GLEF: Its Mission and Its History

Credit: Edutopia

I'm often asked, "What is the mission of GLEF?" It's a good question, because our purpose is unique in the world of nonprofit organizations, foundations, and education.

Answering it involves a look back at our history. This year, GLEF is celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of its founding. In the late 1980s, Steve Arnold, general manager at Lucasfilm's Games and Learning divisions, had discussions with George Lucas [1] about his interest in education.

Less than twenty years ago, the personal computer was still in its infancy, especially as an educational tool. But even then, Lucas and Arnold had a vision that one day, the kinds of immersive worlds being invented in filmmaking could be adapted for learning. As media creators, they set out to produce a number of demonstration projects. One of them -- "Paul Parkranger and the Mystery of the Disappearing Ducks," published by the National Audubon Society and LucasArts Entertainment in 1992 -- still stands today as a provocative model using an interactive videodisc and a personal computer.

The system enabled students to help Paul analyze why ducks had not returned to the wetlands. Through that investigation, students learned about air pollution, deforestation, desertification, global warming, acid rain, and ozone depletion. It was a precursor to what we today call a virtual field trip, where video viewed over the Internet gives students a chance to see, hear, experience, and participate in explorations with teams of scientists and other experts at the North Pole, in Antarctica, and at many other sites around the globe.

Educational experts who reviewed this package of learning technologies were impressed but listed numerous reasons why it would not take hold in schools: lack of funding, technology, and trained teachers and a complete mismatch with textbook-based curriculum, obstacles that remain today. These experts did, however, say that a small percentage of teachers in innovative schools have always been at the leading edge of change. They encouraged Lucas to use his filmmaking talents to shine the spotlight on those educators and how they were already embarked on a path toward cooperative learning, project-based learning, interdisciplinary studies, and technology integration.

Telling the Stories of Education

Filmmakers, Lucas has said, "speak with very loud megaphones." GLEF's mission crystallized around using the power of media to amplify the stories of our nation's most innovative schools. That way, at least, these practices would not be hypothetical nor easily dismissed. GLEF could point to those exemplars and declare, as Immanuel Kant once said, that "the actual proves the possible." GLEF's documentaries and the stories in Edutopia magazine provide "the existence proof" that such innovation is practical, possible, and affordable in real schools led by real teachers.

GLEF's Multimedia Strategy

So, the mission of GLEF has been to use media's many forms to document, disseminate, and advocate for the innovative teaching and learning practices mentioned above. In our early years, we came up with the word Edutopia to communicate our belief in an ideal learning environment and this new world of learning.

As an operating foundation, rather than a grant-making one, GLEF uses its resources to produce and publish media that tell the success stories of education through our videos, our Web site, our magazine, and our weekly e-newsletters. Our media tell the inspiring stories of K-12 educators and their business, university, and community partners who are creating twenty-first-century schools. Often, these individuals and groups need to cut across the grain of conventional thinking and take risks that often go unrewarded, so it is indeed an honor for us to profile their work. Their passion has become our purpose.

In our own media making, we strive to practice what we preach: We integrate stories across media to tell the fuller story and enable users to access these stories in a variety of ways. For example, "Rain Check: Backup Systems Move Front and Center," [2] a component of "What's Next: 2006," [3] the cover story in the September issue of Edutopia magazine, on the future of disaster preparedness in public schools, tells how Sheryl Abshire, technology coordinator for Calcasieu Parish Public Schools, in Hahnville, Louisiana, saved the district's computer system in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and faced with the impending onslaught of Hurricane Rita. Although the schools were closed for thirty-four days, thanks to their efforts, she and her team made sure district staff were paid on time.

This article, also published on our Web site, is accompanied by an audio interview with Abshire, chairwoman of the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) and one of those pioneering leaders and risk takers more people ought to know about. The article links to another one about the culture of collaborative learning for students and teachers at Hahnville's Landry Middle School. That article sits next to a documentary video [4] on eighth graders who participated in an emergency-preparedness drill at the Emergency Operations Center in St. Charles Parish before Hurricane Katrina hit. (Landry's test scores, by the way, have shown impressive improvement over four years, in both math and language arts.)

Through harnessing the multimedia power of the Web, our strategy is to show the many facets of high-performing schools and districts -- their leadership, curriculum, assessment, technology, and culture. Our challenge now is to not only show what is possible and to stretch the limits of our educational imaginations but also to provide a manual on how they did it. This more specific layer of information, what we call the how-to level, requires us to provide the lesson plans, technology strategies, staffing organization, assessments, budgets, schedules, blueprints, and more of exemplary schools. As GLEF continues to carry out its mission, we want to engage with our community of education influencers, as we call you, to obtain these active ingredients that make up the recipe for great schools and school districts.

I invite you to let me know how you may have used this Web site, Edutopia magazine, or our videos, online or on DVD, to help create change in your schools. What other resources have you found helpful? What are the most valuable types of how-to materials you know of? In future columns, I'd like to share your ideas with our audience.