DigiAcademy: Fixing 21st century illiteracy via eCROP's digital palette
solutions
All life is problem solving. Karl Popper, 1991
Robert S. Houghton
Western Carolina University
United States
houghton@email.wcu.edu
Abstract: The DigiAcademy model and Web site is a design that solves a series of critical questions. Why should a
culture invest in an expansion of digital hardware, software, and networking for all citizens irrespective of their ability
to pay? What philosophies and teaching practices create the best value for the rapidly morphing nature of cyberspace?
What should be the definition of literacy in our digitally focused 21st century? How does a global educational system
emerge that provides rapid effective benefits through digitally supported problem solving at all scales of community?
When can school classrooms of all ages and adult organizations both profit and non-profit implement this model? How
does an economic system generate rapid yet relevant and focused entrepreneurial growth from this model? The model
creates system guidelines for harvesting a global crop of ideas through an electronic community for resolving our
problems, eCROP, a global problem processor.
Introduction
What does it mean to thrive? It is one of the central cultural questions that emerges in the context of any
age. Once again in human history the cultural landscape is working through a major turning point and its economic
systems are undergoing vast changes. We are shifting from a culture that thinks locally and more regionally about
inventing and processing things, to one that thinks more globally about resolving problems by inventing and
developing ideas. Educational systems in turn have always followed such changes to fill the new needs. Around
what ideas could a re-visioned educational system center that would maximize the value of the new culture?
At the heart of human thriving is the question, so elegantly expressed by the symbol of the question mark.
To be able to pose and shape a question is to not only demonstrate the capacity to discover a problem but to provide
a mind that is prepared to learn and change. A question represents a mind that can scan for change, for what is new
and what possibilities that newness might pose. Our 21st century culture is already a 'perfect storm' of problems and
disconnected and overwhelming quantities of raw data that need the focus of questions in order to find effective
results. As questions are the seeds of solutions, the art of questioning needs nourishing by every means possible. The
quality of any crop of questions that range throughout our higher order thinking skills is not only a measure of the
health and capacity of an individual but of the health of all kinds of communities from homes to classrooms to teams
to larger organizations. Communities of whatever scale are the means by which we find, rework and share our
harder questions.
Quoting Karl Popper, one the leading philosophers of the 20th century, "all life is problem solving". This
line of thinking reaches back to the educational philosophy of the Socratic method and forward to the inquiry based
recommendations of Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky and Freire. Without our ability to question and solve, our species
would not be here. The steady increase of climate variability over the last several million years played a central role
in the evolution and extinction of numerous hominid species, leading to homo sapiens, us, as the last species
standing. Though the vagaries of weather have largely been defeated by invention of modern tools and resources,
other factors have picked up the charge for change, leading the ever faster pace of our current existence. The
exponential curve (Fig. 1) is a strikingly elegant symbol of the accelerating nature of 21st century life. Understanding
the complex implications and the accelerating problems created by this simple symbol on the left is critical for
surviving and thriving in the new age (Houghton, 2008).
Figure 1: An exponential curve.
To deal with life's problems, the basic idea of the CROP model and supporting web sites is to provide ideas
and tools for individuals and teams to better find (discover and share), frame (think about, shape, refine)
and solve problems. eCROP addresses the need through an overarching strategy for problem solving that fits all
ages, topics and content areas.
Thriving always happens in a context. We work with what we have and what we know. In this new age, the
greater our digital literacy, the greater our unprecedented new capacity for communities to resolve our problems
(CROP). The eCROP Web site is a set of philosophies, layered models, supporting digital strategies, teaching
practices, tools, library of resources, and instruction for problem processing in our ever more nonlinear 21st century.
Basic Models
To better follow this process means learning more about the emerging strategic thinking model that
undergirds the global idea processor commonly known as the World Wide Web (Fig. 2).
Figure 2: Three part strategic thinking model.
As "university" means a community of teachers and scholars, then for those that use it wisely, the Web has
already become the world's first global and free school and university. As scholars and teachers have always known,
becoming more effective in following this triangular process (graphic on right) also means becoming more fluent in
the literacy required to carry out problem communicating and processing more effectively. The clickable digital
palette on the left is an overview of the basic composition elements of the new literacy of our digital age, discussed
in detail within Breakaway Literacies (Houghton, 2010). In the subtle outlines of the yin yang symbol at the heart of
the digital palette (Fig. 3) the observant will see the outline of a question mark. These dividing lines outline a model
of the infinite interplay between our question solving compositions and the birth of new understandings, an endless
awakening of new questions and solutions.
eCROP stands for electronic Communities Resolving Our Problems, a model of one possible way to
provide models and strategies for this process. Within this model, the term community refers to any group of 2 or
more. CROP can also be seen as the application level of the emergent and chaotic paradigms (Houghton, 1989) that
are increasingly taking center stage in our culture. If we can unleash the question harvesting capacity of the Net and
and merge it with the Web’s capacity to bring global problem solvers to process those questions, the unbridled
optimism of even Star Trek seems reasonable.
Throughout human evolution this process has been able to draw on ever more varied and powerful tools for
thought, leading to the current range of digital tools for the problem solving trade, the newest literacy. The rich
nature this digital palette is represented by the model below, composition and communication tools that are used
throughout the problem solving process, each representing a wide range of options and features. Though unlabeled
the paintbrush stands for programming, the paintbrush with which all elements of the digital palette are created and
mixed (Fig. 3). The term “frame” simply represents that edge or border of any set of information, including paper
pages, the size of a display screen or a poster. The DigiAcademy Web site provides one or more chapters of
information, teaching methods and activities for each of the elements of the digital palette (see
http://tinyurl.com/digiacademy).
Figure 3: The digital palette integrates Popper’s philosophical focus on problem solving, a series of strategic
thinking models, and the ten elements of composition on which the digital age depends for its problem processing
communication.
As literacy is the capacity to understand and compose what goes on a page, the Web has transformed the
definition of a page and thereby transformed the definition of literacy. This transformational leap is as least as a big
a jump as the shift from oral to written culture. This has profound implications for our culture and the curriculum
needed to support its implementation, leaving even the curriculum of the few long-standing one-to-one programs in
the dust of its passing.
On the one hand we have the volcanic growth of the processing capacity of the digital palette and on the
other hand a largely invisible information explosion that has created tsunami of such Exabyte scale that we struggle
with metaphor to grasp it. Between these two hands there is not just a single but a series of enormous gaps that must
be tackled to effectively bring those hands together to aggressively tackle our significant local and global challenges
(Houghton, 2013). There is a deep irony in recognizing knowledge as the new oil while drowning in the seemingly
infinite wealth of the black gold while flailing about in raising those with the intellect to see and process it.
Relentless and accelerating change in world culture (Friedman, 2007; Gleick, 2000; Toffler, 1970) and
growing knowledge of our limited capacity to predict (Houghton, 1989; Smith, 2000) requires equally relentless
pursuit of ideas and systems that can address our problems and questions even faster than they emerge. The three
stage conceptual model frames the three main branches at the top of the CROP site’s web pages. Each of these
divisions contains their own models for action. This CROP model of DigiAcademy aids two audiences that seek to
spell out and solve problems, individuals and communities. CROP's design also highlights the enormous potential
for an integration of school-based and work-based learning communities. Web and Net technologies provide a wide
range of ways to discover, capture and share questions and problems, which are also central to the activity of
learning and teaching in more formal classroom and educational systems. Addressing authentic problems, real world
problems in which student effort towards solutions creates real-world answers has significant potential for greater
motivation and engagement in the learning process, a long standing problem in our current formal educational
systems.
eCROP’s performance-support system pulls together a wide range of genres of computer applications.
CROP also serves as a model for the development of similar but more specialized web problem processors which
could be designed for a wide range of disciplines and needs, for example, a “flatworld processor” (Houghton, 2012)
a global entrepreneurship creator. Knowledge is a very different kind of power from those that have preceded it. The
eCROP vision can also be seen as part of a new foundation for non-rival economic activity, the twinkle in the eye of
Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of the United States of America.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the
thinking power called an idea… He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should
freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and
improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature…
—Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813
Through problem processing we can reflectively teach ourselves and others. eCROP is a new kind of application, a
web based problem processor. The web site provides the scaffolding to help solve any problem, including those of
your community.
A Personal, Classroom and Community Problem Solving Model
The great danger of the current educational system is its blindness to its strength, its ability to teach its
participants to answer the problems and questions of others. Within that focus, come many weaknesses. This begs
the question of how many more might become educational successes if the focus shifted from the answer to the selfinitiation of questions, to inquiry-based learning.
Too often the learner is perceived as a kind of tape recorder, someone who must store, find and repeat facts
back on demand on some form of a computer-scoreable test. In a similar way, too often the worker and employee
has been seen as some kind of organic robot that simply carries out the thinking of others (Ehrenreich, 2001; Smith,
1776; Taylor, 1911; Whyte, 1956). Though demonstrations of the recall of information are necessary to everyday
experience, the information age increasingly puts such skill at the bottom of its ladder of economic and cultural
importance. Are there not other more interesting and more valuable models for teaching, learning and
working? Such activity can be found within the problem processing models for creativity, ethical and critical
thinking, and inventiveness.
Such a problem based line of thought that connects real world knowledge with intellectual growth has long
been pursued by educators (Kliebard, 1999) and researchers (Strand el al, 2003; National CBR; PolicyOptions).
Those interested in entrepreneurship and the health and economic growth of businesses pursue a similar agenda
(Kurato & Hodgetts, 2007). The information age with its growing cognitive requirements (Darling-Hammond, 2006)
has accelerated this reassessment of learning and teaching as central cultural goals. The DigiAcademy site pursues
educational and community reform and innovation through a focus on a goal important to every area of study and
life, questioning. The acts of finding, reframing and solving problems are at the heart of economic and cultural
growth in the 21st century, and therefore problem processing should be at the heart of the teaching and learning
process as well.
Problem solving provides a meaningful and useful context through which CROP integrates a number of
socially important agendas: preservice teacher reform, educational leadership, authentic learning, technology skills,
information literacy, community building, school-parent-community building, university research that is
community-based and business entrepreneurship. This site provides considerable support and guidance for
increasing problem solving skills with new technologies and further integrating legacy or older technologies. But
solving any given problem is just part of a larger model for problem processing. The CROP site also seeks to find
and provide the right amount of support for not only solving problems but in discovering and refining the problem
itself.
The brief description given here has but lightly overviewed major elements of DigiAcademy. The call of
our times then is to understand, develop and support the new literacy, to lobby and legislate for a digital literacy that
enables universal participation, invention and creativity for the increasingly challenging problems of 21st century
culture.
References
CBRNet http://cbrnet.org
Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Powerful teacher education: Lesson from exemplary programs. San Francisco, CA:
Jossey Bass.
Ehrenreich, B. (2001). Nickel and dimed: On not getting by in America. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Friedman, T. L. (2007). The world is flat 3.0: A brief history of the twenty-first century. New York: Picador.
Gleick, J. (1999). Faster : The acceleration of just about everything. New York: Pantheon Books.
Houghton, R. S. (1989. A chaotic paradigm: An alternative world view of the foundations of educational inquiry.
Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin-Madison.
http://www.wcu.edu/ceap/houghton/ThesisM/chaosthesis.html
Houghton, R. S. (2008). Major trends of the fourth age of computing that impact educational planning.
http://www.wcu.edu/ceap/houghton/EDELCompEduc/Ch1/technology_trends.html
Houghton, R. S. (2010). Breakaway literacy: New writing composition models and challenges in the 21st
century http://www.wcu.edu/ceap/houghton/Learner/MM/literacy-frameset.html
Houghton, R. S. (2012). Startup planning (entrepreneurship): Increasing economic health with flatworld thinking.
http://www.wcu.edu/ceap/Houghton/Learner/flatworld-processor.html
Houghton, R. S. (2013). The knowledge society: The impact of surfing its tsunamis in data storage, communication
and processing. http://www.wcu.edu/ceap/houghton/readings/Ch4_Knowledge_set.html
Jefferson, T. (1813, August 13). Letter to Isaac McPherson, Monticello.
http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl220.php
Kliebard, H. M. (1999). Schooled To work: Vocationalism and the American curriculum, 1876-1946. New York,
N.Y.: Teachers College Press, Columbia University.
Kurato & Hodgetts, (2007). Entrepreneurship: Theory, process, practice. Mason, Ohio: Thomson Higher Education.
PolicyOptions http://www.policyoptions.org/
PolicyOptions Wiki http://www.policyoptionswiki.org/
Popper, Karl (1999). All life is problem solving. New York: Routledge.
Smith, Adam (1776). An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. London : W. Strahan and T.
Cadell.
Smith, L.A. (2000). Limits to predictability in 2000 and 2100. Adaptive Systems for Signal Processing,
Communications, and Control Symposium 2000. AS-SPCC. The IEEE 2000, 129-134.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.27.7670.
Strand, K.; Marullo, S.; Cutforth, N.; Stoecker, R.; & Donohue, P. (2003). Community-based research & higher
education: Principles & practices. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Taylor, Frederick (1911). The principles of scientific management. New York; London: Harper.
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=6435
Toffler, Alvin (1970). Future shock. New York: Random House.
Whyte, William H. (1956). The organization man. New York, Simon and Schuster.