************************************ *** Hacking Education Transcript *** *** Part: 4 of 4 *** ************************************ MR. WILSON (cont): information, it's about talent, it's about getting... out there. I think you can actually infect the school system from within, from things like better lessons. When you start putting the power in the hands of the teachers, start collaborating around lesson plans, and you start to create teachers who are stars because they make the best lesson plans. All of a sudden they say, "Hey, you know what, I'm a star." And then they're going to start doing whatever stars in the media business do. They say, Screw you, school, I'm a star. I'm getting paid. MR. JARVIS: Bob, Teri and I talked once about that, that when you have those stars -- what role was there for him. We talked about it, a virtual distributed Cambridge model. He had a lecturer and a tutor. And to build on top of that is that at a local level, you have the tutor who will work one-on-one with the big-star lecturer. And there's a new economic structure that allows the stars to support -- because they have wide distribution; and the tutor to support, because they have a different relationship with the community. MS. HAREL-CAPERTON: And also the trick is when you have a star teacher, it can also be dangerous because the revolution could actually make it contagious for other teachers in the same school, for the tipping point to really happen. So, you have to create an infrastructure that really allows it to be legislative. There are simple things where you don't even think about -- a course number, I want to do this Globaloria thing; right? What is the course number that will officially allow me to do this as part of what I need to cover? And then these teachers show that, the star quality of figuring it out, and then you right away have to put five more teachers in the same school, in the same star atmosphere so, they would all succeed. Because one star teacher in school will not create the tipping point... So, there is a system out there and it worked. The model that worked about it, that -- it also, all the time, has to be working with the legislature at the top, whether through funding, through really giving it the credit that it can work in a system and transform. And also from the bottom, the students has to succeed, show up, attend, get good grades, perform really well. More teachers than one want to do it if everybody wants to engage students, and it all works together like that. So, that star thing is complicated, much more complicated than you think. THE SPEAKER: You said that rock star teacher had made a lot of money. There's really no incentive for teachers to be rock stars, again, because -- there is no incentive because teachers get the same amount of money. MR. WILSON: My point is, Jim's business is professional education; right? So, that teacher is in the free market system and is very valuable. And he makes Kaplan a lot of money and he makes himself a lot of money, and that's an open marketplace model. I don't think we will reinvent education without getting rid of this monopolistic system where teachers are undervalued and good teachers get paid the same as bad teachers. THE SPEAKER: And that's my point. MS. HAREL-CAPERTON: By the way, one thing that we do, practically stipend all of the teachers that work with us. MS. SEGGERMAN: You didn't have hundreds applications for fabulous teachers for your school? Why do you think that was? A lot of people are pointing out there are not good teachers around. MS. SALEN: Because I think there's a lot of amazing teachers out there. I think there's a lot of amazing teachers stuck within systems that don't let them be amazing teachers. And I think if we provide opportunities for those teachers -- that may be online spaces, that may be new kinds of schools -- I think they are out there. One thing that I -- I think we are still stuck in this model that school is the only -- we're trying to stuff all of the learning back in school. I think we need to take the pressure off the school and sort of re-imagine, Well, what do schools do well, because they've been charged with doing so much. Can we take some of it out of the schools, distribute it in the places where it is actually done better and, again, allow the learning to happen in most places? Because we can't fix the school by keeping it, charging it with all that it's still doing. It's busted. It simply cannot support all of our expectations about what has to happen there. So, I think if we can figure out -- we can figure it out, lighten the load, that might help, and provide market opportunities for these other kinds of innovations to begin to happen. MR. O'DONNELL: It's feature creep. MS. SALEN: Feature creep. Well, it's got to do with what Diane had said earlier -- in the early part of the century, there was this configuration between home, church and school. And it was understood that kids learned in those three different places and it was really clear what was learned in each of those three places. And over time, the Web infrastructure between those things split and all of it got stuck back in the school. And so, it is too much. Yeah, the features creeped into one space. So, yes. MS. RHOTEN: The schools got burdened with all of the responsibilities that were once in a distributed set of institutions, and then they got retrenched. And so, they're burdened with all of the big responsibilities but not endowed with money to provide... we lost arts, we lost vocational. And so, it's been shifted off, ideally, to these other institutions who are struggling. I looked at -- in this case of New York, very, very hard to compliment and augment what happens in the school. And simple things, whether it's a virtual environment, they're finding they can't get to the firewall in school, can't augment... can't get standards in a way that makes the chancellor happy; those problems, we are trying to rebuild that network. That's the place. We'll try to -- MR. WENGER: I want to go back to John's comment on that. One of the key leverage points would be to have more opportunities for alternative systems to evolve. So, if there is one political thing that could happen, it is the political thing that lets more people create the ultimate realities of schools more rapidly. MR. WILEY: The charter movement is one area? THE SPEAKER: Well, it would be one. But I think in the same way that the Internet itself, as a collection of pipes and protocols, provide free, relatively low-risk places to experiment as an infrastructure, I think -- one of the reasons we're doing this in open high schools is because it feels like free educational content is an important piece of infrastructure around which these later educational innovations can happen. They're always paying for this per kid every year, leasing access to it, renting access from ...com or whoever. Starting something like this is very expensive and there's a great cost and risk there. So, content, I think, is one of the most important pieces of infrastructure that needs to be freely available to allow other these other innovations to happen. MR. CAULFIELD: The content conversation get contentious, but it's important to note that if you look at areas like the textbook industry, there have been places where free market solutions, albeit run through government-run schools, have been just remarkably inefficient. The inefficiency of when you consider what is needed out of a textbook, K through 12, even at college level -- and how much money has to go into actually providing to these kids textbooks -- it is kind of staggering. So, you start to look at things like, in California, there is a group of community colleges that are getting together. They're trying to put together a set of open textbooks that can be shared among community colleges. I think it comes down to this idea of having this common infrastructure that's available to anybody that wants to set up shop and teach. But I think where the effort really should be put into is developing this infrastructure, whether it's physical infrastructure or whether it's information infrastructure. So that, if someone wants to set up shop and teach, or if a institution wants to transform how they teach, they can pool through a common pool, and it's not this rival pool which is creating this unnecessary expense and these unnecessary permutations of textbooks and so forth. Obviously, I'm biased here, being from Open Coursework Consortium. But if I was going to pick out a place where I think we could have a lot of effect, it is in providing common sets of materials open to everybody. They either approach zero cost or are free through subsidization of government, in some way approach through one of those -- MR. RESHEF: Content is expensive. However, when you look at the cost of education, this is not the most expensive thing. What I'm saying is that lowering it, that says thank you, because you're enabling me to use this free. This is very important. But the main cost is the people, mostly teachers and the administration and the building. Now, if you want to save, you really need to save on these. I think that looking at teachers, there may be -- having less teachers, maybe using the Internet more, maybe in the classroom actually -- people that cost you less but are more effective in doing other things than teaching the student, I don't know, different ways to look at it, that's the way to lower the expenses. MR. CAULFIELD: My point is kind of along the lines of what you're saying. If you open up to everybody that base level infrastructure much as of a courseware is available to people that want to try different models with it, then you can have experimentation with those different models on top of that. And the experimentation, you're right, the cost that you save by making the content freely available is not necessarily your big savings. But by enabling people to try different models on top of that content, that's where you're going to get the experimentation, that's where you're going to get, I think, the new ideas in the real -- in the hacking. But you need that first level because, again, obviously, if everybody had to come in from the ground floor, build this up -- some people around here have done that, but I'm sure those people will tell you it's very expensive and very challenging. You could make it less challenging by building a common pool of resources. MR. WILSON: Diana, what do you mean by Text Shop model? MS. RHOTEN: Are you familiar with Text Shop? I'm a huge, huge fan of Text Shop and I feel like it's optimized for the downturn in the economy, frankly. Text Shop is actually a for-profit model, it's classified as a retail model. But it's essentially a storefront place and you go in and it's a maker's shop, essentially -- you can go in and you can build anything, whether it's building up wood or building up metal -- MR. RESNICK: For fabrication purposes, you go in and make -- you rent materials and that should be a better maker. I think with other people as well, it's not just the tools. MS. RHOTEN: It's not as real, but knowing about Text Shop and a line of advocating it in everywhere I go. It is not -- it's really thinking hard about the community aspect of it. So, it's not just putting... into that space, but thinking hard about courses, why they have the courses, who teaches the class, who gets to teach what. It's perfect... on Teach Street and people are signing up. It's incredibly empowering -- MR. BURNHAM: But there are online companions to the space? MS. RHOTEN: We're working on the -- MR. SCHAPPELL: I never heard of Text Shop. We have a knitting store that a friend opened. I said, how will this work? And she has a bunch of big sewing machines and tables and fabrics. The place is packed. It's called Stitches, in Seattle. And it's one of those like, "oh, you're going to fail." To "oh, my gosh, it's just happening with all these people, a huge online community that are saying, I don't think -- I'm thinking Text Shop, that would be awesome. At the moment, you have to sign a waiver before you let me on the chain saw. MS. RHOTEN: Your point is good. We're having a meeting this spring to think exactly how to -- we're trying to help Text Shop from a variety of angles. To bring in the legislators, to understand Text Shop's economic development innovation. To bring in stimulus dollars. MR. WILSON: To teach or make stuff? MS. RHOTEN: Yes. MR. HEIFERMAN: How can we move further? You know, Jeff and I are having second thoughts. MS. RHOTEN: I just wanted to add we're trying to getting the policy level, but we're also really thinking about how do we build a virtual aspect of communities. And Text Shop, should it go, should it be successful. Well, eventually, a network of a different types of... MR. HEIFERMAN: Jeff and I talked for a couple of hours, but the question of using dead retail space for a new network of organizing centers -- an entrepreurial effort, it can be like, you know, new schools. I see that. The number one problem -- there's been two million meet-ups. The number one problem is the space, space surveys. Starbucks won't cut the open basement, the church won't cut it. Real good surveys are a group of not three, four or five, but kind of 10 to 20 people. Like I said, how much did this space cost? Can a group of parents that care about coming together and making their school better, just rent this space? Space simply doesn't exist out there. MS. HAREL-CAPERTON: In New York, it's very hard. But yesterday, I was in Winston-Salem and in Greensboro and High Point. These are places that are empty, no tobacco, no wood, no furniture, no textile; huge spaces are available, waiting. MR. HEIFERMAN: They are padlocked. MS. HAREL-CAPERTON: They're just waiting for economic development at this time. MR. JARVIS: We have the River Rouge of Starbucks, you know, the world's largest. But it's probably also that need a new second place; right? People leave offices and jobs, they need a new second place and there's a business there. And Starbucks is good at coffee and mediocre at space. You have the inverse of that. MR. RESNICK: The school buildings should be community centers, but there are all these rules and regulations. MS. HAREL-CAPERTON: There's also factories. MR. JARVIS: Google would create a platform -- thank you for the plug. Google would create a platform that would treat it as a platform where you can create business on top of this, the space maybe. And then discussion on Twitter while other people from the outside say that the space should be free. But if you want to reserve the space, it would cost you. If you want the broadband, it would cost you. If you want the social services, there are maybe ways to make a good business of this. I think, Fred, we will be putting it before we know it. MR. SHEFRIN: There's a start up in Seattle. They're building a platform including 50 others just like that. But they're creating a platform for people to list their rooms. The companies can list their conference rooms, they have somebody to manage them. You can choose to have overhead projectors, coffee, any amounts that -- you basically -- MR. HEIFERMAN: If anyone wants to develop that business as a retail developer, we'll license the name. MR. WILSON: You know, Rob, you have done this right now. You did this with Etsy's offices in Brooklyn. And then you did it again in Red Hook, where you actually put in saws and -- MR. KALIN: It's a 9,000 foot work space, but a space to make stuff isn't enough...how to make a living. And education isn't available in Text Shop... through board here. There's a huge space in Brooklyn, they have something -- What I'm trying to do is create what I call Parachute, there's thousands of Parachutes around the country... with a name in it. And the stuff made by the Parachute, you have a little Parachute icon and a number. You can go to Parachute and look at number of it, see where, what, you bought the name. This shirt has a little Parachute in the back and 101. But each one of these Parachutes can have a variety of resources. You can have this studio space or it can have sewing machines. You can have Text Shop. And it all gets listed in the directory. But I've found landlords who were interested in giving free, low rent for these large spaces. And I know three such landlords. One who owns half of Kingston. What are you buying... in upstate New York. And they want to economically revitalize these towns by putting these Parachutes in them. That's one of the group of projects I'm playing on. There's a huge demand for it. So, the demand for the education side, this is as much about learning how to make stuff and learning how to make a living. Its like the aphorism, give a man a fish and you'll feed him for a day; but teach him how to fish, and he'll have fish for a lifetime. We've got to teach them how to sell fish so they can -- (Laughter.) MR. RESNICK: And when the lake dries up, teach them how to do something else, as well. MR. CAULFIELD: And teach those people how to fish. MR. KALIN: Teach them how to teach other people how to fish. There's more to life than eating and fishing. (Laughter.) MR. GRODD: I'll say one thing about the monopoly issue. I think that is the fundamental issue, sort of the detriment to creating a good school culture in K through 12. And I think a good school culture is key to the teachings and learning. And so, I think the only way to hack the monopoly is through competitions and creating good schools and giving parents a choice. So, the charter movement -- and I think the charter school is doing a lot of good stuff. Whether or not it can scale it is a good question. I'm not convinced that it can. MR. WILSON: Stop there. You can't scale because there's not enough charters out there or there's not enough people? MR. GRODD: There are the schools that get a lot of press, sort of these incredible schools with really high student achievement, based on standardized tests, in the narrowest sense of the term. Is the system there in place which you can tell the system, but it's the people implementing the system. You will find people like me, 20 something, Ivy League. MR. KALIN: But that's the old system. If you reinvent it to what Dave Wiley is saying -- that human capital problem, and you will be able to scale. MR. GRODD: I'm talking about my current charter. MR. BURNHAM: What Rob is saying is that -- well, I don't know what Rob is saying. (Laughter.) MR. BURNHAM: The point is that if you create an environment that's an inspiring place to work, that's attracted to a 20 something from an an Ivy League, where it's a meaningful way to invest your life and not become a drone in the bureaucracy where there's a lot of uninspiring people surrounding you, then there's a real chance that you'll solve that human capital problem, as well. MR. HEIFERMAN: It's how do you appeal to the 98 percent of college graduates who are not graduating from Ivy League schools and turning them into great teachers by letting the best practices emerge through systems like Alex's? And in general, my take from Fred's point was the rock star. The rock star teacher isn't about teaching at Yankee Stadium like the story over here and making a million bucks. It's about having their reputation in the teaching world be the rock star, because people are using their lesson plan, using their -- MR. GRODD: We are trying to do that without a platform to do it, but we're arguing that. I think charter schoolss, the reason I don't think their current scalable in the current form because is they're currently driven by 20 something, Ivy League types for two for three years. MR. SACKLER: And so, High Tech High is a 2,000-seat school as an extension of their program. It's going to be an interesting experiment. MR. WILSON: I think if we're going to do political advocacy, I think we should try to make it legal for kids to opt out of classes in the public school system that suck, and take the classes online instead and be able to get credit for that. In that way, my kids would opt out -- either you send a kid to the private school or the public school, you can't opt out on a class by class basis. MR. JARVIS: That's the voucher system. MS. SALEN: That is happening. There's a school, a public high school called the I School opening this fall. And that's their model, that kids are able to take online courses as part of their course work. So, that, I don't think that is a dream, that's a reality. That's happening now. MR. WILEY: In Utah, at our charter school, we're not allowed to require students to attend more than three-quarters time. They can use the rest of that time to take online classes or to go to a second school -- MR. WILSON: And they can get credit for online classes? MR. WILEY: Yes. MR. WILSON: I don't think that exists in New York. MS. SALEN: It is. The high school does. MS. FLEMAL: The teacher is intrinsically rewarding or somehow recognized or somehow empowering for you. And typically what happens, and this is a story I hear over and over when I'm interviewing teachers for the private jobs, is, "I'm a good teacher, I do a great job, and what happens? I get all the difficult cases put into my classroom. I get all the tough kids. I have got 30 kids now in my classroom and 25 of them are the problem kids. After three or four or five years, I'm beaten down, I can't handle it anymore." So the best teachers are the ones that get all the problem kids, and the least capable teachers are the ones who don't. Those teachers aren't being rewarded. Whatever you want to call "being rewarded," whether it's a pat on the back, whether it's a showcase, whatever the reward is, theyre not getting rewarded. MR. KALIN: The system that does succeed, the system that is the dominant system in 20 years, is going to be one that solves the hum capital problem. When it create more teachers, it will be a successful system. MR. GORDON: I disagree. Here is why I disagree. I'm going to disagree with numbers rather than adjectives and tone of voice. I would submit that an independent school of 15 kids per class costs $30,000 a year tuition with the capital cost of the school for free. If you build in the capital cost of the school and depreciate it over 30 years and you put in the outside cost, I would submit a kid going to an independent high school in a city costs $60,000 a year. And those kids, about a third of the teachers that they get are not good enough. So, you can get a third of the teachers who are kind of public-school-quality teacher for 60 grand a year all in, and the public schools, not including the cost of -- they don't include the capital cost of the buildings, which they should, because most public school districts should be selling buildings now, in my opinion. But $60,000, we need to get it to $5,000 a year to scale. MR. KALIN: You're thinking inside the current system. MR. GORDON: No, not quite. I'm saying, if you decide to do it with people and you go to a school where there is one adult for every six kids, that costs $60,000 a year, fully loaded. MR. KALIN: If the teachers doing nothing but teaching those kids. MR. GORDON: No, if there's six adults per student. THE SPEAKER: But that's not a necessary number. MR. GORDON: Okay. Well, if you do any kind of ways. So, yes. So, take it to 15 -- so, you can take it to 30, I would submit. So, take it to some number. You could take it to one, it's $250,000. If you take it 50, then it's $5,000 plus the cost of the -- So, to try to argue the numbers, I'm saying I know really well independent school -- MR. KALIN: The music industry's kind of a way on how much to record an album when, people didn't have laptops, they could record at home. MR. GORDON: I'm sorry. Try to talk with numbers. I'm trying to take it with numbers. MR. BURNHAM: Well, the way Rob -- the disagreement here is, one is facilities-based and one is not facilities-based. MR. GORDON: Facilities plus materials plus people; if you pay the people. So, we need to get it to $5,000. MS. HAREL-CAPERTON: Why five? MR. GORDON: Because that's the number -- I think that's the number that the State of California thinks they pay on average out-of-pocket per student; 5 to $6,000. So, pick a number or take -- who knows how many students are per year -- MR. JARVIS: Who says we have classes the way we have? MR. GORDON: That's not the point to all of this. MR. JARVIS: Where the cost can come way down, where the rock star teacher can teach thousands with minimal support and get better education out there; and the support comes from fellow students and you get radically new models, they're supported by frameworks to do things that reduce the cost way down and make maybe a lot of the space irrelevant. MR. GORDON: Perfect. MS. HAREL-CAPERTON: But there's always professional development. MR. GORDON: We need to get the full cost per person, about $5,000 of the US GNP that can't afford arbitrage. MR. JARVIS: We may arbitrage that. MS. ALLEN: Why don't we just have -- why does space return in the conversation? Because you're right. Everybody is talking about the concept of space for the last 15 minutes, it's how important it is. MR. JARVIS: Open and flexible space that people can use in various ways, that you can hold a class at any way. You don't necessarily -- the community doesn't have to own -- MR. BISCHKE: I think there's some courses that drive the cost way down. One of my friends runs a site called Grocket, which is a benchmark company, and they're focused on students to learn. So, it's a game you play alongside other people. When you get the question all right, the game moves on to the next question. When one person gets the question wrong, the game stops. Everybody discusses amongst each other without knowing what the right answer is, what the learning concepts are. Now, that's something where there's so much knowledge locked up in student's heads that as we develop systems and software to allow students to teach each other, you can drop the cost way down. MS. HAREL-CAPERTON: But I think the cost of virtual, even virtually nonphysical professional development and training for and innovation, when you have to take -- all the range, from not very qualified or talented to the most talented and faster learner type of instructors or teachers to really scale is the largest cost. You said "people," but I don't know if you meant that. Even if you run a one hour once a week session for people to come and learn how to teach and learn in a new way in the system, even if they don't end up in a physical space; that's from my analysis of budget in the last three years when we were running Globaloria, is the largest cost item. MR. KALIN: On the people side, why don't you just require as a requirement to graduate high school, you have to teach other people. You show that you've learned best when you're teaching something to other people. So, just require high school students to teach -- MS. HAREL-CAPERTON: The thesis on teaching, on learning by teaching, but to teach daily, a two-hour workshop, tech shop style that we're talking about, where you really create a year or two-year or three-year program when you start as a beginner, you advance to the next story. In fact, the programmatic way, it's not something people just do. They may be very good at it but they always need some training and that training still costs money even if it's not physical or virtual. And you have to consider that in your numbers when you think about your very creative idea. MR. BISCHKE: I have a cousin with seven kids who home schools them. It's like, the 15-year-old teaches the 13-year-old, who teaches the 11-year-old, who teaches the 9-year-old. Rob's point is right on which is, again, the best way to learn something, to understand something, is to teach it to someone else. And yet, in schools, we don't do that at all. MS. SALEN: Some of your training is simply just -- the student who is teaching you is also training you to teach the next student, so there's some training involved. MR. KALIN: And some people are better teachers. It's also like some people are better learners. MR. JARVIS: I teach a course on entrepreneurial journalism, and a business out of this last term was a structure for teachers and students to share video instructions in Physics because there was a niche. And then the community, if this works and it takes off, will judge the best and worse and easyest and hardest and then you'll have a platform for more. That's one small idea and I'm sure there are others here doing the same thing. The point is that there is a business opportunity in that. My fear is -- I'm on the one hand, I'm jazzed by this, but on the other, I'm profoundly depressed because my son is a Junior and it's almost -- it's too late for him, I fear, and my daughter is 12 years old and I watch her going through the system and I don't know what to do. And I feel like I've made terrible mistake in saying that, yes, son, get good grades because that's why -- because that's what we expect in getting a good college and I'm touring them around right now. And he's a creator, they're both creators and they're being taken away from creation. And I almost feel like Rob would tell me have them drop out tomorrow. My wife would kill you but -- (Laughter.) What I fear here is time, and what I see happening in school boards politically is that while you have the kids in, you care deeply; as soon as your kids are out, that's somebody else's problem. Or while you're out of school some people here care deeply for teaching; but the care factor here, to get the critical mass to make the change, I just fear, is not there yet. What we need in great measure is P.R., is a movement, is writing, is stuff. MR. RESNICK: One model that I like -- citizen schools that started in Boston and other cities as well, where it's using school buildings in having people from the community come and teach specialized workshops at the school, and volunteering, people, architects, participate in workshops after school. And I think it's really getting people who are engaged in expanding the things that they do. They are expanding their role... So, this is not a replacement for school. It can do some the role that Katy was talking about, redefining what the teacher needs to do and what the rest of the community is being part of. And I think the citizen schools' role for new start-ups -- there's also a role right now in the country, pouring out the possibilities for the community services, public service, and a lot... schools for 20 somethings, 30 somethings after work all day at their investing banking firm, law firm and people who still have their job, will spend some time in the community school. That's just one example. But I do think that's an example showing how we can try to reframe who it is doing it -- it's not just the latch teacher, there are other people in the community. But I think you need a whole collection of other ways to engage the whole community in the education effort. MR. LOUGHRIDGE: I think there is a really simple approach that maybe can be hatched here now with some of the folks and their talents -- I'm thinking of Chris -- I know in Hawaii there's enough pain with how the public schools are not working out. I think it's harder to get into a private school in Hawaii than it is to get into Harvard literally. So many people want to get out of that system. But there's a super simple tool, SST, where you can get involved -- it's something that the PTA can use, for maybe a goal setting with teachers and principals. I feel that the tough things that we have now to effect change or problems in accountability and transparency -- and if there is a way to tackle that with a social networking tool that's inclusive versus... Some way to engage teachers and principals locally, school by school, using this tool, where a parent can sit down with the teachers, administrations and say, "This is what we are going to work on; because we have a problem with math in your school or we want to bring in robotics," whatever it is, just be a part of -- MR. HUGHES: I think that's a fine idea. But what I'm more interested in is what tools can actually enter the classroom to make it so that students can learn from other students who are in the same room or halfway across the world; or engage with games that people have begun to create -- How does that integrate with the rest of the curriculum that the teacher or facilitator can be categorized. I think that's where the real paradigm shift is here now, where people can learn from other experts regardless of their age, regardless of their background, and be judged or assessed on what they actually take in or what they put out. I think that's where -- MR. BURNHAM: You have to get into the classroom. I think what we're hearing about -- to answer Jeff's questions about what do you do with your children is, you begin to work around the limitations of the classroom and you find a tutor, and Fred's hired a guy to teach his kids how to code. That's the kind of perspective that you can have when you sit in this room and you have the education that you had and the resources that you have. But I think that to the degree that we can make these resources more broadly acceptable, what Shai is doing, what David is doing and then begin to make parents more aware of them. You can begin to work around that. I think the hardest problem that we have is not whether or not the technology could create real value inside the classroom; the hardest problem is how you get it inside the classroom. MR. KALIN: A million student march. All the students get together and say, We're sick of this education, we don't like it -- MR. BURNHAM: No school administrator ever said that Facebook is now allowed on our campus. (Laughter.) MR. O'DONNELL: In fact, the opposite -- MR. HUGHES: If you give everybody a $200 computer, not just the use of technology but the new structured history lesson around whatever the given topic is... not the major things that we keep talking about, like force kids to, like, interact with and tell me was that truthful, what was actually, you know, bullshit, and actually make all of the decisions and then integrate into some type of creative work letter, say paper or presentation of video or whatever. But I think that's the challenge, it's getting that technology in the classroom and using teachers as being facilitators rather than -- which is a whole paradigm shift from everything else. MR. WENGER: When you think about how much it costs to every student in the United States a net book with full Internet access compared to the cost of the AIG bail out. MR. O'DONNELL: I disagree. I don't think it should be in this classroom at all. The worst thing I've ever done is teach a class in a computer room where everyone is sitting in front of a computer that's connected; because absolutely nobody pays attention, they were just instant messaging with their friends or whatever. I think outside the classroom, especially in situations where you are teaching the kids how to access resources, the content, other students who are learning the same thing, on the off hours, when the teachers might not be able to reach or wait for the teachers to reach them on their own time. Because in the classroom, I think it can be a distraction; but outside, if there is a support systems especially in situations where maybe parents don't know the same language as the kids in the classroom, they don't have the parental support around the education, stuff like that, to be able to access those resources. MR. HUGHES: I understand where you're coming from, and there's a debate raging around the country about whether or not students should be able to have laptops. I think the problem there is just -- you just need to build a software that does real time assessment. So, if you have given a task or given a problem or you're trying to teach a given topic you should be able to know which of your students are actually engaging with that topic or whatever they're doing online. MR. JARVIS: Or at some point it's up to them. At some point they're responsible. MR. HUGHES: I'm talking about younger. MR. JARVIS: Graduate students. MR. HUGHES: Twelve-year-olds who are on Facebook. But maybe you have those different channels where you also see software development so you can assess what -- MS. HAREL-CAPERTON: I think that you don't realize that most public schools don't have computers in the classroom and maybe -- but also they don't have it at home, and to answer your question in this debate, the only way is to really post in a place where teachers are looking, that there is this innovation and what you're looking for teachers to be patient about it and want to do it; and you work with them and then try to advance to get the principals and decision makers and the school. That's what we are doing and it works really, really well; but you really have to make sure that they have the bandwidth, the infrastructure, the computers and everything in order to work with them from within. Once it works, then after a year the school sees that something did happen, they may actually -- whether it's writing for grants or asking for funding to bring more computers, more productivity, but they have to see that that configuration is monitored towards the classroom is happening. And that is happening all around. It's an old trick. And this is -- so far, my knowledge is how innovation spreads in schools. The answer to the question "how did we get it there" is really to identify those teachers. So, not necessarily techie but passionate as to what extra time to make it work and demonstrate because they're excited about doing something new. And that's really how it works so far in the research. MR. GORDON: Fred, to add to your idea about the vouchers. How about the idea of about a $100,000 check to a family who successfully gets a kid a GED home school? Just thanks, and here's a hundred thousand. That would probably create activity. MR. WILSON: Who is funding those $100,000 checks? You and me? MR. GORDON: We already are, Dude. With half a billion dollars we're paying $10,000. MR. WILSON: We're not going to get the government do it; right? They are not going to do it. MR. GORDON: They already are. Instead of doing it by credit, here's the only outcome we care about -- we want the kids in jail until they're 18 or until they're 16, and they're run down jails and we want the GED. That's all we really care about. We don't care is they're smart enough to vote, obviously. We don't care if they understand science, obviously. All we want is a GED and get the government out of it. Sell the jails. MS. ALLEN: A small anecdote on the issue of technology in all schools and to underscore the fact that any conversation on education needs to take a whole bunch of other factors into account, which are pretty absent from our conversations. I've served on a board of the University of Chicago Charter Schools for a number of years. We had to quit because kids were getting attacked. First, we tried school buses so that they didn't have to walk home, but that wasn't enough and it's super expensive. So, it wasn't a sustainable program, just because of various social factors. MS. FLEMAL: I live for technology, but I'm not sure that it is worthwhile putting it into any more classrooms. MR. KALIN: Technology is the software, not the hardware. MS. FLEMAL: And you have to keep updating the technology instructors. What I do is tell kids -- I keep sending people to the Apple store, that's where I send my students. "Go to the Apple store and sit there for free classes and you will get the most up to date instruction." I'm not sure it's worthwhile. MS. SEGGERMAN: I always ask, why does education seem to be the last thing we're going to get a handle on? Technology seems really well used in the corporate sector, in health corporations, the military obviously knows how to do it, politics is starting to totally get it. Why, when most of us are parents, we care about education, why is it that technology and education as a marriage is like the last? MR. WENGER: That may be the perfect way to wind up. I think what they refer to is that the hacking that is taking place is taking place on the outside and that's, I guess, where innovation tends to come from, largely. And the reason, I think, that the school itself is going to be last place it takes place, is it's the system that's the most tightly controlled by lots of different interests; and that slows down innovation because the big system and the innovation doesn't fit inside the existing system and the system changes slowly. MR. SHEFRIN: I think this idea of the inside and the outside is really critical and I think the role of education really is to make a porous wall between those things. That's what schools and education really should be about right now. We're living in a time where we have access to all of those things, and we're moving back and forth. So, what's happening on the outside needs to be able to move in a revolving door and be brought into the inside and back out again. And I really do think that's the role of education. And I also want to say that lots of conversations today were about what's happening in the public schools and also at that level of education. And I think the next teachers, to think about teachers as innovators, innovators as teachers in the relationship, the paradigm between those two things. And what happens all the way through, the next teachers and innovators are the kids in kindergarten right now and the kids that are graduating college right now. And what the continuum is between that whole range I think is critical to be able to understand and to know also that it goes both ways, that it's not just kindergarten up to college, that that learning goes back and forth in a continuum. So, I do really think that the inside, outside -- as the outside becomes more acceptable, things that would happen in the after-school programs and what students and teachers have access to now are easier to fold back in in may ways. What the classroom is, the idea about what the classroom is, is the real question, what is it, where is it, what happens inside and then outside of this and maybe to not be able to think about inside and outside as two separate worlds. So, I think a lot of what needs to be happening in education is that what happens to the students is, they are finding a way to be in the world that's meaningful. And then I think the way we begin to think through these things is what makes that happen and then tell the students to really empower so that what happens is also initiated from them. We have to find a way to do that. MR. WENGER: We have promised more time to talk in smaller groups. I want to thank everybody for being here but I also want to encourage everybody to continue the conversation with the part of the group or on the Wiki or just through connections established today. I think that's how ultimately we will carry out the ultimate hack of education, creativity in all of us. Thank you all. (Time noted: 4:10 p.m.) (Applause.)