically, as the newly elected mayor, Michael Bloomberg, disbanded the Board of Education in a major reorganization. As a failed project, however, what the Cyberspace Taskforce represents was not an impossible life form, but rather a life form, a possible path, one not taken. The historical path subsequently taken has proved to be one fraught with many difficulties — severe weaknesses in actual educational effectiveness and growing levels of political and cultural dysfunction. What was the path that was not taken?

We should not be surprised by the charge, itself. With slight variations of wording, education authorities everywhere were dealing it out with repetitive results: more computers in the classroom, more professional development for teachers, and improved, more usable software for instruction. Integration meant slipping technology into the system as it is, much like a tune-up and a new set of tires for the family sedan. The Taskforce took the charge to mean something different, encompassing the conventional goals while setting out what it would take to actually integrate digital technologies into all the public educational activities in New York City, fully and thoroughly.

Irving Hamer, Jr., who had been appointed as the representative for Manhattan, one of seven members of the BOE early in 1998, chaired the Taskforce, having largely recruited and organized it. A personable, energetic condottieri in the world of organized education, he imbued the Taskforce with a strong sense of purpose and openness to possibilities. Members of the Taskforce spanned a range of important domains — 5 from the BOE or one if its districts, 3 from IBM, 2 from Cisco, 1 from Toshiba; 3 from Andersen Consulting; 1 from Chase Manhattan Bank, 1 from the UFT, and 3 from groups implementing innovative efforts in education. Hamer soaked up ideas and synthesized them, promoting a sense of ownership among the members and reported the Taskforce's consensus, strongly stated in his hand, "A Revolution in Public Education."

In the Taskforce Report, the charge became a concise vision Statement: "A community of self-learners with self-funded, ubiquitous online access 24x7." A goal, difficult yet explicit, concretized that vision — "to integrate state-of-the-art technology into the teaching and learning experience of every student, every family, every teacher, every administrator." Meeting that goal required meeting two key objectives:
"to provide every member of the Board of Education community an e-mail address and 24X7 internet access;"
and
"to provide every student and teacher a networked connected laptop in an instructional environment starting with the fourth grade class of 2001."

Such objectives invited, actually, they required interpretation, and normally that would result in a gravitation towards the mean, towards the means-at-hand. With the BOE project, that eventually happened, but not until the historical context forced it. The Taskforce worked during an unusual time and it proposed something that could only have been proposed on behalf of an educational authority the scale of the NYC BOE. The Taskforce advanced a maximalist interpretation of its objectives in "A Revolution in Public Education." What did it mean maximally to provide every member of the BOE community an e-mail address and 24x7 internet access?" Every student, family, teacher, and administrator translated into a user-base of several million, 24x7x365, say a third of the NYC population, making the BOE a major Internet Service Provider with a revenue potential measured in the billions of dollars. To make it work would require an educational Internet portal covering all aspects of educational experience at a world-class level of excellence.

Should we do more than treat the project as an obscure historical footnote? After all, it never fully got going and it quickly disappeared the obscurity of failed projects.

Certainly, in part the BOE project exemplified the soaring optimism then aggregating into the Dotcom bubble. It had a better grounding than unfounded optimism alone. Activity on the Internet was showing its potential for immense growth, but limiting problems needed good solutions in order to actualize that potential, among them the problem of providing ubiquitoous, dependable wide-area connectivity accessible to large-scale po0pulations. The BOE project aimed to do that through a joint public/private initiative on a city-wide basis. It might have been. . . .

File:Smart Cities - NASDAQ.png

In 1999, Amazon had started its dynamic growth but had a lot of kinks to work out, losing over a dollar on every 2 dollars of revenue. Its number of employees, now on the order of 1.5 million persons reached 9,000 at the turn of the century and did not exceed that unto 2004. The future founders of Facebook were still in high school. Google was an obscure research project funded at the level of $100K. At the time, the BOE had a better case for possibly capturing wide-area network dynamism than most entities, large and small. An urban Wi-Fi network of the scale the BOE envisioned was then both difficult and very attractive as an investment. In the early 2000s, basing such dense nodes on the infrastructure of cities attracted much interest in the first decade of the century and corporations drawn to the project did so in part for this reason. As the bubble popped, the projections of return on investment underwriting the project turned riskier, but that has little to do with explaining why "Smart Cities: New York" may have interest in thinking ahead now, a quarter century later, about the uses of technology in education.

"Smart Cities: New York" came about under special circumstances. In mid-April, 2000, the Taskforce had made its recommendation that the BOE issue an RFP inviting consortia to bid on a project to trigger a revolution in public education. For anything to come of it, the full 7 member Board had to accept the recommendation and authorize issuance of the initial RFP, which would require respondents to it to commit significant resources to developing and implementing the initial stages of the project. The Board docketed consideration and voting on the proposal for its meeting for late September. In preparation for that, in early June Andersen Consulting, which had been the lead corporate group developing the financial and organizational case for the project, presented its overview of it, "Revolutionizing Public Education." The case Andersen primarily presented a communications plan "to inform and involve stakeholders of the business planning effort" and secondarily a business plan, relying heavily on the future tense, "to provide direction and guidance for business plan development." he educational aspirations animating the plan or the potential for controversy that might arise from the degree of corporate involvement in the work of the BOE.

Irving Hamer took shape Here's a little graph of NASDAQ Composite index from 1994 to 2005

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https://www.slideserve.com/leonorag/smart-cities-new-york-electronic-education-f or-the-new-millennium-powerpoint-ppt-presentation

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Presentation Transcript

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Please note:For accurate display and printing, this presentation requires the "Arial Unicode MS" font, which is not included in older version of Microsoft Office. One can download the font (with patience or a fast connection) from http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/2000/downloadDetails/aruniupd.htm. Smart Cities:New York Electronic Education for the New Millennium, Institute for Learning Technologies, Teachers College, Columbia University, A Pedagogical Framework Prepared for the New York City Board of Education and its Taskforce on Teaching and Learning in Cyberspace Autumn, 2000

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An Initiative to Support Teaching and Learning in Cyberspace Introduction A large on-line educational community can generate substantial revenue to sustain services to its members. The New York City Board of Education is planning unprecedented initiatives using information technologies to improve education. Through these initiatives, the Board seeks to make its huge scale, its proverbial weakness, the basis for its future strength. Through its Taskforce on Teaching and Learning in Cyberspace, and a related feasibility study by Andersen Consulting, the Board has established the probability that the astute provision of Internet services can generate substantial resources, both for and through the educational use of digital technologies. By providing advanced Internet services connecting all students and their families, as well as teachers, school staff, and the interested public, to a high-quality educational ISP/Portal, present to anyone at any place and any time, it can transform the conditions of educational work, in school and out. An educational strategy for reaping the pedagogical benefits of this initiative follows.

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CumulativeRevenue Introduction $2,800 M ---- $4,700 M Key elements in the technology initiative Starting with the 2001-2002 school year

All students, 4th grade and up, along with teachers and administrators, will rapidly receive digital devices for use in school and home.
The Board will provide an ISP/Portal with an Education Zone for content, resources, and communication in support of educational work throughout New York City.
These provisions will enable every child, every family, and every teacher to interact with resources in the Education Zone from any place at any time, in school and out. As a result, the Education Zone becomes the education program of the City, the sum of the educational resources New York avails to its children, to its educators, and to its citizens in general. See www.nycenet.edu/cyberspace/ for the Andersen Consulting study. EducatIon Zone TheNewYork

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Raising the spectrum of educational achievement. Introduction New conditions of teaching and learning make new patterns of accomplishment feasible.

We know only past achievements, reached under past conditions.
The Board’s Technology Initiative would substantially change the conditions of teaching and learning.
Therefore, let us think about achievements with a new vision of possibility. Needed: A bold program of education for a transformative technology plan.

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The City as Educator Introduction The ubiquitous, continuous presence of a high-quality electronic Education Zone greatly supports natural educational conditions.

Hitherto the school has contained the educational program.
Henceforth the educational program will contain the school, as well as the home and the community – the entire City.
The Education Zone strengthens the City – civitas, source of civilization, the original interactive cultural ethos – as the ubiquitous locus of educational work.
All adults, groups, and organizations become educational facilitators working with a complete set of shared tools and resources.
Schools and teachers become the pedagogical leaders, engaging the whole City in a continuous, comprehensive educational effort.
Within this comprehensive effort, much educational control and responsibility shifts to the student, a shift that the emerging pedagogy must recognize. The edZone,24/7,changes the conditions of educationalwork by studentsand teachers.

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The Stakes of Change Introduction New York City can fulfill its leadership in the historic democratization of education.

In the late 19th century, New York City was a leader in making compulsory elementary schooling for all take hold as a civic responsibility and entitlement.
In the early 20th century, the City again led efforts to extend compulsory schooling into adolescence and to provide opportunities for universal secondary education.
Through the 20th century, the City has sought to enable a widening sector of the population, ever more diverse, to gain access to higher education.
Early in the 21st century, by creating the Education Zone and engaging all in its activities, the City can complete the the democratization of education by making an intellectually rigorous, progressive education a reality for all.

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Three changes, each with great educational significance. Strategies Engagement Intelligence Communication Changing the conditions of learning and teaching changes what goals are practicable and what means are effective. It creates a new ecology of education. Through 24/7 interaction with the Education Zone, all students, teachers, administrators, and parents will have, at any time and any place,

Unlimited, selective access, opening universal participation in an unprecedented range of quality educational tools, resources, and experiences.
Immediate, informative responsiveness by those resources, amplifying the working intelligence of students, and that of teachers, administrators, parents, and the whole community.
Flexible opportunities for communication with others, facilitating the pursuit of curiosity and the construction of meaning. Consider the educational possibilities these changes bring, especially in putting the student in control of his or her education. Engagement Intelligence Communication

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Engagement Strategies -- Engagement Multiple intelligences Cultural Diversities Learning by Inquiry Explanatory modules Portfolio Assessment A Curriculum of Questions 1st CHANGEUnlimited, selective access opens universal participation in an unprecedented range of quality educational resources

Providing access through the Education Zone to educational resources of great extent and deep quality makes important reforms much more feasible.
Respecting multiple learning styles.
Cultural diversities become intellectual assets.
Learning by inquiry.
Using explanatory modules on demand.
Assessment through portfolio construction.
Educators will need to put powerful questions to students, thereby activating and directing their curiosity, leading them to exploit their opportunities for access.
The curriculum becomes a cosmos of questions to be asked, not a compendium of lessons to be learned.

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Diverse resources in the edZone challenge multiple intelligences Strategies -- EngagementMultiple intelligences Cultural Diversities Learning by Inquiry Explanatory modules Portfolio Assessment A Curriculum of Questions Linguistic Musical Logical-mathematical Visual-spatial Bodily-kinesthetic Interpersonal Intrapersonal

Traditional methods make it easy to confuse repetition with reinforcement, inducing boredom, not a sense of accomplishment.
Few schools can deploy diverse instructional materials in classes that suit multiple intelligences and different learning styles.
Students have little power to experiment with and control the learning styles they use.
Reinforcement by experiencing a subject in ways that activate different forms of intelligence helps students develop a lasting mastery of material.
Digital curricular resources can encompass multiple versions of the important topics, each adapted to a distinctive learning style.
Explorations in the edZone give students more control over how they learn and what styles of learning they use.

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Multiple intelligences in practice. Strategies -- EngagementMultiple intelligences Cultural Diversities Learning by Inquiry Explanatory modules Portfolio Assessment A Curriculum of Questions Project Zero’s School Using Multiple Intelligence Theorypzweb.harvard.edu/SUMIT/ The University of Rhode Island’s Teachers in Technology Initiativewww.ri.net/RITTI_Fellows/Carlson-Pickering/MI_Tech.htmwww.chariho.k12. ri.us/curriculum/MISmart/mi_smart.htm The Gardner School, Vancouver, Washingtonwww.gardnerschool.org/home.html The New City School, St. Louis, Missouriwww.newcityschool.org/homepage.html Case Study: Cultivating Multiple Learning Styles in Fish 101www.washington.edu/computing/windows/issue20/johnson.html

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Cultural diversities become intellectual assets in a full curriculum. Strategies -- Engagement Multiple intelligencesCultural Diversities Learning by Inquiry Explanatory modules Portfolio Assessment A Curriculum of Questions The edZone presents full coverage of diverse cultural resources. Print-based curricula have limited carrying capacity.

Textbooks have limited scope and curricula based on them present a narrow reduction of ideas uniformly to all.
Curriculum design consists in deciding on what to limit and exclude.
Groups compete for nominal inclusion, resulting in curricular superficiality.
Educators fail to reflect the complexity of their world, propounding a false homogeneity instead.
The edZone will include multiple traditions and interpretations, presented with intellectual integrity and fullness.
Curriculum design puts questions through which students generate unity in diversity.
Groups contribute their fullest potentials and assert the value of those for the whole.
Educators mobilize the cultural diversities of a world city as an educative force suited to a global age.

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World cultures on-line. Strategies -- Engagement Multiple intelligencesCultural Diversities Learning by Inquiry Explanatory modules Portfolio Assessment A Curriculum of Questions

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The edZone empowers learning by inquiry. Strategies -- Engagement Multiple intelligences Cultural DiversitiesLearning by Inquiry Explanatory modules Portfolio Assessment A Curriculum of Questions Educators well recognize the value of learning by inquiry. Despite many attempts by educational reformers, learning by inquiry often has not worked well because the resources in school libraries and staffs do not sustain students’ inquiries well enough to produce substantial results. Schools in low income areas, in particular, often avoid learning by inquiry because the intellectual tools – good libraries and laboratories – needed to sustain effective inquiry are not available. The Internet is a vast research library and the edZone will make it usable. Every school, every student, every teacher, and every family will have a comprehensive set of intellectual resources with which to sustain all forms of inquiry. Resources, alone, will not lead to productive inquiry. Teachers and the school have the essential role of posing powerful questions and setting problems in ways that will motivate productive inquiry. As the Ancients said – Philosophy begins in wonder.

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Diverse sites for inquiry-based learning. Strategies -- Engagement Multiple intelligences Cultural DiversitiesLearning by Inquiry 2 Explanatory modules Portfolio Assessment A Curriculum of Questions

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Learning becomes cumulative, rather than sequential. Strategies -- Engagement Multiple intelligences Cultural Diversities Learning by InquiryExplanatory modules 1 Portfolio Assessment A Curriculum of Questions Students can use explanatory modules on demand – short, lucid clarifications of the ideas and concepts that they should master in meeting high learning standards. Existing curricula are too sequential. Students who do not learn something well at the required time in the sequence have difficulty going back and getting it right when they realize they missed something. It is hard for teachers and students to jump ahead selectively when curiosity is ripe. Unanticipated reviews of material from prior grades are almost impossible. In the edZone, mastery can be cumulative, for it can include a complete matrix of explanatory materials at multiple levels of depth. A good pedagogy in college and graduate school is to have students develop short multimedia modules explaining basic elements of their field. The Education Zone will collect and organize these for on-line use on demand. A matrix of explanations becomes the essential resource for continuous, life-long learning.

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Learning modules for on-demand use. Strategies -- Engagement Multiple intelligences Cultural Diversities Learning by InquiryExplanatory modules 2 Portfolio Assessment A Curriculum of Questions www.worldcom.com/marcopolo/ http://www.econedlink.org/ http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/ http://edsitement.neh.gov/ http://illuminations.nctm.org/index2.html http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/index.html http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/

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Assessment through portfolio construction is feasible. Strategies -- Engagement Multiple intelligences Cultural Diversities Learning by Inquiry Explanatory modulesPortfolio Assessment 1 A Curriculum of Questions Emerging possibilitiesDigital portfolios are easier to use and more flexible Current difficultiesPhysical objects complicate portfolio logistics

Student’s work is hard to save and easily damaged.
Comparisons showing progress over time are awkward to make.
Linking teacher assessment to examples of work is cumbersome.
Setting follow-up assignments incurs logistical problems.
Portfolios are hard to transfer from one school to another and unwieldy for use in the college entrance process.
Student work is easy to save and safe to use.
Comparisons, within and across portfolios, are easy to make.
Assessments easily become permanent components of a digital portfolio.
Teachers can embed links to further resources in comments.
On-line portfolios are stable over time and can move from school to school and are more useful to colleges and employers.

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Electronic portfolios in action. Strategies -- Engagement Multiple intelligences Cultural Diversities Learning by Inquiry Explanatory modulesPortfolio Assessment 2 A Curriculum of Questions Dr. Helen Barrett maintains an excellent site, Using Technology to Support Alternative Assessment and Electronic Portfolios. Schools that are exemplary in using portfolios includeMt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka, Alaska.Hunterdon Central Regional High School, Flemington, New Jersey.

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A curriculum of questions, not lessons. Strategies -- Engagement Multiple intelligences Cultural Diversities Learning by Inquiry Explanatory modules Portfolio AssessmentA Curriculum of Questions The edZone:Accesssupportsengagement

Educators will need to put powerful questions to students, thereby activating and directing their curiosity, leading them to exploit their opportunities for access.

The curriculum becomes a cosmos of question to be asked, not a compendium of lessons to be learned.

Students, by virtue of making continuous selections about how to direct their attention and activity, take fuller responsibility as the primary agent shaping their own education.

Teachers have essential roles as guides and goads – informing and sustaining their students’ inquiries. They serve less as the font of knowledge and more as the source of questions.

Parents are on the inside and can support their children’s work, neither interfering nor ignoring. They can participate with their children and their educators in the pursuit of insight about difficult questions.

Schools have the opportunity to serve as community learning centers, shared resources and opportunities to participate in cultural life.

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Intelligence Strategies -- IntelligenceSimulationsBasic skillsBetter habitsOn-line toolsStudent feedbackResponsiveness 2ndCHANGEImmediate, informative response by educational resources amplifies the working intelligence of students, teachers, and parents.

Embedding capacities for immediate, intelligent response in educational resources provides enhanced learning experiences.
Deepened understanding through quality simulations.
Improved basic skills through use of adaptive, integrated learning systems.
Better habits through the automatic flagging of errors in spelling, grammar, usage, and calculations.
Superior output through regular use of on-line tools for searching, storing, analyzing, and synthesizing knowledge -- a Cyber Pilot.
Complex tracking of student progress and interests, with feedback to students, teachers, and parents.
Educators will need to adapt learning goals to a situation in which the everyday tools of education amplify the capacities of all persons to spell, write, remember, organize, calculate, select, analyze, and synthesize.

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Complex simulations engage interest and deepen understanding Intelligence Strategies -- IntelligenceSimulationsBasic skillsBetter habitsOn-line toolsStudent feedbackResponsiveness To learning as From learning about

Most learning in schools requires absorbing one-way communication from the teacher to the student, with the communication consisting of information about the subject at hand.
Students experience intellectual skills, not as means to employ in the course of education, but as the goal and objective of the education itself.
Communication between students is usually off topic, a distraction from the isolated task of learning about the matter the teacher expounds.
On-line simulations for individuals and groups engage students in learning as knowledge professionals, mobilizing ideas and tools to carry out productive tasks of intrinsic value..
Students experience skills as important means to acquire in order to achieve the goals of the simulation. Learning is thus aligned with the uses of real knowledge.
Students and teachers communicate together about the tasks underway and experience their interactions as integral elements of professional work.

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Adaptive, integrated learning systems improve basic skills. Strategies -- IntelligenceSimulationsBasic skillsBetter habitsOn-line toolsStudent feedbackResponsiveness The edZone can take drill and practice out of the classroom; make it diagnostic through continuous, built-in assessments running in the background; and provide it to all students whenever and wherever they may need it. Continuous access to adaptive learning systems designed to promote mastery of basic skills in mathematics and language arts can ensure that all children are ready to engage in meeting high learning standards in a spirit of thoughtful self development. Children who most need a lot of feedback and practice often have the least opportunity to get it. Good on-line skill-building programs can correct this inequity without depriving them of opportunities for more challenging problem-solving and collaborative learning experiences. Every child in the New York City schools should be at or above grade-level in basic skills from the 6th grade onwards.

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Automatic flagging of errors creates better habits. Strategies -- IntelligenceSimulationsBasic skillsBetter habitsOn-line toolsStudent feedbackResponsiveness

Tool software that automatically flags suspected errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy can provide students with routine immediate feedback that helps them build good skills.
When students do not realize they are making errors, they will keep on doing so.
Teachers and parents cannot promptly make routine corrections for all students all the time.
Programs that flag errors provide students essential feedback and relieve teachers and parents from the burden of routine work, enabling them to concentrate of complex problems and questions of value.
Tools that reduce the burden of complex calculation allow students to concentrate on mastering powerful concepts.
Tool software changes the relative pedagogical balance between routine skill training and the development of higher-level problem-solving capacities.

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On-line tools – a Cyber Pilot – strengthen knowledge creation. Strategies -- IntelligenceSimulationsBasic skillsBetter habitsOn-line tools 1Student feedbackResponsiveness

The World Wide Web differs significantly from the mass media. The WWW is an interactive storage and retrieval system, similar to a flexible, comprehensive library. Development of its content and its tools for use is in its infancy and will progress rapidly in the coming years.
With tools for searching, storing, analyzing, and synthesizing knowledge based on resources in the edZone, students will strengthen their capacity to solve problems and present results.
With tools for working actively with on-line content, students will be able to express their ideas and accomplishments to others, evoking encouragement and criticism.
With tools for creating a personal workspace, available whatever the time or place, students will integrate their learning across subjects and grades more effectively.
With tools for working together on substantive materials, intellectual collaboration will displace recitation as the basic form of group instruction.

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Useful on-line tools are now available. Strategies -- IntelligenceSimulationsBasic skillsBetter habitsOn-line tools 2Student feedbackResponsiveness

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Intelligent tracking improves educational decisions and choices. Strategies -- IntelligenceSimulationsBasic skillsBetter habitsOn-line toolsStudent feedbackResponsiveness Students, teachers, and parents can get timely, significant feedback on-line. Current information about a student’s progress, and its use, is limited.

Physical records are hard to manage and information in them is difficult to use.
As students move from grade to grade, school to school, district to district, chances diminish that useful information about their work will move with them.
Feedback to students and parents often lacks context and diagnostic depth. They often experience it as an ad hominem rejection, painful but not helpful.
On-line records, rich with examples, managed through a flexible retrieval system, become more actively useful.
Students' educational work can become more cumulative as their interests and accomplishments travel with them. What they have accomplished becomes more visible.
Feedback can be more timely and connected to examples. Educators can shape it to inform responsible choices by students and their parents. Through the edZone, the school, the home, and the community can coordinate their educational work.

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Adapting the curriculum to new learning goals. Strategies -- IntelligenceSimulationsBasic skillsBetter habitsOn-line toolsStudent feedbackResponsiveness The edZone:Responsivenessevokes intelligence Technology enabled change in educational practice occurs when new means alter the fundamental repertoire of skills that the well educated person needs to master. Hitherto the tools of education have been illuminating, but not actively responsive. Digital technologies permit the design of responsive educational resources. Technologies increasingly assist and amplify basic skills – the ability to spell and to write with correct grammar and diction, to calculate simple and complex functions, to categorize and remember, to diagram, to map, to annotate, even to translate. In the edZone, where responsive tools become available to all people at all places all of the time, opportunities for the cultivation of intellect and intelligence increase and the fundamental question – What knowledge is of most worth? – will be hotly debated anew.

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Communication Strategies -- CommunicationCollaborative learningProblem-solvingMentoring Virtual Apprenticeship Just-in-time PDEducational linkages 3rdCHANGEFlexible opportunities for communication with others, facilitating the pursuit of curiosity and the construction of meaning. People must make their knowledge meaningful in their lives, which they do by communicating with each other. Good digital technologies will allow students, teachers, and parents to engage more easily and widely in communicating about the significance and value of their educational work.

Fuller use of opportunities for collaborative learning.
Enhanced problem-solving as students can reach beyond the classroom and school for input and answers.
Mentoring across age groups.
Virtual apprenticeships become more fully feasible.
Improved teaching through just-in-time professional development and consultation with experts on-demand.
Linking the school, the home, and the community in a shared field of educational interaction through the edZone.
Educators will need to transform the school into a communications hub, not a closed circuit.

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Students can effectively engage in problem-solving. Strategies -- CommunicationCollaborative learningProblem-solving 1Mentoring Virtual Apprenticeship Just-in-time PDEducational linkages The edZone creates conditions for students to learn well through inquiry. Learning by problem-solving has limitations in traditional schools.

Reliance on learning about leads to dependency on predictable, stock problems, which trigger exercise and practice, not open-ended inquiry.
Effective inquiry requires full resources and tools pertinent to the question. Few schools can provide their students with sufficient tools – as a result inquiry often produces frustrated superficialities, not deep understanding.
Frustrated inquiry is rarely cumulative. Students drop problems without seeing how they lead to further, more challenging questions.
Opportunities to learn as creators of knowledge encourage posing real problems, challenging students to generate and test significant ideas.
With the edZone, all resources and tools are available to all students, from any place at any time. Thus the conditions for effective inquiries are in place and students can carry them to a point of significant understanding.
Open-ended inquiry leads, not to conclusive answers, but to further questions and to insight into why those further questions are important.

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Examples of resources forinquiry learning. Strategies -- CommunicationCollaborative learningProblem-solving 2Mentoring Virtual Apprenticeship Just-in-time PDEducational linkages

Secondary
www.letus.org/bguile/Secondary biology inquiry.
asterix.ednet.lsu.edu/~edtech/webquest/titanic.htmlTitanic. What can numbers tell us about her fatal voyage? Math
www.manteno.k12.il.us/drussert/WebQuests/HallOvandoRobinson/start.htmlWhat can 1 person do about hunger? Plenty. Start here. Social issues.
www.geom.umn.edu/apps/gallery.htmlGallery of interactive geometry
www.exploremath.com/activities/Activity_page.cfm?ActivityID=13Quadratic equations
www.mgw.dinet.de/physik/ChaosSpiel/ChaosEnglish.htmlChaos theory
www.vkp.org/Secondary. Interdisciplinary. Resources to connect art and other disciplines.
Elementary
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/Excellent in every way: graphics, text, clarity, questions.
www.exploratorium.edu/cycling/Physics - elementary.
dorishill.tripod.com/id16.htmBats
www.fi.edu/city/water/Elementary science. Attractive page.
www.fi.edu/qa98/atticindex.htmlAn excellent array of inquiry topics visible by scrolling.
www.miamisci.org/af/sln/phantom/mightymolecules.htmlElementary chemistry. Atoms via "Adams family."
chickscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/Elementary. Science.
www.bsu.edu/teachers/burris/iwonder/Homepage of inquiry site. Math & science through museums.

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Mentoring across age groups becomes effective in the edZone. Strategies -- CommunicationCollaborative learningProblem-solvingMentoring 1 Virtual Apprenticeship Just-in-time PDEducational linkages

Grouping students by age dominates schools. Insofar as students need to learn the same thing at the same time and they do so best when grouped together roughly according to their abilities and stages of development, age-grouping is a useful expedient. It leaves out a great deal, however.
Younger children learn and form aspirations in interaction with older children.
Less developed students can test and challenge themselves through interaction with more developed peers.
Older students can learn a lot by having to act as teachers and mentors with younger students. Becoming more aware that they are resources for others and role models heightens their sense of responsibility and self worth.
The edZone provides means for students to interact flexibly, in school and out, across formal age groupings. Educational service within the edZone should become an expectation and norm for all.

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Mentoring through the edZone. Strategies -- CommunicationCollaborative learningProblem-solvingMentoring 2 Virtual Apprenticeship Just-in-time PDEducational linkages Digital technologies serve as both a coordinating mechanism and as a mentoring medium.They greatly reduce the logistical impediments.

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The edZone makesvirtual apprenticeships feasible. Strategies -- CommunicationCollaborative learningProblem-solvingMentoringVirtual ApprenticeshipJust-in-time PDEducational linkages The edZone allows students to study disciplines and professions as if they are practitioners of them. The Internet allows the direct observation of scholars, researchers, and professionals at work with their data, tools, and instruments available to the observer. Collaborative groups can interact as participants at an distance, learning by virtual doing in real time in real settings. In schools it is important to deploy communications technologies so that they empower collaborative groups. Groups can convene on-line, or face-to-face, with information technologies providing substance for thoughtful collaboration and the facilitation of meaningful interaction. Outside of school the edZone provides means for students to enter into virtual apprenticeships across a very wide range of interests. As peers engage in the shared evaluation of projects and in criticizing the quality and value of their results constructively they will make virtual apprenticeships highly effective educational experiences.

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Just-in-time professional development. Strategies -- CommunicationCollaborative learningProblem-solvingMentoring Virtual Apprenticeship Just-in-time PDEducational linkages Teachers will expand the knowledge they use and diversify their skills. The best teachers hone relatively static skills, acquired early in their careers. Texts and tests have largely determined the scope and sequence of ideas that teachers engage with their students. The need to acquire new knowledge on the job is low. Pre-service professional development has provided decontextualized career resources that a teacher turns into his or her characteristic cast of practice in the first few years on the job. In-service professional development is episodic and difficult to put into practice in a constrained working environment that reinforces each teacher's initially acquired style. Students will interact with the full culture and teachers will facilitate and assess inquiries into matters about which they have little prior knowledge. The drive to learn new things becomes continuous. Professional resources become mobile and can be brought to bear on-demand, at the point of need. Pre-service preparation becomes increasingly an initiation in the scope and use of these on demand resources. Practice becomes a more many-sided process of problem-solving in an environment that becomes less predictably structured. Teachers can put on-demand help immediately to use.

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Educating the whole person by the entire city. Communication Strategies -- CommunicationCollaborative learningProblem-solvingMentoring Virtual Apprenticeship Just-in-time PDEducational linkages The edZone links the school, the home, and the community in a shared field of educational interaction. Traditionally schools and classrooms have been closed communications systems. So too the family. The result fragments educational work, making it hard for teaches, parents, and the public to join together in a shared effort. Students experience this fragmentation as alienating, with education becoming a series of things that different groups and institutions seek to do to them. Communication between school and home is awkward and creates a significant overhead draining the educational effort that each can sustain. An alternative to increased communica-tion between closed systems is partici-pation by each in a shared, common field of educational interaction, the edZone. Coordination is spontaneous when all have the same resources and tools. Students can better take responsibility for their education, able to explain their choices when they know that all have access to the same field of interaction. Working with shared tools and resources, the school, home, and community can communicate through a fluid collaboration, not a mutual distraction.

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Towards educational justice in a cultural democracy. edZone Practice -- GoalsEducational JusticeCumulative EducationPurposive Study 4th Grade(2002-2003 and on)8th Grade(2006-2007 and on)12th Grade(2010-2011 and on)

The edZone provides all students with educational resources of great power and depth.
New York City school population scores roughly the same as the rest of the State.All New York City 8th grade students pass the intermediate-level assessments in English, mathematics, science, and social studies.All New York City seniors graduate with Regents diplomas.
Equipped to succeed, all students should graduate successfully.

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Cumulative educational experience. edZone Practice -- GoalsEducational JusticeCumulative EducationPurposive Study Traditional schooling has been sequential, a progression from grade to grade.In the edZone, education becomes cumulative, an expansive mastery of resources in the culture. The physical condition of books forces educational experience to be sequential. The mechanics and scale of books further accentuates the division of knowledge into discrete subjects. Students must leave curricular materials for each year behind as they move to the next grade. Students do not have the knowledge resources at hand to easily review, compare, or anticipate work slotted for some other time. The curriculum becomes a set of discrete subjects, experienced in a strict order, the curricular scope and sequence. All the resources of the edZone are available to any student from any place at any time. As a result, students can more easily build on the interconnectedness of experience and leaning, over time and across subjects. Students easily draw on knowledge and ideas they experienced in prior grades in working on current problems. They can reach ahead when sudden insight shows where a questions might lead. The edZone displaces curricular scope and sequence with a more powerful resource -- a cumulative curriculum.

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With the new educational strategies,students work purposively. edZone Practice -- GoalsEducational JusticeCumulative EducationPurposive Study Students will experience intellect as resources for thinking productively. Too often students experienced intellectual means as ends.

Traditional education tends to convert intellectual skills and techniques, which people employ in the course of experience, into educational ends, learning objectives of inherent value.
Basic skills -- correct spelling, accurate calculation, knowledge of dates, places, etc. -- become signs of worthy achievement.
Subjects, represented by epitomes of acquired knowledge, displace disciplines, as systematic ways to generate and validate knowledge.
This process reduces education to dead routine.
The edZone will represent intellectual skills and techniques in their fullness, not through epitomes, and avail them to students as useful resources in pursuing questions of substantial import.
Students will experience basic skills as acquisitions that speed and facilitate work on challenging matters.
Students will employ different disciplines as organized means for the advancement of knowledge about interesting matters.
Education becomes purposeful effort to assuage shared concerns and curiosities.

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Continuity with Learning Standards. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development Learning standards indicate the intellectual agenda that students should engage and master. The standards and the resources requisite for meeting them should become a public reality, manifest in the cultural experience of all people at all times and all places. The standards are not merely delegated to the school, closed within it and irrelevant to the rest of life. The conduct of life – the level of disciplined intelligence, judgment, and discourse expected in politics, business, the media, and personal conduct – should routinely excel the standards at their best. The standards indicate the intellectual tools and resources students should be able to use with competence in addressing questions and problems of importance. All students, teachers, and parents should continuously command usable, comprehensive resources supporting attainments that excel the standards. Student tracking and feedback should map achievements relative to the skills and capacities that the standards define.

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The edZone andEnglish Language Arts. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development A 10% improvement, compounded from 4th grade through 12th, more than doubles achievement. Excellent resources supporting the English language arts learning standards exist. The edZone will make them available, fully and continuously, to all students, teachers, and parents. Tools in the edZone will expand the support students have in mastering the mechanics of reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Consequently, interpersonal interactions in the language arts can emphasize the development of meaningful communication. Using and making multimedia productions will bring greater diversity and authenticity to the contexts for reading, writing, speaking, and listening in classrooms. The edZone brings all learning resources together in one, integrated comprehensive setting, facilitating efforts by teachers and parents to work with students to develop skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening across all content areas and standards. A comprehensive set of tools and resources, available at all times and all places, will help students draw productive connections between their study of reading, writing, speaking, and listening in school with activities in the home, at work, and in the community.

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World literature for all. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development

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The edZone andSocial Studies. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development The edZone will provide social studies content in unparalleled fullness and depth. The edZone should key content to the State's eight critical dimensions of teaching and learning: intellectual skills, multidisciplinary approaches, depth and breadth, unity and diversity, multiculturalism and multiple perspectives, patterns to organize data, multiple learning environments and resources, and student-centered teaching, learning, and assessment. Modules should clearly explain the key concepts of the program in history, geography, economics, and civics and these explanations should link to a variety of cases and examples illustrating their pertinence to historical, geographical, economic, and political life. The edZone should include a variety of simulations and collaborative learning opportunities pertinent to the full range of skills and ideas comprised in the social studies. The edZone should provide parents and teachers with full resources for understanding the learning tasks that students face and the means to collaborate in helping individual students work successfully. The edZone should enable students of the social studies to participate actively in the public life of the City.

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Resources for social studies. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development

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The edZone andMathematics. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development The edZone should provide programs to exercise student's basic skills in calculation, to empower students to perform diverse mathematical functions accurately and rapidly, and to stimulate students to engage in the construction and explanation of mathematical theory and proof. The edZone should help students, teachers, and parents deal with three principles of best practice emphasized in the New York State learning standards – inquiry approaches; mathematics, science, and technology integration; and equity. To support inquiry approaches, the edZone should include powerful sets of mathematical tools designed to allow students to explore geometric, mathematical, and logical relations, and to test, explain, and demonstrate generalities about them. The edZone should have associated resources helping teachers and parents stimulate and guide student inquiry. To support equity, the edZone should make available on-line tutorial help for students, teachers, and parents who find themselves stumped by a mathematical resource.

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Mathematics Resources. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development

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The edZone andScience. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development The edZone will provide a wealth of explanatory modules, multimedia clarifications, and interactive simulations clarifying key concepts across all the sciences. The edZone will greatly increase the accessibility of the practicing scientist, along with the data and instrumentation at the base of scientific inquiry. The Internet is a fundamental resource in the practice of science, engineering, and technology. Students become able to observe science at work and the edZone should provide them with the means to ask how and why working science functions as it does. Powerful computer-assisted design tools can enable students to see the integration of mathematics, science, and technology by engaging in real-world engineering design projects. The edZone should enable students, teachers, and parents to connect the diversity of scientific resources on the Internet to the seven NY State MST learning standards and to map how each student's scientific explorations in the edZone relate to the range of expectations established through the standards.

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Science Resources. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development

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The edZone andTechnology. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development The edZone itself should encompass all the information technologies that students, teachers, and parents might need to encounter. Students should develop an understanding of technology by learning through its use, seeing it as a facilitating means with distinctive strengths and limitations. It is important to exercise care in the design of the edZone to ensure that its component technologies serve students, teachers, and parents effectively. Poor implementation of technical resources mystifies technology, creating experiences of it in which authorities invest it with an aura of importance while the user feels let down. Simulations in the edZone should provide a clear understanding of how and why fundamental technological innovations take hold in human experience and consequently transform and shape historical life. In the edZone, technology should be a unifying study, linking science, art, social studies, language and communication, careers, and on, in a complex reflection on basic choices, personal and collective, that people need to make as they face the indeterminacies of their future.

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Resources on technology. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development

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The edZone andthe Arts. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development Dance, music, theater, and the visual arts pervade contemporary culture. The edZone will help students, parents, and teachers integrate informal and formal arts education. The edZone, 24/7, should support both artistic creation and appreciation. For both purposes, the power of the edZone to help students, teachers, and parents to organize themselves spontaneously into active audiences will significantly improve educational experience in the arts. The edZone should provide on-line tools for graphic arts, music, video, theater and the like, as well as virtual display and performance space. The means of artistic expression can be continuously at hand making a fuller integration of the arts into educational experience more feasible. The arts are copious, protean, and diverse; they do not thrive in a narrow scope and sequence. The edZone can reflect the full flowering of the arts; a greater diversity of talents can find opportunities for development and expression.

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Resources for dance, music, theater, and the visual arts. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development

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The edZone andLanguages other than English. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development In the edZone the conditions for the study of languages other than English change fundamentally. It greatly expands opportunities to engage in cultural activities through other languages, to communicate by means of them, to connect with ideas and views uniquely expressed through them. The edZone is a global network in which many languages are together fully at work. Through the edZone, students can have access to a full range of educational resources in each of the world's languages, along with the news, entertainment, criticism, and culture, making the effective integration of language study into the curriculum more more feasible. The edZone should include tools that will facilitate multilingual collaborative projects and technical standards should ensure that work in any language will display correctly. With the edZone, students for whom English is a second language can have a much more positive relationship to their first language within their educational experience.

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Global languages. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development

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The edZone andHealth, Physical Education, Family & Consumer Sciences. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development With traditional arrangements, the school more and more exclusively contained the educational program. As a result, as many matters related to home, family, and community became formal curricular subjects, the irony arose that these matters loose direct connection to the experiential world of the student outside of school. The edZone makes the educational program ubiquitous and continuous, putting the school, along with the home, family, and community, within it. This context will renew the linkages of health, physical education, family and consumer education, with the existential lives of students. These are among the matters that educators in school and throughout life should present in a preeminently student-centered way. The edZone should provide tools by which students can better control the consequences of their choices for their health, physical well-being, family life, and consumer experience. More than most other aspects of education, these matters are sensitive to class differences. Resources in the edZone should be multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-class in the principles of personal prudence that they propound.

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Resources on health & families. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development

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The edZone andCareer Development and Occupational Studies. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development In the edZone, the world of education and the world of work more effectively overlap. The edZone should enable students to perceive and master the background knowledge requisite for effective participation in one or another occupation. Students should understand what specific expertise they need to develop to gain entry-level employment in an occupation and how to go about acquiring it. Lastly, the edZone should facilitate their developing the learning skills needed to sustain a successful career within a chosen occupation. Students should experience the edZone as an educational resource continuously available to them, equipping them throughout life with the capacity for on-going self-development. Global, high-tech economies require that employees be life-long learners and the ability to adapt and change is the surest form of security. The edZone should reflect the recognition that a commitment to learning will pervade work and that leisure will become more active and productive of diverse forms of value – economic, political, cultural, and spiritual.

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Careers. edZone Practice – Learning StandardsEnglish LanguageSocial StudiesMathematics—Science—TechnologyThe ArtsOther LanguagesPhysical Education & Career Development

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Using the edZoneAll Grades. edZone Practice – Using the edZoneAll GradesGrades K through 5Grades 6 through 8Grades 9 through 12School to CollegeSchool to Work

Communication
The edZone serves as an educational communications hub, enabling –
Students to collaborate in and out of school on difficult problems.
Patterns of interaction in which older students mentor younger students in their studies.
Broad participation in contests, quests, affinity groups, and interest driven learning. Engagement The edZone provides full access to the Learning Standards and the Resource Guides for each subject and to digital libraries of materials correlated to its scope and sequence. It comprises clear, concise multimedia modules explaining the concepts and principles encompassed within the standards. The edZone poses the powerful, generative questions motivating the advancement of knowledge within the scope and sequence. Intelligence Across the range of the Learning Standards, the edZone provides sustained simulations, engaging participants in using the techniques of the relevant disciplines and professions to create knowledge and know-how. The edZone continuously provides tools to exercise and develop basic skills. The edZone will map a user's work relative to the scope and sequence and provide feedback about its quality relative to the learning standards.

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Using the edZoneGrades K through 5 edZone Practice – Using the edZoneAll GradesGrades K through 5Grades 6 through 8Grades 9 through 12School to CollegeSchool to Work Communication Students should acquire facility with the edZone as a medium of communication. Through the 3rd grade, they should progressively use the edZone for communication between their immediate group and other groups and individuals. From 4th grade, students, teachers, and parents should use collaborative tools and personal email to engage in cultural work and to facilitate interaction with others, near and far, in work and play. Engagement The edZone provides numerous quests and exploratory challenges that engage children in the practice of search and retrieval as well as assessing the relevance and reliability of results. Students and teachers build the expectation that the school is the place where interesting questions get put and the edZone is a resource for the collaborative development of answers that will stand up to reflective examination. Intelligence At this stage, mastery of basic skills is the first priority. The edZone should situate opportunities for practice and self-correction so that each student feels the command of those skills has significance for the fulfillment of his or her purposes. Students should develop the sense that through the edZone they control powerful cultural tools, with which they can build their intellectual skills, solve problems, and create meaning. Students learn with simulations.

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Using the edZoneGrades 6 through 8. edZone Practice – Using the edZoneAll GradesGrades K through 5Grades 6 through 8Grades 9 through 12School to CollegeSchool to Work Communication Communications patterns fostered by the edZone should embody a utilitarian calculus – the greatest responsiveness for the greatest number. Students should gain experience using different forms of interaction for different educational purposes – synchronous and asynchronous, proximate and distant, direct and mediated. Students engage the problem of separating realities from appearances fostered by each kind of communications media. Engagement Students should make their initial cycle through the fundamental questions that give rise to the structure of knowledge and inquiry. Students, teachers, and parents should realize that they will not "finish" a topic and then move on to the next. Questions explored lead to further questions – that is the driving force in inquiry-based learning. Novices must experience the edZone as both manageable and comprehensive. Portfolio construction. Intelligence In the edZone, the scope is comprehensive and the sequence individual. The edZone must provide students, along with their teachers, parents, and others, continuous feedback about the sequence of what each has done relative to the full scope of knowledge. Such feedback should inform each student's decisions about his or her studies and help teachers and parents be informative resources for the student as he or she considers successive choices. Simulations across subjects.

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Using the edZoneGrades 9 through 12. Section title edZone Practice – Using the edZoneAll GradesGrades K through 5Grades 6 through 8Grades 9 through 12School to CollegeSchool to Work Communication Students increasingly engage in communication in order to act through the edZone on matters of personal and public import. A range of norms, which derive from the traditional idea that the school is a realm separate from the rest of practical life, become subject to revaluation. Students will use communications resources to develop their public personae, a responsible sense of who they are and what they stand for within the educative community. Engagement Students again address the basic questions, expanding the reach and depth of their engagement with the culture. Students will show more differentiation in the sophistication of their inquiries. Students engage in complex collaborations, reaching into higher education, the workplace, and public spheres. Through the edZone, students engage with the world at large, with the school as a staging ground and the portfolio the assemblage of its fruits. Intelligence Students actively use feedback capacities in the edZone as resources in individuating their interests, capacities, and accomplishments. Students use a wide range of simulations and evaluate how the virtual and the actual differ in substance and action. Students develop discrimination in their selection and application of intelligent tools within the edZone.

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Using the edZoneSchool to College. edZone Practice – Using the edZoneAll GradesGrades K through 5Grades 6 through 8Grades 9 through 12School to CollegeSchool to Work HighAchievingSeniors These students should find entrance to colleges of their choice easy and the transition to undergraduate work natural, having already interacted substantially with university resources and studies. AverageAchievingSeniors Most should get into four year colleges and be ready to succeed in study there. Progression into CUNY should be natural, facilitated by extending the edZone to encompass undergraduate and graduate study. Low Achieving Seniors Most should easily enter two-year colleges, which, within the City, will seem much like an extension of high school with preparation for desirable jobs in the work place as a prime concern. Seniors fromSpecialHigh schools A growing proportion of graduates may directly enter professional life confident that they can extend their education through further study on-line. The lockstep from high school to college may weaken further. CollegeEntranceRequirements Colleges will re-examine their admissions processes as more students will have been interacting with their programs routinely while in school. The NYCBoE and the City's higher education community will take the lead in this re-examination.

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Using the edZoneSchool to Work. edZone Practice – Using the edZoneAll GradesGrades K through 5Grades 6 through 8Grades 9 through 12School to CollegeSchool to Work Employers will interact regularly with students through the edZone, facilitating the transition from school to work. The Internet, and the edZone with it, builds fluid interconnections between diverse sectors of activity that were previously more distinct from each other. The world of work and the world of education will increasingly overlap. Students will act as participant observers in different kinds of work settings. Employers in both the public and the private sector will routinely participate in the educational experience of students. Employers need to help imbue the learning standards with value and meaning by making high achievement with respect to the standards a condition of entry level employment. Employers need to take affirmative measures within the edZone to ensure that the entire workforce can continuously extend its educational attainments beyond the standards. The edZone can attract employers in search of skilled, well-educated workers and dynamic employers have both a self-interest and a civic responsibility to make the edZone pedagogically effective.

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Pedagogical requirements. Building the edZone – Pedagogical RequirementsStudent RequirementsTeacher RequirementsSchool RequirementsParent RequirementsGeneral Requirements Educators using technology to improve education, not technologists using education to improve technology.

Technological specifications – processing power, bandwidth, server capacity and through-put, etc. – should suffice to support full use of the Education Zone by all members of the City’s educational community.
Providing the pedagogical requirements set by the Board to implement its educational plan should be an absolute priority that all bidders must meet in implementing the Board's technology plan.
Tools for students must provide them with full control over their educational activities.
Tools for teachers must enable them to interact effectively with each of their students, and their parents, individually and in groups, about all aspects of a student’s educational work.
Tools for schools must enable the school to serve, 24/7, as a communications hub for everyone connected with it.
Tools for parents must engage them in the educational life of their children and offer adult educational resources, making the school an effective center of community learning.

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Technology scaled to student potentialities. Building the edZone – Pedagogical RequirementsStudent RequirementsTeacher RequirementsSchool RequirementsParent RequirementsGeneral Requirements Students need to control high-quality content, confident that is has been peer reviewed for accuracy and relevance.

The edZone must provide students with full control over their educational activities.
Foremost, students need to control comprehensive, high-quality intellectual content. Development of the edZone should include effective procedures for the prompt, continuing review of contents in an effort to guarantee accuracy, currency, and completeness.
Students need the most up-to-date tools for on-line collaboration and powerful applications for processing content.
Students need a secure, copious storage for their work, with the ability to access it routinely, at any time from any location. Each student's work and the ability to access it should endure across his or her whole educational experience.
Students need a full repertoire of stimulating, challenges – on-line apprenticeships, simulations, webquests, virtual worlds, and so on.
Students need opportunities to interact with a wide variety of experts, peers, and counselors about concerns of mutual interest.

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Technologies for teachers facilitating the work of students. Building the edZone – Pedagogical RequirementsStudent RequirementsTeacher RequirementsSchool RequirementsParent RequirementsGeneral Requirements

Tools for teachers must enable them to interact effectively with each of their students, and their parents, individually and in groups, about all aspects of a student’s educational work.
Foremost, teachers need means to put powerful questions to students and to perceive easily the results of students' work, to interject suggestions and criticisms, to consult with diverse authorities – in short teachers need a full suite of tools for on-line collaboration with diverse individuals and groups.
Teachers need a full set of just-in-time professional development experiences and opportunities to engage specialists as the occasion requires. In the edZone, teachers cannot be prepared for every contingency long ahead of time, but they must have the means at hand to respond knowledgeably, however the occasion warrants.
The edZone will put teachers into a mentoring relationship with parents. Teachers need a repertoire of useful resources to which they can refer parents who seek help in working constructively with their children. Teachers become educators in the fullest sense.

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Technologies to make the school a center for pedagogical communication. Building the edZone – Pedagogical RequirementsStudent RequirementsTeacher RequirementsSchool RequirementsParent RequirementsGeneral Requirements

As the school ceases to contain the educational program, it becomes the conductor orchestrating use of an educational program that pervades the whole life of the community. School technologies must enable it to serve, 24/7, as a communications hub for everyone engaged in educative work.
Foremost, the school becomes a communicative organization encompassing the classroom, the school building, the district, and the whole educational system.
As a communicative organization, the school should be among the most capable and sophisticated, able to handle comprehensive records, complex information, and substantive ideas in a secure, responsive way.
Sustaining progressive improvement in the quality of the edZone will entail continuously upgrading the capacity of the school to provide students, teachers, and parents with useful feedback and effective control over educational resources.

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Technologies to enable parents to engage fully in education. Building the edZone – Pedagogical RequirementsStudent RequirementsTeacher RequirementsSchool RequirementsParent RequirementsGeneral Requirements

Tools for parents must engage them in the educational life of their children and offer adult educational resources, making the school an effective center of community learning.
Foremost, parents need to set examples as learners for their children. With the edZone, it is less important that parents help their children perform prescribed tasks and more important that they exemplify active curiosity and the urge to make use of educational opportunities. For that to occur, the edZone must provide adults with a full range of useful learning opportunities.
In addition to engaging in their own educational opportunities, parents can help their children in the edZone with the logistics of learning. The edZone should track what has and has not been accomplished and provide both parent and student insight at each step into what might come next.
Parents need to be able to communicate easily and regularly with all those involved in educative work with their children. They need to understand expectations and have access to all tools and resources with which their children work.

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Pedagogical power – the key to success. Building the edZone – Pedagogical RequirementsStudent RequirementsTeacher RequirementsSchool RequirementsParent RequirementsGeneral Requirements

It is worth investing in technologies sufficiently powerful to ensure that the edZone serves students, teachers, parents, and the whole City well.
The comparative advantage in a portal sponsored by the Board of Education, relative to typical commercial portals, lies in the quality of its educational services. Users will stick with the portal and return to it regularly if they experience it as a compelling educational resource.
The Board can leverage its huge scale by setting its standards and aspirations higher than smaller competitors can. The scale of participation is likely to be a function of the quality of the educational experience the edZone sustains.
Open source development techniques and an open source business model should enable the creation of high quality content and powerful software tools at minimum costs.
The edZone can set itself apart from alternatives through continuous, exacting peer-review of content and pedagogy.

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Commitments Building the edZone – Civic CommitmentsHigher Education and the Professions Government – Business – LaborPhilanthropy, Religion, and ArtJournalism and the MediaSports and EntertainmentCommunities and Leadership TheSmartCityAn achievement to which all contribute.

In a system where students are players and teachers are coaches, the whole community must join in as supporters and fans.
Higher Education – Knowledge in the people’s service.
Professions – Expertise in the service of children and youth.
Government – Making intelligent connections for all.
Business – Volunteering for educational excellence.
Labor – Solidarity supporting the dignity of creative work.
Philanthropy – Resources where they count.
Religion – Cultivating value and dedication.
Art – Creativity making meaning through the City.
Journalism – Information serving the pursuit of possibility.
New Media – Design for living and learning.
Sports and Entertainment – Get smart. Get with the message.
Communities – Diversity makes the City work.
Leadership – Educational vision and the future of New York.
The edZone is a work of the City as a whole.

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Education – by, for, and through the City. Building the edZone – Civic CommitmentsHigher Education – the Professions Government – Business – Labor Philanthropy – Religion – Art Journalism – the MediaSports and EntertainmentCommunities – Leadership The edZone transforms the conditions of teaching and learning by making high-quality educational tools and resources ubiquitous and continuous throughout the City. The school ceases to contain the educational program, as that program comes to contain the school, the home, the community, the entire City. With this change, the educational responsibilities of the diverse components of the City become more visible and explicit. All sectors of city life participate in the work of education and become accountable for the quality of their contributions. The question ceases to be the old, rather divisive issue – what does business, or the press, or one or another community group, think the schools should do or stop doing. The question becomes more practical and participatory – how can business, or the press, or one or another community group, work through the edZone to help the progeny of the City develop its fullest potentials? It will take much experimentation and effort to find all the ways different groups can answer this question with effect.

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The City as Educator The City as Educator Greater New York Get in the Zone

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Where there is a will . . . . Conclusion

Teaching & Learning in Cyberspace

Architecting K-12 Education in the New Millennium: A Feasibility Study for the Development of an Educational ISP/Portal for the

New York City Board of Education

Executive Summary

In the new millennium, literacy will include the capability to use various mechanisms for communication: the ability to manipulate computer networks, integrate multimedia into instruction and student presentation, navigate content portals, work with search engines, link to electronic libraries, employ distance learning, and guide inquiry in Web-based classrooms. Indeed, there is an emerging body of research that suggests that student achievement, time on task, and classroom dynamics improve where there is evidence of technology being integrated into instruction. Beyond literacy, working knowledge of the new technologies will define who is educated and who is not. The Board of Education seeks to have the new technologies integrated into instruction in a substantial way.

Not since the development of the Guttenberg printing press has there been a means to transfer knowledge and skills in such a democratic way. The feasibility study was commissioned to determine how the Board of Education, in the new technology economy, might leverage its assets to make access to the new technologies ubiquitously available throughout the education system of New York City.

The findings of the feasibility study, conducted by Andersen Consulting, to examine the efficacy and potential value of the New York City Board of Education capacity to create the first ever K-12 public education revenue-generating portal with Internet Service Provider (ISP) capabilities is conservative and compelling. It concludes that the creation of such a portal by the Board is indeed doable and would generate cumulative revenue ranging from $120 million to $11.5 billion. In fact, the study shows that the Board’s portal would be among the top 100 portals in terms of users with the potential of eventually becoming one of the top 10 portals in the world.

Portals are gateways to a community of users, rich in content with eCommerce opportunities. An educational portal would combine a portfolio of pedagogical content, communication and commerce services. It also would serve as the impetus for organizing and building an online educational community through the Web that would allow for addressing concerns of parents, teachers, administrators and community members who have long argued for greater accessibility of resources, information and input into the public school system.

The Board’s portal would serve as a single point of access on the Web for the Board’s Web pages, Internet services and e-mail and would provide some of the following benefits to the New York City public schools:

q Web-based interfaces for all Board of Education staff and the community

q One-stop shopping for all existing online pedagogical materials

q Revenue for the Board of Education, which would maintain and sustain the portal

q Services for community building through Web development

q Navigational services, mailing lists, bulletin services and other Web-enabled information services that would enhance the users’ experience in using the portal

q Telephone support and Web services such as search engines and discussion forums

q Web pages designated for each group within the learning community (students, parents, teachers, administrators, advocates etc.), some for schools only and others to be shared with the community-at-large

The study looks at how the new economy offers a way for the Board to generate revenue if it leverages its assets and captures value by allowing access to its aggregated community. The revenue obtained would be used to integrate technology into instruction and provide every member of the Board’s community with an e-mail address and Internet access. Moreover, every student and teacher will be provided with a portable and networked computing device.

According to the study, the estimated global market for education and training in 1998 was $2.1 trillion, making it one of the single largest markets worldwide with the bulk of spending going to the K-12 market ($1.4 trillion). The United States has the greatest percentage of the global market at $697 billion or 33.72 percent. The study recommends that the Board create an education revenue-generating portal with a default start page that aggregates the community of users. The portal would be divided into two “zones”: a commercial-free education zone and a partner portal zone.

The Education Zone

q The education zone would focus on content and applications that facilitate

learning and the integration of learning into the learning process.

q The education zone would be a parent-controlled, commercial-free area

for students and members of the educational community.

The Partner Zone

q The partner portal zone would allow access to the Internet targeted to the needs of the adults and family of our educational community.

According to the feasibility study:

q Every community member would have a login ID and password to ensure

secure access to e-mail, discussion groups, etc.

q The appropriate content would be made available to portal users based on their role (teacher, administrator, parent, student, alumni, or support staff).

q Non-members of the community (anyone without a login ID) would not have access to students.

The Portable Computing Device

The study states that the New York City Board of Education would give every child and teacher, starting with the 4th grade, a portable and networked computing device. These devices would be deployed “free-of-charge” to students, or at a significantly discounted price. According to the study, the infrastructure, when possible, should be built on a wireless network to maximize portability across classes. Users could use dialup, satellite, or other access approaches from the home. Further, the portal would be accessible from home, school, and at alternative locations, such as public libraries and community centers.

The study outlines a number of factors that are critical if the Board decides to proceed with this recommendation. The policy and operational decisions the Board makes can have a significant impact on the portal’s viability and financial value. These decisions include those that are related to governance structures, technology infrastructure and support, and revenue streams.

The Value of the ISP/Portal

In estimating the potential value of the ISP/Portal, the study uses four approaches, each of which varied depending upon the perspective of the company partnering with the Board.

q An existing Internet company might look at the “lifetime value of customer” and evaluate the value on the basis of costs avoided. The estimated range for the value using this approach is $120 M to $259 M, based upon the Net Present Value of costs avoided and direct revenues forfeited.

q A portal that has an advertising driven revenue model might look at the potential advertising revenues that could be generated by companies wishing to target the Board of Education community. The estimated range for value using this approach is $2.8 B to $4.7 B in cumulative revenues.

q An entity specializing in the education marketplace may want to package this approach and create an asset that can be sold to other school districts like New York City’s. If this asset were sold to other large urban communities, its value could range from $370 M to $11.5 B in cumulative revenues.

q The market capitalization of an Internet portal that has a subscriber base the size of the NYCBOE aggregate community could be valued from $3 B to $13.2 B.

Because of the volatility in the Internet market space, Andersen conducted sensitivity analyses on certain assumptions, identifying those that affected the cumulative revenue streams most. At its heart, the NYCBOE ISP/Portal is an advertising driven revenue model. As a result, its success hinges upon those things that most directly affect advertising revenue: the size of the community, the amount of time they spend online, and its ability to be a targeted portal, rather than a broad-based portal. The cumulative revenues are most susceptible to changes in the following factors:

q Size of the ISP/Portal community

q ISP/Portal penetration into the NYCBOE community

q Advertising revenue per page view

q Length of time to deploy equipment (and therefore bring people online)

q Use of a nominal fee to offset costs

Two other factors, parental consent for students to use the partner portal “commercial” zone, and the growth rate of time spent on the Internet, affect revenue streams moderately. NYCBOE can affect several of these factors through policy decisions.

This potential value presents a compelling case for NYCBOE. On the basis of this analysis, the study recommends that the NYCBOE test the market by initiating an exploratory, rather than a directed, highly specific RFI/RFP, to gauge the market interest for innovative solutions. The Board should see what options are presented, and evaluate those submissions based upon the potential value created, and the portion that could be accrued by NYCBOE.

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Smart Cities: New York

Teaching & Learning in Cyberspace

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Teaching & Learning in Cyberspace

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