Ed and Adriana, I*EARN came from a vision that has mushroomed into something quite amazing. What are your visions for the future and as a part of that question, what difficulties challenge your ability to manifest those visions? Well those are really big issues you've raised. Let me deal with some of the obstacles first. Over the last ten years I*EARN has grown to include about 3000 schools in 50 countries. Yet as we all know, that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the number of schools, teachers and students that could be involved. There are 106,000 schools in the United States alone for example. What we're seeing now is an exponential growth of interest. For the last several years schools have gotten online, schools have been wired and teachers have tried to do things on their own by surfing the net and trying to find project partners. They have realized that it's not easy. They've been told that all their teaching questions are going to be answered by access to the Internet. Of course once they get on, the volume of information is there and just the complexity is overwhelming actually. They don't have the time to surf and find and refind when the connections don't work. So now they're looking toward organizations that have some structure in the sense of community to help them with this process. This has created a real concern on our part. In the effort to exponentially increase, how do we maintain that which in my mind has been the key to our success-- that's been the high touch, the nurturing, the people to people part of the network, the building of the community worldwide. We often talk about an I*EARN family out there. In the process of expanding, how do we maintain that part of the program when in fact there are 10 million kids working together on projects? We are looking at various technological solutions. What parts can be automated? What parts can not, because then you lose the very essence of what you're about? We're struggling with those kind of issues. The other big issue is equity and access. It's been a pillar philosophy of I*EARN that the whole purpose of what we're doing is to give voice to kids so that the diversity of voices out there in the world can be heard. So that it's no longer one part of the world telling and giving answers for the other part but in fact that the Northern Hemisphere and our country and northern Europe actually listens and can hear the voices of kids in other parts of the world. So the struggle there is with infrastructures and technologies and economies that make it real difficult to do this kind of work. So there we're teaming up with other organizations to see what kind of creative solutions can be found, whether it's wireless technologies, whether it's somebody carrying lap tops to communities that don't have electricity and running water. There are a lot of schools that are in that kind of situation. Real challenges for us are how do we maintain a high level of technological infrastructure so that the high end doesn't walk away because it's no longer exciting but at the same time how do you not walk away from the very folks who are just now coming in or who don't have access to this high end technology. That's the tight rope we are walking and will continue to walk in the years ahead I suspect. Here's the vision. Yesterday in one of the sessions someone said that the Internet is a kind of magical dust to open up hope and optimism for linking people to people. For us that's true because it has the potential for literally involving million of kids collaboratively together in realizing the things that we never learned to do as kids--that we can actually talk together and work together and have some role to play in the world's issues. To me, that's the vision. That's the exciting part of the whole network. When people come together annually in the conference, to see the bonds that have been formed and the relationships that have been made, to me that speaks a lot about what we're trying to do in I*EARN. [Adriana] As a classroom teacher, my vision and my dream is to see I*EARN growing as it has been growing today. I would like many more teachers and many more students to have this possibility of working the way we've been working all these seven years. I would like to convince policymakers and administrators and those who have the power to make decisions that this is worthwhile. I am going to work on that when I go back to Argentina. We'll be thinking of you. I am happy to share your story in whatever way I can and let more people know about I*EARN. cliff's edge || jump || innovate || email