St. Paul Public Schools Superintendent Valeria Silva spoke of a powerful tool on her district’s wishlist during a Massachusetts Institute of Technology panel last month. She called it “a framework, a platform,” that all teachers, parents and students can tap.
The district has been shopping for such a product over the past year. A one-stop portal to a district’s entire digital toolbox, the teaching and learning platform would feature social network-style pages where students can access lessons and assignments, take tests, collaborate on projects and reach out to teachers.
The choice is central to a technology plan the district hopes to fund with a $9 million-a-year levy increase on the ballot next week. Making the right call is especially important because St. Paul is looking to sign a five-year agreement.
That’s a lengthy commitment on a rapidly changing and increasingly competitive platform market. Dell, one of the contenders for the job, sponsored the MIT panel on digital learning, though the district paid for Silva’s trip.
Many Minnesota districts are eyeing the platforms. They range from so-called open-source versions — low on cost, commitment and frills — to custom products, which come with more functions, staff training, ongoing support and, in some cases, seven-figure pricetags.
Even some of the most forward-looking districts in the state are holding out until the market can deliver more sophisticated products or more evidence they pay off.
“St. Paul schools has the potential to lead the state of Minnesota in a very profound way by bringing this kind of system to the Capital City,” said Michael Baumann, the district’s second-in-command.
MORE TOOLS FOR TEACHER
In her free time, Denise Young, a fifth-grade teacher at St. Paul’s Frost Lake Magnet, scours educator blogs and discussion boards for handy tools.
Digital flash cards help her students practice vocabulary on their tablets, which adjust the difficulty based on their answers and track how well they do so Young can adjust her instruction. This week, students watched a video about hurricanes and took an online quiz.
“These tools allow me as a teacher to reach more kids individually at the level where they are at,” Young said.
Frost Lake, a technology magnet, is among what district officials call pockets of innovative technology use in the 39,000-student district. A one-stop-shop platform would have many advantages, officials say: It would do away with the multitude of logins and passwords that makes accessing the district’s various online resources a hassle. All educators in the district could get training; tech-savvy teachers like Young could share their knowledge and tools with colleagues.
In its request for platform proposals, the district conjured what would likely be the most advanced system of its kind in Minnesota. It would feature a repository for lessons and assignments, discussion boards for after-school-hours brainstorming, video sharing, tools that track and graph student progress, portfolios of student work and more.
This portal would speed up the district’s shift toward blended learning, which combines face-to-face classroom instruction and more independent work online students can tackle anywhere, anytime.
Last spring, the district received seven proposals and brought in finalists. Cost estimates ranged from less than $1 million to more than $5.3 million, spread out over five years.
St. Paul’s original timeline called for board approval in April and the start of adoption this past fall. In a large and complex district like St. Paul, a five-year rollout makes more sense than a pilot project, Baumann said: “There’s enough going on out there that you can say the pilot has been done.”
But in spring, as the district asked taxpayers to chip in extra for its technology plan, officials decided to pause and do more research, Baumann said. They’ll make a decision after the election.
The district would not disclose the finalists who gave presentations last spring. More recently, a Dell representative spoke to St. Paul principals and other district leaders about national trends in digital learning. But officials said the August presentation was not a sales pitch.
BOLD VISION
Learning platform experts said St. Paul’s request for proposals spells out a bold vision, but such an advanced product is not yet available off the shelf. Given the unprecedented level of private investment and innovation in the field, though, it might be in the works.
“There are a number of companies working toward that vision, but there’s not one product that fulfills the laundry list of features the district lists,” said Tom Vander Ark, director of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning and a partner in the company that created Edmodo, an open-source platform.
Being a trendsetter has its advantages — and carries risks, said Darrell West, who has studied learning technologies at the Brookings Institution. West usually advises districts to consider open-source platforms, which tend to cost little and sync up readily with the wave of new online resources coming onto the market.
“I think it would be a bad idea for the district to sponsor custom development given how rapidly this market is improving,” Vander Ark said.
In any case, Vander Ark said the district should stay flexible: Rolling out such a product takes time and staff energy, but a five-year contract still strikes him as too long.
Many educators nationally are exploring these products. “It’s a very dynamic market, and lots of districts are waiting for the dust to settle,” West said. “They don’t want to buy a product that might be obsolete in two years.”
In Minnesota, at least 65 districts use the open-source Moodle, based on a survey by Jon Fila, the online learning facilitator for intermediate district 287. According to TIES, the classroom technology consortium, a handful have bought Schoology, one of the products for which St. Paul got a pitch.
Stillwater uses Moodle, in combination with other online tools, to facilitate blended learning. Mike Dronen, the district’s technology coordinator, applauds St. Paul for seeking a platform that would do more.
But his district isn’t going there yet: With setup costs of about $4,000, Moodle does the job for now, Dronen said.
“Some of those tools are newer to the market,” he said, “and when you put so much money into them, it’s important to be sure they would deliver.”
In Edina, Technology Director Steve Buettner said he is looking for the “holy grail”: a platform that not only tests students and gives them access to learning materials, but also does an expert job of steering them to the right materials based on how they do on the tests.
Though some products come “intriguingly close,” he said, he hasn’t found one that does it all. For now, Edina uses a platform it cobbled together from open-source Moodle and Google Apps for Education.
Open-source platforms like Moodle have some downsides, especially for a large district such as St. Paul: Districts are generally on their own for training and maintenance, and these systems can be less user-friendly for unititiated educators.
Minnetonka adopted Schoology on a year-to-year contract last year after a pilot phase to gather feedback from educators. The district liked the Facebook-like feel of student pages, where they can access assignments, seek after-hours help from teachers, brainstorm with peers and take online tests.
Also, said executive director of technology Julie Carter, “It’s really easy for mom and dad to know what’s happening in class and how they can help.”
But Aaron Turpin, the technology director of Hall County Schools in Georgia, said there are real advantages to having a platform designed to fit the needs of the district. The 25,000-student Hall County partnered with Dell to custom-design a learning platform, which students started using last school year.
Along with Edina, Hall County is one of the districts St. Paul holds up as models for its technology plan.
It’s too soon for solid data on the platform’s effect on student achievement. But Turpin said his district saw some gains on state tests last year, especially for students who were already meeting standards. The product has helped transform teachers “from sages on a stage to facilitators of learning,” giving students a sense of ownership of their education.
Turpin said he could not readily provide the district’s cost of the project. But faced with a budget shortfall this summer, the district touted the platform as a source of savings: It has scrapped print textbooks altogether in favor of online resources.
“This is the direction where we’re heading,” Turpin said, “and we’re never turning back.”
Mila Koumpilova can be reached at 651-228-2171. Follow her at twitter.com/MilaPiPress.
SEARCHING FOR A PLATFORM
What is a teaching and learning platform?
A digital system that blends features of social networking, curriculum repositories, student performance data management and more. It allows one-stop access to the digital tools at a district’s disposal.
St. Paul’s request at a glance
Students would:
— Comment on assignments and reach out to peers
— Collaborate on group projects online
— Access video lessons and supplemental learning materials
— Create a digital portfolio to submit with college applications
Teachers would:
— Track and review student performance in classes
— Access and share district curriculums and other resources
— Address student questions outside of class
Parents would:
— Keep track of student assignments and progress
— Access resources to become engaged in learning
Companies vying for the job: Dell, Education Elements, Desire2Learn, Schoology, SafariMontage, Seertech, Pearson
