New Thinking through New Tools and Techniques for Engagement

Anita Brown-Graham is being honored as a Champion of Change for her efforts in making government more transparent and accountable through technology.

In the face of serious economic and social challenges, growing national polarization continuously threatens devastating gridlock. Each day seems to bring new indications of our dysfunction at discourse.

When I joined the Institute for Emerging Issues (IEI) at North Carolina State University in 2007, I looked forward to bringing together the state’s leaders from all sectors, regions and points of view. Founded by former North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt, IEI had earned a strong reputation for its efforts to focus the state on matters important to its continued competitiveness.  The organization sought to extend North Carolina’s rich tradition of boundary-crossing leadership - a tradition credited with transforming the state’s economy and quality of life over a 50 year period.

However, there were troubling indications that North Carolina faced a civic engagement crisis.  By 2010, our state ranked 42nd in the nation for volunteering, 44th for participation in non-electoral policy activity (such as public meetings), and 39th for group affiliation/membership. Without reclaiming the ability to engage and collaborate, North Carolina was on course to lose the voices of too many of its people as leaders shaped their future.

IEI needed to respond to this crisis, but we could not act alone. We reached out for the wisdom of hundreds across the state. With their contributions of content, design support, software innovations and funding, we created the Emerging Issues Commons - a first of its kind engagement tool - both a physical space and an online hub that is today transforming how citizens across the state connect with each other, access information, and take collaborative action on important issues.

The citizens of the state asked us to replace charts and graphs with interactive tools that visualize more than 100 county-level data points on the economy, education, health and the environment. They told us they wanted to see the connections among challenges, be able to compare challenges across different geographies, and to have data curated in ways that offered greater insight into the issues. 

Our citizen advisors wanted also to have big challenges humanized through short videos, and to be able to add their own ideas for solving challenges. They asked that others be able to rate and rank ideas and add opinions on how to make them stronger. Finally, they insisted that the Commons content be available online 24/7.

Despite indications of permanent disengagement, North Carolinians made clear that they would participate at higher levels if given an opportunity for meaningful engagement and resources to support their efforts.  What they needed? New thinking through new tools and techniques for engagement.

Anita Brown-Graham is Director of the Institute for Emerging Issues (IEI) at NC State University

Crossing the Line in the Sand: Why Early Exposure to Emerging Technologies Will Lead Our Students to Greatness

Jeffries Epps is being honored as a Champion of Change for his work to expand opportunities for young learners from communities historically underserved or underrepresented in tech fields.

For the past 21 years I have served the public schools of North Carolina in the area of technology implementation. As a systems engineer and now a technology director, I have worked in both a management and leadership capacity.   From my engineering point of view I have witnessed technology change every two to three years.  When I became a director I set my cross hairs on the skills we were teaching our students. Working with business leaders, administrators, teachers, and students has afforded me the opportunity to see how our efforts to prepare students directly affect the workplace.  It is now my mission to ensure that the technology training inside of the school walls keeps pace with the needs of the global economy.

For two decades, technology in education has evolved rapidly.  The rate of change outside of the school walls has not only altered the way we teach our students, but also how early we should expose them to emerging technologies.  By exposing them early, and integrating science and mathematics at every grade level, they will have years to master these technologies as opposed to semesters. In addition, most companies will not entertain an engineer’s application unless they have seven verifiable years of exposure to the engineering process. So where can these applicants be found? They are currently in the 3^rd grade!

In 1996, we began wiring schools for internet access.  Students could access the internet from every classroom, media center, and computer lab.  Since then, tools such as word processing, electronic presentations, and desktop publishing have become commonplace in our schools, homes, and the workplace.  Students who were 3rd graders in 1996 graduated in 2005, however, they progressed into a workforce that had already been saturated with workers possessing the same skills. During this time, we drew a line in the sand that separated mediocrity and greatness. We sided with mediocrity. Yet, the workforce was demanding more highly-skilled, innovative workers.

Early exposure equips them to compete for current and future jobs, satisfy the seven year requirement and most importantly fail their way forward. When failure occurs, students often side with mediocrity. At this early stage they will learn that failure is a part of success and they persevere toward greatness. Greatness when their first line of code throws them a syntax error. Greatness when their first 3D scan does not align properly.  Greatness when their first 3D object does not print as expected. Suddenly greatness is no longer a buzz word; it is now an attitude.  This provides upward mobility.  3D technology will continue to evolve and these students will have the necessary knowledge, skill, and attitude to lead us into the future. By the time our 3^rd graders graduate, they will be well-equipped to fill these jobs.  The key is early exposure!

Somewhere along the way the real world component became someone else’s responsibility. As educators, it is our responsibility to take the time and make the connections between coursework and the real world. When students apply what they have learned to solve real world problems we pull them to the “greatness” side of the line and we dare them to go back!

In education, we stand on a great Genesis. We are redefining ourselves, and the way in which we do things. If we don’t get this right, generations will pay the consequences. If we are to lead the world, we must cast the vision of what the marketplace will be by teaching skills and thought processes that will be relevant well into the future. The end result is a highly skilled workforce that is prepared to compete globally.  The United States will maintain its economic edge. Success does not follow mediocrity; success follows hard work and leads to greatness. Let’s start!

Jeffries Epps is the Director of Information Technology for Richmond County Schools in Hamlet, NC.

Don't Tell Them It's Too Hard

Carlos Bueno is being honored as a Champion of Change for his work to expand opportunities for young learners from communities historically underserved or underrepresented in tech fields.

Imagine leaving this world as complicated as you found it. To me, that's one of the scariest thoughts around. If the next generation takes just as long to learn what you've learned, they won't have time to do better. That's why good teachers don't merely replay knowledge. They try to distill it.

Three years ago I started writing "Lauren Ipsum", a children's novel about computer science and critical thinking. I wanted to write the introduction I wish I'd had as a child. My wife Yta and I looked for conceptsthat could be explained to a nine-year-old. We purposefully ignored how hard or easy they were supposed to be; that's what we were testing.

It's easy to forget that computer science is a very young field, and young fields are messy. As we race to generate new knowledge we also generate excess complexity and jargon, piled up around us like sawdust. When the hard stuff looks messy and complicated, and the easy stuff looks messy and complicated too, then you can't really tell the difference. That means, as teachers, we're not even starting in the right places.

Many things considered basic were much harder than expected. Other things with impressive-sounding names were literally child's play. It turns out that kids already understand cryptographic timing attacks; they just call it the game of Hangman. Most humbling was the number of things I failed to explain because I didn't really understand them.

People tend to think that scientific progress is all about discovering new facts. It's equally about discovering new ways to explain what we already know. Open a child's math book, and what do you see? Zero, negative numbers, pi. Every one of those "simple" facts was once the weirdest, hardest, most difficult concept in the world. Over the centuries we've come to grips with them. Today, we expect every child to know more math than Archimedes and more physics than Newton. That's progress.

We haven't made much of this kind of progress in computer science. If the mathematicians are the ones making fun of you for being too complicated, you know you've got some work to do.

Those experiments convinced me that a crucial part of computer science is training yourself to think clearly. You can't explain clearly unless you think clearly. And what is programming, if not explaining things to the computer? So as Lauren goes through her adventures she doesn't learn the messy incidental details of writing programs. She learns how to think like a programmer. She learns not just that she is responsible for her own decisions, she learns better ways to make them.

Today, "Lauren Ipsum" is used in classrooms all over the world in homeschools, elementary schools, and even universities. For every copy sold, we donate another copy to anyone who teaches children. To date we've mailed over 800 books to everywhere from Indiana to Indonesia. We're also about to publish a Spanish translation.

My favorite story is from a mother who had read the book to her children as a bedtime story. A few weeks later she was packing away some suitcases, nesting the smaller ones inside the larger ones. Her six-year-old watched for a while and said "Mommy, that's recursion!"

Take a few minutes to try an experiment. Pick something you know that is supposed to be complicated. Pretend you are talking to a child and try as hard as you can to truly understand and distill and explain it. Then try it out on an actual child. Tell them what you are doing and ask for help; work together to come to an understanding. It's astonishing what children can do if you don't tell them it's too hard. The odds are good you'll learn something too. And that's progress.

Carlos Bueno is an Engineer at Facebook.