If somebody asked you to name the masters of interactive design, chances are good that Will Wright would be on your list. He created SimCity which led to SimAnt, The Sims, and Spore, and he’s currently working on a new social game called HiveMind. Last year in New York, I heard him speak and was struck by his thoughts about the learning opportunities he brings to his players, and asked him about it. What does he think about when he makes a game? What are some key influences? (Note that this was a long interview, and edits have been made for clarity).

Scott Traylor: In your presentations you often refer to learning theory, including your own Montessori education. It seems you have a passion for the topic.

Will Wright: Learning theory is certainly one of the factors that shapes my talks and my work in general, but it’s only one element. For me, making a game or a talk is a process of continual self-discovery.

Scott: Can this be attributed to your Montessori background?

Will: Montessori is good for self-discovery and exploration, but Montessori didn’t invent it. Self-discovery and exploration have existed for millennia before Montessori. it’s the way the human brain works. The whole constructivist approach to education simply leverages hardware that’s already built in.

Scott: When you say “constructivist” is it fair to say that you are thinking of Piaget and perhaps Seymore Papert?

Will: Oh, yes, and Alan Kay as well. This formalized approach to learning has really only been around for maybe a 100 years. We can go back hundreds and hundreds of years before that and see people understood this as the primary mode of learning. Consider the Renaissance and Leonardo Da Vinci. At some point the pedagogy got wrapped around that inherent process. It’s something that has remained, almost becoming more relevant in terms of its implications with modern technology, or our imaginations, and our creativity. It’s almost more relevant now where people can approach a wider range of endeavors creatively, because of the tools we have, for gathering information, for creating things, for sharing things.

Scott: So you’re saying we’re at a point, technically speaking, where we are empowered as creators, as explorers, in anything that might interest us?

Will: Yes, especially in things like the social dimension. I can create something and put it up on the web and then by tomorrow 1,000 people might’ve seen it. Think back 100 years ago what it would have taken for that to happen. It just wasn’t a possibility then, but now it’s a possibility for anyone.

Scott: While these theories have become more formalized in the last century or so, good teachers and good facilitators of learning have been aware of these things for ages. Now there’s the opportunity for learning to be amped up through technology and through participation in a way we have never experience before, in such an immediate way.

Will: Yeah, Seymour Papert and Alan Kay were among the first people to realize the impact that modern technology was going to have. Nicholas Negroponte, as well.

Scott: When you talk about games, or video games, you often refer to these things as playful objects. Is that intentional?

Will: Let’s take a look at that. People like to call the things I make games, but I tend to think of them as toys. There really needs to be more open-ended play experiences and that’s a broader world than the formal definition of games. I think a game is really a subset of the world of play. In substance it’s really just semantics but it’s cultural as well. A lot of people think of games, video games, as this brand new thing that’s popped up. But of course games have been around forever. Most games are based on some fundamental play experience that at some point becomes formalized. There are different connotations to play, and with that formal rules. You might play with others, or by yourself, the play might be a zero sum game, or not. These are just a few specialized versions of play in my mind.

Scott: Are there any play experts you follow?

Will: Not really. There have been a lot of attempts in the game design community to come up with more formal structures of frameworks to understand this. I think we’re just beginning to scratch the surface. They’re looking at the different perspectives on play coming from cognitive science or sociology or evolutionary psychology. I don’t think any one of these things is going to capture the subject completely. You have to triangulate from all these different perspectives.

Scott: Do you think the vocabulary around play and around games is evolving?

Will: In general, yes. A game is like the nucleus of the experience, but it’s not the whole experience. I spend a lot of time thinking about the meta-game, the experiences we’re having around the game, experiences that are the larger iceberg. For example, The Sims is a game on some level, where you can play with goal structures and rules. However, there’s a larger game where people make things and tell stories about the game. Then they try things with online communities. These are the things that people do outside the game. It is what I call the meta-game. To me, the more successful games are the ones that spark these larger meta-games.

Scott: You mean bringing the play or the game experience outside of the game, in some kind of social context, where people can talk about and interact around the game?

Will: Yes, in some sense the game in the player’s minds goes from being a specific entertainment experience to becoming a tool for self-expression. At first they were playing for the fun, just exploring. Then they start realizing they can be expressive with it. It’s almost like playing a musical instrument. At first, you experiment and press buttons. At some point you realize you can compose music. You might even start to perform. Eventually this toy becomes a tool to express one’s self.

Scott: Is it accurate to say that the opportunity for creative expression is also a central part of your games?

Will: it’s one of the more powerful benefits of technology. We can do things now that allow people to come in and craft more interesting experiences and share them with others. Somebody can take something from their imagination, create an external artifact, and then share it. They can even collaborate on larger imaginary structures. This is something that used to be confined to a small number of people that had very high skills in language. These individuals could write a book and describe some imaginary world, like Alice in Wonderland. But not many people had that skill set. Now average people are getting these tools that empower them, to create entire worlds, external to their imagination, to share with other people.

Scott: You have this amazing ability to translate complicated systems into successful play objects. What is your thought process?

Will: First, how much are these things representations of the real world? When I get started it’s usually with something that contains some aspect of the real world that fascinates me. I’ll start to imagine if I had a toy planet, what kind of things would I want to do with it? What kind of processes would I like to see? By connecting the toy to real world, it maintains a relevance. Later that toy becomes the scaffolding for building a more elaborate model. When people get to the point where they realize the toy’s limitations, they start discussing and debating what their more elaborate model is relative to that toy. When players first started playing SimCity they didn’t know what was going on. They started building things, they started exploring what caused land value to go up or down, they explored issues around crime, or pollution. Eventually they get to a point where they say, “I don’t think that’s the way traffic really works” or “I don’t think the land value model is very accurate because of this or that.” They could not have formalized these thoughts without the toy. When a player realizes the limitations of a toy, the user has created a better model for themselves internally that transcends the toy.

Scott: Once a certain of level of mastery is achieved with a game, that’s the point when a player will go out and look for additional information to improve upon those models, those systems that they have in their mind?

Will: Yes, that’s the real model we’re building, actually. The computer is really just a compiler for that model.

Scott: What you have described in a sense are games that are digital manipulatives. Tangible manipulatives are a big part of the Montessori world and early learning. Sometimes I hear educators debate the benefit of digital manipulatives over tangible ones. Even if a digital manipulative doesn’t perfectly represent a system, they lead a user in a direction that helps facilitate further learning and growth and discovery that is more accurate and representational of the actual model.

Photo above: The typical Montessori learning experience is based on time with tangible manipulatives, such as these base 10 beads. There’s 1 bead, 10 beads, 100 beads, and 1,000 beads, in the form of a block. These physical manipulatives help young learners understand small and large, base-10 counting, and maybe even geometry (point, line, plane, volume). Substitute beads with the elements of a city, where you can freely experiment with a different kind of units and rules. Get the idea?

Will: Think about it. That’s what we call the scientific method. Quantum mechanics does not describe, is not reality, but it’s our best model so far for describing what we observe to be reality. it’s not the first model we built to describe it and it’s not the last model we’re going to build either. Each model is making a more accurate understanding of reality. They’re all just models and none of them are accurate representations of actual reality.

Scott: Does the knowledge a user gains through game play transfer into the real world? Do you have an example of people playing games where the user transferred something they learned from a game into the real world?

Will: There are a lot of things people learn from games that can’t be measured on any test. On the surface games don’t necessarily feel like education. But when you look deeper into them they really represent a fundamentally deeper level of education. There’s a common story I hear from players of The Sims. Someone will be playing the game and they really get into it. They make sure to take care of the basic needs of their Sims, getting them fed and rested before they go to work the next day. These players can get totally obsessed over making their virtual lives perfect. In doing so, a Sim might get a promotion at work the next day. At some point many players experience an “a-ha” moment — that its 2:00 in the morning, and they have to go to work the next day. Then somehow the players understand that they were taking better care of their Sim than they were of themselves. They were making sure their Sim got to bed on time, was well rested for work the next day, while the players were staying up late playing this silly computer game. For these players this is where they started understanding the strategy within the Sims as a time management game. it’s a game where you juggle many factors. Sometimes a player will step back for the first time and see their real life as a strategy game. As a player, day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, they were making resource management decisions that would impact their Sim in the short term and long term. Then there’s the paradigm shift: What if your real life was a game, and you actually had these resources, and had to develop structures, how would you play it? This is one of those things you’re not going to measure on any standardized test. Through playing the player would walk away from the game thinking deeply about every aspect in their life. “Do I really need to do this now?” or “Should I really spend that money?” For the first time, the game caused them to clearly see the decisions they were making in every day life.

Scott: If the game is the model of a system, which happens to loosely or exactly parallel your own life, at some point, you might reach that a-ha moment.

Will: Right. People who think of themselves as really good strategy players, for some reason never think of their real life as a strategy game. If I were to treat my life as a strategy game how would I play it?

Scott: Will, thanks very much for sharing your thoughts on play, learning, and games. While we have talked about a variety of inspirations and influences across a number of professions, is there one person that has done more to shape your thinking than any other?

Will: My mother, Beverlye Edwards. She supported me with all my crazy ideas as a child. If there was something I was interested in trying or doing, she believed that I knew what I was doing, even if at the time certain ideas seemed slightly odd. Just her believing in me allowed me to keep on trying new things, made me believe in myself, made me confident that I could do something big, something special. I thank my mother, for everything I have, everything I achieved, for her wonderful spirit and the great support she gave during my childhood years and in the years thereafter. I credit all my success in life to her unconditional belief in me and support in my trying something new.

Linkography:

• NY Times – The Long Zoom, by Steven Johnson
  October 8, 2006

• TED Talk – Will Wright makes toys that make worlds
  March, 2007

• NY Times – SimCity Living
  November 21, 2008

• Maria Montessori: The 138-Year-Old Inspiration Behind Spore
  March 29, 2009

• Jeff Braun presentation at Dust or Magic Design Institute
  November 1, 2009

• The Man Behind Spore Explores Gaming as Learning
  February 5, 2011

• Huffington Post – HiveMind Creator Will Wright Hopes To Turn Real-Life Into A Game
  January 2, 2012

Being the number one virtual world for kids is no small thing, especially in these days of Disney, Nick and Cartoon Network. But what’s interesting about Wizard101 is that 60% of visitors are playing with another member of their family (at least, according to a recent Trinity University study). What’s are they doing right?

To find out, CTR correspondent Scott Traylor interviewed head wizards at KingsIsle: Josef Hall and Todd Coleman, on a quest for their magic formula. Note that portions of this interview have been condensed, and this interview is part of a larger report that is sold separately.

Where did the Wizard101 idea come from?

Josef Hall: We started talking about it seven years ago. I have three kids, they were young then, and I wanted them to have a safe and high-quality online game. Todd and I thought the children’s space really seemed underserved. We wanted to make something that was triple-A, super high-quality. Something we could feel comfortable with our kids and other kids playing.

Todd Coleman: Josef and I were founders of another game company that made hardcore fantasy games with violence and mature themes. We were interested in going in a different direction, a more lighthearted approach to gaming through storytelling.

So the founders of KingsIsle brought you on and charged you with developing a virtual world product for them?

Todd: The story goes back earlier than that. Elie Akilian, our CEO and primary investor had an idea to create a new kind of game company. He talked to a dozen or more game companies to find a partner. At the same time he was searching for a partner, Josef and I were out talking to big publishing houses about a new kind of game we wanted to create. What’s funny about both sides of that story, neither of us were finding traction. Elie found that game companies were mostly interested in making shooters or army games or post-apocalyptic games, hardcore games for hardcode players. When Josef and I were talking to studios, those were the same types of games they wanted to fund. We stumbled into Elie who looked at us, having come out of the hardcore game space, now pitching a wizard game for the family, and it became apparent we should join forces.

From the beginning the idea was to create a family-based wizarding world, even before KingsIsle was formed?

Todd: Yes, in fact if you go back and read the high concept document that Josef and I put together, it’s amazing how much of that original vision is exactly the same as what we created.

How long were you in development?

Josef: About two and a half years before we went into alpha with friends and family.

Todd: And another eight weeks before we went live.

Did the masses come right away?

Todd: It took time. It was about six months of steady growth, but we hadn’t yet hit the tipping point. That was in December 2008 when it started to pick up steam.

Josef: We did some national television advertising, then things really took off. We started growing quickly around that time, and we knew we had something special.

How has Wizard101 changed since you launched?

Josef: The game has stayed true to what it was when we launched, but we’ve added a lot of things, like a housing system and gardening. Everything has kind of the wizard slant. The gardening’s not a normal gardening system. You grow funny plants that have a lot of character and personality, like Couch Potatoes which are little spuds sitting on couches watching TV and talking to each other. It’s all very tongue-in-cheek. We’ve added a pet system where you can own pets and grow them through different in-game mini games. We’ve also added a lot of new worlds, some are pretty big departures from the existing world, like Celestia, which is underwater.

[CTR Editor's note: Most of these are premium features, available only with a code that costs up to $39. That's the magic of Wizard101's business model.]

Have you learned anything surprising about your audience?

Todd: It’s a wider age spectrum than we expected. We started hearing grandparents were getting into the game, using it as a way to stay connected to their grandchildren. This was really surprising and just really cool to us. It’s something you can’t predict going in. You sit down, make the best game you can, and what you don’t really have control over is player behaviors. Players come into this empty world you crafted. They bring their own hopes and expectations and experiences and relationships. Then the world starts to take on a life of its own. It’s an amazing thing to watch.

How has the business of virtual worlds changed in the last few years?

Todd: Back when we started Wizard, the biggest game at the time was EverQuest, having amassed 400 thousand people. The prevailing thought in the industry at the time was any new virtual worlds to come out would simply carve up the same base of 400 thousand players. Then World of Warcraft launched and started racking up millions upon millions of players. All of a sudden people realized there was a new market. After that, the free-to-play model started in Asia. When it first came to the US, people thought that model would never fly, and of course that was not the case. Today you’re seeing these very casual games pop up on Facebook, and people who never considered themselves gamers, hundreds of millions of people, are now playing on a daily basis. Using those games as a way to connect with their friends.

What was your single biggest moment in the Wizard101 history?

Josef: One that jumps to mind was early on in development I came home and all the computers were taken over by my wife and kids. They were so deep into the game nobody noticed I came in the door. They were laughing and talking to each other, running around in the game. I knew at that moment we had built something that was a lot of fun for my family and would be fun for other families too. It was a wonderful moment.

Todd: My biggest moment was during development. I remember we had our first milestone, an internal test. We had created the art pieces and had engineering working on the code and a design group working on the players and the characters and pulling it all together. We fired it up, and Josef and I were able to jump in for the first time and play. It was that vision we had, taken from a “Wouldn’t it be cool?” conversation to actually seeing it on the screen. It was buggy, the sound wasn’t working, the cinematics were too long, the cameras weren’t working, but looking past all those warts and seeing it, at that moment I knew it was going to work. Josef and I were like, “Okay, we’ve got something here.” I think it was two in the morning. But that moment, you turn that corner and know you’ve gone from an idea to an actual game. Nothing beats that.

(Photo and images © KingsIsle Entertainment)

Start your engines! Disney’s newest virtual world, World of Cars, is at the starting gate! World of Cars recently went live and is the latest online community for kids. The LA Times posted a great interview with Rachel DiPaola (shown in photo above) who is the Product Director for Disney Online and commander in chief for Cars Online. Reading the piece reminded me that just a few months earlier I had a conversation with Lane Merrifield (also in photo above) about Cars. Merrifield, founder of Club Penguin, now oversees all virtual worlds for Disney. Below are highlights from our conversation together as he discusses the thinking behind Cars Online. This interview was conducted in the Spring of 2010 and has been edited for clarity purposes.

QUICK QUESTION PICKER:

In our last interview together, Club Penguin had just been acquired by Disney. Today you’re in charge of all virtual worlds for Disney. How many virtual worlds are you managing?

You were made the Executive Vice President of Disney Online Studio. Where do you start with this role?

What makes World of Cars unique compared to other virtual worlds?

What 3D solution are you using for Cars, Unity?

Was John Lasseter involved with this project?

In addition to Cars Online, what else can Cars fans look forward to in the near future?

INTERVIEW:

Scott Traylor: In our last interview together, Club Penguin had just been acquired by Disney in August of 2007. Today you’re in charge of all virtual worlds for Disney. How many virtual worlds are you currently managing?

Lane Merrifield: We have four actively launched virtual worlds. ToonTown was the first, Pirates of the Caribbean Online, Pixie Hollow, Club Penguin, and soon to be World of Cars. That’s four live currently with a fifth virtual world actively being worked on. It’s a lot of worlds to manage, but we have really strong teams who own the product, who are passionate about it, and passionate about their audience. For me, I’m less inclined to feel like I have to manage the worlds themselves, and more inclined to make sure that the values are lined up, the priorities are right, the expectations on quality are consistent. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: You’re under Disney’s wing now, which was nothing unfamiliar to you since you first worked in the parks at Disney as a teenager. You’re brought on as the Executive Vice President of Disney Online. Where do you start with this role? Do you focus on business models for these virtual worlds? Do you coordinate branding? Do you modify these virtual worlds to meet the business objectives of Disney Online or maybe the entire Disney enterprise?

Merrifield: When I first came onboard, almost all of these worlds, with the exception of Cars, had already been launched. So all of them had a nature. They were all in different parts of their life cycle. Some were struggling a little more than others. Pirates, which had great content, was not technically functioning as well as it could. It wasn’t working well on all machines. The team had reached pretty far with what they could do technically, but as a result, had made the site less accessible. For Pirates, we put a halt on a lot of new development, went back to the drawing board, and retooled to get it to a place where it is now. Recently we started to move the content ahead again, and the experience is far more accessible. You can play it in a browser now. Anyway, these virtual worlds are all on different paths, and a lot of my focus has been stepping in, bring the two studios together (the Club Penguin studio in Kelowna, now called Disneyland Studios Canada, together with the Disneyland Studios LA,) and bring together a lot of shared learning.

It’s interesting, the two studios are almost identical in size, although one was focused on just one product and the numerous facets of that product, and the other was focused on multiple products. One studio wasn’t involved with as many languages. The other wasn’t as tied into their consumer products and other things. One was driving very deep, and the other was focused on all the pieces. Internationally, Club Penguin was really leading the way, and now the infrastructure that we developed for Club Penguin is going to allow all of our virtual worlds to be able to grow internationally in the same way that Club Penguin did. The sharing between the two studios has been a great cross learning experience. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: What makes World of Cars unique compared to other virtual worlds that compete in the same space?

Merrifield: Well the most obvious is that it starts from such a strong place in terms of its intellectual property. People know the product, people know the characters, they know what Radiator Springs should look like and feel like, although they haven’t necessarily experienced it like this before. There’s great strength in that, but it’s also a double-edged sword. It means people’s expectations are going to be higher. We already had a head start in the narrative, and in the environment and the characters. I don’t like to focus on the technology, but we’ve also created a way of doing 3D in Flash that’s pretty unique and different from Papervision and some of the other technologies out there. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: The front-end is in 3D using Flash? You’re not using Unity?

Merrifield: We’re using Flash, at least until some of these other tools get to the same adoption rate. Our goal is never to try and perpetuate the technology. We’d rather come in behind it once it’s already reached a significant adoption level. This is not to say we’re not looking at all of these other new tools, playing with all of them. Just the same, we’re not locked into Flash either.

We always talk about being technologically agnostic. That’s a big focus for us. It’s difficult to bring a Pixar 3D movie to life in 2D. Not to say we didn’t experiment with it, but it just wasn’t the same thing. The character of the cars, and the ability to bring them to life, and the way they are articulated, we knew we had to address that problem. And yet, the requirement was always not to chase technology. If we’re going to do it in 3D, it has to have a 98 percent install base, which is what Flash has. It was a tough challenge, but the team rose to it. In part, it’s also why we’re making sure everything will work right for the launch. This is a technology approach that hasn’t been done before. We need to make sure when there are 60 cars driving around on the same page at the same time, that it’s still as strong an experience as if there were just two cars driving on screen. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: Was John Lasseter involved with this project?

Merrifield: Yeah, John’s been pretty involved. He would do check in meetings throughout. He also has the dedicated gurus of Cars at Pixar who are involved in work on Cars II and the Cars Land Experience. The relationship has not been like a licensing situation where we say “Okay, can you tell us everything about Cars, and we’ll go make it.” It’s been a real collaboration. In fact, there are elements of what we’ve created that are being incorporated into the Cars manual, the Cars bible. Some point down the road, it could be incorporated into future movies or theme parks or whatever else. It’s neat to see this. It’s a collaborative effort, more than it is one way. John’s been a big fan, and he’s very interested in this because it presents a new medium for storytelling. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: What you have shared with me so far is that there’s a new Cars Virtual World, a new physical world theme park called Cars Land, you’re also talking about the next Cars movie. I’m seeing a “tent pole” approach with the Cars brand that has many different elements circling around that center pole. Fans of the Cars franchise are soon to see much more than just the Cars virtual world, is that correct?

Merrifield: There is a lot of cool stuff coming out. The neat thing about everything you mention is that the center pole IS the story and IS the narrative. People sometimes say, “The virtual world is the connection point.” The Internet may be the connection, the vehicle, and Cars Online will be a browser experience. However, as devices get more and more connected and smarter, as we connect more with mobile, as we connect more with console games, as we connect more with the physical environment, my hope is that this next evolution of engaging with the Cars franchise will be more about this connected experience. Disney has been making similar connections from a franchise perspective for years. It’s not just about the replayability of these various experiences. It’s really about one continuous story across multiple experiences. (Return to Question Picker)

These are just the few of the questions posed to readers in Ellen Galinsky’s new book Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs. Out in the world today there are a lot of behavioral and developmental research studies that clinically describe what’s happening during a child’s growing years. The problem however is that this information often feels inaccessible to everyday moms and dads. What’s great about Ellen’s book Mind in the Making is that it makes the inaccessible accessible. Each chapter is filled with carefully selected and easy to understand research that consistently shines a light on what’s going on with your growing child. Sprinkled throughout these findings are recommendations from the author on how to grow that spark and stories from everyday parents that share similar concerns and their successes related to helping their child thrive.

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting Ellen at a gathering to discuss her work in New York City’s Teachers College at Columbia University. During the event, Ellen was interviewed onstage by Lisa Guernsey, another fantastic author who wrote the book Into the Minds of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children from Birth to Age Five (360KID interview with Lisa about her book, video) The pairing of these two authors together for the event was excellent and a video of the conversation can be enjoyed below. During the presentation, Ellen not only shared many of the insights she has written about in her book, she also presented another dimension of her journey through carefully captured video recordings of researchers describing their studies. There are many compelling observations described through these videos for parents to learn about and use in daily interactions with their child. One video in particular is a “must watch” if you are unfamiliar with “The Marshmallow Experiment,” a study that looks at the internal conflict four year old children struggle with when offered one marshmallow they can eat now or instead two marshmallows they can eat later. This experiment is technically referred to as a study in delayed gratification and you can enjoy the discovery of this experiment (as a newly refreshed life long learner through reading Ellen’s book) in the interview below. Enjoy!

It seems wherever I travel, educational publishers, learning theorists, and teachers of all kinds bring up the concept of learning through interactive games. It’s an idea that’s been picking up steam over the last few years, and why not? Research from the PEW Internet and American Life Project last year found that 98% kids ages 12 – 17 play video games. Organizations like the MacArthur Foundation have been funding a small number of projects to test out new ideas for using interactive games with learning in mind. A few months ago I came across a great article in the Economist about a new public school opening in New York City that uses gaming principles to teach its students. At the recent Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age conference held at the Google headquarters, I had the opportunity to speak with Katie Salen, the visionary behind this initiative. You can view a short video of my interview with Katie on the Cooney Center YouTube channel or read the complete interview below. Portions of this interview were edited for clarity:

QUICK QUESTION PICKER:

Tell us about your new school, Quest to Learn.

How did you recruit teachers for your school?

Was it hard to get teachers around the concept of teaching from a game design perspective?

How are the students working with the teachers who apply this teaching model?

How do you divide up the class day?

Is it your intent to open up more Quest to Learn schools?

INTERVIEW:

Scott Traylor: Tell us about the work you’re involved in with the start of your new school, Quest to Learn.

Katie Salen: I run a nonprofit called Institute of Play. Two years ago we started work on a new school with an organization called New Visions for Public Schools. Our new school is called Quest to Learn. The MacArthur Foundation gave us a two year planning grant around the school. The work that we’ve been doing at the Institute of Play centers around the idea of games and learning. We’re really interested in the idea of how we can develop a school that doesn’t necessarily use games in the classroom, but does use game design principles in learning spaces. Our idea was to design a school from the ground up built on those ideas.

We opened Quest to Learn this past September. It will eventually be a 6 to 12th grade school but we started with just the sixth grade this year. Next year we will roll in another grade, continuing to add an additional grade each year for the next six years.

Today we have six teachers and 79 students. We’re located in New York City, in Manhattan. It’s a district two school so we could recruit kids from a specific geographic area in Manhattan. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: How did you go about recruiting teachers for your school?

Salen: We think the way we recruit teachers is actually very interesting. Our process is one in which anybody we bring into the school needs to be immersed in our model. We held a series of four-hour workshops on Sundays for teachers that were interested in our school. They come in, we put them through a learning problem that kids would have and then they do some work with us around assessment. From the list of interested teachers we narrowed it down to a smaller group and then took them through a series of interviews. We also do direct observation in our classrooms.

We had some really specific criteria for the teachers we were looking for. First, teachers had to be content experts, they had to really know their content. Next, the teachers we looked for have to be really good collaborators. Teachers didn’t necessarily have to be technology people, and a lot of them weren’t necessarily gaming people either, but they were able to work in teams or had come from schools where they worked in teams. They had to have a very good sense of how to enable kids to be innovators. This was very important to us. And finally, teachers had to have done project-based work before, our curriculum includes project-based work in it. Those were the three criteria that we looked for. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: Was it hard to get teachers around the concept of teaching from a game design perspective?

Salen: You know, when you begin to explain to a teacher how a game designer thinks about the design of the game, and we’re able to show them a one-to-one parallel with how they think about teaching students, they say “Oh, it’s the same thing.” Then they realize “Oh, maybe it’s the words that are different” and so it’s about helping them understand and translate between something like the term “core mechanic” in games, which talks about the primary activity of the player, and the learning design, because the curriculum is the basic activity of the lesson. It’s a learning curve for everybody. Game language, as with any other language, can feel very specialist, but the concepts aren’t so new. That’s our whole argument. Games actually model good learning and good teachers are immersed in good learning all the time. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: Quest to Learn has only been in operation for a short while now. Any observations this early about how the students are working with the teachers who apply this model?

Salen: Well the interesting thing is that the kids are so excited to come to school every day. We have parents saying this is the first time that their student has ever come home excited to tell them about what they’re doing in school. This is the first time that their child gets up out of bed and wants to go to school. So that’s great just from an engagement perspective. It’s a place where kids feel safe. It’s a place where they feel excited about coming which is no small feat for a new school where kids are coming from many different neighborhoods. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: How do you divide up the class day?

Salen: When you design a school from the ground up, you attend to every detail. One of the things we spent a lot of time thinking about was the daily schedule. A lot of schools use the Carnegie Unit, classes that are 45 to 50 minutes long. We don’t believe good learning can happen in 45 minutes. From the beginning we wanted to use block scheduling which are extended periods of time.

The main classes we offer, domain classes, last 88 minutes. In a typical day a student will take two domain classes. Since we have an integrated curriculum students will take a class that’s an integrated math/science class and an integrated math/English language arts class. They may be dealing with three or four subjects in a day, but only in two full classes.

There are shorter classes called annex classes, which are extended enrichment and literacy periods. There’s also a gym period for 50 minutes.

For elementary school kids it’s a bit of a shift to be in a class for 88 minutes because they’re used to changing topics with every 45-minute class period. Because our students are working in a problem-based way, the time goes by in a second. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: Looking to the future, is it your intent to open up more Quest to Learn schools?

Salen: Everyone always asks us about scale. To be honest, it’s not the first thing we’re thinking about. We’re still in a fact-finding stage to understand what’s working about our model. However, our curriculum is modular. We piloted it in schools before we opened Quest. Everything we produce is open source and online. Any teacher can take what we’ve created and use it right now. The professional development program we have is something that could be used by any school. Our vision is not to make a hundred or two hundred Quest to Learn schools. Over time maybe other organizations will be inspired by the ideas we developed and seek to build schools that share a similar model. (Return to Question Picker)

If you’re attending a conference on forward thinking ways to help kids learn, or maybe an event on learning through video games, chances are you will be listening to thoughts offered by James Paul Gee. Dr. Gee is a noted expert on the topic of video games and learning. He is the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University and is a member of the National Academy of Education. His work has been published widely in journals in linguistics, psychology, the social sciences and education. Dr. Gee’s recent book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy argues that good video games are designed to enhance learning through effective learning principles supported by research in the Learning Sciences. His new book, Women and Gaming: The Sims and 21st Century Learning, written with Elisabeth R Hayes, will be available this coming May, 2010. At the recent Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age conference held at the Google headquarters, I had the opportunity to speak with James. You can view a short video of my interview with Dr. Gee on the Cooney Center YouTube channel or read the complete interview below. Portions of this interview were edited for clarity:

QUICK QUESTION PICKER:

What successes do you see in the learning games movement?

Why do you think games are not perceived as effective learning tools?

Would a funding approach that is similar to public television be a good model for the learning games industry?

What excites you when you see kids developing their own games?

How are learning games best used to accelerate learning?

INTERVIEW:

Scott Traylor: Where do you think things stand today with the learning games movement? What successes do you see?

James Paul Gee: Successes have been slow in coming, much more slowly than I would have thought, but they are coming. What I’m seeing is the beginning of noncommercial games for learning.

Looking back on the gaming industry, developers made products that were expectable, products that were designed by baby boomers and made by principles of instructional technology. These games didn’t break the mold, and didn’t break out of a pattern. They were not good games and did not include good learning. Today we’re beginning to see games being developed by young game designers who understand learning and understand game design. They’re making good games, and they are making things that work. Over the next few years we’re going to see a real explosion in better products. Some of this has to do with the appearance of the independent game studios. In the commercial world the independent games community has been very slow to develop. For a while there really was none, but now with downloading services across all major platforms, you’re seeing many independent games being developed. Games like Flower and Braid, made with relatively small budgets, but they are really top games. Independent games like these are doing as well as many of the commercial games out on the market, and they’re setting the standard for so called “serious games,” games that have the ability to teach. If we can make commercial games that are as good as Flower or Braid for a modest budget, we certainly can make games in the learning sphere that are equally as good. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: Why do you think games are not perceived as effective learning tools?

Gee: I think the major reasons are cultural, along with the slow development of an independent game industry, but also the power of baby boomers. People of my age, baby boomers, have theories and are in relatively solid positions in institutions. They get to call the shots, but this is a changed world. We’re talking about learning and using technologies that people under thirty know a lot more about. It’s not surprising when they apply our theories and do a better job than when we applied our theories. I think that’s all good, we need to release that creative energy.

The other thing you touch on, and it’s a very serious matter, is that we really don’t have many new business models. Think about it. We’re trying to make things that do social good, but if the social good is done for free, it dies when the grant ends. Right? We now realize we have to think about how to make products that can go on for a long period of time, and at some level earn enough money to sustain themselves while still doing social good. Lots of people are now thinking about how we can create new and innovative business models so that everybody wins. Models that allow people to make enough money and at the same time spur new businesses, new enterprises to open up, models which will help everybody benefit. Until we really get that down, what you’ll end up seeing are products that are made on government dollars that die the day the grant is over. The same is true with academic research, the day the grant money stops coming in the research stops. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: Would you suggest a financial approach that is similar to public television? Would that be a good model for growing a learning games industry?

Gee: There’s going be a whole new set of models. Open source, the public sharing of programming resources, is one very important area. A public television model around games that would include both design workshops as well as giving out products, and also encouraging consumers to make products, would certainly be one model. We just have to have new models for new businesses. There are going to be “double bottom line” businesses; businesses that are committed to social good by solving our educational problems but these same businesses would be committed to making money. Making money not just to enrich individuals, but to also keep the social good going. There are a number of models we can think of for that. As is true of many academics, we didn’t think that business models were important. Now people are starting to see that business models are needed to bring about long-term impact. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: What excites you when you see kids developing their own games?

Gee: I’m excited that so many young people today are taking gaming beyond gaming. They’re not just playing games. They’re making games. They’re designing things for games. They’re setting up discussions and guilds and websites around games. They’re learning new software, software that contributes to these sites and discussions and products. And very often, they organize themselves into learning communities to do all of this. Their passion for learning in these communities grows beyond their passion for the games themselves. In other words, it’s a trajectory towards learning communities, and towards thinking like a designer, and producing, and not just consuming, that some of our best games give rise to.

The video game Spore is a great example. Spore is designed so that you play, and then you design, and then you play, and you join a community, and you get the products you have designed to appear within the game, and then you design with others collaboratively. This game provides very good tools to do that. Anyone, from the very young to the very old, can play.

Another great example is the game Little Big Planet. There’s a whole bunch of products coming out that say why don’t you see playing and designing as things you can do together in a game. These things are integrated together, so the game becomes as much your product as it is ours, and becomes a community event and not just an individual event. The lessons here for education are massive, because it means we’re going have to start designing, not just pieces of software, but ways for people to set up learning communities that they’re productive within. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: So the perception that learning games alone will result in really good learning outcomes, is not the full story. What you’re saying is that learning games, supported by learning communities, are really the combination that accelerates the learning opportunity?

Gee: Those of us who study learning games make the distinction between a game, which is just the software, and the game with a capital “G”, which is the whole set of social learning interactions built around the game. We used to argue, if you’re going to use games for learning, you have to have a community of learning built around the game. Now the commercial industry realizes you won’t make money if you don’t build a learning community around the game. It’s an integral part to gaming, to participate in a collaborative community around the game.

My work has never been that of an advocate to put games into schools. That’s a fine thing to do, but that’s not what my work is about. It’s about putting the learning found in games into schools, learning that’s centered on problem solving and collaboration.

In school students get a bunch of facts and information. You can’t solve problems with it, so you get nothing. The interesting thing is if I make you solve a problem, and I really design the experience of that problem, guiding you and mentoring you, which is what good game design does, you get problem solving and you get facts and information, because you have to learn that in order to solve the problem. I will also get you to collaborate in a community where you might even innovate. You’re going to design new things and do new stuff. I want to see that model go into schools and that model doesn’t have to be a game. We can do that in the world in many different ways.

The other thing I really want to stress about games is that, in my opinion, it’s not a good idea to try to teach a whole curriculum through games. Industries are building up to try to do this. It’s too expensive. We want to learn in many different ways. Games are particularly good for preparation for future learning. If you want to motivate somebody in an area like chemistry or physics, a game is an ideal way to not only motivate that learning, to get learners to see why you do it, what is good about it, why it would be a turn on to do it, but it also prepares them to get ready for learning in the future. That future learning doesn’t have to occur in games. We tend to get obsessed with one platform, but just like in the world where kids don’t just game, they also go on the internet, and they write fiction, and they mod games. They do a whole bunch of stuff. We want our curriculum to be a whole bunch of stuff as well. (Return to Question Picker)

In the last week of October, I was invited to participate in a conference that was held at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA called Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age. While I was at the event I had the opportunity to interview a number of thought leaders involved in the world of technology and learning. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street, I thought it fitting to begin with an interview I had with Gary Knell, President and CEO of Sesame Workshop. The following is a transcription of our discussion. Portions of this interview were edited for clarity. Stay tuned for more interviews in the coming days and weeks.

QUICK QUESTION PICKER:

When looking at expanding into other mediums, how will you apply the Sesame philosophy?

In terms of metrics, do you see Sesame’s on air numbers going down and online numbers going up?

Is it more challenging today for creators of younger children’s content to be on air?

In regards to testifying on Capitol Hill about the Children’s Television Act, what outcome are you looking for?

Do we need the Children’s Television Act for other media formats?

What is the Cooney Prize?

INTERVIEW:

Scott Traylor: Congratulations on the upcoming 40th anniversary of Sesame Street. It’s amazing to think how far the Sesame Street show has come, a show that is often called the “educational television standard.” When you look at expanding into other mediums, how do you think you will be applying that same Sesame philosophy?

Gary Knell: Well the show was invented 40 years ago and has now won more Emmy Awards than any television show in history. Recently we were awarded the lifetime achievement award at the Emmy’s with a standing ovation from, I think, everyone who ever worked in daytime television. But we know today that children are using applications that weren’t invented back when we started the show, and media and technology is getting faster, smaller, and cheaper. So it’s a world of on demand media, portability, those are places that we have to be because those are the access points to where kids are going to find Sesame Street. This was the first year we have ever seen more people and more children access Sesame Street content off television than on television. That’s through video on demand, that’s through iTunes, that’s through YouTube, that’s through our website. It’s through all of the different ways in which we are spreading our content now because that’s where the audience is going. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: So if you were just looking at the metrics of how viewers are watching Sesame Street, you see on air numbers going down and online numbers going up?

Knell: Well I think you’re generally seeing that across television, and certainly network television and PBS is no exception to that because there are a couple of things happening. Sesame Street was one of two preschool shows in 1988. Today there are 54 preschool shows on television. If you just look at market share, you’re not going to have the same market share today that you did 20 years ago. But more importantly, kids and parents are just accessing media differently today. For example, I was just chatting with someone at the University of California here who told me about her daughter who does not watch television but when she sees mom on her laptop, sits down in her lap and says, “Can we watch Elmo for ten minutes?” And I think that’s what’s happening now. I think you’re finding parents who are trying to have more of a control over their child’s viewing habits and behaviors. The TV becomes less of an available babysitter. Interactive technologies give us all the ability to have a more vibrant, richer learning experience than one-way television. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: Do you think it’s more challenging today for creators of younger children’s content to be on air? In part I look at the example of Viacom recently folding the popular preschool channel Noggin into Nick Jr. I see this move as something that’s a detriment to the entire preschool space. It’s too bad there aren’t more outlets like that.

Knell: Yeah, I think there were a combination of factors to that decision which may have had to do mostly with branding, as well as the economics of children’s programming, because there are 54 shows, so I think Nickelodeon probably made the decision that, well, we need to be under this umbrella because it will attract more people to watch our programs. But I agree with you. I think we have to have some safe spaces for children, where moms and dads can leave their kids in a place where they’re not going to be marketed to, where they’re going to be safe from commercial messaging, and it’s a place where kids are going to have a learning experience. Because we do know, even with the youngest kids, that television teaches. As Joan Ganz Cooney always says, “It’s not whether television teaches, it’s what does it teach.” So we’ve got to be in those spaces today just as we were in 1969. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: Related to those safe spaces for children, I know earlier this summer you were testifying on Capitol Hill in front of Congress about the Children’s Television Act, a bill that a major children’s media advocate, Peggy Charren, was able to see turn into law many years ago. Could you talk a little bit about your latest efforts and what you hope will be achieved?

Knell: Let’s think about how the world of media has changed in the last 20 years. The Internet did not exist 20 years ago, at least in its popular format. What we were trying to urge senators to do was to take a fresh look at this. Maybe the rules about having three hours of educational television on every broadcast station are sort of irrelevant today. I mean most kids don’t know what NBC is necessarily, or channel 9 versus channel 12. It’s really about shows that they’re watching or their platforms online. And I think you’ve got to redefine the space in terms of protecting children’s health and promoting education. So we were trying to promote the idea that there’s a real gap in educational programming today, especially for 6 to 9 year olds, in fact, a bigger gap than there is for preschoolers. The other thing is to make sure that children’s health and welfare are being taken into account. Things like childhood obesity, which have exploded in America over the last decade, in part, many people feel, because of the commercial messages targeting kids with foods that are less than healthy. These are things we were trying to urge Congress to take a fresh look back, 20 years after the initial act, which has become a little bit irrelevant if you go back and look at it. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: One might argue that it’s a bit of a challenge to think about the mindset of Children’s Television Act and applying it online or in other kinds of digital media delivery systems, that in principal it’s a great place to go, but in order to get everyone on the same page to try to implement it across numerous online media outlets, there’s a real challenge there.

Knell: It’s true. Although, you know, children’s content platforms are still children’s content platforms. And so you have these iconic characters who have a huge influence over children. When a major character on some channel is promoting double cheeseburgers, it has a big influence on a child’s behavior. It doesn’t really matter what the distribution platform happens to be. You’re looking at the use of licensed characters to promote unhealthy lifestyles. And those are the things that those of us who care about children’s health need to do something about, and that’s what we’re focusing on, along with a lot of other people. (Return to Question Picker)

Traylor: During the Breakthrough Learning event held at Google recently, you announced the Cooney Prize. Could you share a little bit about what you hope it will spark in the years ahead?

Gary Knell: Well we feel that we’re just beginning to unleash the power of digital media in learning applications. There are a lot of people talking about it. This is a way to specifically bring attention to 6 to 9 year olds, which the Joan Ganz Cooney Center is focused on, and try to promote digital learning for literacy using online platforms and also, specifically, mobile learning platforms. The iPod Touch, for example, could be a very powerful learning platform, without the cell phone component. And being able to connect kids to content in unique ways who otherwise disengage from learning could be a way that reaches them more directly. What we’re trying to do is spur innovation by having a prize contest. We will be giving cash awards to the most innovative people who come forward with the most innovative ideas. We hope this contest will spur innovation. We hope that these ideas can be incubated to go to market, and frankly, we hope that other people will copy this. We want to start a movement in which we challenge the conventional wisdom in the gaming community, for instance, that education can’t sell. This is the same challenge that Joan Cooney had before the launch of Sesame Street when she was told that education can’t sell on television. Well we certainly know that is not the case. You now have 54 shows on air, you have six competing networks, and all of this started because of a dinner party in Manhattan decades ago, when two people got together and thought about the idea of using television to teach children something, something more than showing them sugared cereal commercials. And look what happened. Now fast forward to 2009, we think we can spark a similar outcome. What we want to do is jump start this idea a little bit through these awards. (Return to Question Picker)

For those that follow my blog, you may remember a post I wrote last winter where I explored the world of children’s television commercials, just before and after the last holiday season. At the time my focus was mostly on the world of technology toys, and how toy companies promote their wares to children through television. Over eight consecutive weekends, I had watched about 100 hours of children’s television across seven stations, which loosely added up to over 3,000 commercials viewed. That many commercials edited end-to-end would fill an entire day of watching nothing but commercials.

A couple of months ago I was reviewing the data I had collected, deciding if I might undertake a similar effort again this year (I’m looking for sponsors), when I realized I was sitting on a ton of stats related to virtual worlds and kids. After pulling my head out of the world of toys, and instead focusing on social and virtual worlds for kids, I realized that many virtual worlds were advertised for the first time ever on television during the latter part of 2008.

In the months leading up to last year’s Christmas holiday, at least nine virtual worlds were advertised in the US to older kids and younger tweens. These destinations included Bella Sara by Hidden City Games, Build-A-Bearville by Build-A-Bear Workshop, Mattel’s UB Funkeys, Cartoon Network’s Fusion Fall, Irwin Toy’s Me2 Universe, Disney’s Pixie Hollow, Hasbro’s MyEpets and LittlestPetShop, and Wizard 101 by KingsIsle Entertainment. Most companies offered commercial spots in 15 and 30 second lengths to promote their online virtual worlds. All commercials were placed on channels that aired children’s programming with the heaviest rotation appearing on weekends.

The company that had the most commercials in rotation was for Cartoon Network’s virtual world Fusion Fall. Cartoon Network ran an AMAZING number of spots in 10, 15, 30 and 45 second lengths to promote Fusion Fall, but all of Fusion Fall’s advertising was on a single channel, that being Cartoon Network. The shorter spots were placed strategically as bumpers around all show entry end exit points. I can’t cite the exact number, but the amount of Fusion Fall impressions per hour was impressive and more than any other competing site.

The Pixie Hollow and Wizard 101 virtual world commercials were the next heaviest in rotation after Fusion Fall, but for these worlds, they were advertised across multiple channels. Next in line was Build-A-Bearville, Bella Sara, and Funkeys. Each virtual world destination experienced an increase in unique visits to their virtual world but none more than Fusion Fall and Wizard 101 in the November to December 2008 time period. Both of these desitinations experienced an increase in web traffic 3 to 5 times more than before those on air campaigns began. All virtual worlds lost traffic to their sites after the holiday season as advertisement campaigns wound down, all except for Disney’s Pixie Hollow. However, gains remained for seven out of nine of the virtual worlds advertised when measured over a two month period, though only three out of the nine had experienced any significant gains. Out of the collection of these nine virtual worlds, seven companies offered a tangible product that was sold as part of their virtual world service.

Over the summer months, I’ve had the opportunity to check in on a few children’s channels to see what’s being advertised. A new crop of virtual world commercials are running on air this summer. One big surprise to me was MapleStory which is a virtual world that started outside the US. It makes sense to try to reach out to kids during these months to grow an audience base. I’ve been thinking that this might be a better and cheaper way to gain visibility as opposed to winning kids over during the winter holiday season.

Outside of children’s television, I’ve also been keeping a close watch on a number of virtual worlds for kids. Every now and then I’m surprised by how some site just explodes. Moshi Monsters has had my interest most of this summer. This is a UK virtual world for kids that has yet to take off here in the states, but has been doing great at home. I’ve wondered why it has been so successful in the last two months. Only recently did I came across an interview with Michael Smith, CEO for Moshi Monsters on YouTube. (Thanks Joi Podgorny for the tip!) In this interview Michael discusses the growth in visitors and subscribers to his site as a direct response to advertising on TV.

If you’re interested in learning more about the data I have, shoot me an email. One thing is certain though, we should all be prepared to see many more commercials of virtual world advertised to kids in the months, and years, ahead. What used to be a vital part of toy promotion is now expanding to the virtual world as well.

Can you imagine using video games as an effective tool to improve a child’s mind and physical well being? Can you also imagine video games that do more than just passively entertain and become media tools to improve a child’s life? These ideas no longer live in the domain of fantasy, and the researchers at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, a non-profit organization named after the Sesame Street show’s founder, are exploring how new kinds of video games can help promote learning and healthy lives for children across the globe.

Yesterday at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, the Cooney Center released its latest policy brief entitled Game Changer: Investing in Digital Play to Advance Children’s Learning and Health. (Note: Video of this event will be available soon on the Joan Ganz Cooney Center’s YouTube channel.) The paper was shared with a crowd of thought leaders specializing in the areas of education, public policy, research, television and video games. Game Changer defines a number of recommendations for a new framework related to learning games and games for health. After the event, which include a panel discussion from a number of pioneers in the learning games and games for health space, I had the opportunity to speak with Ann My Thai, one of the Cooney Center’s lead authors on this paper.

Scott Traylor: Your Game Changer report covers two sizable topics; learning games and games for health. Why one report and not two?

Ann My Thai: This was something we really struggled with because learning games and games for health are both large areas. Learning encompasses all types of content areas, be it literacy, math, programming, or 21st century learning skills. Health on the other hand has a certain kind of knowledge and a certain rigor in the medical field that doesn’t exactly map out in the same way to learning research, especially when you talking about educational intervention research, an area which created a really big challenge in writing this paper. In the end we decided we wanted to stay to the Sesame Workshop philosophy of the “whole child,” or in other words, the many areas of a child’s overall development, not just one area of development. We felt it was important not to ignore one or the other but to present both topics together. There’s strong research that shows learning and health are closely connected in young children. It’s important to address these challenges in both realms when talking about digital media. We suspect these are the areas within digital media that provide the greatest benefits. They can help bridge the gap between home and school as well as provide tailor-made learning for children, areas that are really important in health learning and learning in general.

ST: In your report you cite that the health-based gaming industry is estimated to be a $6.6 billion market. How big is the learning games market?

AMT: That’s a hard question to answer. Defining what is a learning game can be tough to begin with. On one hand you have organizations that are developing learning games in a research-based way, to make games intentionally educational. On the other you have companies who are making games that are fun first, but sometimes accidentally provide great learning opportunities to kids. Financial data exists for the gaming industry generally but I’ve yet to find anything specific that defines the market size of just learning games.

ST: In your report you touch on Henry Jenkins’ Digital Media Literacies Project, a body of work that could provide valuable insights for integrating digital media in the classroom. What do you think it will take for the points defined in the Digital Media Literacies Project to find its way into the classroom?

AMT: I think it’s going to take a complete paradigm shift with everyone who is involved with educating children, from parents to teachers, to school administrators, to reasearchers like us. There are so many ways that learning can work better for students. We need to completely re-envision what it means to be a school. For example, the area of parental involvement with children’s learning alone is huge. There’s a big disconnect between what happens at school and what children do at home. Digital media can be a really powerful tool in this regard, but it won’t happen if there are calls for cell phone bans in schools because news reports claim students are cheating in school by texting with cell phones. I don’t believe this is the response that will keep kids engaged. Kurt Squire, a leading learning games researcher from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recently said that kids pass notes in class to one another all the time, notes that have been created with pencils. We don’t ban pencils in the classroom. Pencils are a neutral medium, just like cell phones and other technologies. We need to spend more time exploring the benefits of these technologies, instead of banning them for what potential harm they may bring.

ST: Studies find that Nintendo Wii Sports players expended significantly less energy than children playing “real-life” sports. Would you say exergaming is more about behavior change than it is about physical exertion during game play?

AMT: That’s a good question, and one that reminds me of a comment made by Alan Gershenfeld, founder of E-Line Ventures, during today’s panel presentation. Alan wonders if the success of Guitar Hero has inspired children to want to learn how to play guitar. Wouldn’t it be great of we could track increases in guitar sales as as a result of Guitar Hero’s success!

I think behavioral change is one part of it. I also think about communities that may not be safe for children to go outside and play. As the exergaming pioneer Dr. Ernie Medina mentioned in our interviews, exergaming may not necessarily be better than going outside. However, if children are inside and they are playing games, playing games that require children to be physical active are a much better alternative than playing sedentary games. It’s all about a balanced media diet.

ST: How best can we achieve a coordinated effort to improve research related to learning games and games for health?

AMT: Certainly programs like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio national Health Games Research program is a good start. A good first step would be to get people who are developing games to communicate with others across a variety of other important disciplines. Game Changer calls for the government to conduct an inventory to determine what games research is being funded and by which agencies.   This would organize the current research and help accelerate collaboration across silos, which is already starting to happen. The government also needs to create incentives for people to work and play in the same sandbox. The way that academic research is currently being conducted is very much driven by individual researchers. There are not many opportunities for researchers to cross pollinate. This is something that digital media, as well as any other media, requires.

Researchers also need to have more communication with practitioners and people who are using these digital medias as part of their research. There needs to be more incentives to drive and encourage these sorts of collaborations.

ST: Are you hearing any feedback from policy makers about your report? What are they saying?

AMT: People are talking about these issues. This is a really pivotal moment in Washington in terms of setting an agenda for education and health. We hope that policy makers will read this report and see that if children are playing video games for hours a day, why not provide options that are not only entertaining and engaging, but also helpful with improved health and can teach children something as well. We have a briefing coming up with the Office of Science & Technology Policy. We know they have been looking at some of these barriers to multidisciplinary collaboration. We hope that our recommendations will give them some concrete ideas for how to lower those barriers.

For an audio recording of this interview, click here.

Cathleen Norris and Elliot Soloway are both pioneering educators who are defining the future of technology and learning.

Dr. Cathleen Norris, a former high school teacher for over 14 years, is currently a professor in the Department of Technology and Cognition at the University of North Texas. Cathleen is also the past president of ISTE and the past president of NECA, the organizing body for the country’s leading technology and education conference, NECC.

Dr. Elliot Soloway is a faculty member at the University of Michigan. In addition to teaching at the university, Elliot is involved with a number of grant initiatives for the development of middle school science instruction through technology. His research also involves working with many different school districts to define technology-based curricula.

Together Cathleen and Elliot have authored and published over 100 different research papers on a variety of different learning technologies through the professional organization the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). They are also founders, partners and collaborators of the handheld software company, GoKnow.

Late in 2008, I had the opportunity to interview Cathleen and Elliot on their thoughts regarding mobile technologies and this platform’s ability to deliver educational content to students.

Scott Traylor: Cathleen, Elliot, could you share with us how your university work and the work you are involved with at your company, GoKnow, have influenced your thinking regarding technology use in the classroom?

Elliot Soloway: Well, Cathie and I have worked together for about 15 years. A bunch of years ago we took on the task of trying to understand why is it that technology has not impacted K-12 education in the same way that it’s impacted basically every other aspect of human endeavor. We conducted a survey called the “Snapshot Survey” and as we went into that survey we thought, “Oh it’s going to be something about the teachers. There’s something about the teachers that’s problematic. If we can just figure out what that problem is, then we could address the issue of why computers and technology have not yet had an impact in the classrooms.” What we found in the survey results was that the issue was about access and wasn’t about teachers at all. It was about the fact that there was such a limited amount of access. 65% of the classrooms had one computer or less in their classroom. We found 60% of the kids were spending less than 15 minutes a week on a computer because there weren’t enough computers or there weren’t any computers. So why hasn’t technology had an impact on K-12? It’s because there hasn’t been enough technology available, so the kids couldn’t use it. And if they couldn’t use it, they certainly weren’t able to learn from it. That was a startling realization. The fact that it is about access was sort of a necessary condition.

Cathleen Norris: In the survey that Elliot was talking about, we surveyed more than 10,000 teachers across the country; from Santa Clara, California to Florida, to New York. We had a really good mixture of teachers. When we found out there was this access problem, we decided that if we were going stay on this path we’re on, which was to provide laptops to all students as the solution to the access problem, then the technology solutions we were looking to achieve were simply not going to happen. The amount of laptops needed, and we were talking about 55 million children in the United States public schools at the time, was a solution that just didn’t scale. Elliot and I didn’t really believe that this was the right answer to the technology access problem.

So five years or so ago Elliot was in a meeting with Roy Pea, a leading professor on education at Stanford University. Shortly after this meeting, Elliot called me and said “We’ve got to start developing for the Palm computer.” This was just after the Palm first came out. He said “Roy’s convinced me this is a real computer.” At that time we were working on an NSF grant. We decided to take what was left of that money and try to develop educational applications for the Palm. In other words, let’s take this low cost, easy to use businessman’s device and retrofit it so that it could be used in schools.

During that summer we had a group of very bright and enthusiastic undergraduate students working with us. We asked them to help define what Elliot called the “cool dozen apps.” We talked to teachers about what kinds of things they did in the classroom and what kinds of ideas the students had for what they would want if they were students in those grades. We didn’t quite come up with twelve apps but we did come up with and develop quite a few. Almost immediately we had more than a hundred thousand downloads of these apps once we offered them online for free. The only problem was that after Palm changed their operating system, our apps didn’t work on the new Palm operating system. People started calling us saying we have to redo these apps so that they work on the new operating system. We said “Excuse me but free is free and we are professors. This is not what we do,” but these calls continued to come in. We thought that maybe we could hire a programmer, one of the original people we worked with us on these apps, and maybe we can just fix this problem. Anyway, long story short, we ended up spinning a company out of the University of Michigan. We licensed the applications from the University and then started to maintain them. This was the very beginning for us in doing anything other than our professorial work. This was how we got into the software business.

ES: Traditionally NSF gives out all this money to researchers. Researchers publish papers, and that’s really great, and they get their tenure and such, but really nothing happens. At the time, NSF was asking “How do we transition research into commercial ventures?” So basically what Cathie and I did was do what NSF wanted; to take the research and make it real. Now we were naïve in the sense that we could easily start a business. No big deal, right? The University of Michigan was very supportive and helpful as we started it. I was the CEO thinking “No problem!” We had absolutely no marketing. We thought people would simply call us up, we’d answer the phone, and we would send off the software. We really had no idea how to do this as a real business. After a while, people started helping us because they realized what we had was valuable and the Palm at that point was really in it’s ascendancy.

We also realized that if people were going to use Palm computers with kids in schools, then they needed our software. For example Sketchy, which is a drawing animation tool we developed that allows students to create animations, is not just a paint program, but a tool that can be used as a sequencer. Kids could illustrate how to do long division with Sketchy. They could use this software to demonstrate long division. They would show the math and write English to explain it. Teachers have shared with us that they can teach long division in half the time when we use Sketchy. So we hit something, we hit a nerve that really made a difference with early adopters.

At the same time Cathie and I we were doing research in Detroit along with some other folks to look at the impact of handhelds on learning. We had three teachers, each of which had four classes. Two of those classes used Palm computers, the other two classes didn’t use Palms. This was a controlled study, paid for again by NSF. At the end of the second year of the study, once the teachers finally understood how to take advantage of the technology, the children who were in the classes that had the handhelds showed a 13% advantage over the children who didn’t use the handheld, using the same test and the same curriculum.

What this study did was confer an advantage in using these devices. It was a difficult study to do and it cost almost $600,000 by the time we were finished with the research. But in the end, we had a control study to support the anecdotal story, which is pretty cool. Today, Cathie and I continue to do research at the universities, publishing papers, writing, because that’s what you do at a university, but also trying to figure out how to make this company into a viable force in K-12.

ST: What year was this when you started?

ES: We developed the applications in 2000 and then by 2002 we were a small little tiny company.

ST: So GoKnow, as a business entity, offers instructional content via the Palm or other handhelds for K-12 use?

CN: That was the way it started, but as of the last year handhelds have converged with telephony. While there are still some companies that make standalone handhelds, many of them are now cell phone computers as opposed to simply handheld computers. We are starting to see the implementation of cell phone computers into classrooms.

ES: Let’s take one step back. What happened was Palm started to back away from the K-12 market and all of a sudden Dell came into the picture. They offered low cost pocket PCs. We ported our software over to the Windows mobile platform when there was an uptake on pocket PCs. But then, that too stopped because of this idea that no one would want to buy a non-telephone handheld device. Everything was going towards this converged device.

Parallel to this was the one-to-one laptop programs as Cathie mentioned earlier. The results from those programs were “They’re not really working.” Why weren’t they working? One reason was there wasn’t enough educational software available for these laptops. A second reason, teachers weren’t receiving any professional development on how to use those laptops in the classrooms. They could show technically how to use the computer, but the bigger issue was how do you integrate the laptop into the classroom. And third, the costs were such that it was not sustainable. You couldn’t keep buying and buying laptops, it just didn’t work. So that laptop thing, it’s still going, but the momentum has clearly died down.

ST: I know we had spoken about this before Elliot. That the business of how computers are sold on the consumer level, with upgrades and operating systems that are updated every 18 months or so, seems to work against trying to create really successful learning software because schools purchase equipment that outdates itself pretty quickly. Schools can’t necessarily repurchase again to keep up with whatever the state of the art is in computing.

CN: That’s exactly right. We had a school district that we talked to just this week that said they were ordering a device, a laptop, and the hardware was changed three times before they received the device.

ST: Well this leads in nicely to my next question. I think it’s clear what the challenges are related to laptops and workstations in the classroom, that there are financial incentives to computer-based businesses that require OS and hardware upgrades. Computer obsolescence seems to occur faster than a school’s ability to pay for upgrades. Do you see similar challenges with handhelds in the classroom?

ES: Well, again, let’s take one step back because there is this new opportunity with these low cost, mini laptops that was started by Nicholas Negroponte and the One Laptop Per Child initiative. While GoKnow was going out and selling its handheld software, people would say to us “Why should we buy a handheld? We can spend a $100 and get a whole laptop computer.” We used to say “Well if you can buy a laptop for a hundred bucks, go buy it.” As you know the OLPC device came out around $200. What also happened was that Intel, Asus, and now Dell, all came out with a $300 – $500 mini laptop, and we’re seeing schools moving pretty quickly to buy those laptops. They’re not buying the $1,000 – $1,500 laptops, but the lower cost laptops are an exciting opportunity. Now they still run XP and you still have problems with these devices turning on or off instantly. There are still all kinds of headaches and the operating systems are still complex, but the price point is really low and that’s very exciting. Handhelds are still in the $250 – $350 neighborhood. Double that and you can get a full laptop.

On the market today you have this mini laptop movement and then you have these converged devices that have a lot of functionality. Everybody has an offering in that space and the prices for those devices are not unreasonable. So now the question is how could K-12 take advantage of this opportunity. Remember, our study stated that access was the problem. Now it seems that access is no longer the problem. It is within the grasp of schools to give every kid a computer. It could be a cell phone computer, it could be a mini laptop computer. The conditions necessary for computing to have an impact could actually be achieved, and it’s only been in the last 6 to 12 months that that vision has been recognized in the community. But now there’s another problem that has raised it’s head.

CN: The biggest single problem now, if children do indeed have access to technology, is the problem of how teachers integrate this technology into the classroom. Up until now, technology is either the focus of the instruction in that it’s an instructional technology class (they’re teaching children about Word and Excel and that sort of thing) or it’s an add on to a lesson (here we’re going to be doing a lesson on the Civil War, let’s look at this website that deals with the Civil War,) but it’s not an integral part of the lesson. We determined that it couldn’t be an integral part of the lesson because there weren’t tools available that easily allowed teachers to create lessons around the technology. There are products like Blackboard or WebCT or Moodle and I can understand why teachers aren’t authoring their lessons everyday in these tools. It’s like asking them to program in HTML. How good are they at that? I would say many of them don’t even know what HTML is, especially when we see elementary education majors who are only required to take one three-hour course in technology. They don’t know the difference between “Save” and “Save as” and we’re going to ask them to create their lessons in something like Blackboard? Well we know that’s not going to happen and so what we did was create what we call the Mobile Learning Environment. The mobile learning environment is a tool that runs on top of Windows Mobile, Windows CE or Windows XP. It allows teachers to easily take whatever applications they normally use, be it Inspiration, or a paint program, or some type of drill and practice program, and it allows them to build a cohesive lesson in a very short amount of time with very little training.

ES: What Cathie’s explaining is that schools have existing curriculum that they have to teach. They bring that pencil and paper curriculum to the table and set it down next to a computer and say “How do I take this pencil and paper stuff and integrate it with the technology?” School districts across the country have specific things they have to teach. Some companies try to replace the curriculum through a new computer-based environment. These companies are saying “You adopt this technology, and with it, you also adopt this curriculum.” We feel that this doesn’t work. School districts have existing curriculum they teach with, you can’t tell them to change the curriculum because of the technology. So then the question becomes how to integrate the technology with the school’s existing curriculum.

ST: Let’s say that technology and hardware, because it’s coming down in price, is not the issue. The problem then becomes software that attempts not to undo lessons and materials teachers have been preparing in an analogue way for years. Software that tries not to tell teachers to chuck all that they know aside and start anew with whatever this latest and greatest software product tells you to teach. The issue is about providing tools that work in addition to and complement side by side with the teacher’s instructional materials they’ve been using for years.

CN: Yes, that’s very well put.

ES: If you go to a situation where the computers are one-to-one, where every child has a computer, be it a cell phone computer or a mini laptop computer, then all the learning activities, all the learning resources are on that device. It becomes the conduit then for the curriculum and for the artifacts the student creates. In some sense it does replace or certainly augments the paper and pencil materials. As Cathie pointed out earlier, the problem was that the computer was used as an add on. The major part of the lesson was still done on paper and there might be one activity that you did on the computer but that activity wasn’t integrated with the rest of the pieces of paper. The computer wasn’t playing an integral role to the lesson. But with one to one, it becomes possible for the computer to play an integral role.

CN: Which is the way it is in business. Most business people do the majority of their work on their computer. Pencil and paper tends to be an aside or an add on for notes. When we start talking about teaching children 21st Century Skills, teaching them how to use the computer for the bulk of what they do is certainly a 21st Century Skill.

ST: Certainly, so long as it’s not just teaching the technical means to do a PowerPoint presentation or write a paper. It’s about the critical thinking that goes on.

ES: Right.

ST: I’ll come back to that point in just a moment. I’ve heard it expressed by business leaders involved in creating educational materials that handhelds present an opportunity to empower student learning in a way we’ve never before imagined possible, but it could come be at the expense of teacher control. Can student empowerment and teacher control coexist in the classroom?

ES: Absolutely.

CN: The teachers who are out of control when students have handhelds are the same teachers who are out of control when the students have pencils and paper. I was a classroom teacher for 15 years and back then the threat was that computers were going to come in and replace all teachers. All of the good teachers felt that any teacher who could be replaced by a computer should be. There is always room for and a place for good teachers. In this case the role of the teacher is different. It’s not necessarily a role of handing out the information. You don’t open up students’ heads and dump in the information. Rather, teachers provide direction and contextualize things for students as they do their lessons. Students are not sitting there like little birds waiting to be fed. To create autonomous learners you must contextualize things for students as they find them or as they run into difficulties trying to fit pieces together because you’ve structured the lesson for them.

ST: You’re singing my song. One of the things we often say at our organization is that a child is not a vessel to be filled, but a flame to be kindled. What you’re speaking to is how do you create that spark and engage that 21st Century Learner.

CN: Exactly.

ES: We saw that spark and the leveling of the playing field when we were working in Bedford-Stuyvesant in New York City with handhelds four years ago. This was when pocket PCs were just beginning to be available to K-12. We would go into these classrooms where children are physically and sexually abused, they live in homeless shelters, it’s 100% free and reduced lunch. This is a very intense school. You bring in these pocket PCs and they could do anything, they could do everything. If you looked at the work and said “Who produced this?” you wouldn’t know that it was a child from Bedford-Stuyvesant. It could be a student from an upper class suburb. The work stood on it’s own merits. The children there were not successful with the paper and pencil. They didn’t like it. It didn’t meet their needs. It wasn’t part of who they were. But when you gave them this technology, it kindled that flame and they then had an opportunity to produce in the same way that the other kids had. It was astonishing to see.

ST: So it’s your belief that 21st Century Learning Skills can be addressed properly with handhelds?

CN: Yes. The way we learn and what we learn is changing, and that is really the majority of the issue around 21st Century Skills. Children need to learn how instead of what. How do I find this information? How do I determine from this Internet what is valid information? How does this fit into everything else that I’m reading? How does this merge with my textbook? It’s the how. Again, it’s helping the child take the wealth of information that’s out there, assimilate it, and determine what’s a valid source, what’s real information.

Photo of 5th grade students from Singapore using computers that are tethered to desks.

ES: The 21st Century Skills are about teamwork and the “soft skills” kids gain when working and collaborating together. If you watch classrooms with big desktop computers, the kids are sort of sitting hunched over looking up at the machines. They’re not talking to each other. They’re not sharing. They’re just staring at the screens with headphones on. But when you put mobile computers, handheld computers, in a classroom the kids are looking at each other, talking to each other, putting the handhelds in front of each other’s faces. They’re working together. They’re actively engaged in teamwork. It’s a completely different flow in the classroom.

Photo of 3rd grade students from Singapore using mobile computers in a conversational manner.

The smallness, the immediacy, the ease of use of these handheld devices is exactly what is needed to support the 21st Century Skills, where your dynamic workgroups change over the course of a day. If different children work with different kids on different problems, no problem! That’s what happens with these handheld computers because you’re not tethered.

CN: We have some excellent photos of that when we were in Singapore last month. We were working with researchers there at the university in Singapore. They’re implementing a project where they will follow third and fourth graders who are using cell phone computers, pocket PCs, for learning activities in the classroom. We observed great diversity in the entry points into lessons, even on the part of second graders. One such lesson was on prepositions. Teachers gave them pocket PCs and sent them out into the school yard, over to the Koi pond, into the central office in groups of three to take pictures that were illustrations of the preposition “in”. You know, the fish are in the pond, the basketball is in the basket, things like that. They gave them a series of prepositions they had to photograph and then they came back to the classroom and wrote sentences explaining their pictures. Then they shared their pictures and the sentences that went along with it. We saw eight different ways that students could complete a lesson. In the end, they all got the assignment done but they were all able to do it their own way, the way that suited them best.

ST: That really speaks to the empowerment for students. One of the things I wonder about for a greater acceptance of handhelds in the classroom; do you have any thoughts or insights into what professional development should be in place to help this succeed?

ES: When companies that really understand the role of technology in the schools work with the teachers, they realize it’s not a one shot deal. You can’t just go in and only show the teachers how to use the computers. That was the failure of those laptops programs, the lack of ongoing professional development with the integration issue. We stress this when we work with a school district. There are districts that say “Well we don’t have the money and we really can’t do professional development” and Cathie and I just sort of grimace because we know there’s going to be trouble. The teachers and administrators are not going to understand how to use the technology. When the bumps happen, and there are always bumps, they’re not going to know how to deal with those bumps. Professional development is not just having experts help the teachers, it’s also having the teachers talk to each other and work together with children to get over those bumps.

ST: It’s great that schools can invest in the technology, but just buying the equipment and any additional software to benefit the instruction is only half the solution.

CN: That’s exactly right. It would be like buying a new car. It really helps if someone walks you through all of the features of the new car. Otherwise you’re driving but you’re not really taking advantage of all of the bells and whistles that a new car has. A lot of districts think that if their teachers know how to use a computer that this skill translates into knowing how to integrate it. In fact that’s something that they don’t teach in school. Most of the colleges of education don’t have tools to be able to teach prospective teachers how to do that. Teachers who have been out there in the field certainly don’t have that information.

ES: So if we could summarize. One of the first challenges we saw to getting technology to have an impact on the kids was the access problem. Today we feel that the access problem, while it’s hasn’t gone away, is certainly addressable in a scalable, sustainable way. The next problem is this issue of how do you integrate existing curriculum with the technology. That requires professional development, it requires software that helps the teachers in doing that integration so the technology scaffolds in some sense so teachers can create coherent, cohesive lessons. Professional development also scaffolds the teachers in creating coherent, cohesive lessons that integrate the technology. Now that we have access addressed, we have to deal with this integration problem, and it’s integration with existing curriculum.

People say, and I’ll be honest I’m guilty of it too, that we need to have a new curriculum. Technology enables us to do new things. That’s easy to say but it doesn’t address what schools have problems with today. The curriculum will change but everything is not going to change on day one. You have to start where the teachers are, with their existing curriculum, and help them understand how to integrate it using tools like what Cathie suggested along with professional development.

ST: If I could branch off of your comment there. Classrooms have the potential to see beneficial change as a result of technology. Today there are so many different ways of interfacing with these new technologies, be it classroom technologies like Tablet PCs or Smart Boards or consumer technologies like the Nintendo Wii or Apple iPhones. Are you seeing any technology trends that are important to watch in terms of learning?

ES: I think the smallness issue is really important. The cell phone computer is not simply just a smaller laptop computer. We’ve spent years learning how to design interfaces for laptop computers. You can’t just use all those same techniques, scale it back a little bit, and apply then to cell phone computers. Designing for mobile machines with a small screen is different than designing for 15 – 17 inch screens. We have to think about what is the essence and what’s really important. It will require a change in how we think about designing our software, how we design our web pages. Companies that simply take their 17 inch or 15 inch technology and just try and repackage it for the small screen will lose out. People will not buy that solution because it is not effective on a small screen.

ST: That seems to be a common occurrence with publishers, that is if they have a successful program in one media format they simply port it over to another. And that is not the best solution for addressing mobile computing or any other kind of platform for that matter.

CN: Exactly.

ES: It might make instant business success but they won’t have business success with that simplistic model. We’ll see. The proof’s in the pudding. It’s too early to say. That’s our opinion, we’ll see.

ST: Well that’s true. One of the things that I worry about with Smart Boards is people are just porting all of their book based content into static PDFs to be displayed on Smart Boards. There’s nothing engaging there about that solution.

CN: Right. Children are simply watching something bigger. We were in Mexico and we saw that Mexico had adopted the Smart Boards in all the classrooms. At one meeting we attended, they demonstrated how they were going to be using the Smart Boards in the classroom. A teacher had a book opened, displayed on the Smart Board, going through the lessons with the book on the Smart Board. It was just a bigger book, the children are still being passive learners. They simply watched her as opposed to engaging with a technology that fits them, moving up and around, it’s a completely different learning environment.

ES: This was a very powerful learning experience for both of us. Here is a country trying to move into the 21st century. They were going to equip their classrooms with all these expensive, electronic whiteboards. All they were doing was the same thing that they had done with books in the past and that wasn’t particularly interesting to the kids. Displaying the book a little bigger is not going have any impact whatsoever.

CN: We were laughing. We thought “Is this just telling you the same thing, but only louder?”

ST: Andy Warhol had a saying, “If you can’t make it big, make it red.” So maybe that’s the next step.

CN: That’s right.

ES: That’s good.

CN: That’s not to say that some people aren’t doing innovative, imaginative things with Smart Boards, because they are.

ST: Very true. I don’t mean to be down on Smart Boards. I’m excited by them but I get disheartened when I see its use in such a way that it’s really not forward thinking to benefit the instruction with the great medium that’s available to them.

ES: Historically, new technology mimics old technology until you figure out how to take advantage of the new. A classic example is when the movie camera came out people simply photographed the theater because that was the thinking of how you viewed theater. Then Hollywood came along and defined this experience as a new genre, a new medium, one that can tell a new kind of story. It wasn’t immediate. It took a while to figure it out.

We work folks at SRI and they are doing some wonderful things with whiteboards, with the clickers, they’re really trying to go beyond the obvious things that you could do with those devices and be much more engaged, much more imaginative.

ST: Let me ask both of you; whose work are you watching these days? Who do you think is doing neat work with technology and learning that would really benefit students everywhere?

ES: Outside the education world, I think the folks who are trying to develop apps for mobile computers, people who are grappling with how to use multi touch, how to display information, those are the folks that we’re looking at. The range of location-based apps that people are coming out with now, with GPS built in, those are very, very provocative.

We’re going to see new interface conventions generated. Phone companies have opened up access to lots and lots of applications, not just the three or four products that come with the phone when you buy it. You can download and install whatever applications you want. Cell phones are full blown computers. Cathie is intentional when she uses the term cell phone computers. Just like you have desktop computers and laptop computers, you have cell phone computers. The emphasis is on the computing part, that it can enable all kinds of applications. What do you build, how they work, ease of use; these devices have to be ready to go and intuitive from the moment someone picks them up. That’s a real challenge.

ST: I sometimes wonder if the difficulty with technology in the classroom is in how it is defined, semantically. A cell phone in the entertainment industry is portable entertainment or portable gaming device. That terminology doesn’t work in the classroom. I like how you’re framing the conversation, that these are cell phone computers, they’re not cell phones, they’re not entertainment devices, they’re devices made for learning.

CN: Yes. We had a discussion about this just yesterday, about what a cell phone computer should be or not be. In Singapore they’re not enabling voice. They’re only paying for data plans for the third and fourth graders. They will have 24/7 access to the Internet which really levels the playing field because it doesn’t make any difference if you have an Internet capability at home or not. You can still have access to all of the information, no matter where you are because of your cellular capability. But someone in a parents group yesterday said “Do you really think it would make a difference, and what difference would it make, if you did indeed give them voice in addition to it?” We have moved away from the term acceptable use policy of devices to what we call responsible use. As educators, we believe that we need to make all of these users responsible for what they do with their technology. It’s not that we’re dictating what is acceptable and what isn’t. It’s about being responsible and maybe that means we do give them voice. We also encourage schools to let children put a few tunes on the mp3 player, or to let them download a game or two because we want the device to seem personal to the children as opposed to it just being another school device. If it’s personal to the child, then they’re going to take better care of it, they will make sure that it’s charged, because is theirs. It’s their personal device. What’s important to you are those things that are personal to you.

ES: We see a trajectory with this issue of one-to-one computing. The entire notion of one-to-one is going to change. The term is inappropriate. It’s a dominant term now because it comes out of the laptop world. It still focuses on the technology as opposed to what the kids are going to do with the technology. I think over the next few years, the notion of one-to-one as a term will disappear. What’s going to happen is that it will be a given that all the children will have a computing device. It probably is going to happen faster than most people think. Right now, a large percentage of schools in the United States, ban cell phones. But once this dam breaks, when schools see that kids are already bringing computers to school and schools don’t have to pay for those computers, the light bulb within administrators will light up. Administrators will begin to notice that one child brings a Motorola, another brings a Nokia, and yet another brings an iPhone. The solution? You just put a layer of software on top of the phone that makes all those non-homogeneous devices homogeneous with respect to the teacher and the learning activities. Just like a Dell and a Sony and a Gateway. They’re different computers. You put a layer of software on top of them and now they’re all the same. That’s the same idea that will happen in the cell phone computer world. And when this happens, we think it’s going to happen very quickly. Not in five years, more like two to three years.