Innovate 2 Innovation – An Assessment of California’s Innovation Ecosystem (Phase II) Digitally Enhanced Education

Abstract

This document is one of three reports produced in response to a request from a bi-partisan group of California Legislators, which asked CCST to assess the state’s innovation ‘ecosystem’ and offer a specific list of recommendations for legislators to enhance the state’s ability to foster and benefit from innovation.

To prepare its response to the Legislators’ request, CCST convened a series of roundtables with academic, industry and research leaders across the state in late 2010 to seek their input on the challenges faced by California and possible solutions that could be achieved by building from California’s S&T capacity. From these meetings, CCST identified two key strategies essential to achieve this task:

• Developing and leveraging public-private partnerships linking California’s assets in education, research, technology, finance, and philanthropy to create social and technical innovations that competitors with less complete infrastructure cannot match.
• Enlisting California’s international competitiveness by enlisting California’s S&T community in finding solutions to two of the State’s major challenges, education and water.

In this report, CCST proposes that California’s 21st century learning environment be grounded in digital learning, transforming schools into “incubators of learning and innovation.” The skills and competencies gained in these learning environments would be directly applicable to the workplace. These incubators would be characterized by student access to technology; personalized learning; use of on-line content; assessment and accountability; and an overall learning environment sensitive to and grounded in the digital age.