Education Sciences Institute Vision

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Education Sciences Institute Vision Two-slide
Executive Summary Briefing
Jan 08Dan M. Davis
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U.S. Education Requires a Dedicated Education
Sciences Institute is Now

• 1 Education, especially in math and science, is
  vital to the continued strength of the Nation,
  but is not currently optimal!
• 2 Innovative researchers and master teachers are
  demonstrating what can be accomplished, with
  encouraging local results!
• 3 National implementation of these programs is
  hamstrung by outdated methods of adoption,
  inadequate systems and daunting retraining needs!
• 4 The Internet Revolution progressed, not when
  users developed web pages (Google, Wikipedia, My
  Space, ), but only after Government-sponsored
  institutes provided the standards (e.g. IP), the
  tools (e.g. HTML) and infrastructure (e.g.
  ARPANet)!
• 5 For a similar Education Revolution to
  succeed, at least three areas need to be
  addressed content capture methods, interactive
  computing systems and tailored infrastructure
  design!
• 6 USCs ISI provided similar capabilities for
  the Internet, so a new Education Sciences
  Institute could do the same for U.S. Students

An institute for 10M/yr holds the key to
implementing the critical advances of which we
are already capable, yet is just 0.00001 of
U.S. Education expenditures.
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ESI Activity Flow Chart
Guidance Advisory Committee PM
Products Technology requirements and potentials
analysis New technology enablers for
Education Content capture tools Lesson plan
framework Assessment monitor Interactive
virtual tutor Proof of concept
implementations Outreach to educators identify
and facilitate technology insertion Tiger team
to attack hard EdTech problems Community
leadership to identify, foster and promulgate
standards
Inputs Technology from DoD Needs mandates from
DoEd, State Ed. Depts Prioritized and urgent
assistance needs from classroom
Teachers Technology-insertion lessons from
Internet Development-sharing lessons from open
source community
Assessment Independent Evaluators
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Back-up Information

• The following slides support the position laid
  out in the executive summary brief

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Current Education Problems

• Too manifold to list exhaustively
• Experience
• Societal pressure
• Assessing the current levels
• Once more, Hero Teachers into the breach
• Examples
• Paucity of domestic PhD technology students
• Done with math book early
• Test scores (a la NCLB) still unknown data
• Lessons in The World is Flat

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Technological Enhancements

• There are some issues where technology may not be
  the panacea, but there are benefits that can be
  implemented
• Education has been trying technology at many
  levels, despite drawbacks, failures and
  over-promising
• Analogies exist between the civilian and DoD
  educational environments
• Learners have varying skills, abilities and
  graces
• Dearth of hero teachers and role models
• Limited resources with which to address issues
• Interactive instruction can be augmented with HPC
• Not a new concept has been shown to work

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Vision of a Technology Enhanced Future

• A classroom where a teacher always has a virtual
  interactive master teacher to help with
• Difficult or unfamiliar subject matter
• Challenged learners in any field
• Gifted students looking for new challenges
• Students in an individual teachable moment
• A computer aided education platform that does not
  burden the teacher in any way with technology to
  master and new gear to monitor
• A system that automatically and effectively
  monitors and analyses students to identify
  optimal learning strategies, differentiating
  content, process and product

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Technology can Help to Produce that Vision

• Hundreds of small research projects show what
  should be done
• Thousands of hero teachers show what can be
  done master teachers
• Decades of slow progress show what is not being
  done because it is so hard
• The Internet Revolution shows what can be
  accomplish if society is enabled by user-friendly
  technology

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Hrothgar Project

• HPC was used to teach HPC
• Taught thinking like physicist
• Validated by student reaction
• Program showed students how to parallelize a code
• Was batch, not interactive
• Gave demonstration of HPC in educational setting
  as
• Accessible
• Stable
• Robust
• Reliable
• Inexpensive

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Major Efforts to Date

• Three papers on technology and education
• Vetted Idea with subject area leaders
• Identified people through whom to work
• Surveyed issues and identified problems
• Identified the major hurdles
• Compared advances in similar fields
• Conceived the path to best inject the tools
• Conceptualized the organization to lead

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Germane Papers

• Davis, D.M., Gottschalk, T.D. and Davis, L.K.,
  (2007), "High Performance Computing Enables
  Simulations to Transform Education", WSC07-The
  Winter Simulation Conference, Washington, D.C.,
  2007http//www.isi.edu/ddavis/JESPP/2007_Papers/
  WinterSim07/DavisGottDavis_0.xV.pdf
• Davis, L. and Davis, D, (2007), Implementing New
  Educational Technology for a 21st Century
  DoD", in the Proceedings of the
  Inter-service/Industry Simulation, Training and
  Education Conference, Orlando, Florida,
  2007http//www.isi.edu/ddavis/JESPP/2007_Papers/
  DavisDavis/21CentEducDoD_Paper-0.xV.doc
• Davis, D. and Davis, L, (2006), Educational
  Extensions of Large-Scale Simulations Enabled by
  High Performance Computing" in the Proceedings of
  the Inter-service/Industry Simulation, Training
  and Education Conference, Orlando, Florida,
  2006http//www.isi.edu/ddavis/JESPP/2006_Papers/
  Davis_Davis_Allen/Educ_HPC_Sims_1.0aV.pdf

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Support and Leadership

• RADM Fred Lewis Head of IITSEC
• Prof Stephen Thernstrom - Harvard U.
• Prof. Harry ONeil USC Rossier School
• Gene Bal Exec Dir, MHPCC, U of H
• Prof William McComas U of Ark
• Mike Rota U of Hawaii
• Sue Fratkin CASC Washington Liaison

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Major Initiative Vision

• Center or institute not another small research
  project
• 10-15M/yr for five years, renewable
• Develop enabling technology not generate content
  
• Model on early Government/Internet Developers
  relationship

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Benefits

• Technology requirements and potentials analysis
• New technology enablers for Education
• Content capture toolsLesson plan
  frameworkAssessment monitoring
  systemInteractive virtual tutor prototyping
• Proof of concept implementations
• Outreach to educators to facilitate technology
  insertion
• Tiger team to attack hard EdTech problems
• Community leadership to identify, foster and
  promulgate standards

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Hurdles

• Must be responsive to qualms of
• Teacher organizations
• Parents
• School administrations and government entities
• Previous technology efforts were over-promised
  and under-delivered
• Many have sense they are doing this already
• Students now have a high expectation for
  technical sophistication and entertainment
  content
• Supplant many efforts focus on bells and
  whistles with substantial and proven pedagogical
  emphases

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TIMSS 2003 Data on 8th Grade Math (Trends in
Mathematics and Science Study)
Average is higher than the U.S.
average Average is not measurably different
from the U.S. average Average is lower than
the U.S. average
Highlights From the Trends in International
Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)
2003 December 2004 U.S. Department of Education,
National Center for Education Statistics
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State Rankings by 8th Grade Science Scores

• Massachusetts
• Minnesota
• North Dakota
• Vermont
• Kansas
• New Jersey
• South Dakota
• Virginia
• New Hampshire
• Montana
• Wyoming
• Maine
• Colorado
• Pennsylvania
• Texas
• Maryland
• Wisconsin
• Iowa

• New York
• Kentucky
• Florida
• Michigan
• Arizona
• Rhode Island
• Georgia
• Oklahoma
• Tennessee
• Arkansas
• Louisiana
• Nevada
• California
• West Virginia
• Hawaii
• New Mexico
• Alabama
• Mississippi
• District of Columbia

• - DoDEA
• Indiana
• Washington
• Ohio
• North Carolina
• Oregon
• Nebraska
• Idaho
• Delaware
• Alaska
• Connecticut
• South Carolina
• Utah
• Missouri
• Illinois
• - National Average Score

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An ESI-Enabled Educational Vision for the Nation

• Leverage the best and brightest educators
• When we establish one who has the vision, extend
  it to all
• Use new technology to capture the passion and the
  concepts
• Provide managed-risk environment
• Use goals set by visionaries and validated by
  veterans
• Employ proven pedagogical techniques to optimize
  learning and inculcate desired attitudes
• Create an Augmented Intelligence (A/I) program
  to
• match education to learner
• adjust to changing world
• Implement ISI-proven techniques to achieve all of
  the above.

pace individual learners validate progress
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What ISI et alii bring to the Mix for Education
Technology

• Manifest reputation for delivery
• Acknowledged leader in large-scale DoD
  distributed simulations and scalable HPC
  implementations
• Well suited skill set
• Prototyping
• Standards setting
• Operational implementation
• Organizational stability for 30 years
• Professional network and valuable colleagues
• Major Research University
• Reputation
• Personnel and Facilities
• Contacts

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Mission Statement and Goals
Education Sciences Institute
Mission Statement The ESI will inseminate and
incubate, then insinuate, enabling technologies
for K-12 education in order to empower every
classroom teacher to nurture challenging
students, to convey difficult material and to
optimize classroom time this will deliver a new
capability to effectively and easily incorporate
the latest pedagogical advances, the most
student-centered instruction, and the optimal
instructional pacing, all through
teacher-friendly, education goal-oriented, and
innovative systems, adapting lessons learned from
the Internet revolution and the open-source
software movement.

• Goals
• Virtual master teacher(s) available to assist in
  every classroom
• Relief for, not burden upon, classroom teachers
• Each child be able to work at optimal, not
  classroom, progress rate
• Uniform excellence in education, especially math
  and science

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Major Thrust Areas

• Content Capture/Knowledge Acquisition
• Grand Challenge quality problem
• Wide applicability
• THE team ISI and collaborators (e.g. Caltech)
• A/I (artificial or augmented intelligence)
• Content adaptation
• Student optimization
• Learner risk reduction
• Education Technology Infrastructure
• Bullet proof, teacher proof, tamper proof
• COTS Hardware
• Thin client

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Org Chart 50 (65) Personnel, 10(15)M/Yr
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Future Direction

• Refine the goals
• Select and recruit team
• Define the optimal configuration
• Entire center in Marina del Rey
• Locate elsewhere
• Involve several Universities
• Funding opportunities may drive answers
• Working on THE next step