A Strategic Plan for Educational Leadership
January 2000 through December 2004

Imperatives of Implementation

This strategic plan sets an ambitious agenda for the Institute. Although ambitious, it is a plan proportioned to the scale of action requisite to make technology deepen and extend the potentialities of education for all. Moreover, it is a plan commensurate with the stature of Teachers College and of Columbia University.

Any group that seeks to help transform education with digital technologies must find the wherewithal sufficient to exert meaningful effects on comprehensive, pervasive institutions, such as education and the information infrastructure. These are universal concerns that touch an incredible diversity of people. To change them, one must act through local institutions and specific programs in ways that have distinctive consequences far beyond the localities and specificities of ones actions.

To work towards the renewal of education with digital tools, the Institute, Teachers College, and Columbia University should concentrate on the four basic objectives of this plan -- technology configuration, curriculum innovation, professional development, and policy formation - and by effecting its strategic vision -- developing a proof of concept, harnessing the driving force of technical innovation, generating a moving social vision, and exerting tangible institutional leverage. To accomplish these general aims, the Institute must achieve proximate goals in concrete ways. Over the next few years, the Institute will work systematically to fulfill seven implementation imperatives by 2004. These are challenges that relate to the particulars of the immediate situation, the Institute's means towards its objectives and its strategic vision. 1. Institutional leadership: Act to bring the full resources of Teachers College and Columbia University to bear in using technologies to improve education.

• Continue building the linkages between ILT and the program in Communication, Computing, and Technology in Education at Teachers College. Fund a broad range of paying internships for students in CCTE to provide concrete experience integrating technology into schools and academic institutions.
• Build the capacity of Teachers College to provide graduate students in GSAS, SEAS, and other Columbia schools general know-how about teaching and the requisite mentoring to acquire teacher certification, should they desire it.
• Work with other innovating groups at Teachers College and throughout Columbia University to deploy advanced technologies in was that enhance the essential, animating missions of education in its fullest forms.
• Work with the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning to identify technology-based resources that may have significant educational value for use in K12 schools.

• By 2005, increase ILT's endowment from approximately $1,000,000 to $10,000,000 (in current dollars) in order to enable ILT to maintain an adequate core staff and well-equipped quarters while ceasing to need support from the University's Strategic Initiative Fund and the operating budget of the College.
• Strengthen the staffing structure of ILT by appointing people to an expanded array of roles, such as a chief operating officer, a development officer, and heads of technology innovation, curriculum design, professional development, and policy consultation.
• Design at least one new media resource, probably the Columbia Curriculum Navigator, which can start to produce significant royalties by 2002.

• Publicize specifications for school networks and educational appliances and get major suppliers to produce them.
• Initiate creation of an open-source software environment for schools and see that the complete repertoire is available by 2004.
• Lead consortia making effective educational use of Bell Atlantic's Diffusion Fund and the Federal E-Rate.

• Put together a management structure for the diverse schools participating in ILT projects and work with the leadership of the New York City schools to put them in the forefront of educational practice.
• Establish formal consulting arrangements, paid through a Board of Education contract, with key high schools and community school districts in Upper Manhattan, especially CSD6.
• Participate in leadership efforts through the Mayor's Council on New Media, the Board of Education CyberLearning Taskforce, and in collaboration with MOUSE, HEAVEN, diverse corporations, to address the needs of schools and to diminish the Digital Divide.
• Submit successful proposals extending the Eiffel Project beyond 2001 and obtain funding to keep the ILT school testbed at the leading edge of technical and pedagogical practice.

• Secure funding, and a broader base of participation, to continue development of efforts such as Digital Dante and the New Deal Network.
• Find ways to enable K12 schools to participate in Columbia's digital library projects and work with researchers to make their on-line resources and tools accessible in schools to non-specialists.
• Work with teachers to design and implement ways to enable students to use advanced technologies to support inquiry, problem-solving, and the creation of portfolios.

• Establish school media centers in 50 or more schools connected to the Columbia testbed and deliver on-demand technology-based professional development through them.
• Put collaboratories for teachers and administrators in New York City schools into operation and build a broad base of participation in them.
• Develop a broad range of internships for graduate students who seek to develop improved curricula and classrooms practices for the use of advanced technologies in education.

• Respond as fully as possible to opportunities to speak out on policy questions and to form public opinion about the uses of digital technologies in education.
• Defend the integrity and autonomy of public and non-profit educational institutions and use technological innovations to improve their effectiveness.
• Define new issues and concerns as new technologies transform patterns of feasible practice, rendering familiar conflicts meaningless and making new ones significant.

• Complete the thorough revision of ILTweb during the 1999-2000 academic year.
• Construct ILT web resources as tools of program implementation and require all staff to participate in the development of ILTweb.
• Engage a wide circle of teachers and students in the use and construction of ILTweb as an educational resource.
• Develop the theory and practice of using the Internet and the Web as agencies of communicative action in the service of educational initiative.

With sustained attention to these implementation imperatives, the Institute can help shape the way educators use information technology to construct a worthy educational future. Through such effects, Columbia University and Teachers College will advance their leadership in education. Significant opportunities exist through government and industry to win funding for projects of sufficient scale to make a difference in developing the educational uses of technology and the national information infrastructure. Educators can mobilize the means for a great effort. To grasp this opportunity for leadership and excellence, educators need two essentials: commitment and collaboration.

Commitment requires decisive action -- an active decision, a resolve to make the effort required to achieve results. The challenge entailed in the ambition to reform our educational activities is massive; the opportunity to do so is an exceptional historic opportunity - exceptional in two senses, as an extremely unusual opportunity, which occurs rarely in the fullness of time; and as an extraordinary opportunity, which will lead to great historic achievements should we grasp it during the present juncture. This exceptional opportunity merits the commitment of an unstinting effort, one in which we mobilize all the talent and resources required to shift the spectrum of educational possibilities upwards for all.

Collaboration follows from attention to the large, important goal -- the betterment of education and the quality of life. Narrow, cramped visions beget spiteful competitions, each against all. So long as the end-in-view requires a large vision, the many possible projects, groupings, and participants can naturally fit together in a shared effort. The Institute believes that to accomplish the large goal, it must create strong alliances throughout Teachers College, throughout Columbia University, and throughout New York City, and throughout the world of education in all its forms. The Institute invites participation on all levels from the greater Teachers College and Columbia University community, as well as from the community at large. Together let us act to achieve a vision in which all people can use information technology to enable themselves to fulfill their greatest potentials and highest aspirations.

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