October 11, 2017

In a New York Post op-ed last week, Ivanka Trump said she intends for education technology to be one part of her White House portfolio. “Given the high and increasing demand for workers with computing skills, it is imperative that all of our students, including women and minorities, have access to computer-science education,” Trump wrote, emphasizing the need for K-12 students to have opportunities to learn computer science at an early age.

Educational technology is a complex field, and Ivanka Trump does not appear to have sustained experience engaging in those complexities. “Inside Digital Learning” wanted to assemble a syllabus for her as she dips her toe into this world; we posed the following questions to a panel of experts.

• Which authors and texts should Ivanka Trump read as she prepares to try to influence national policy?
• Which education programs should she study as models for how to incorporate ed tech into learning environments?
• What advice would you give her about how to think about ed-tech’s role in education relative to other priority issues facing students at all levels, especially college students?

Michael Horn, chief strategy officer, Entangled Ventures; co-founder, Clayton Christensen Institute

As Ivanka Trump wades into the world of computer education, computational thinking and coding in schools, it’s worth her taking a broader view of the world of education technology first before zeroing in on the more specific field of building students’ computing skills.

I would of course recommend she read my own books on the topic, Disrupting Class and Blended, but also books that cover the emergence of these new technologies in the postsecondary space.

• Ryan Craig’s College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education
• Kevin Carey’s The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere
• Jeff Selingo’s College Unbound and There Is Life After College: What Parents and Students Should Know About Navigating School to Prepare for the Jobs of Tomorrow
• Goldie Blumenstyk’s American Higher Education in Crisis?: What Everyone Needs to Know
• Anya Kamenetz’s DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education
• Andy Rosen’s Change.edu: Rebooting for the New Talent Economy

I would also encourage her to read Larry Cuban’s timeless Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom, Paul Peterson’s Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning, and Larry Cuban and John E. Chubb’s Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics and the Future of American Education.