A clutch of Silicon Valley chief executives, first thrown together in opposition to 1996’s failed Californian proposition 211, has developed a prototype system to bring together parents, teachers and children using the internet in an attempt to increase the children’s all-round skills in preparation for a future in the high tech industry. Speaking yesterday at the second annual conference on ‘the Internet and Society’ at Harvard University, Marimba Inc chief executive Kim Polese outlined the proposed technology, called Education Dashboard. The group of CEOs, called TechNet, sees its prime concerns at present as the debate over the US encryption laws, the caps on immigration visas, and most of all, the state of education in the US and how best to meet the demands of the high technology industry for home-grown talent, which is currently in very short supply. The group met with vice-president Al Gore last year, who suggested that as well as talking about these problems, they should put forward something tangible, in particular to deal with the education issue. Education Dashboard, still in the prototype stage and not yet seen in public, is an internet-based framework built in a highly visual way to make it easy to use, says Polese. She said it could be used by parents to monitor homework grades, to check whether their children actually attended classes, and for parents and teachers to communicate directly, among other uses. She said the intention is to make it available in community centers and libraries, as well as schools. The technology will be as open as possible so other companies, not necessarily represented in the group could easily plug in their software as well, says Polese. She says the group is now at the stage of looking for funding and sponsorship. Polese emphasized that she is definitely not advocating the eventual replacement of teachers with internet- based learning – she says the internet should be just one of the tools at the teacher’s disposal. She added that ensuring schools are connected to the internet is obviously crucial, but is often glossed over as a thing that everyone assumes is happening. Quoting a survey conducted by CEO Forum, she said that while 82% of US public schools are connected, only 3% have effectively integrated the internet into lessons, and less than half of the classrooms in America have any computer in them at all, while many more have obsolete machines. With 350,000 vacancies in the high-tech sector left unfilled, according to government figures, and while 60% of students entering college need remedial writing and algebra lessons, the stakes couldn’t be higher, said Polese. Proposition 211 was rejected by Californian voters in November 1996. Had it been approved, it would have lifted limited liability from the directors of Californian companies so long as just one California resident held one share in the company and greatly increased the likelihood of stockholder law suits. Polese, a native of Berkeley, California, acknowledged that Silicon Valley is often portrayed as politically agnostic, but she says many there have been galvanized recently, first by proposition 211, and more recently by these issues.
