Address by Steve Case Chairman and CEO, America Online, Inc. National School Boards Association 13th Annual Technology and Learning Conference Dallas, Texas November 11, 1999

 

 

Thank you, Mary Ellen, for that kind introduction, and especially for mentioning the Fortune article. In the interests of full disclosure, I should tell you that my mother also told the reporter that my brother Dan (unlike certain of his siblings) was the son who called on Sundays.

Hey, I send e-mail.

School boards, in many ways, are institutions perfectly in tune with the Age of the Internet. School boards are decentralized. They're self-governing. They're publicly held. And they don't make any money.

If Schoolboards.com went public, I'm sure it'd be a hot offering.

But seriously, thank you for your commitment. Thank you for putting our children's education at the center of your lives. I honor and respect your service. And I think you should give yourselves a round of applause.

This morning, I want to talk about education, in particular, how this new medium of the Internet can transform schools, liberate teachers, and unleash the full potential of every child.

I come at this topic from a triple perspective, as the CEO of a company in the thick of this new interactive world . . . as the father of five children in grade school … and, equally important, as the son of a schoolteacher. My mother, the one who says I don't call enough, taught first grade in my home state of Hawaii, in fact, at the same school my brothers, sister, and I attended. So as kids, we had a teacher at home . . . and a parent at school. At the time, that didn't seem like such a great deal. But now I realize how extremely lucky I was.

When my mom and dad were growing up, the telephone was fairly commonplace. Most middle-class families had one. It was part of their lives. And when I was growing up, the same was true of television. I didn't think too much about it as a kid, because I thought it had always been there.

Today, the Internet is becoming as central to everyday life as the phone and the TV. Right now, 53 percent of U.S. households own a PC, up from 39 percent in 1995. Already, 37 percent of households have online access, when just eight or nine years ago, most Americans didn't know what online access was. At AOL, it took us about a decade to get our first one million members. Now we add an additional million members every few months. When we started, 90 percent of AOL users were men.

Today, more than half are women, about the same proportion as the overall U.S. population.

The Internet is becoming a mass medium. I knew this for sure a few years ago when my parents finally understood what I did for a living.

And just as I took television for granted and my parents took the telephone for granted, kids today consider the Internet a given. Increasingly for children in America today, not all children, but more and more, the Internet is becoming a standard part of daily life.

For example: Arbitron found that 62 percent of kids between 8 and 15 are online. 33 percent of kids used the Internet for school projects, compared with 23 percent who relied on books and magazines and 18 percent who used libraries. Forrester Research says that 24 percent of America's 6 to 12 year-olds have Internet access in the home, and that this portion will grow to 50 percent by 2002.

On our AOL Families Channel, we surveyed 10,000 parents.

90 percent of the respondents said their kids had used computers by age six. 25 percent said their kids had used computers by age 2.

This is amazing. This is historic. This is exciting…

And this is kind of scary.

Most adults approach this medium with mixed emotions, mainly a mix of exhilaration and abject fear. And these dual emotions are especially deep for educators. Think about what teachers are up against. Two generations ago, when kids left school for the afternoon, they'd go home and play hopscotch or stickball. One generation ago, when kids left school, they'd go home and watch re-runs of Gilligan's Island. Today, when kids leave school, they go home, get online, and chat in real time with somebody in Senegal, or take a virtual tour of the Pacific Ocean floor, or bid on Beanies Baby on eBay, or download MP3 tunes from a garage band in Toronto. That's some tough competition if your only weapons are some chalk and an outdated textbook.

These kids live in Internet time. They want to learn in Internet time. Which means we have to teach classes and run schools in Internet time. And that's not easy. In fact, it's exhausting. This new medium is pushing us faster and further than anything we've ever confronted. As fast as you think you're learning it, your kids are ahead. This unrelenting speed is a challenge not just for schools, but for every sector of society, business, government, and individuals.

The good news is that we have time to respond, because we're only at the very beginning stages in the development of this interactive world. If this were an evolutionary tree, those of us using today's Internet would be near the bottom. Below Homo sapiens. Beneath amphibians and reptiles -- down there with the single-celled creatures. At this stage in the medium's development, we're amoebas. Or more accurately, Amoebas.com.

But even in its early days, this medium holds the promise of reforming education and giving our kids the tools to learn throughout their lives. It can help us make the transition from classroom-centered, location-specific, age-based schooling . . . to anytime, anywhere, any-age lifelong learning that's continuous, customized, and connected.

Such a transition is a major break from the past. For most of this century, schools have run on the same principles that guided the Industrial Age, mass production, standardization, and one best way.

That system worked well in its time, but it just won't do any more. The world moves too fast. Along with passing on the substance of the lesson, we've got to sharpen the very skill of learning.

The Internet can help us forge this broader reform in education. It can help us transition from childhood schooling that begins and ends . . . to lifelong learning that goes and goes.

We can transition from students who are passive memorizers … to young people who are active learners, analyzing and synthesizing information, and using it.

From an education system with the institution at the center . . . to a system where learning is flexible enough to be truly centered on the child.

From the old regime of command and control . . . to a new interactive ethic of nurture and guide.

We can use the Internet to do some amazing things, to stretch our kids' minds, expand their possibilities, and prepare them for life in a connected society.

We've already begun to glimpse this medium's promise in three key areas.

The first area is simply information. The Internet allows us to get more information, faster, than any medium ever invented. For example, each month AOL users retrieve nearly three billion stock quotes. That's billion, with a B. Shouldn't we be able to find that same level of information, just as quickly and easily -- about our districts? Or about their local school?

This is a huge improvement opportunity for America's schools. And both school boards and the private sector need to do everything they can to equip principals and teachers with the tools to do the job right.

That's one reason I'm so excited about AOL's partnership with the Family Education Network to offer free Web sites to every school in the country. The Family Education Network is one of our central partners in the K-12 space, and this initiative can help parents stay up to speed with school events and can bring together teachers, parents, and administrators.

I'd love to get to the point where every parent could visit a Web site to find out their child's next reading assignment, the due date for the science project, or even what's for lunch tomorrow at the school cafeteria. I'd love to get to the point where every school district posts the school system's budget for the coming year, the test scores for every district school, and the minutes of the latest school board meeting.

Think about it: why should parents be able to find out more information about a mutual fund in Bangkok than about the junior high around the corner? Especially when every shred of evidence tells us that the number one predictor of improved student learning is … increased parental involvement.

We can do better.

The explosion of information gives us an explosion of possibilities. It used to be that owning a set of encyclopedias was a badge of having made it into the middle class. All those shiny volumes lined up on your shelves meant that you were doing pretty well, and that you wanted your kids to do even better. But just last month, the Encyclopedia Britannica announced it was putting its entire contents on the Net, for free. Demand was so great that the site kept crashing.

The Internet is like the planet's largest public library, only it's open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it's accessible from almost anywhere on the globe.

But let's be clear: information isn't knowledge any more than a bag of cement is the Washington Monument.

That's why we need to use this new medium to transform a second area: teaching. There's no doubt about it: A great teacher beats good technology any day of the week. But there's also no doubt that good technology can make a great teacher even greater.

Teachers can no longer be, as some have called them, the sage on the stage. They must be the guide by the side. It's easy for kids to get information today. They can retrieve it instantly, in gushers. And that makes it even more important to have people who can help kids place that information in context, analyze it, and put it to good use. In the old economy, teachers were like chauffeurs. Kids hopped in the back, and the teacher took them where they needed to go. But in the new economy, teachers must be more like navigators.

These navigators can help kids figure out their destination, chart the best route, and get there on their own, wrong turns and all.

Increasing the flow of information and empowering our hard-working teachers are the first two areas where the Internet can transform education. But the third area is perhaps most important, and we've already touched on it: parents.

Show me a kid whose parents are involved in her learning, who know what she's studying in school, who help with her homework, and I'll show you a kid who's probably doing pretty well, regardless of her circumstances. But show me another kid whose parents are checked out, who either don't know or don't care what's going on in his classroom and education, and I'll show you a kid who's probably not doing so well, regardless of how fast his computer is or how much money his parents have. There aren't any magic bullets in education. But parental involvement comes pretty close.

The Internet offers extraordinary promise in this regard. It enables teachers and parents to have ongoing electronic dialogues critical to a child's progress -- instead of just communicating with notes stuffed into a backpack. Give teachers e-mail and they can talk to parents all the time, rather than twice a year at formal parent-teacher conferences. Teachers could host regular online chats for a whole group of parents, rather than relying on a single Open House in the fall. Teachers could distribute a monthly e-mail newsletter, which included links to material the class is studying. Or parents could start their own listserv, an e-mail mailing list, and zap ideas and questions not just to the teacher, but to other parents as well. When Mom and Dad check their e-mail at night, wouldn't it be great to see, sitting alongside the junk e-mail for weight loss products and getting rich schemes, some messages about their children's school?

The best way this medium can help our children is by helping turn parents from spectators into participants in their children's learning.

We have an opportunity and an obligation to develop the medium so it continues to improve people's lives. And the way to do that is by using this medium to provide all children, whatever their station in life and whatever side of the digital divide on which they now stand, the opportunity to develop the skills they'll need to succeed as productive workers and engaged citizens.

At AOL, we take this obligation to the broader society as seriously as we do our ferocious commitment to the individual customer. Our mission is to build a global medium as central to people's lives as the telephone and television, and even more valuable. And AOL is bringing to education the same focus on building communities that helped make the Internet a mass-market medium.

For instance, this week we're previewing AOL @ School, an online learning tool that will help administrators, teachers, and students take full advantage of the Internet's vast resources. We designed it both with educators in mind, and with educators' minds. We've built something you can really use. And we feel confident of that because we received such extensive input from people on the front lines of American education, groups like the American Association of School Administrators, the PTA, the NSBA, and our own parent-teacher advisory committee.

At the heart of AOL @ School are six online learning portals, four based on grade levels and one each for teachers and administrators. We have culled the best education content for each group and given users one-click access to it. And we've included all sorts of additional hands-on tools. Lesson plans. Reading lists. Online encyclopedias and dictionaries. Personal calendar programs. Even a calculator.

AOL @ School is easy-to-use. It comes with a version of AOL's parental controls, so you can weed out content that's not appropriate for certain ages. And perhaps best of all. . . it's free. It will be available to schools nationwide next fall. The service is now in beta testing in selected school districts. Try it out here at the conference. Tell us what you think. We'll need your continued input to make AOL @ School the best it can be.

So, what else are we doing?

For the last two years, the AOL Foundation has awarded seed money to teams of educators with innovative programs for using interactive technology in K - 12 student learning. We've funded some amazing projects like a retrofitted school bus in Baltimore called "The Parent Mobile" that's bringing computer technology and Internet training directly to parents in communities . . . a robotic design project at the St. Francis Indian School in South Dakota . . . and a distance learning program in Oakland designed for young people with disabilities. We've given out 110 grants so far. And we're learning ever more about what works and what doesn't.

We are also working to bridge the digital divide, so that people in under-served communities can get a foothold in the Interactive Age. Our Digital Divide Clearinghouse assembles in one place the very best research and knowledge about the scope of the problem and the most effective solutions. We've also launched an initiative that provides grants to foster strategies that work, and that other communities could scale and do themselves. And we've been awarding grants to innovative efforts to connect rural America to the networked world.

We've started to explore a question I know concerns all of you here: How can we connect parents and school boards in a meaningful way that really serves our children? That is why I am so pleased to announce today a new partnership we have forged with the National School Boards Association Foundation.

I've already talked about how we can use the power of the Internet to help our children learn better. This new two-year partnership will help all of us learn how to use the Internet to help parents, teachers and school boards communicate better.

We are creating a 24-hour online network in five very different kinds of communities that will connect school boards and parents, and stimulate the kind of problem-solving, issue-bridging dialogue that is central to improving education.

We are all very excited about this new partnership, and I am really looking forward to seeing how much we can achieve for our children. But, we shouldn't stop there, we still have a long way to go to put the "e" in education.

Now, I know that I'm preaching to the choir today. All of you have taken the lead in your own communities and school districts, and you wouldn't be here today if you weren't committed to taking advantage of all the Internet has to offer our children.

But you know as well as I do that everyone doesn't share our enthusiasm for the Internet. Not everyone is completely comfortable with the new technology. And the truth is, it really can be daunting when you don't know the rules of the road.

So before I came here, I thought of the questions a teacher who's new to the Internet might have … and I came up with ten tips that try to answer most of them. I offer them to you today as a teaching aid, so to speak, something you can use to help your colleagues make the most of this incredible opportunity to give our children the tools they need to succeed in the coming Internet Century.

Like everything in the Internet Age, this list is a work in progress, subject to revisions and refinements and debugging.

So consider it Version 1.0.

Here goes.

Tip number one: Don't panic.

I'm serious, relax, it will all be fine.

Tip number two: Make mistakes.

You can screw up on the Internet. It's OK. You won't break anything. In fact, that's one of its great virtues: you can correct your mistakes pretty easily. Get a fact wrong in a textbook, and it stays there for three years. Get a fact wrong on a Web site, and you can fix it in three minutes.

For too long, we've taught our kids that the essence of education is to avoid mistakes. When they get something wrong, it's circled in red, and points are subtracted from their score. But most adults who've achieved anything in their lives will tell you that they've learned much more from their failures than their successes. Sure, we need to hold kids to high standards. But in the new information-driven Internet economy, we all need the freedom to fail. And the risk correlates pretty directly to the benefit!

Tip number three: Learn from the kids.

Arbitron Research asked kids who they looked to for information about the web. Only 5 percent of kids looked to parents. Only 6 percent looked to teachers. How many looked to friends and peers? 54 percent. Hey, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Learn from your kids.

We adults always praise children for asking questions. We tell them it's the only way to learn. Then we resist asking questions ourselves, because we don't want to look stupid. That doesn't make any sense. So, ask and ye shall receive.

Tip number four: Bring everybody along.

This is enormously important. Today, 75 percent of households with incomes over $75,000 own computers, but only ten percent of our poorest families do. That's a crisis. We can't afford to leave anybody behind. We have a moral responsibility to make sure every child has the chance to succeed. And it's an economic challenge, too. In a networked economy, people who are already connected benefit each time more people are connected.

As Bruce Springsteen put it, nobody wins unless everybody wins. I don't think there's a more urgent task before us that closing the digital divide.

Tip number five: Teach your Teachers

Let me quote some more classic rock. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young recorded a song almost 30 years ago called, "Teach Your Children." My song would be "Teach Your Teachers." But training too often gets overlooked and underbudgeted. And as a result, teachers too often get thrown to the cyber-wolves.

Ten years ago, the push was to put computers in schools, but there wasn't much software. Five years ago, there was plenty of software, but very little connectivity. Now more and more schools are getting wired.

But what has remained constant is the need for training. A teacher without enough training is like a tour guide who's new to town. We must do more than give teachers the best technology. We've also got to give them the best training.

 

Tip number six: Don't dabble.

This Internet medium isn't a condiment. It's not like salt or ketchup that you can shake onto some food to liven it up. It's not even the main course. It's more like the plate. It needs to be there for just about every meal. School boards, administrators, and teachers need to integrate the Internet strategically into every part of education.

 

Tip number seven: Technology is an important thing, but it's not the only thing.

At the same time you're integrating it strategically, recognize that this medium won't solve all your problems. Technology is a tool, not a miracle. It can help us do right by our kids, but it's not a cure-all. The best education will follow the path of retail establishments that have realized they need both face-to-face customer interaction and an online presence. Like these stores, the school of the future will be built with clicks and mortar.

Tip number eight: Customize, customize, customize.

When I visit the welcome screen at AOL and many websites, at the very top, there's a message that says something like "Welcome, Steve." These sites have been customized to my preferences. And each time I visit, it learns a little more about me, which makes each subsequent visit a little more valuable.

What happens in the best schools? When the children arrive, a teacher or a principal greets them, by name. We can use this new medium to customize education to serve the unique abilities of each child -- and fashion lessons and curriculum that can help kids learn at the pace and in the place that's best for them.

 

Tip number nine: Two-way is the only way.

The Internet is not a digital version of a school's P.A. system that allows the principal to blast a one-way message into classrooms. It's a two-way medium. It fosters conversation, sometimes even argument. Sure, that can get messy. But the alternatives are even worse. So, don't use this medium as simply another way to command and control. Use it to give all the stakeholders a voice. In the new economy, nobody's as smart as everybody.

 

Tip number ten: Have fun.

There is a joy to learning, a thrill you see in a child's eye when she figures out how to walk at age one; when she reads a Dr. Seuss story all by herself at age six; and when she chews on her pencil and taps on her calculator and comes up with the right sine and cosine at age sixteen. When learning stops being a joy and starts being a chore, we've run off course. Remember: you can't win if you do not play.

I truly believe we are creating a medium that can be as central to people's lives as the television and telephone, and even more valuable. But ultimately any medium is judged by its effect on children. That's both our standard and our challenge.

We have a golden opportunity to create a medium that sparks a student's imagination and enhances a teacher's freedom . . . one that helps every school improve and every child, every child, live out his or her potential in a more prosperous and just society.

It's an easy choice. But it's a tough task.

So let's get to work. Let's build a medium worthy of our children.

Thank you