Implementing blended learning effectively is no simple task. School districts need to take several steps: designing strategy, updating infrastructure, procuring hardware and software, increasing professional development, and continuously working to improve the outcomes. At the Learning Accelerator, we’ve come to believe that districts need organizations that can help them do this at scale, which will require collaboration and partnership across the educational ecosystem, a clear national vision, and significant funding.
EducationSuperHighway (ESH), one of our first grantees, is one such organization. Their journey and ongoing mission provide a clear case study of what support for blended learning implementation at national scale looks like. ESH’s mission is to bring learning-ready Internet infrastructure to every school in America. They have the tools to determine if schools have the Internet speeds necessary for digital education, and they can help get schools up and running on the information superhighway.
So how can we bring this type of critical partnership to schools across the nation?
The Learning Accelerator and EducationSuperHighway have proposed a discussion on this topic for the upcoming SXSWedu conference in Austin, Texas in March 2014. TLA CEO Scott Ellis and ESH CEO Evan Marwell plan to dig in to the following questions:
1. What were the key steps for ESH to get where it is today, what is the vision for the future, and what are the key challenges that lie ahead?
2. What are the lessons for other parts of the evolving ecosystem that are needed to to support districts at national scale?
3. How can other organizations across the country–districts, non-profits, software companies, consultants–partner together to help support the effort.
This in-depth discussion will occur at SXSWedu if we receive enough votes. Please click here to vote for this discussion on the SXSW PanelPicker. Hopefully we’ll see you at SXSWedu, but, if not, we also plan to post a summary of the discussion on our website after the conference. Thank you for your support!
