Presentation to ERAC IT4K12 Conference, Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, June 13th, 2012

1. Digital Learner Project:
Phase II - Environmental Scan Summary
What do , you think?
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June 13 2012
Prepared for ERAC by Cyri Jones,
February, 2012 ZEN Portfolio Networks Inc.

2. Terms of Reference
1.What approaches are school districts,
provinces, states, etc. using to help
students and teachers discover and access
learning resources?

3. Terms of Reference
2. How have they funded their initiatives?

4. Terms of Reference
3. Best practices for how have they rolled-
out these type of initiatives?

5. Terms of Reference
4. Detailed summary of what jurisdictions
are doing in the US and Canada, and in
Europe and Asia

6. Environmental Scan Context
Project / Phase Date
Digital Road Map Project September 2011 to April 2012
ERAC Commons Development & February 2011 to January, 2012
Launch
Phase I – Vision and Strategy May, 2011 to September, 2011
Phase II – Environmental Scan September, 2011 to April, 2012
Phase III - Implementation TBD
Environmental scan will help leverage best
practices as ERAC rolls out its digital learner
services

7. Phase I – Vision & Strategy
How can ERAC support the modern, digital learner?

8. Phase I – Vision & Strategy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pqLv1K72Q0
Communicating vision to stakeholders

9. Phase II – Environmental Scan
Environmental scanning can be defined as ‘the
study and interpretation of the political,
economic, social and technological events and
trends which influence a business, an industry or
even a total market’
Source: Wikipedia Entry

10. Environmental Scan Context
“In times of change learners inherit the earth;
while the learned find themselves beautifully
equipped to deal with a world that no longer
exists.” - Eric Hoffer
Source: Wikipedia Entry

11. Environmental Scan Context
“The future is already here, it’s just not
very evenly distributed” – William Gibson
Source: Wikipedia Entry

12. Implementation Gap
Compelling vision but how to implement?
http://www.bcedplan.ca/

13. Tight Technology Expiry Dates
Systems need to be flexible, adaptive and iterative with user input
to stay relevant, long planning cycles = irrelevant offering

14. Discovery of quality learning
resources
• Move to more granular
learning resources
• Millions of apps
• Billions of user generated
content items
• Need to support
personalized learning
• Crowdsourcing only
practical way to evaluate

15. Governance mismatch with IT
infrastructure economies of scale

16. Disruptive technology

17. Shrinking budgets

18. Environmental changing
at dizzying speed

20. Too Fast, Reactive

21. Too Slow, Deny

22. Quick and thoughtful

23. Good News

24. Opportunity
• Lots of expertise at hand here in BC
• Compelling vision at provincial level and local
level
• A lot of teachers and administrators
embracing change
• Many jurisdictions faced similar questions 3 to
10 years ago
– Lots of lessons learned

25. Trends

26. Collision between traditional face-to-face and online learning

27. Need to build a new, smart system from ground up
not just a “blend” that is “traditional face to face” + “online”

31. Education Trends
Blended Learning Consolidation of distance learning and face-to-face
classroom opportunities for accessing digital resources
and tools.
Raised expectations for digital tools in schools by Why can’t school tools be as usable as digital tools they
students and teachers. use in other areas of their life.
Mobile learning a game changer Students and teachers want to bring their personal
devices to the school and leverage.
Quality and quantity of learning resources Challenge is in finding the right resources for the task or
increasing learning outcome at hand.
Teachers and students becoming creators of Not just consuming traditional publisher content.
content, not just consumers Engaging project-based teaching involves creating
things and collaboration. Creative Commons licensing
facilitating this. Growth of service learning.

32. Education Trends
Repositories to registries Moving away from a siloed learning object
repository approach to one where only local
resources are stored, external resources hosted
with original content owner.
Growth of learning analytics Technology emerging to track para-data about
learning resources (e.g. ratings by teachers) and
consolidating to help filter. Ability to tie a learning
resource to specific learning outcomes and see
effectiveness of learning resource.
Consolidation of learning outcomes across Growing realization that most learning outcomes
jurisdictions from different jurisdictions are almost identical in
core subjects (e.g. Common Core initiative in US
with 42 states participating)
Cloud approach to learning technology Mirroring trend in other sectors, IT infrastructure is
delivery migrating from within the organization to external
providers saving money and improving service.

33. Education Trends
Innovations coming from outside traditional Organizations like Khan Academy are disrupting
education sector education sector. Traditional delivery approaches
are threatened with being redundant.
Growing awareness of important role of Many jurisdictions starting to set up social networks
social networked learning for their students and teachers.
Just-in-time instead of just-in-case learning Less important to “cover all the curriculum” than to
provide authentic, project based learning
experiences for students.
Importance of cross-functional teams Most meaningful work is done today in cross-
functional teams. Students need to go beyond
program and school siloes to get experience with
this.

34. Growth of Microsoft.edu

35. Growth of Google Apps for Education

36. Consolidation of New Google Design

38. Powerful Learning Resource Metadata
Sharing Approaches Emerging

40. Learning Resource Metadata Initiative

42. Move from
Mentoring/
formal to Wikis Coaching
informal
Discussion Forums
learning Live Webcasts
Friending Recorded Webinars
Tagging
Video Conferencing
User Generated
Content
Workshops
Blogs Learnshops
Folksonomy
Networking Websites
Micro-blogging
Learning Audio / Podcasts
Webjams
2.0
Case Studies
Rating /
Comments Books
eLearning
Leadership Forums ILT (instructor-led/classroom)
VILT (virtual instructor/web) Professional Video
Source:
Virtual World (eg. Second Life) Dan Pontefract
Head of Learning &
Collaboration
Telus

43. Recognition for Informal Learning

44. Open learning content providers launching interactive tools

45. Growth of External Repositories and Learning Analytics

48. Pedagogy
changing

51. Learning
Analytics

54. http://lak12.sites.olt.ubc.ca/

55. Quality
improvements in
online learning

56. • In Carnegie Mellon's rigorously evaluated
online statistics course, students learned a full
semester's worth of material in half as much
time—and performed as well or better than
students learning from traditional instruction.

57. Multiple channels
for same content

60. Preface by Seth Godin to popular e-Marketing Textbook

62. Growth in Open
Education
Resources

66. http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.ca/2011/12/more-pedagogic-change-in-last-10-years.html

67. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEJ_ATgrnnY

71. Around the world: British Columbia
Planning phase… 5% complete

72. Around the world: Thailand
Tablets for all students

73. Around the world: Singapore
Mobile learning

74. Around the world: Greece
School social learning network

75. Around the world: Scotland
Region wide digital learner platform

76. Around the world: India
Tablets for all grad students

77. Around the world: Turkey
Virtual learning environments

78. Around the world: South Korea
Migration from print
textbooks to e-books
for all subjects and all
schools

79. Around the world: United States
Learning registry leveraging paradata

80. Around the world: United States
Learning resources metadata initiative

81. Case Studies:
After doing an inventory of more than 100
digital learning commons in different
jurisdictions, we selected eight case studies
that demonstrated innovative approaches and
powerful lessons learned.

82. Case Study: Scotland Glow

83. Case Study: Scotland eduBuzz

84. Case Study: Edmonton Public Schools

85. Case Study: New York Learns

86. Case Study: Pennsylvania’s Standards Aligned System
Case study: http://connectlearn21.net/2011/12/08/case-study-penn-new-york/

87. Case Study: West Vancouver SD #35
Case Study: http://connectlearn21.net/2012/04/10/west-vancouver-school-district-digital-dashboard/
School District Site: http://www.sd45.bc.ca/

88. Case Study: CUNY
CUNY site: http://commons.gc.cuny.edu/
Case study: http://connectlearn21.net/2011/11/23/commons-in-a-box/

89. Case Study: Learn Maine

90. http://eraccommons.ca/

92. http://eraccommons.ca/mobileapps/

94. http://eraccommons.ca/ebooks/

95. Findings: Components
62 components of digital learning commons were identified
http://connectlearn21.net/phase-ii/digital-learning-commons-components/

96. Findings: agile better than monolithic
From Facebook’s S-1 filing…
“The Hacker Way is an approach to building
that involves continuous improvement and
iteration. Hackers believe that something can
always be better, and that nothing is ever
complete. They just have to go fix it — often in
the face of people who say it’s impossible or are
content with the status quo.”
http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/facebook-ipo-letter/

97. Findings: agile better than monolithic
“Hackers try to build the best services over the long
term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller
iterations rather than trying to get everything right
all at once.. We have the words “Done is better than
perfect” painted on our walls to remind ourselves to
always keep shipping…

98. Findings: agile better than monolithic
Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is
possible or what the best way to build something is,
hackers would rather just prototype something and
see what works.”

99. Findings: summary
Main findings are available on the connectlearn21.net site:
http://connectlearn21.net/2012/06/13/erac-environmental-scan-project-summary/

100. Credits
ERAC Staff & Executive – Project Leadership
Music
Audrey Van Alstyne, District Principal Learning
Berty Cox
Technologies
Judy Dallas, Executive Director ERAC
Marjanne Yusyp, Project Manager, Professional
Learning & Training
Maureen Ciarniello, Chair, ERAC
Sherry Kallergis, Operations
Barb Hyde, Executive Assistant

101. Credits
Digital Learners “Think Tank”
Andrei Iancu, CEO, Dynamic Leap Technology
Brent Calvert, Program Leader, Interactive Design,
Capilano University
Elena Kuznetsova, Operations Management BCIT grad
Grant Daisley, Social Media Consultant
Mark Bullen, Dean, Learning & Teaching Centre, BCIT
Morten Rand-Hendriksen, Developer (Pink and Yellow
Media)
Niklas Eriksson, Faculty, Arcada, Finland
Reza Ghaeli, Business Analytics Consultant

102. Credits
Digital Learners Vision Video
Biljana Zecevic, Artist & Director,
see2learn.com
Audrey Van Alstyne, District Principal Learning
Technologies
Judy Dallas, Executive Director ERAC
Marjanne Yusyp, Project Manager, Professional
Learning & Training
Maureen Ciarniello, Chair, ERAC
ERAC Commons Development,
eraccommons.ca
Boone Gorges
Brad Howe
David Smith
Jill Binder
Morten Rand-Hendriksen

103. Credits
Environmental Scan Consultant & ConnectLearn21
Development
Jay Collier, Executive Director, The Compass LLC
Environmental Scan Researcher
Elena Kuznetsova
Case Studies:
Boone Gorges, CUNY Academic Commons
Gary Kern, Director of Instruction, West
Vancouver School District
Scott Leslie, Equella Implementation, BC
Campus
Terry Korte, Tech Integration Planning Team
Coordinator, Edmonton Public School District

104. Learn more and join the conversation at:
http://connectlearn21.net/