The recently passed Omnibus funding bill includes support for educational R&D at the federal level, as noted in the link below. The timing is good, in that the learning from home pandemic panic that ensued when schools had to suddenly be able to massively support online learning …showed how much work needs to be done in the realm of innovation.
The funding of education in the US is a hodge hodge of local taxes, state funding, federal funding, foundation support… with many challenges for “coordination”. Nonetheless it’s a huge part of the US economy.
We can ponder how these education expenditures might best be aggregated and implemented. They should include methods for grass roots innovation that is incorporated with large institutional top down programs. In the meantime, any routes around political and institutional gridlock are welcome.
A DARPA for K–12? Omnibus Bill Includes Substantial New Funds for Education R&D – The 74
DARPA shows that spreading the money around through well regulated grants can really work. Although it should be noted that sometimes the innovation spun off isn’t fully in line with what the funding goal happened to be. Innovation isn’t a straight line, and very useful methods or products can arise in a sort of byproduct way.
Which might lead one to ask about education innovation arising from unexpected sources.
During the pandemic, some teachers took it upon themselves to work up and innovate tools that could help them do “learning from home” for their dispersed students. Not every teacher did or could do this… but of course those who did could derive their innovations from years of classroom experience.
The current arrival of AI chatbot tools appears to greatly enhance the ability of “non expert” course development to occur, presuming one can ask very good questions and dig down into what ChatGPT “knows”.
Designing APIs seems to be a hot field for new careers, and it seems certain some of that will be done by teachers currently on the job.
Kudos to Gary for the link.