Nov 9, 2011

Departments of Education and Defense to Launch “Learning Registry” Tools and Community

“The U.S. Departments of Education and Defense announced last night the launch of ‘Learning Registry,’ an open source community and technology designed to improve the quality and availability of learning resources in education. The launch is an important milestone in the effort to more effectively share information about learning resources among a broad set of stakeholders in the education community.”

As a researcher and practitioner in the field of K-12 digital learning, I’m frequently asked by people, “Are kids really learning online as early as Pre-K?” My answer to them is “yes.” It’s happening in part because of a Waterford Institute program called UPSTART (Utah Preparing Students Today for a Rewarding Tomorrow), a nonprofit organization that helps Pre-K students prepare for Kindergarten. Thanks to a 2015 Obama administration grant totaling $11.5 million, UPSTART is bringing early math, reading, and science lessons to four- and five-year-olds. These lessons are 15 minutes a day, and the program is funded at the state, school, or partner level. Families do not have to cover the cost of the program.

What does it take to be a great teacher in a blended program? To ask that same question in education parlance, what competencies—meaning motives, traits, self-concepts, values, knowledge, and skills—matter most for teachers who are substituting online learning for part of face-to-face instruction?

A recent New York Times article (The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids Is Not What We Expected) makes the case that schools are promoting too much use of computers, by saying that “America’s public schools are still promoting devices with screens — even offering digital-only preschools. The rich are banning screens from class altogether.”

Student access to the Internet in K-12 schools has grown rapidly over the past five years. Based on data from the EducationSuperHighway, more than 44 million students have high-speed Internet connections in their learning environments today compared to 4 million just five years ago. As mentioned in the recently published 2018 State of the States report report, a call to action from President Obama in 2013 for all public schools in the U.S. to have broadband connectivity has been a driver of this major increase. From there, the FCC updated the E-rate program, providing schools with money to help pay for connectivity. In addition to E-rate, matching funds were provided by select states, and some telecommunications groups helped to give schools deals on their connectivity packages.

In a recent blog post by ABC news station WXYZ Detroit, Dr. Langen out of Baker College Online shared her thoughts on the top five myths of online learning in higher education. Although in general terms online learning is more advanced in post-secondary education than in K-12 education, these myths apply to K-12 education as well in ways that we explore below.

Today we are pleased to announce that we are going live with the website of the Digital Learning Collaborative (DLC).

The DLC exists for two main reasons. First, we seek to fill a gap in available information about online, blended, and digital learning. We know that online, blended, and digital learning in U.S. K–12 schools are on the rise. Yet despite the growth, emerging practices, and examples of success, countless basic questions remain about policy and practice. The DLC exists to fill the information gap. Whether you are an educator, school board member, reporter, researcher, policymaker, or concerned citizen, the DLC can help you better understand the K–12 digital learning field and apply that knowledge to your work.