Introduction

It was during middle school that Samantha developed a personal interest in learning more about the stock market. Her curiosity about the stock market was not the result, however, of something she studied at school or a homework assignment. Rather, being a socially aware eighth grader, Samantha kept up on current events. In particular, the social justice movement stimulated her interest in learning more about how wealth is acquired and leveraged for societal good. Understanding the ups and downs of the stock market and its impact on the economy was derivative of that interest. To satisfy her curiosity to learn more about the connection between the stock market and the economy, she googled information about the various markets, read online stock reports about companies that caught her eye, watched cable business shows such as Mad Money and Squawk Box, and followed financial news reporters and commentators on social media. As her interest-driven knowledge increased, Samantha expanded her self-directed learning to include the foreign exchange markets, and ultimately to start using her allowance and babysitting proceeds to make some small investments and trades herself.

Her personal access to technology not only helped her learn about the stock market, but it also proved to be invaluable in managing her nascent trading career, in addition to supporting her schoolwork life. Samantha used the calendar function with the Google suite to get reminders about tomorrow's math test and next week's book report for English class and to keep track of critical financial industry events including when Apple was announcing its quarterly earnings. Electronic worksheets were useful for documenting her lab results in science class as well as helping her plan and track her stock trades. As Samantha explained to me, her self-directed learning about the stock market was not simply a hobby, but rather, it was preparing her to be successful in the future, most notably in terms of developing financial literacy and personal capabilities for making informed decisions about money. Empowered by her personal access to the Internet and a wide range of digital resources and tools, Samantha turned a curiosity to learn about the workings of the stock market into an educational and life preparation experience that was beyond what she was learning in school, and in many ways through a more meaningful learning process. And her intrinsic motivation for more information and knowledge continues to grow.

When I spoke with her in October 2020 as part of a virtual panel discussion, Samantha was starting to research and learn about Bitcoin. On that day, Samantha was also very proud that one of her early morning 10 cent trades on a stock that she had heavily researched was already up $2 by noon. There was no class in her middle school or unit of study in the prescribed curriculum that was helping students like Samantha develop real-world financial literacy or having contextually relevant experiences like this to learn about the ins and outs of the financial world. And while not every student may share Samantha's personal interest in this topic, curiosity is a human condition and thus, it is not unreasonable to assume that our young people have other learning interests that are beyond what is happening in their classrooms. Empowered with personal access to technology and an intrinsic motivation to learn more about the stock market, Samantha felt a personal imperative to address what she perceived as a gap in her education by taking her educational destiny into her own hands to pursue intellectual curiosities, academic interests, and career preparation goals on her own outside of school. Samantha is a Free Agent Learner.

Free Agent Learnership, the subject of this book, is the process by which students self-direct highly personalized learning experiences outside of school around topics and subjects of strong interest or academic passion for them as independent learners and owners of their own educational destiny. I call the students who are engaged in these self-directed, interest-driven learning pursuits "Free Agent Learners." The name is a take-off on a term commonly used in professional sports. In the professional sports world, Free Agents are athletes who are not bound by commitments or artificial structures that restrict their actions or limit their ability for example to negotiate better contracts with other teams. Central to an athlete's free agency is their self-determination, their ability to make their own choices relative to the direction of their career. The professional athlete who has Free Agent status has the capacity to pursue their own goals, whether that is to play for the highest bidder for their talents or for the team in their hometown. Likewise, students are Free Agents regarding their learning today because they now can also exercise greater self-determination when it comes to learning. Learning for today's K-12 students is not limited to the classroom or the afterschool program but rather happens across a variety of settings and through a seamless flow of practices from morning to night. The increasingly ubiquitous availability and access of digital tools and resources such as social media, mobile devices, online communities, and digital games is the fuel that is propelling this new learning paradigm of Free Agent Learning. Students' learning potential is no longer restrained by the knowledge of their teacher, the resources within their classroom, or their ability to visit a local library or museum. A world of knowledge and learning experiences can now be accessed with a few clicks or swipes on their personal smartphone. Empowered with access to technology and a passionate motivation for highly contextualized learning experiences, students are now "Free Agents" in the sense that they can drive their own educational destiny just as professional athletes with free agency have the capacity to direct their own career fate. Most importantly, the experiences that students are having outside of school, driving their own learning experiences, using a wide range of digital tools and resources, and using those experiences to prepare for their future success, are influencing their expectations for in-school learning as well. For today's education leaders, understanding Free Agent Learning is not just about gaining an appreciation for their students' out-of-school activities, but rather, it is an essential input in the ongoing process of transformation of K-12 education to ensure that all students are well prepared to become tomorrow's innovators, leaders, and engaged citizens of the world.

In my role as Chief Executive Officer of Project Tomorrow®, a national education nonprofit organization, I have been studying the role of technology in supporting student outcomes and teacher effectiveness for nearly 25 years. Starting in 2003, those research efforts were consolidated into a groundbreaking new initiative that not only provides annual national reporting on the digital learning trends but affords an efficient and effective way for K-12 schools and districts to understand the views and values of their local stakeholders on the use of technology within learning. Each year, Project Tomorrow through our Speak Up Research Project® provides a suite of online surveys for K-12 leaders to utilize to collect feedback from their students, parents, teachers, and principals and other district administrators. Any K-12 school or district can use the Speak Up surveys, and Project Tomorrow provides access to all locally collected data with appropriate state and national comparative data for benchmarking. By design, Speak Up is a free service with a mission to help all education leaders realize the benefits of incorporating the views of their stakeholders into local planning and decision-making. Central to the Speak Up Research Project is a unique focus on listening to the ideas of K-12 students about their own learning experiences, both in school and out of school. The nationally aggregated Speak Up data and insights about digital learning trends is widely shared through national reports, infographics, briefings, and conference presentations. The data and insights about Free Agent Learning shared in this book are derivatives of the Speak Up Research Project.

My personal journey to identify and appreciate the phenomenon of Free Agent Learning started in spring 2003. During a three-month period, I conducted focus groups with middle school and high school students in five of our nation's most challenged urban and rural communities to learn how students were using digital tools to support their learning, both in and out of school. The existing literature on the student perspective was limited to a few case studies, mostly involving students in suburban communities. I felt a strong need to hear from students in less advantageous situations about their digital learning experiences. I learned three fundamental truths from those student discussions that transformed my professional practice and my world vision. First, like the students in the suburban communities, these students in the less resourced communities I visited were using a wide range of technologies to support self-directed learning outside of school. This was especially poignant given that most of the students I met with did not have Internet access or computers in their homes in 2003, but they had the resourcefulness and personal drive to seek out places and people who could provide them with technology access on a regular basis. This reality obviously challenged the prevailing views and assumptions about the Digital Divide. Second, the students felt...