The Dell Education team participated this week in the ASU+GSV Education Innovation Summit.
The summit brings together national PK-20 EdTech leaders, innovators, investors, start-ups and entrepreneurs for an amalgam of panels, meetings and debates. In just its 5th year, this conference has grown to 2000+ attendees and more than 250 participating companies. This year, influencers and leaders such as Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Mark Cuban and Arizona State University President Michael Crow stood alongside start-ups, teachers and a handful of students in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The official theme for the conference was the American Dream through education and the most compelling idea that permeated throughout the event was the concept of “Kaizen EDU” and authentic results.
Continuous Improvement in Education
Kaizen, Japanese for improvement or change for the best, refers to philosophy or practices that focus on continuous improvement of processes, typically referenced in manufacturing, engineering and business management. In the Education context, it refers to a focus on EdTech innovations that are helping drive real and authentic student outcomes/results.
We had the chance to meet with a lot of our core partners, customers and members of the EdTech startup community, including Microsoft, Google, Ech360, Discovery Education, MGH, Ginkotree, Ranku and Mytonomy to discuss and debate “Kaizen strategies” and authentic “Return on Education” (ROE). We also participated in discussions around core issues that are deterring the U.S. education system from progressing, emerging innovations and promising new breakthroughs.
Key themes:
- Humans innovate – technology helps them
- Authentic student achievement is the ROE (Return of Education)
- Data security/Privacy and transparency once and for all
- Collaboration, engagement, persistence and grit as measures of hope
- Shift to competency-based learning models in higher education and student success measurement being driven by business, students and parents
While at the Summit, we were able to extend and amplify Dell’s story in how end-to-end IT can support EdTech innovation, entrepreneurship and learning achievement, especially when thoughtfully applied. Dell’s partnerships with school districts around the country showcase an entire Kaizen process from visioning and planning to implementation and professional development, all while addressing critical issues such as security, infrastructure and endpoint devices. These elements come together to make a difference in the classroom.
Kaizen Dell
It is clear to us that humans are the difference makers and technology can be the means for making that difference. We need to continue to bring the voices of students, learners and teachers to the forefront to influence “Dell Kaizen.” To that effort, we are excited to have recently launched the Dell Youth Innovation Advisors to help keep us accountable and continuously improve and bring students’ voices early into our solution design process. We were excited to have one of our advisors, Theresa Soares, join us in Arizona. Now more than ever, Dell is poised to partner with customers to bring real ROE and authentic student outcomes to the bottom line with the expansion of the Dell product portfolio for Education, which includes breadth, with Android and Chrome OS-based devices, and depth, with the fantastic new Latitude 13 Education Series and the Venue Pro Tablet line. In addition to Services solutions for readiness consulting and infrastructure blueprinting in Education, we are also strongly aligned with the core essentials necessary for sustainable change in education and are helping our education customers with key security and infrastructure solutions such as:
- Dell One Identity Manager
- Boomi
- SonicWALL
- KACE
- EMM
- VRTX
At Dell, we are thinking BIG on big and tiny data and investing in our work around Science DMZ with SDN for research computing. And last but not least, our investments in education industry leadership with the advancement of key, compelling education solutions around personalized learning with the Dell Learning Platform and Education Data Management (EDM) solution and services showcase the commitment Dell has made to authentic results in education.
We, at Dell, are indeed “Kaizen.”
