As I woke up with my children last Friday to the sad reality that we will be facing massive, extended school closings, I spent the morning thinking deeply about what this means for my kids and the education community as a whole. It was hard not to contemplate how their lives as learners will change forever.

Throughout my 20 year career in education technology I have been a part of multiple teams and initiatives that have been focused on driving tech transformation and innovation in schools. Be it Online Assessment and Data Analysis at Schoolnet, SIS and eLearning at Pearson, Digital Courseware with Discovery, or Robotics and Computer Science with LEGO. The challenges to delivering on the possibility that technology brings are tremendous and complex.
However, I would have never imagined such a dramatic event, our current pandemic, to turn learning upside down. But it truly has.
If there is a positive development as a result of our current health situation, it is the fact that learning models are being forced to adapt to (and leverage) current technologies and digital innovation. There has never been a more appropriate and necessary time for education to catch up to our children – and how they consume, collaborate, connect, and engage.
Today’s learners were born into this digital world, and they need to be the focus here. How are we as an industry and community going to meaningfully adapt to the reality that our children need to benefit from the massive innovation in technology that is benefitting every other industry globally? How are we going to shift mindsets into realizing that what students need today is much different than even a decade ago and that the skills and knowledge necessary for life and career success can be developed for and delivered primarily via technology?
The school building, teachers, counselors, and the education community, are absolutely critical in human development. There is no denying that, however, this time will and should bring significant shifts in how we engage, motivate, and inspire children in learning.
It is well beyond time that we materially change how we deliver engaging, relevant, and personalized experiences in the mode our children live and thrive in. This means being aggressive in developing educational experiences with technologies that are advancing every other industry. We need to embrace possibility in order to deliver for our children… and they are ready for it.
For the past several months, Curriki has been building a comprehensive development environment and delivery platform that will bring robust and easy-to-use authoring tools and mobile delivery to the K12 learning ecosystem. These tools are designed to dramatically reduce the technical barriers to creating and distributing next-generation learning experiences for all children, free to individuals and non-profit organizations. This will be an iterative process, releasing functionality and learning tools for the community, driven by the community. We are launching a preview release of the platform in the coming weeks, and we encourage you to join the effort.
Finally, as we evaluated how Currki can support teachers and students in this time, it only deepened our resolve to provide you, our educator community and students, the ability to create and deliver different types of learning experiences and content that we know will be necessary to engage our students from afar.
This is not a “Free for Now.” Our technology initiative is deeply rooted in the origins of Curriki, making high-quality learning experiences available in a FREE and OPEN environment.
CONTENT CREATORS: BUILD NEXT GEN LEARNING WITH US
Curriki is developing a comprehensive and easy-to-use development environment, content exchange, and delivery platform to bring robust and easy-to-use tools and mobile native delivery to the K12 learning ecosystem.
If you are looking for new and engaging ways to deliver digital learning experiences to your students, please reach out!