On Thursday, July 31, 2008, Digital Promise, a fund to keep America competitive in this digital century by transforming education, workforce training, and lifelong learning, was passed by both the U.S. House and Senate as part of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. It is expected to be signed into law by President Bush. Digital Promise will establish the National Center for Learning Science and Technology Trust Fund based on the principles of Digital Promise. The Trust’s goal is to transform America’s education at all levels through the development and use of revolutionary advanced information technologies comparable to those that have already transformed the nation’s economy, its communications system, media, and the daily lives of its people.

The Trust will enable the nation’s schools, universities, libraries, museums, and public broadcasters to reach out to millions of people in inner cities and remote regional areas, no matter how poor or deprived, in the U.S. and throughout the world, with the best of the educational and informational content now locked inside their walls. It will support the research and development of new models and prototypes of educational content, taking full advantage of the Internet and other new digital distribution technologies. For example, the Trust will commission pre-competitive research and fund the development of prototypes to:

- Demonstrate computer simulations that let learners tinker with chemical reactions in living cells, practice operating and repairing expensive equipment, or practice marketing techniques, thus making it easier to grasp complex concepts and transfer this understanding quickly to practical problems.

- Demonstrate sophisticated help systems that provide accurate answers to questions using a combination of artificial intelligence and live operators.

- Demonstrate new communication tools that could enable learners to collaborate in real-time on complex projects and ask for help from teachers and experts from around the world.

- Demonstrate learning systems that could adapt to differences in student’s personal interests, backgrounds, learning styles, and aptitudes.

- Demonstrate tools that provide successively more difficult challenges with appropriate levels of scaffolding that motivate the learner while avoiding frustration or boredom.

- Explore learning opportunities present in persistent, online learning environments.

- Provide continuous measures of competence—integral to the learning process—that can help teachers work more effectively with individuals and leave a record of achievement that is compelling to students and to employers.

- Demonstrate new tools that could allow continuous evaluation and improvement of the learning systems themselves.

- Digitize America’s collected memory stored in our nation’s

universities, libraries, museums and public television archives to make these materials available anytime and anywhere.

Join the Digital Promise Coalition here.