As the world of digital education takes off, Stan Silverman doesn't want the state of New York to get left behind. That's why six months ago he launched a program called "The Way Forward" in a grassroots effort to revamp decades-old education policies that pay no mind to technology.
"New York has never had a coherent vision around technology and how technology could best serve us," said Silverman, the director of the Technology-Based Learning Systems department at New York Institute of Technology (NYIT). "Old models of the way the public and private sector work together have not been effective."
For the program, Silverman started by putting together a conference for education officials and parents to meet with corporate sponsors from the technology arena. Held at NYIT, the forum allowed about 30 different academic groups to look over new technologies and learn about emerging trends.
From there, Silverman said, smaller focus groups formed all over the state, collecting data and figuring out how to best incorporate these technologies in classrooms and other learning environments. He is working with unions to identify what changes need to occur and, much to his surprise, there has been limited opposition to the movement.
"It's almost as if this is the exact right time," Silverman said. "The financial crisis is forcing people to rethink everything and getting people to be able to talk about change in ways they've never talked about it before."
But Silverman is on a tight deadline. The University of the State of New York (USNY) -- an umbrella organization that oversees all of the state's academic institutions, museums, libraries and so forth -- is currently drafting a set of new education policies. Richard P. Mills, the state's commissioner of education, wants the drafts completed before he departs in June. So Silverman hopes to get all the pieces together to present to USNY's Board of Regents by then.
"We want to be prepared when they put that on the table with input from the field," Silverman said. "From that will come the recommendations about changes in grant funding, the way textbook aid has been used, etc."
Textbook aid, which gives schools $150 million for purchasing textbooks only, is one the perspective objectives of the group, Silverman said. They would like to see that legislation expand to a broader definition to also incorporate digital content and other technologies used in virtual schooling. Part of the conversation, he added, will also be how the money from President Obama's stimulus package fits into the equation.
"We're really going to try and do this from the grassroots approach and look at things people have shied away from because previous politics didn't allow it," he said. "This is really about action. If you just sit with a policy, nothing happens; the tires have to meet the road."
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