Featuring 1291 speakers in 23 cities, seven states and six countries. But i am pleased to say as of today were really proud to announce this is our home, the National Center for the preservation of democracy. Trust me, were very happy about it. Of particular interest to me, our offices will be next door in the building that was constructed in 1924. Im told its haunted. Im a little freaked out by that. The other cool thing is my great grandfather was a bricklayer on this building in the middle of los angeles. So i own the place, by my logic. All of our events are followed by a reception to which everyone can grab either a glass of wine or water and continue the conversation with tonights featured guest and one another. Please give a warm welcome to ms. Goldie bloomenstick. Good evening, everybody. Thanks for joining us here tonight. I understand theyre going to be showing the bat signal tonight at 7 30 in l. A. We have a terrific panel here tonight. Im going to introduce the panel. We have darryl adams whos a former superintendent from Coachella ValleySchool District. Jamie casssup who is the google education evangelist. Marie senie. Michael crow. We have a really cool topic tonight. Can Digital Education dismantle the class system. Weve got 45 minutes. Should be a piece of cake. No problem there. Last week i put that topic out on twitter and i asked people what would you ask. I thought maybe id crowd source a few questions. The first answer i got back, someone who said, what are you smoking. The second person said ask about decades of Research Showing access to technology doesnt improve learning and takes up needed time, money and other resources. Its a big topic. For me, it means that Digital Education must break down the class system, especially in america. Born and raised in memphis tennessee during the civil rights moment, our lack of access to knowledge prevented people like me from getting ahead. Now with the tools that are available, power and knowledge is there for everyone. Students are going to have the opportunity to use these tools to access information like never before. That is power and opportunity. What does Digital Education really mean . Youre right, technology doesnt improve learning. Great teaching improves learning, great education improves learning. The higher ed system itself actually, i think creates even more of a class system. If you know of someone whos done to harvard i get this question all the time, is education broken. Its hard for me to answer that question because i am a first generation american. I was born and raised on food stamps and welfare in Hells Kitchen new york. I grew up in the old Hells Kitchen of the 60s and 70s, not a great place to grow up. I went to college and i get to do what i do today because of education. More importantly, the impact that we have on students goes on for generations and generations. My kids are impacted by this. My daughter went to college. She never thought she wasnt going to go to college. She assumed she was going to college. She asesumed she was going to graduate school because her mother is a teacher and she went to graduate school. She assumed i was going to pay for it. Thats a good problem to have. Has it impacted everyone . Can we do more . We need to do a better job with that. But the opportunity to do it is real. Its been real for a long time. One thing ive been wondering is, is there something about digitizing using Digital Technology that changes education . Are we talking about Something Different in 2017 than we were in 2000 even . Does it have a power now than it didnt have before . I think it does. Now for the first time we can truly personalize and individualize education. I dream of a day when we can have an app that can read your biorhythms and tell you what you need to learn. You see schools springing up like that at school in the bay area. They have cameras in all the classrooms and kids are helping to design their own program. Students are able to design programs from as early as sixth grade or seventh grade. Technology can allow us to do that. Youve got to train your teachers to be able to use it if not its just another tool that sits there. We have students coming out of institutions like in maryland and Arizona State now that theyre ready for this, but now weve got to bring the leadership on board and make sure parents are involved in the process as well. Id like to make a distinct between actual learning. I keep going back to the question. You know, i thought it was awfully broad and a little like really how do you dismantle an entire class system. Theres the learning that goes on in institutions and again im thinking about colleges and universities. And then theres the signaling function. I know that many of our students in my institution are getting really good quality education. Theres still employers that will question it. Because its an online education. Because, yes, its an online education, but were in the university of maryland so theres that signal. Its a public system, so it must be good. If you come from an institution that does a good job but isnt a public brand, that signal isnt there. So i think we still have if you look at who runs the country, look at whos on the supreme court, look whos elected except for our president right now, but we wont go into that. He is the smartest guy thats ever been elected. He did go to wharton for his mba. We segment as people leave and that creates even more of our ossified class system. We have found ways, as has been suggested, to create intelligent tutor devices that would allow an individual to tirelessly be assisted in their own individual learning process in addition to their teacher, not in lieu of the teacher. One of the things thats kind of interesting is this constant just posit suction jux juxtaposition. The rate of acceleration of change and our brain capacity is very substantial, is got to find ways in which learning can be enhanced for every human, accelerated, broadened, deepened, personalized and made as human contact as possible with all of these other things that are there to assist you. All were doing is enhancing that process and finally getting to the point where we can actually say theres maybe a chance that the full capacity of a human brain might be visible to us and operationalized across everyone. As opposed to, oh well, those learners are slower learnings. Thats the whole way human beings have operated. They class structure everything. It is time to dynamite that stuff out of existence and use these tools to be able to do it. You mentioned employers and what theyre looking for. What im excited about is this next generation of students just starting to come into our college system. In terms of generation z and the fact that 70 of them dont want to work for you at all, they want to go their own thing. Because of technology, because kids can pick up laptops and have some server space on google or amazon, they can run everything. This idea of employers controlling who dpegets to say t skills are needed is kind of going away and im excited about it. We hear that Digital Natives are coming in. Is that really true . Are all these students that digitally savvy . This is the first generation that doesnt know what the world looked like before google. They dont know what that world looked like before technology, the internet. So theyre going to have a different expectation of what learning looks like. But more importantly what they can do with technology. Were trying to get the name of the species altered. Everyone born before 2000 is a homo sapiens. Everyone born after is a homosapien. Net. They can ask questions that we have no idea where this is going. We have no idea what it means. If you could if you were a selfdisciplined person, you could basically educate yourself at the moment. You could educate yourself with a lot of things. Earlier you could have gone to the library and read a lot of books earlier. For some reason we didnt. Some people did. We still developed schools and colleges and systems. Frederick douglass educated himself in an unbelievable way. He taught himself to read. He is a far better writer and speaker than anyone ive ever met. If he could have had access to a broader learning environment, who knows what that genius could have been able to do. I was born in memphis. I couldnt have gone to Memphis State University until 1972. We didnt have that opportunity to even learn in that environment. Now with the power of technology, i could do my own thing. I can google it. I can research it. We cant forget the fact that we still have to have that connection as human beings, body, mind, heart and soul. Thats why were going to be in high demand soon. When all the robots take over, what the heck are we supposed to do . Weve got to remember theres a balance that has to happen here as well. Theres some sky net officers up there. There has to be a balance as well. You kind of raised this with me when we were getting ready for this discussion. We talked about whether the knowledge economy and the Digital Technologies would create a different kind of class system. People would be connected in different ways. I wish we were talking about two different things. One is i do think theres all kinds of advances in not Just Technology but learning science. We know how people learn now. Higher ed still has a ways to go. I know the r 2 institutions are trying to use learning science. I do think we will be able to hit a point soon where more people have been able to learn in far better ways than ever before. But i dont think its just Digital Education that will up end the class system. I think its this coming acceleration, as michael said, of all things in our society. So between the internet, computing power, i can connect with anyone on the internet. I can link into anybody. The power of small is actually now quite big. We can form networks. There are ways that power is going to shift, i think, pretty quickly. At the moment, though i dont know if some of you have been reading a little bit about this new book that just came out by english author Richard Reeves where he talks about he thinks the american class system is more solid than the British Class system. More rigid . Yes. He says in the United States, though, we have the top 20 . Dont they have like a queen in england or something . Theyve got that whole queen thing going, yeah. It would be hard to have a social class system less rigid than one where theres a hereditary leader. We kind of have our own king now, so to speak, with whats going on in d. C. Edit that out, please. He does talk about this top 20 as being sort of the dream hoarders. Dream hoarder . Thats his new phrase. This guy must be angry at things. He does sort of say Silicon Valley has this notion that the technology is open and you can play on the internet and be a tech billionaire. Thats not exactly how it works. No. Being a billionaire is hard. Not that i would know. You work for some. I have a couple friends. Its not about just being around technology. All of us were born around when there were 18wheeler trucks. Doesnt mean we can all drive an 18wheeler truck. When i was a kid, when i needed information, i had to go to the Columbus Library on 51st street and 10th avenue that was closed on the weekends, that would close at 5 00, that when i would look for a book, it wasnt there. The limited amount of Resources Available to me predetermine what had information i had access to. That is no longer true. I know a picture of google when it first started. That can happen anywhere in the world now, anywhere with a good internet connectivity. Theres power in that. Michael, you and i have known each other a long time. I dug back in the archives to a quote you had in 2012 where you were talking you were worrying about the future of higher education. You said you worry about a future where we let rich kids get taught by professors and poor kids getting taught by computers. Absolutely. I still worry about that. What were talking about is the enhancement of the teacher, the professor, the learning network. What i was concerned about were some investors investing in for Profit Companies where they thought there was no need for the knowledge creator, the profess professor. There was no need for the master teacher. Theres always a need. The machines around them are the enhancement. Where that was going five years ago was it seemed that people said rich kids and smart kids can talk to humans. Everyone else can talk to machines. Our online courses are derivative of our core faculty. Even more so in this world that were building. If we talk about what are the skills that kids really need, everyone will agree, collaboration, problem solving, critical thinking. A teacher has to be able to look at a classroom and say what team can i put together. You also mentioned this other notion ive been thinking about a lot. What about the students who dont want to go for a four year degree . We heard the president today talking a little bit more about Apprenticeship Training in this country. Theres a lot of discussion now about more people going for certificates and programs that are not leading necessarily to a four year program, an associates or even a sub associates. We havent seen that much innovation in Digital Education in those areas, have we . Or am i missing the boat on this . That isnt my strongest suit. But, no, we dont have an apprenticeship program, per se. Applying that to the sector of the information economy. We got carried away with that four year degree, like Everybody Needs a four year degree. There needs to be better opportunities for jobs in that blue collar, working class kind of group. Which i came from a working glass background. Its hard to be in the working class and truly middle class anymore. Thats an area that we have to Pay Attention to. The move towards more apprenticeships is a really good way to go. I think theres Huge Movement in this space for middle skill jobs. The plumber and pipe fitter unions are some of the most sophisticated education enterprises, using technology, using the internet to drive things forward. Theres all kinds of skill based professions that are becoming more and more sophisticated. Human beings have more potential than we gave them credit for. And they can learn more things and faster and broader and take on more things and make things happen. What were seeing from trade skill jobs to military training, is we have too much of a social hierarchy assigned to all of this. That somehow if you were admitted to some elite, exclusive, admit almost no one, fouryear college, youre somehow better than everybody else. Im sorry to say, youre simply not. We should move on from that point and say everybodys finding their niche and theyre getting themselves educated along the way to be able to do that. One of the things we worked on in my district was it doesnt come down to who goes to class and who doesnt. They all should be prepared to go. You make that decision when the time comes. You also should be prepared to go into a career, a passion, a purpose that you really want to do in your life. As opposed to fuss feus feeding into square boxes and this industry and that industry, you could do a plethora of things in your life. You you can a plumber, a musician, a doctor, a lawyer. Has the education jumped into this . It changed in our district because we insisted on it. The model was preparation for college, career and citizenship. Some of my kids werent even natural born citizens here. But we dont care think about. We care about the fact that they are here. Theyre a product of society now. That community took off because that was the belief. Every kid should have a device, every kid should have access. And they should have the ability to have choice when they graduate from high school. Thats what education should start really focusing on. Are we seeing education to these careers, to training that isnt just at the b. A. Level. Were starting to get into this stuff. Lets start with the fact that at google you dont need a College Degree to work at google. How many people at google dont actually have a College Degree . The guy who runs infrastructure for google doesnt have a College Degree. There are some people who never graduated from high school. Thats a supply and demand thing. People want to come work for us. Its not a requirement. Its not something you have to have. At the same time, i think the technologies that are coming have an interesting angle on those Technical Skills like vr, ar. What we could do with training around these things when someones when im going to have surgery, hopefully no time soon, but i want that doctor to be able to have access to the latest and greatest information at their fingertips. Thats true for a lot of different industries, mechanics, technicians. How many people in this room have looked at vr stuff . Im just curious. Were on day one of that. I watched a few demos on it. Were launching a Digital High School in august. The Digital High School, like we just heard, is prep for life, prep for career, prep for college. It doesnt say prep for college. Its going to be the asu digital preparatory academy, prep for life, prep for career, prep for college. That means designing it in a way where it works for all of those things. Theres certainly no one that wants to be less skilled, less capable, less adaptive. Its not just about college. Absolutely in the sense that those jobs are very technical now. If you are in an apprenticeship to become, i dont know, some sort of journeyman, et cetera, theyre highly technical, so the training does have to be highly technical. How many parents really say, if you want to be a plumber, thats great. We will support you. Theres this sense of status, though. Maybe the world tha