Supt. takes MGSD's advances to White House

Mooresville Graded School District Superintendent Mark Edwards will make his second trip to the White House today, this time to discuss education technology.

Edwards and 100 other school and business representatives across the country will attend the event on learning technologies, hosted by Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Edwards will also participate in a panel discussion about technology in schools and will speak to the group about the MGSD’s digital advances.

 After welcoming ceremonies in the East Room of the White House, the conference will move to the auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House.

“It’s a catalyst to engage and harness energy of organizations and individual school districts advancing innovation using technology,” Edwards said of the Washington D.C. conference.

Duncan will discuss the Obama Administration’s “commitment to harnessing the promise of learning technologies, and key steps the Administration can take with the private sector and universities to advance learning technologies that can prepare the American people and America to succeed in the 21 st century.”

An initiative called the “Digital Promise” will be unveiled during the event, said Karen Cator, director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education.

“The Digital Promise announcement hopes to spur breakout through developments associated with the opportunity to learn,” she told the Tribune. The Digital Promise is an independent nonprofit endeavor created through Section 802 of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, authorizing a nonprofit corporation known as the National Center for Research in Advanced information and Digital Technologies.

According to the statute, Digital Promise will “support comprehensive research and development program to harness the increasing capacity of advanced information and digital technologies to improve levels or learning and education, formal and informal, in order to provide Americans with the knowledge and skills needed to compete in the global economy.”

After Duncan’s comments, a discussion panel will be moderated by Thomas Kalil, deputy director for Policy for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy . He is also the Senior Advisor for Science, Technology and Innovation for the National Economic Council.

Edwards will be on the panel, representing schools and districts across the country. “He is a main superintendent representing the best promise learning technologies for improving teaching and learning,” Cator said.

Edwards will share the story of the MGSD’s digital conversion and participate in a question and answer period.

“It’s extremely exciting,” he said. “I think that being recognized at this level is a real honor to our leaders, students, teachers and community of Mooresville.”

It is Edwards’ second official trip to the White House.

As a superintendent in Virginia in 1998, he participated in the roll-out of President George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program.

“Having the opportunity to be in the White House is certainly something to look forward to,” Edwards said.

His comments to the group about the MGSD’s digital conversion will discuss the link to student achievement and the alignment of resources to support it.

“The are two factors to this,” said Edwards. “Evidence of single achievement at multiple levels and that we rank 99th out of 115 districts in budget and are still able to get technology deployed out to schools.

“People look at Mooresville and because we don’t have a lot of money we really had to maximize our resources to get it done.”

In partnership with Digital Promise, select school districts will come together to launch a League of Innovative Schools, Edwards said. The League will be a coalition of schools dedicated to innovation in learning technologies.

He said the League will explore key steps it can take to help the learning technologies market, including “rapid testing of promising new technologies, create a buyers’ consortium to demand better prices and higher quality and encourage entrepreneurs to develop game-changing innovations by promising to buy them.”

“I’m looking forward with other leaders who support both the national system and individually,” said Edwards. “I’m certainly excited about hearing and seeing plans of other leaders with digital promise.”