We commonly hear optimistic reports that computers, digital multimedia, and the Internet are transforming work practices, social relationships, and organizations. Yet, as we approach the millennium, computers have made limited impact on learning and teaching in K-12 schools. Although more schools than before are networked to the Internet, including both wealthy schools (87%) and low-income schools (80%) according to a recent U.S. Department of Education survey, educators struggle with the new forms of pedagogy and technology fluency needed to use computers effectively for learning and instruction.

As we all know, computers aren't quick fixes to education. Yet for over 20 years, education researchers have been demonstrating robust learning with innovative approaches mediated by technology while also providing the data necessary to show why these approaches help kids learn. These innovations and empirical results are not widely known outside of research communities. Even within these communities, the successful transfer and communication of research from one test bed to another in a different setting is rare. How do we accelerate knowledge-sharing and large-scale adoption of innovative approaches to learning and teaching with technology? How can we demonstrate the effectiveness of learning technologies that scale beyond a small set of classrooms or a narrow segment of the curriculum? The National Science Foundation's Learning and Intelligent Systems initiative has been supporting multidisciplinary partnerships that cut across sectors. The Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT) is an example of such a partnership.

Since the fall of 1997, CILT has been exploring and documenting the nature of multi-institutional collaboration between four institutions: The Concord Consortium, the University of California at Berkeley, Vanderbilt University, and SRI International. CILT aims to foster a new model of collaborative research that capitalizes on accumulated research findings, distributed community contributions, and ongoing synthesis, reflection, and incubation of new ideas in the area of learning technologies.

There are many challenges to organizing a cohesive community. Four workshops hosted during the year by CILT attracted participants from industry, commercial business, schools, training institutes, government, scientists, universities, and private foundations. With different constituencies came different methods and competing goals to solving the "education problem." Even among education researchers, there was no consensus on approaches to education assessment and reform. A large part of the community-building discussions involved reaching common ground. Although everyone was passionate about improving education, everyone had different criteria for what counts as "learning" and how to "design for learning." Would it be a cheap high speed networked laptop, or better teacher professional development, or a set of curricular design principles, or uniform learning assessments, or the ability to openly share software source code?

CILT strives to provide concrete support for ongoing multidisciplinary, multi-institutional collaborative activities like these. However, achieving the degree of mutual understanding or collaboration needed to spark breakthroughs requires a completely new way of thinking and working. We are banking on learning technologies to facilitate this breakthrough.

Sherry Hsi is a post-doctoral scholar at the Center for Innovative Learning Technologies. Sherry@concord.org

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