A Gallup Student Poll recently found that,

the longer kids stay in school,

the less engaged they become.

In elementary school,

three quarters of students are engaged.

In high school, it's less than half.

It's as if they are just going on a slide

down into the pool.

Everyday, 8,300 students drop out of school.

That's over 3 million students every year.

Unless we make a critical turnaround fast,

our students are gonna turn into zombies.

But we can make this turnaround happen.

We can support them in a new type of learning environment.

A curiosity driven learning environment.

Think about this:

9 out of 10 of today's elementary, middle and high school students

believe that mobile technology will change the way they learn in the future,

and make learning more fun.

In fact, 56% of today's high school students own smartphones

and this number is only going to be higher in the future.

For the longest time, we used papers, pencils, erasers,

to share what we've learned and our observations.

But, times have changed

and, as an educator,

I've noticed students in the US, Japan and France

use mobile technology to share, communicate and interact with each other.

It's time to start adding mobile technologies to classrooms.

Now, I know that there are critics of this,

there are privacy issues,

kids can take silly photos.

But the benefits of having these students learn to use

mobile technology as research tools

outweighs all these challenges.

It's time to start thinking about

how these students should learn to use the mobile technologies.

So I started thinking: "How may we use mobile technology

to address that issue of the student engagement slump that we saw?"

And with this question in mind

I worked on a solution with fellow educators and designers

from Harvard graduate school of education and MIT media lab

called "curious learning".

We designed a learning platform and environment

where students can use mobile technology as real world observation tools.

After learning a new concept or theory, they can go and explore

and find evidences or examples of what they've just learned.

They can even share their curiosities and observations

with their classmates and their teachers.

We call this the curious learning cycle.

The teacher assigns real world assignments to their students,

that complements classroom curriculum.

For example, they can ask students to find

examples of geometric patterns for math or polination for biology.

And then students go out into the real world

and find examples and evidences of what they've been learning.

And to complete the cycle,

the teacher facilitates a discussion

based on the students' curiosities and observations

and brings those photos back into the classroom.

Take John for example.

He is learning about fractals in his math class.

What's a fractal?

It's an infinitely complex and self-similar pattern.

John's teacher asked his class to go out

into the city and find an example of a fractal.

John decides to go to Golden Gate Park,

and he is amazed to see that there are examples of fractals everywhere,

and he decides to take a photo of an interesting leaf

and share it with his class.

His classmate Anna, she decides to go to the piers.

She also finds an interesting plant

but she isn't quite sure whether this is a fractal or not.

So, she decides to take a photo, to ask her class.

And the next day, John's teacher

collects all these photos and they discuss

and share and compare them with each other.

Remember that sudden engagement slump that we saw ?

Lets reverse it!

As students, educators and designers and more,

we can imagine and create these new learning environments

that allow teachers to connect the curricular content

with student observations.

We can do this three ways.

First, we can allow students to have a voice with their curriculum,

to be more engaged with their curiculum.

Second, we can give them mobile devices

to make learning more fun and accessible to them.

And third we can allow more opportunities

for students to discover the real world.

As an educational technology specialist,

I want to increase student engagement,

both inside and outside the classroom.

These students want to see mobile technology in their learning environment.

It's part of their daily routine to take photos

and share them with each other.

In fact, the word "selfie"

was the 2013 Oxford dictionary word of the year.

So, why not let these students

use taking photos

as an opportunity to learn?

These are going to be

the lifelong, passionate and curious learners.

Instead of looking like bored zombies,

they'll look like Curious George

or Indiana Jones.

And with the tools and technologies that we have,

the possibilities are endless.

Thank you

(Applause)