How do we help students develop 21^st century skills like critical thinking, collaboration, creativity and innovation that employers’ value?  Is it enough to simply put more devices in students’ hands?

Will playing Plants vs. Zombies or Angry Birds help students be more innovative? Create information?  Work together in new ways?

It isn’t about “the stuff” we put in students hands… it’s about how we enable them to learn with it.

We must move the conversation from “what kind of devices do we need” to “how do we help improve student outcomes.”  When we know what and how we want to teach, then we can make really good decisions on the right infrastructure and technology.

Keys to successfully impacting student outcomes come back to a simple, though not necessarily easy, process:

• Assess: Get an accurate snapshot of instruction and outcomes
• Plan:  Develop a roadmap with measurable outcomes
• Prepare faculty:  New strategies that emphasize learning by doing through required and ongoing professional development

HP takes a holistic approach to supporting the long term needs of schools.  We start with understanding goals / obstacles, and then align resources and solutions that help address these needs.   HP’s Digital Learning Suite provides solutions and resources for :

• Preparation – planning and professional development
• Instruction – curriculum & learning tools
• Infrastructure – technology that fits your goals
• Accountability – benchmarks and measurements

Learn more about the Digital Learning Suite and download the Technology for Learning: A Guidebook for Change technology planning resource here.

Attend the Education Panel discussion on Thursday, October 20 at 3:45pm (Breakout Session Part 2) to learn more.

Do you believe in giving people second chances? We do. We also value education. That’s why Qualcomm, through our Wireless Reach™ initiative, is collaborating with Renaissance Academy, a private correspondence high school in Japan, on a pioneering project that leverages 3G technologies to help high school dropouts re-engage in learning and earn their diplomas.

If you’re a high school dropout in Japan, your prospects for finding a part-time job are slim. They’re even slimmer if you’re looking for a full-time job.

One challenge for educators is the lack of interest by some students in learning the traditional curriculum. In fact, an increasing number of students each year express their desire to study topics that are personally relevant or related to a potential profession. That’s where Renaissance Academy comes in. The Academy provides specialized and vocational training for aspiring professionals and a second chance for high school absentees and dropouts to complete their education and earn diplomas. They are now doing so by offering smartphone-based courses.

The 3G Smartphone x Digital Textbook project is providing 500 Snapdragon® processor-enabled smartphones, mobile educational content and 3G wireless connectivity services to Renaissance Academy students to demonstrate the effectiveness of smartphones and digital textbooks in learning.

Many Renaissance Academy students spend their day in professional training, working part-time jobs and are otherwise on the go, leaving little time for studying at home with textbooks. But with smartphones and digital textbooks in their pockets – tools which we believe will be the norm for learning in the near future – students can access educational content and resources through a 3G wireless network, download educational applications and take lessons or tests anytime, anywhere.

This project marks the Academy’s first offering of a smartphone-based course for credit. First up is an English language course. The Academy plans to add science and social studies to the smartphone-based curriculum.

The 3G Smartphone x Digital Textbook project is just one example of how Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach initiative creates new ways for people to communicate and learn. We believe that access to wireless technology can improve people’s lives, and we’re committed to exploring how mobile broadband can engage students in learning and give them a second chance to obtain a high school education and diploma – which are essential assets in life.

To learn more about Wireless Reach’s education initiatives click here.

Link to Press Release:

For more information on Renaissance Academy click here.

As a great precursor to Wireless EdTech 2011 this October, the ISTE 2011 (International Society for Technology in Education) conference held this June was a massive gathering of the best and brightest in a variety of fields relating to education technology. Conferences such as these provide the perfect grounds for leaders, who would not otherwise cross paths, to meet and discover ways to collaborate on how to best integrate technology into the classroom environment. ISTE 2011 Conference Chair Dr. Leslie S. Conery summed it up nicely by saying, “When we unlock potential within ourselves, we can then provide the tools and inspiration to unlock curiosity and a love of learning in our students.”

I was eager to hear about the latest advances in education and I was also honored to share the stage with Dr. Chris Dede, the Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. We presented our thoughts specifically on the educational and infrastructural opportunities and challenges of wireless technology in education. Our belief, as well as Qualcomm’s, is that always on, always connected mobile devices in the hands of K-12 students have the potential to dramatically improve educational outcomes by providing unprecedented access to learning resources and the ability to collaborate with peers and advisors in and out of the classroom. Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach initiative is supporting several pilot studies to help drive the wireless mobile device education platform forward and as a step towards demonstrating the use of wireless devices as a productive educational tool in and out of school.

Co-host of Wireless EdTech 2011 and CEO of Project Tomorrow – one of the nation’s leading education nonprofit organizations – Julie Evans also presented at ISTE 2011. Julie shared Project Tomorrow’s dedication to empowering K-12 students, teachers and parents to have a larger voice in improving education and learning. Related to this goal, she announced the release of the Speak Up 2010 National Findings on the use of emerging technologies in education and a special white paper on digital content called “Learning in the 21st Century: 2011 Trends Update.” You can download both of these here. Using the data from more than 400,000 K-12 students, teachers, pre-service teachers, parents, and administrators, Julie shared Speak Up findings, such as “Increasingly administrators are seeing the value of mobile devices for learning. Since 2007, twice as many administrators believe that mobile learning provides opportunities to personalize learning.” These and other results from the survey confirm that the current education infrastructure is not meeting the demands of its stakeholders. And we, as an industry, are committed to help change that.

For more news coming out of ISTE 2011, Education Week has a detailed tracker here.

To view the PowerPoint Chris and I presented, as well as other resources on education technology, visit the resources section of the Wireless EdTech site here, and register for the conference soon. I am looking forward to rich dialogue and to meeting new people involved in wireless education at Wireless EdTech October 20-21 in DC.

“I think going to school in 2015 will be someone using a mobile device to learn through online school classrooms.”  – 8^th grade student from New York

As we plan for the 2011 Wireless EdTech Conference, we are reminded that today’s students have already developed a very clear vision on the value of mobile learning in their lives. As part of Speak Up 2010, Project Tomorrow asked K-12 students nationwide to envision what “going to school” would be like in 2015. And many of those students see wireless devices as an essential component of that new ultimate school. Not much of a surprise when you consider the increased access and familiarity that students have to mobile devices today. As noted in the Speak Up 2010 National Results released in Washington, DC on April 1, for example, personal access to smartphones for students in grades 6-12 increased by 42 percent in just one year. In reality, with that kind of access, we should really be talking about how to incorporate student devices into classroom instruction for 2011, not 2015! We will be doing just that at Wireless EdTech in October.

Beyond the awe and surprise over the increased student access, however, the more important question is how K-12 students visualize using these small, multi-functional, uber-connected devices for schoolwork. The Speak Up 2010 results are noteworthy here also. Students have identified two pathways for leveraging their wireless devices to increase productivity and achievement. On one level, the devices can help them to be more efficient with some typical school processes – checking on their grades, taking notes in class, learning about school activities and accessing online textbooks. The greatest success is how students want to tap into the unique capabilities and features of these devices to transform the learning process – such as accessing information anytime, anywhere and using the video functions to record lectures and labs. They can then review the projects later and collaborate with other students at their school. With these kinds of authentic ideas from the students, we can now have a much richer dialogue about the real value proposition for mobile learning. Suddenly, that ultimate school in 2015 is not so far away.

To learn more about the most recent Speak Up national findings, please visit www.tomorrow.org.

To register for the 2011 Wireless EdTech Conference today click here.

I am excited about October’s 2011 Wireless EdTech Conference in Washington, D.C. This conference offers a unique opportunity to share what we know about realizing an effective mobile wireless infrastructure for education. Complementing the “classic” resources of workstations, laptops, and wires with the emerging “ecology” of smartphones, e-readers, smartbooks, handheld gaming platforms and similar broadband devices is not a simple task. But accomplishing this “blended” infrastructure is vital to achieving in education the many benefits we have seen in other sectors of society, such as the transformation of knowledge work due to anyplace, anytime access.

The U.S. Department of Education’s 2010 National Educational Technology Plan delineates an exciting vision of learning, assessment and teaching transformed to meet the needs of 21st century society. The Technical Working Group for the Plan discussed how to actualize this vision and saw ubiquitous mobile, wireless devices as a crucial part of the necessary conditions for success. Richly linking learning inside and outside of classrooms, building on the mobile Web that students find so exciting and involving parents, informal educators, and community members in aiding teachers are all important frontiers for 21st century education.

But the “puzzle” of actualizing the mobile wireless infrastructure is difficult because many groups that typically work in isolation from each other now must collaborate closely. Teachers, faculty, educational leaders, students, parents, informal educators, community, vendors (in curriculum, professional development, assessment, devices and networking), funders and policymakers must all act in ways that overcome challenges and empower other stakeholders to contribute their part of the vision. A vital first step is bringing these various groups to the table to initiate discussions about opportunities and challenges, barriers to collaboration and complementary initiatives. The 2010 Wireless EdTech Conference achieved this goal, as documented in its report.

The 2011 Wireless Ed Tech Conference builds on this foundation, and I am looking forward to facilitating the discussion of various groups that will convene to realize the full power of mobile wireless devices for learning! Beyond visions and barriers, we will add this year a focus on international insights and dialogue about what we know and don’t know from research on mobile devices. I hope you will join us and, if you cannot, I hope you will keep in close touch with the initiatives and collaborations that flow from this event.

SAN DIEGO – October 20, 2010 – The Wireless Education Technology Conference advisory board and Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM), as part of its Wireless ReachTM initiative, today announced details regarding the Wireless EdTech Conference 2010. The conference, scheduled for October 29, 2010 at the Westin City Center in Washington, D.C., features more than 20 speakers and leaders in business, academia and government who will come together to address the use of mobile technology in advancing 21st century education.

Dr. Chris Dede, Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies for the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University, will open the conference, which includes several prominent speakers who will discuss the role of wireless technology in education. Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, chairman and chief executive officer of Qualcomm, will deliver the keynote address, followed by an interview conducted by John Harris, Editor-in-Chief of POLITICO with Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, regarding the importance of broadband and mobile technology to the future of education. The conference agenda includes breakout sessions in which participants will develop specific action plans for increasing the role of technology in the classroom.

Other speakers include Kwasi Asare, associate director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Education Technology; Dr. Daniel C. Edelson, vice president for Education at the National Geographic Society Education Foundation; and Robert M. Lippincott, senior vice president of Education at the Public Broadcasting System.

“The United States has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform education in a way that will truly prepare our students to compete in the global economy,” said Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, chairman and chief executive officer of Qualcomm. “Mobile technology has a critical role to play in this effort by equipping students and teachers with 24/7 access to learning communities and information. Qualcomm is pleased to join a group of distinguished leaders to explore mobile learning at Wireless EdTech 2010.”

Another highlight of the conference will be the release of a major report on mobile learning by Project Tomorrow, a national education nonprofit organization, that draws on data compiled from over 370,000 K-12 students, parents, teachers and administrators.

The conference will address key cross-functional topics, such as:
• Differences between mobile learning and existing one laptop per child programs;
• Advantages of extending learning beyond the four walls of a classroom and traditional school hours to fully leverage 24/7 connectivity;
• Platforms needed to support new methods of teaching and styles of learning;
• Network and infrastructure issues and options as they relate to cloud computing and device evolution;
• Methods for breaking down silos and fostering collaboration between stakeholders; and
• Means of leveraging the large ecosystem of mobile devices and applications to lower implementation costs and provide schools with access to state-of-the-art technology.

To see the Wireless EdTech Conference agenda, list of sponsors and to register to attend, please visit www.wirelessedtech.com.

About Qualcomm and its Wireless Reach Initiative
Qualcomm believes access to advanced wireless voice and data services improves people’s lives. Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach initiative supports programs and solutions that bring the benefits of connectivity to underserved communities globally. By working with partners, Wireless Reach projects create new ways for people to communicate, learn, access health care, sustain the environment and reach global markets. For more information, please visit www.qualcomm.com/wirelessreach.

Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) is the world leader in next-generation mobile technologies. For 25 years, Qualcomm ideas and inventions have driven the evolution of wireless communications, connecting people more closely to information, entertainment and each other. Today, Qualcomm technologies are powering the convergence of mobile communications and consumer electronics, making wireless devices and services more personal, affordable and accessible to people everywhere. For more information, visit Qualcomm around the Web:
www.qualcomm.com
Corporate Blog: www.qualcomm.com/blog
Twitter: www.twitter.com/qualcomm
Facebook: www.facebook.com/qualcomm

The U.S. Department of Education’s 2010 National Educational Technology Plan delineates an exciting vision of learning, assessment and teaching transformed to meet the needs of 21st century society. The Technical Working Group for the plan discussed how to actualize this vision and saw ubiquitous mobile, wireless devices as a crucial part of the necessary conditions for success. Richly linking learning inside and outside of classrooms, building on the mobile Web that students find so exciting and involving parents, informal educators, and community members in aiding teachers are all important frontiers for 21st century education.

But the “puzzle” of actualizing the mobile wireless infrastructure is difficult because many groups that typically work in isolation from each other now must collaborate closely. Teachers, faculty, educational leaders, students, parents, informal educators, community, vendors (in curriculum, professional development, assessment, devices and networking), funders and policymakers must all act in ways that overcome challenges and empower other stakeholders to contribute their part of the vision. A vital first step is bringing these various groups to the table to initiate discussions about opportunities and challenges, barriers to collaboration and complementary initiatives.

The 2010 Wireless EdTech Conference offers this initial step and I am happy for the opportunity to incite the discussion with the various groups that will convene to realize the full power of mobile wireless devices for learning! I hope you will join us and, if you cannot, I hope you will keep in close touch with the initiatives and collaborations that flow from this event.

-Chris Dede is the Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies for the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University

—
Hello, Marie! Can you tell me why this conference is important to education at this point in the technological and geopolitical timeframe?

Of course, Michael. As you know we are at a unique crossroads for education. There is the political will to invest in the future of education through Race to the Top, i3, and other funding sources. There is a national vision for teaching and learning that are beautifully outlined by the National Education Technology Plan and the National Broadband Plan. And, for the first time in history, there are mature technologies such as mobile broadband systems that can support that vision. The learning sciences have been telling us for decades that kids learn best by doing, that the best learning is personalized to each student, and that learning becomes richest through give-and-take with peers, mentors, experts, indeed a whole learning community. For the first time in history, we have the technology to enable students to take charge of their learning using the same tools professionals use to take charge of their professional work, for personalized lessons to be delivered to each student anywhere, anytime, and for students to stay connected to their learning community 24/7 to help and challenge each other with assignments and projects.
The pieces are all in place, but they haven’t yet been put together. The 50,000 foot level vision of the National Education Technology Plan is compelling and achievable. Leaders in the learning sciences are doing their part as are policy makers, schools of education, instructional designers, content developers, educators, academics, and others. Those of us on the technology side need to bring our voices to the conversation about what technology can do today and will support over the next several years. This conference brings together a deliberately diverse set of stakeholders to help catalyze the conversation about bringing the vision of the NETP from 50,000 feet to 30,000 feet. All of us from the technology side hold a piece of the puzzle to realizing the vision. To extend the metaphor, I would call it a “corner piece” and we have a responsibility to put it on the table with the rest of the pieces the field has gathered and to collectively see how they fit.
—

To read the interview in its entirety, click here.

“The Smart Phone is like a teacher in my pocket.” – Project K-Nect Student

Irvine, Calif. — Students using “smartphones” as part of their academic classroom work in Onslow County, N.C., significantly outpaced other students — in the school district and across the state — on end-of-course exams in Algebra, Algebra II and Geometry, a new report reveals. The significant gains made by the students in math suggest that mobile devices, engaging content and subsequent changes in teaching strategies lead to substantial improvement in student achievement, the report states.

In a study of Project K-Nect, a pilot program examining the use of smartphones as a learning tool in schools, teachers and high school students in Onslow are utilizing the technology and digital content to supplement selected math courses. Implemented at three high schools located in economically challenged communities, the Project goals are to increase student achievement in math and close the digital divide.

“We’re extremely optimistic about the findings and what they mean for the future of smartphones in the classroom,” says Julie Evans, Project Tomorrow Chief Executive Officer, whose organization prepared the evaluation report. “Students improved their scores in Math by an average of 20 percent, and this technology and wireless Internet access ensured the equitable delivery of engaging instruction, bridging the
persistent digital and achievement divides. Project K-Nect and this report have significant new implications on how, when and where we engage students in a learning process.”

Some of the other key findings from this year’s evaluation report include:

• Students participating in Project K-Nect have a greater self-perception (61%) that they are succeeding academically than their national peers (39%). And they believe that they are being better prepared for that success (55%) than other students (45%).
• Project K-Nect has provided a “safety net” of additional support for the students through the connections with classmates and teachers, and new approaches to learning math. As a result of participation in the program this year, over 90% of the students said that they are now more comfortable learning math, and 81% said that they have increased confidence talking about math and math problems.
• Almost two-thirds of the students reported taking additional math courses and over 50% are now thinking about a career in a math field as a result of participation in Project K-Nect.
• The teachers involved in Project K-Nect also report that their students are more responsible for their own learning and have developed more collaborative learning skills as a result. Additionally, the teachers note that their students are more active participants in the class, as either learners themselves or, in many cases, as teachers or peer coaches to their classmates. This was especially significant for students who are normally shy or reluctant class participants due to disabilities or limited English proficiency and can now participate more fully through the IM or blogging features.

Project K-Nect participating students continue to pursue rigorous Mathematics instruction with 90% of the initial student cohort currently enrolled in AP Statistics, a college level statistics course taken by less than 1% of high school students nationwide. Project Tomorrow plans to track these students as they enter postsecondary schooling.

Project K-Nect is funded through Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach Initiative.

Copies of the report will be available for download after July 6th from the following two websites: http://www.projectknect.org and http://www.tomorrow.org