Technological applications of leapfrog

Abstract

Relating recent social developments in mobile learning (m-learning) technologies in China, this article explores technological manifestations of Leapfrog as it relates to educational transformation. The author asks readers to consider a break in didactic educational settings where students "download" knowledge from their teachers to a new paradigm where m-learning devices replace the teacher for banking-style pedagogy and free classrooms from rote memorization exercises. New technologies therefore must be purposively employed to support the construction of new ideas and support the co-construction of new pedagogies. This purposive refocusing allows for the application of innovative modes of knowledge production and distribution that identify, create and utilize new and future-oriented formats for sharing knowledge in schools. In this reframing to support knowledge-based learning for an innovation society, Leapfrog schools must design and build institutional flexibility to rapidly adopt/incorporate/evolve these technologies into transformative practices rather than using them to support old practices. Introduction It all started with a failure. In January of 2007, I failed to renegotiate favorable terms on my cable television bill, which had elevated to a cost beyond what I was willing to pay. As a result, I canceled my service, and looked to the Internet to provide for my television needs. I found a program called TVUPlayer, created by TVU Networks 1 , that utilizes BitTorrent technologies to stream near-real-time 1 See http://www.tvunetworks.com/ television broadcasts over Internet Protocol. This allowed me to view several popular U.S.-based television networks, and many others around the globe. While watching a Chinese movie channel, I encountered a lengthy advertisement for a handheld, m-learning (mobile learning) device, a "Q," manufactured by Ozing in Shanghai. While I do not understand Mandarin, the advertisement relayed the following series of events clearly: 1. A student who does not perform well in school exams is chastised by fellow classmates. 2. The student's father expresses shame in his son's academic performance. 3. The father gives the student an m-learning device and walks away. 4. The student is shown learning from the device. 5. The student is shown using the device in the classroom … to help him do his class work. 6. The student is shown being congratulated by his classmates for improving his exam grades. 7. The father giggles with happiness over his son's academic improvement. The most interesting element of the advertisement, however, was not the device itself, but rather that the pitchman for the product was a smartly-dressed Caucasian Canadian (Dashan, AKA Mark Rowswell). In other words, the marketers are conveying a message that the West is adopting these technologies in our homes and in our classrooms. Furthermore, we're using these devices to help students augment their knowledge, and perhaps to help them take tests. Are we? What are the possibilities for Leapfrog education? In the United States and elsewhere in the West, m-learning devices are routinely confiscated at the classroom door. In didactic educational settings where students "download" knowledge from their teachers, such devices are often viewed as providing a means for cheating, distracting students from the educational environment, or providing a means to access prohibited content. Consider what might happen if m-learning devices were allowed in the classroom and embraced by teachers: 1. Content may be delivered "anywhere, anytime," eliminating the need for teachers to download information and knowledge into students' minds. 2. Students are able to look-up information and facts rather than committing them to memory by rote memorization. 3. Students are able to make better grades by passing tests with the assistance of handheld devices. 4. Students are prompted to use readily available information to stimulate the construction of new knowledge. 5. Students are helped to use new knowledge to support innovations, or actual changes in the way learning and other activities are accomplished.

Full text

Technological Applications of Leapfrog
John W. Moravec, Ph.D.
Director, Leapfrog Institutes
College of Education and Human Development
University of Minnesota
330 Wulling Hall
86 Pleasant Street, S.E.
Minneapolis, MN 55455
tel +1 612-625-3517
moravec@umn.edu
Abstract
Relating recent social developments in mobile learning (m-learning) technologies in China, this article
explores technological manifestations of Leapfrog as it relates to educational transformation. The
author asks readers to consider a break in didactic educational settings where students “download”
knowledge from their teachers to a new paradigm where m-learning devices replace the teacher for
banking-style pedagogy and free classrooms from rote memorization exercises. New technologies
therefore must be purposively employed to support the construction of new ideas and support the co-
construction of new pedagogies. This purposive refocusing allows for the application of innovative
modes of knowledge production and distribution that identify, create and utilize new and future-
oriented formats for sharing knowledge in schools. In this reframing to support knowledge-based
learning for an innovation society, Leapfrog schools must design and build institutional flexibility to
rapidly adopt/incorporate/evolve these technologies into transformative practices rather than using
them to support old practices.
Key words
Mobile learning; human capital development; China; innovation society; educational transformation
Introduction
It all started with a failure. In January of 2007, I failed to renegotiate favorable terms on my cable
television bill, which had elevated to a cost beyond what I was willing to pay. As a result, I canceled my
service, and looked to the Internet to provide for my television needs. I found a program called
TVUPlayer, created by TVU Networks
1
, that utilizes BitTorrent technologies to stream near-real-time
1
See http://www.tvunetworks.com/

television broadcasts over Internet Protocol. This allowed me to view several popular U.S.-based
television networks, and many others around the globe.
While watching a Chinese movie channel, I encountered a lengthy advertisement for a handheld, m-
learning (mobile learning) device, a “Q,” manufactured by Ozing in Shanghai. While I do not understand
Mandarin, the advertisement relayed the following series of events clearly:
1. A student who does not perform well in school exams is chastised by fellow classmates.
2. The student’s father expresses shame in his son’s academic performance.
3. The father gives the student an m-learning device and walks away.
4. The student is shown learning from the device.
5. The student is shown using the device in the classroom … to help him do his class work.
6. The student is shown being congratulated by his classmates for improving his exam grades.
7. The father giggles with happiness over his son’s academic improvement.
The most interesting element of the advertisement, however, was not the device itself, but rather that
the pitchman for the product was a smartly-dressed Caucasian Canadian (Dashan, AKA Mark Rowswell).
In other words, the marketers are conveying a message that the West is adopting these technologies in
our homes and in our classrooms. Furthermore, we’re using these devices to help students augment
their knowledge, and perhaps to help them take tests. Are we?
What are the possibilities for Leapfrog education?
In the United States and elsewhere in the West, m-learning devices are routinely confiscated at the
classroom door. In didactic educational settings where students “download” knowledge from their
teachers, such devices are often viewed as providing a means for cheating, distracting students from the
educational environment, or providing a means to access prohibited content.
Consider what might happen if m-learning devices were allowed in the classroom and embraced by
teachers:
1. Content may be delivered “anywhere, anytime,” eliminating the need for teachers to download
information and knowledge into students’ minds.
2. Students are able to look-up information and facts rather than committing them to memory by
rote memorization.
3. Students are able to make better grades by passing tests with the assistance of handheld
devices.
4. Students are prompted to use readily available information to stimulate the construction of new
knowledge.
5. Students are helped to use new knowledge to support innovations, or actual changes in the way
learning and other activities are accomplished.
This also prompts several questions:
1. If content could be delivered anywhere and at anytime, what are the new roles of teachers?

2. If students were freed from the rote memorization of facts, what new activities should they do
in the classroom?
In an earlier publication, Arthur Harkins wrote
Many school boards and administrators will face the prospect of realigning educational services
to meet the needs of a knowledge-based Continuous Innovation Society. Fortunately, the U.S.
workforce is already pioneering the use of distributed software and handheld devices to support
the growing percentage of Knowledge Workers. As the role of software grows, the focus on just-
in-time performance evolves with it. Performance competence stimulates innovation by taking
advantage of cost-effective improvements supplied by software such as job automation, skill
downgrading, and the freeing of worker time for innovation of next- generation jobs.
Accordingly, preK-12 and higher education should emulate the worker software movement by
bringing it into the common experience of students. My arguments are premised on the
assumption that software-based preparation of students for success in a Continuous Innovation
Society will be driven by performance-based learning, where the skills of (a) software and device
management, and (b) developing and working within fast cultures will become the new CTE
basics. The separation of technical-vocational education from liberal or general education will
greatly diminish, and that career education will shift to career creation and career cycling. I
delineate the potential for significant social and employment sector leadership in helping
schools and colleges understand the requirement for technical and software support in all forms
of education, employment and daily life.
I also argue that no one should be permitted to fail in the development of software-supported
performance and innovation. If Johnny cannot read, the software will do it for him. If Johnny
cannot do calculus, the software will do it for him. If Johnny can operate the software, Johnny,
in theory, can do anything the software knows. Johnny will get 'A's' in everything that he alone,
or his software alone, or both together can accomplish. For example:
It is 2005. You are S.E.L., a second grader (S.E.L.'s initials are the same as the acronym
Software Enabled Learner). You are being asked to learn a new math process,
multiplication. It is the first day that multiplication has been presented to you. You are
having a terrible time getting the right answer all by yourself, so you move to another
problem. You are marking time. The teacher seems to make no sense. Some other kids
understand her but some, like you, do not.
On the second day of multiplication class the teacher gives you a wireless device to clip
into your shirt pocket. If you pull the small pen out of the device and scan it over your
multiplication problem, the pocket device talks to you and tells you how to get the right
answer. After a while you are making 'A's' in your multiplication class.
Unfortunately, you get stuck after a few weeks' success with multiplication. The
problems have become more difficult and you are unable to do them any more. But it
doesn't matter. Your teacher makes some adjustments to your pocket device. Afterward,
when the teacher calls on you for results, your pocket device tells you the answer and
provides explanations of how the answer was framed and arrived at. You are still making

'A's' in your math work, and you always will, because even if you cannot do the work,
sooner or later the software will.
In this scenario, multiplication tasks have been supported by a wireless pocket device that
makes S.E.L. capable of performing at a novice level within a few minutes. Over time, with the
assistance of a wireless pocket device, S.E.L.'s performance levels will move from novice to
competent to skilled to excellent to master. The speed of S.E.L.'s progress will depend upon how
s/he and the Distributed Competence software of the wireless pocket device work together.
(Harkins, 2002)
The technological applications of Leapfrog are not centered on which technologies are used, but rather,
how technologies are employed. Perhaps the ideal future is one in which age, incapacity, educational
level or ignorance are no longer factors in solving problems and capitalizing on opportunities.
Distributed Competence software and its supporting technologies make possible the cascading of
formerly esoteric and difficult skill sets into contexts of technologically amplified human performance.
Several scenarios that illustrate this point are:
Five year-old Yolanda brushes her teeth in the bathroom of her family's small apartment
on Chicago's South Side. As she moves the smart brush up and down, its tinny voice
coaches her, "Move up onto your gums. That's it! Not so hard, now…. OK, let's do the
bottom teeth." After Yolanda finishes she rinses the brush and places it in its holder.
Within seconds, a data stream carrying gingivitis, plaque, and bacteria types and levels,
has been sent to an analytical program in a dental hygiene office.
While Yolanda brushes her teeth and prepares to leave for school, two late-model
automobiles are tested on a snowy slope in upper Michigan. The cars are positioned at
the top of a winding, ice and snow-covered road descending steeply into a valley about
one mile away. Both are driven by certified test drivers. The first car move down the hill,
and within a thousand feet slides into a ditch. The second car follows. Employing smart
steering software it negotiates the winding road perfectly, arriving in the valley without
control problems.
At about the same moment as the car arrives safely in the valley, flight control software
refuses to permit a tired pilot's command to pitch up the nose of his airliner while
descending into Chicago air traffic. "Your speed is too low for that maneuver, Captain,"
says the voice in his headphones. "Entered in the flight log," the voice concludes.
(Harkins, 2002)
These scenarios illustrate the real world functionality of distributed competence (DC) software
embodying information base skills. DC enables Yolanda and the driver of the second car to accomplish
tasks beyond their current experiential, skill and information resources. In effect, Yolanda's smart
toothbrush embeds some of the dental hygienist's capabilities, while the driver has benefited from
partnering with driver-enhancement software. The airline pilot may face further simulator time and
even a proficiency check ride, but his passengers arrive safely in Chicago.
The lesson learned is that if we want to create graduates who will perform well in an ICT-oriented
society, then we should provide them with technological tools. If we want them to develop creative and

innovative uses to succeed in knowledge and innovation-based societies that demand the use of ICT,
then we must embrace these tools. And, when we do so, we cannot use them to teach the same old
content (usually rote, “download”-style learning). Pedagogies that embrace ICT must leapfrog
conventional paradigms and support students’ pervasive drive for creativity, knowledge production,
invention, and innovation.
New technologies must be purposively employed to support the construction of new ideas and support
the co-construction of new pedagogies. This purposive refocusing allows for the application of
innovative modes of knowledge production and distribution that identify, create and utilize new and
future-oriented formats for sharing knowledge in schools. In this reframing to support knowledge-based
learning for an innovation society, Leapfrog schools must design and build institutional flexibility to
rapidly adopt/incorporate/evolve these technologies into transformative practices rather than using
them to support old practices.
Heuristics for purposive applications of technology
Table 1, adapted from Harkins (2002), provides a heuristic framework for the purposive applications of
technologies in industrial through innovation societies. The chart presents the history, present, and
emerging future of technologically-augmented educational paradigms. Schools in both China and the US
have a long way to go if they choose to apply technologies that can properly utilize these paradigmatic
functionalities.
Table 1
Five learning approaches
Learning
system
attributes
Earlier industrial
training
Generalized
mass
education
Information/knowledg
e transition
Cybernetic
supports:
Person-
focused
electronic
performance
support
systems
Performance/innovatio
n-based learning for
Continuous Innovation
Society
Primacy
(learning is
performance
)
Performance (learning
is secondary)
Learning
(performanc
e is
secondary)
Performance
(performance is focus)
Performance
(learning is
unnecessary)
Creativity, innovation &
learning are
synchronous
Purpose
Prepare individuals for
specific task
performace
Prepare
individuals
for general
task
performance
Provide explicit
information to
enhance performance
Guide
performance
Advise, consult, guide,
facilitate, perform-for,
innovate-with
Approach
OJT preparation
Class
Inform
Coach
Partner, innovate
-
with

preparation
(perform
-
with-for)
Occurrence
Episodic instruction
On
-
going
tutoring
On
-
demand
information
On
-
demand
performance
s
On
-
demand innovations
Learning
sequence
Learning occurs prior
to performance
Learning
occurs prior
to
performance
Need
-
driven
Event
-
driven
Continuous (concurrent
and post-performance)
Delivery
platform
Human & machine
-
based
Human
-
based
Machine
-
based
(electronic information
base)
Agent
-
based
for
individuals-
in-context
Agent
-
& human
-
based
upgrades of distributed
competence software
Learning
initiative
determinant
Trainer determines
how individuals will
learn
Teacher
determines
how
individuals
will learn
Need
-
driven
Event
-
driven
Learner
-
tool
-
task
-
context co-determine
nature of innovation
base learning
Context
Context dependent
(partial)
Context
independent
Context independent
Context
dependent
Context creative
Delivery
location
OJT/classroom
Classroom
Computer node
Software
network
nodes
Anywhere, anytime,
anyplace (user, task,
context-determined)
Delivery
time
Unscheduled/schedule
d
Scheduled
On
-
demand (anytime)
On
-
demand
(anytime)
Continuous (anytime)
Workforce
implications
High relevance, but
usually lags behind
needs
"Just
-
in
-
case"
relevance;
sometimes
only chance
of
applicability
High situational
relevance but very
inefficient to store or
access due to
information mgmt.
limitations
High
situational
relevance;
essential for
supporting
PBL
Uploaded situational
competence/innovation
s to points of need "just-
in-time" or "just-ahead-
of-time
A continuously innovative society is driven by continuous context creation, recreation, and ubiquitous
access to innovative social and knowledge formats. Moving from a download education paradigm to a

human capital development paradigm, a continuously improving workforce is able to upgrade their skills
situationally to adapt to new, competitive socioeconomic. While m-learning is described as a potential
change agent toward this new paradigm, it is at the “tip of the iceberg” of technological and social
changes that are transforming human learning:
• Tiny terabyte disk drives; pocketable optical and quantum computers operating at room
temperatures; circuitry woven into clothing or sprayed onto skin; early implants; large
percentage of flat surfaces receive painted-on interactive displays; heads-up delivery of high-
resolution images to the retina; automatic language and dialect translations; obsolescence of
the keyboard; ‘nano-marketing’ to individual consumers worldwide; projections of the eclipse of
homo sapiens by a wide range of intelligent technological and genomic varieties of humanity.
• Jobs whirl into and out of existence quickly, sometimes overnight.
• More and more, human work creates jobs that are carried out by automata. Traditional
separations of living, learning and working have vanished, as the same technologies are used in
all three domains. Learning is experiential, through simulations and direct, real-world
involvement. Performance and innovation are paramount.
• Humans are expected to move forward, creating low-cost, highly efficient automated processes
in their wake. Innovative knowledge workers make up perhaps 90% of the work force.
Intelligent machines, capable of competing with innovative Knowledge Workers, are on the 20-
year horizon. The individual resume replaces the transcript.
Looking toward the future
Leapfrog means not avoiding the future, but rather, taking the future head-on. Leapfrogging builds the
future into today. Leapfrog education is not concerned about “future-proofing” in a world driven by
accelerating change and accelerating uncertainty. For example:
•
How do we future-proof our schools?
•
How do we future-proof our libraries?
•
How do we future-proof our wealth?
•
How do we future-proof our careers?
•
How do we future-proof our families?
The above questions reflects dichotomous thinking along the lines of, “if the rest of the world is going to
change, how can I (or my beloved institution) best survive by changing the least myself?” Why should
we not expect ourselves to change significantly as well? Leapfrog schools do not use old rules to define
how they use new technologies. To leap beyond the contradictory thinking of “future-proofing,”
leapfrog educators ask themselves:
•
Does the future need schools?
•
Does the future need libraries?
•
Does the future need wealth?
•
Does the future need careers?
•
Does the future need families?

More importantly, leaders in the Leapfrog Paradigm also ask what, why, and how do we need to change
today to help ensure positive outcomes for all learners given these futures? By framing our actions
based on these questions, the purposive uses of technologies becomes evident.
References
Harkins, A. M. (2002). The futures of career and technical cducation in a continuous innovation society.
Journal of Vocational Education Research, 27(1).
Moravec, J. W. (2006). Chaordic knowledge production: A systems-based response to critical education.
Theory of Science, XV/XXVIII(3), 149-162.
Moravec, J. W. (2008). Moving beyond Education 2.0. Retrieved March 18, 2008, from Education Futures
Web site: http://www.educationfutures.com/2008/02/15/moving-beyond-education-20/