How Do Innovations Travel from the Lab to the Classroom?

By Robert Tinker

Technologies don’t just happen; there is a fascinating and revealing history behind most popular technologies. Did you know that the mouse was invented with Air Force funding in 1963 at the nonprofit SRI by Doug Engelbart? Then a Xerox lab integrated it with software windows for the laser printer they invented. In 1979 Xerox shared the window concept with Apple, which Steve Jobs incorporated into the Macintosh in 1983. After resisting the mouse, Bill Gates incorporated the idea in Windows in 1985. It finally took off in 1990. Widespread use of the mouse required almost three decades!

Educational innovations also have histories that often start with government funding and wend their ways into classrooms through various channels. Let’s look at several that have made it into many classrooms, and consider the general themes that can guide future dissemination efforts.

Logo

In the late 1960’s Wally Feurzeig at Bolt, Baranek and Newman developed a programming language for children called Logo that ran on time-shared computers. Seymour Papert at MIT seized on this idea and obtained NSF funding to develop a microcomputer version that first ran on the TI-99 and, later, the Apple II. A compelling speaker and writer, Seymour popularized the idea of using Logo programming to teach math and thinking skills. Beginning in the 1970’s the project developed and extended the language, created student activities, supported school implementations, and studied their impact. This early work had a huge effect worldwide.

At that time, the NSF had a cumbersome commercialization procedure that required MIT to solicit publishers and split any royalty with the NSF. Eventually, two companies agreed to publish Logo, but in the year that it took to negotiate the agreement, Seymour formed LCSI and made a new version that circumvented the copyright on the grant-supported material. LCSI still markets Logo. An NSF grant in the 1980’s funded Logo-in-a-brick, which was commercialized as Lego Mindstorms. The MIT team continues to improve Logo, now supporting two multi-agent versions that are free, one of which is open source. Funding comes from a variety of sources, including additional NSF grants and the Media Lab. While interest in Logo as a programming language has waned in the U.S., it is still viable and widely used internationally. Mindstorms continues to reach kids worldwide, and the new Logos are likely to continue in this tradition.

Microcomputer-Based Labs

In the late 1970’s my team at TERC applied to education the idea of collecting and displaying real-time data using microcomputers, a technique we called Microcomputer-Based Labs, or MBL. A Department of Education grant in 1983 allowed us to apply this to the Voyage of the Mimi project and an NSF grant in 1984 supported further development. At that time, we attached a Polaroid ultrasonic sensor to the Apple to create the first motion sensor, an original probe that is now a cornerstone of physics instruction. The project developed the software, hardware, and student activities, and studied student learning with this approach.

The NSF still required licensing commercial exploitation of materials, so HRM Software became the publisher. We also made $10 kits, which we advertised through our free newsletter. Other companies picked up the idea, in several cases through the kits. IBM funded a major improvement in hardware and software and TI adapted them to calculators, changing MBL to CBL. This strand of R&D is responsible for probe use, which is widespread in secondary and college science teaching. Five vendors now serve this market and offer over 40 kinds of sensors.

Kidnet

In the early 1980’s my group at TERC developed Kidnet, learning activities based on kids collecting data and networking to share their results with other students. The NSF funded this under a program that required dollar-for-dollar matching from a publisher. We selected the National Geographic Society, not your average publisher, but one deeply committed to our project. Our collaboration was successful and led to the NGS Kids Network that reached a quarter-million students after a huge effort resulted in award-winning software, tested curricula, and impressive learning results.

Web technology overtook the product in the 1990’s and the NGS was unable to fund its reinvention as a web-based product. Subsequent grants to TERC have accomplished this, and the material is now available, though not widely used. In parallel, Kidnet led to other independent projects. Al Gore was inspired by Kidnet to write about it in Earth in the Balance, which led to the GLOBE project. Currently, dozens of other free projects are based on the Kidnet success.

The Virtual High School

The Concord Consortium conceived the Virtual High School (VHS) in early 1996 and initiated it later that year in collaboration with the Hudson Public Schools of Massachusetts with funding from the U.S. Department of Education. It is unique, because it is a cooperative through which schools share over 200 online courses. VHS offers rigorous online courses to teachers where they learn how to create and offer successful online courses. Most schools offer virtual courses in proportion to the number of participating students.

After five years of federal funding, the project was proven and ready to be licensed. We set up a separate nonprofit, jumpstarted by a major grant from the Noyce Foundation. VHS, Inc. has expanded and generates its primary income from fees and services.

The VHS idea of offering online high school courses has been widely copied, but without the cooperative economic model. There are now hundreds of thousands of secondary students enrolled in other virtual school projects, many of which were inspired by VHS.

Seeding future dissemination

These examples illustrate the time it takes for technology-enhanced educational practice to become widespread and the range of paths taken. All these examples started with government funding of an R&D group and achieved their greatest distribution after a decade or more by others. Logo, MBL, and Kidnet tried the standard method of licensing materials to a publisher, but all eventually failed and none generated significant income for the developer. Mindstorms stands as a unique example of a grantsupported innovation breaking into a mass market.

Another clear message is that the original innovation needs to be more than simply a good idea. To take off, extensive and continuing development is needed of the technology and of educational applications. Research on student learning with the innovation is required, as well as close cooperation with experienced teachers.

With software, the complexity of the required code is a major factor in determining the route to dissemination. Of these examples, only Logo and Kidnet involved extensive software. Two of the commercial Logo efforts failed and the third barely survived. The NGS did not have the capacity to maintain Kidnet software and additional grant funding was required to make the transition to the Web. The MBL software is relatively simpler, but vendors are challenged to produce the needed code and we are currently helping them all with grant funding.

This history has convinced us that the best way to disseminate educational innovations that incorporate sophisticated software is to encourage mimicry by giving away the technology and making it easy to author related student materials. We hope to duplicate for educational applications the phenomenal worldwide spread of the open source GNU/Linux operating system. All the software now being developed at the Concord Consortium is free and open source. These include a wide range of models, probeware, and graphing tools, along with hundreds of student activities based on these.

Robert Tinker (bob@concord.org) is President of the Concord Consortium.