This Point of View identifies some major constraints to achieving large-scale and lasting education success in today’s connected world. It outlines four major principles for government and education leaders, the adoption of which can make a fundamental difference to how students learn and education systems work. It is written by Kevin Johnson and Jim Wynn of Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG), drawing on their own insights and those of global colleagues and external commentators.

1. Point of View
Connecting Education
Authors
Kevin Johnson
Jim Wynn
November 2007
Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG)
Cisco IBSG Copyright © 2007 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

3. Point of View
Connecting Education
Effective education remains fundamental to economic development and social
cohesion. It already attracts massive investment (typically 5 to 15 percent of countries’
GDP) and, with new skill requirements and global imperatives, its importance has never
been greater.
In reality, however, many education systems are either broken or poorly prepared to meet
the needs of today’s world. Skill gaps are widening, not narrowing. Education policy does
not reflect the dramatically changed expectations of individuals, the requirements of
employers, or the wealth of newly accessible global resources and services.
There are several reasons for this, most notably the historical inertia of education
systems. Most have been slow to recognize or embrace recent developments in
communication and collaboration. Progress has typically happened in isolated pockets,
and this combination of inflexibility and fragmentation is now a major constraint to
large-scale, sustainable success.
“Many schools preserve the routines, cultures, and operations of an obsolete 1930s
manufacturing plant.”
U.S. Chamber of Commerce report, March 2007
This situation creates some familiar consequences:
• Cohesion on curriculum, not technology: While governments are typically
prescriptive about what is taught, they often give autonomy on information
communications technology (ICT) matters to local practitioners—a role many
practitioners neither want nor are equipped to handle. One result is fragmented
islands of excellence that rarely interoperate and are not cost-effective to sustain.
• Misconceptions, causing poor return: The full value of ICT investment is not being
gained because the ICT agenda is seen as being about (1) teaching ICT, not using it
to help people work better, or about (2) user devices and software, not the processes
they might help improve or the core enablers required to make them effective.
• Focus given to inputs, not outcomes: Resources are often wasted by leaders
focusing on inputs or reach, not strategic outcomes or impact. This prompts success
measures to be based on relatively meaningless factors such as PC-to-child ratios,
or ambiguous metrics such as percentage of “broadband” coverage. (The speed
required for useful two-way collaboration in multiple classrooms and schools is very
different from the public “broadband” speeds often cited.)
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4. Point of View
• Fostering of old-world realities: Our future leaders, employees, and citizens are
learning from people whose outlook reflects yesterday’s world. This is inevitable, given
how these individuals are often recruited, trained, and managed. Most students and
staff are also operating in physical environments that don’t reflect today’s realities.
Where taxpayers’ or sponsors’ money is spent to address this problem, old-world
design and construction approaches typically perpetuate the ICT constraints of
yesteryear. In short, current educational practices are seriously out of touch.
This current, challenging situation need not be the case. The incredible capacity of
today’s technologies, driven by the explosion of digitization, connectivity, and related
services, has created possibilities previously unimaginable. It’s clear from our work with
governments and other major organizations around the world that huge potential now
exists to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and user satisfaction.
In our view, four major principles—if truly believed and adopted deeply—can make a
fundamental and lasting difference in how students learn and education systems work,
with profound impact on how national and global socioeconomic needs are met.
1. Run the Enterprise as It Deserves
Education is a business like any other: in other words, it will not run well if left to
chance or just to local best efforts. Fragmented, “point” solutions may have generated
significant local benefits in the past, but the opportunities—and complexities—created
by the technology avalanche of recent years demand a different approach.
First, the foundation for lasting, large-scale success must be laid:
• This starts with ensuring ruthless clarity on strategic outcomes and priorities, in most
cases concerning improved access, affordability, and quality of education.
• From this beginning, the frameworks and core enablers that are essential for
effectiveness, agility, and compelling user experiences in any enterprise can be built:
– Business architecture: core processes and organization enablers
– Information architecture: easy access to truths, insights, and knowledge
– Technical architecture: a suite of relevant communications, collaboration, and
management tools, connected by a secure network platform
Disciplined thinking and the provision of core enablers are a fundamental starting
point for running large education enterprises. One of the greatest insights of the
historian Will Durant was that “liberty is a product of order.” That is particularly true for
making large-scale, ICT-enabled progress in education. This has been recognized
by countries, regions, and major institutions whose leaders are successfully taking a
strong, enterprise-wide approach, such as Northern Ireland and Scotland in the United
Kingdom, Saskatchewan and Alberta in Canada, or Case Western Reserve University in
the United States.1
1. See http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac79/how/materials.html for more details on the Northern Ireland, Scotland,
Case Western Reserve University, and other case studies.
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5. Point of View
2. Nurture All Aspects of 21st Century Talent
Once enterprise fundamentals are in place, further attention can turn to the greatest
asset of any educational system: its people. The world today is different: the talent
needed to thrive amidst today’s realities must, therefore, be nurtured accordingly, in
three key aspects:
• Use it: Today’s children and teenagers learn, think, and interact in ways that are very
different from those of their parents—because they can. Today’s youth are often
habitual, compulsive collaborators who multi-task as the norm. This should be seen as
a boon, not a threat, embraced and used for mutual success.
• Prepare it: Those same students are also tomorrow’s employees and leaders. Their
education must imbue them with the competencies they need to thrive in society.
This includes systematically ensuring that they enhance their natural skills, attitudes,
and the ability to apply these in today’s world. This can be taught to some degree,
but will be developed much further by immersion in environments where those same
competencies are required and used routinely by all around them.2
• Expect it: Expectations of teachers and leaders must evolve to foster today’s needs
and avoid always having to “play catch-up.” Creativity, adaptability, and digital fluency
are now as much core requirements for teachers as are subject knowledge and
classroom craft. Leaders, meanwhile, need the competencies to run large, complex
enterprises successfully in the digital age. This won’t just happen; different standards
are needed at every stage, including training, recruitment, and management support,
along with the time and focus required to change old habits permanently.3
3. Pool Wisdom
Adoption and execution of principles 1 and 2 will establish a platform on which to start
taking advantage of the phenomenal possibilities that now exist. We live in a world
where almost everyone is connected to everyone else, and capabilities reside in a
multitude of small, dispersed parts. With the right connections of places, people, and
information, location becomes irrelevant, constraints are removed, and possibilities
increase exponentially.
• Connect to access: Network connectivity enables access to basic education and
help in places and ways that were not feasible before. Lessons are streamed to
remote locations or to part-time students at their workplaces, and subject expertise
is shared via video networks. Children excluded from mainstream schooling gain an
approved education through online services they access from home, while Massai
teachers in Kenya receive personal coaching via mobile phone.
2. For relevant insights, see “Maximizing the Impact: The Pivotal Role of Technology in a 21st Century Education System” by the State Educational Technology Directors
Association (SETDA), International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, November 2007
3. For further views on the criticality of staff talent, see “How the World’s Best-performing School Systems Come Out on Top” by McKinsey & Company, September 2007
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6. Point of View
• Connect to collaborate: By using the wealth of networked tools and capabilities
now available, students, teachers, and researchers are co-developing ideas and
collaborating in increasingly inventive and interactive ways. Undergraduates in
Singapore work in real time with others in Canada and Germany, while children in
Northern Ireland help diffuse historical tensions by conducting collaborative projects
between primary schools. In 2006, TIME magazine named “You” as its Person of
Year because “The new Web is a very different thing. It’s a tool for bringing together
the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter.” This ability to
interact with and help other people characterizes today’s collaborative world.
• Connect to enrich knowledge: Connecting disparate information sources has the
same powerful network effect as pooling the ideas of individuals and groups. As a
result, knowledge becomes more integrated, contextualized, and relevant, saving
time and enabling better decision-making. This applies equally to academic matters
and other operational needs. When this richer knowledge is then connected to
information about users’ preferences, needs, and location, it can be “pushed” to the
right people, at the right time, and in the most useful way to add even further value.
4. Make It Personal—Systematically
The fourth and final principle is, in many ways, the key goal—building on the
foundations and practices of principles 1, 2, and 3 to improve permanently the
experience of all stakeholders.
Ultimately, those experiences drive the emotions that students, teachers, parents,
or other partners feel when they interact—hence, their engagement, cooperation,
and, ultimately, achievement. Today’s connected world makes it possible to improve
experiences in a large-scale and systematic way—if the fundamentals for success are
in place.
Other people-centric sectors, such as retail, entertainment, and social services,
have realized this, and the opportunity in education is equally high. A high priority
for education leaders who are ready to take this step should, therefore, be to:
(1) understand what’s driving the personal experiences of students, teachers, and
others; (2) understand their interdependencies; (3) capture that knowledge; and then
(4) use connected architectures, approaches, skills, and tools to help address the core
issues systematically.
“Education can learn a lot from the entertainment industry. The primary lesson?
Know your audience.”
Lord David Puttnam, chancellor of the Open University
and retired filmmaker, March 2007
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7. Point of View
The increasing number of good local practices and some recent and more holistic
research suggest that addressing personal experience in a habitual, systemwide
way is feasible.4
This is partly due to the recognition that, while people vary greatly, their experiences
and actions are often driven by similar things. It also comes from the increasing
range of relevant ICT tools that are now available to help practitioners address those
experience drivers. Combine this with the right processes, architectures, leadership,
skills, and culture, and large-scale, sustainable experience improvement becomes a
reality. For example:
• Give parents, staff, and students timely information and help as a matter of course,
in ways and via devices that are most useful for them at any given moment in time.
• Increase stimulus in lessons by giving teachers and students new capabilities for
their core “tool bags,” including solutions based on live or recorded video, gaming
and simulation, or sensor-, biometric-, or digital-surface-based approaches.
• Free up time to build one-to-one relationships by using connected approaches
to reduce “time-wasters,” such as (a) allowing easy access to tools, people, and
knowledge, wherever users may be; (b) enabling sharing and co-editing of documents
real time, rather than repeated e-mail exchanges; or (c) using inexpensive, high-quality
videoconferencing to meet, rather than traveling.
Conclusion
The four principles outlined in this paper build on each other and, in our view, are funda-
mental to lasting, large-scale success in education. Priorities and entry points will vary,
but the same principles apply whether a national school system, a university, a system
that’s broken, or a strong one trying to achieve more.
Government and education leaders who share this view can make a significant start by
establishing clarity of where they wish their systems to be and why, then assessing the
current reality against those goals and against each key element of the four principles.
Leaders now have unprecedented opportunities to avoid historical pitfalls and acceler-
ate desirable outcomes. The socioeconomic impact of doing so could be profound.
4. Cisco IBSG research with The Innovation Unit (http://www.innovation-unit.co.uk) and UK Department for Children,
Schools & Families, “Improving the Experience of Students, Teachers & Parents,” June 2007
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8. Supporting Sources
Economist Intelligence Unit, “Foresight 2020: Economic, Industry and Corporate
Trends,” March 2006 (http://tools.cisco.com/dlls/tln/page/research/detail/
rs/2006/2020foresight)
Cisco IBSG, “The Connected Republic,” September 2007
(http://www.theconnectedrepublic.org/)
Cisco IBSG, “21st Century Trends for Higher Education,” August 2007
(http://www.cisco.com/web/ANZ/assets/docs/21st_Century_WP_0606a.pdf)
Forrester Research, “Unified Communications Delivers Global Benefits,”
September 2007
European Union ICT Task-Force, “Skills & Employability,” 2007, plus various
“Skills Gap” reports, including IDC, 2006
Insights from the 21st Century Schools Program, USA
(http://www.21cschools.org/index.php)
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the following IBSG colleagues for their valuable contributions to this
paper: William Buller, Pete Cevenini, Damien Dunne, Paul Johnston, Anne Lange, James
Macaulay, Bob Moriarty, Michelle Selinger, Tam Shepherd, Nico Smit, Maria-Jose
Sobrini, Martin Stewart-Weeks, Tracey Wilen, and Simon Willis. In addition, the authors
acknowledge the contributions of many others in the wider Cisco Education family.
More Information
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