This piece is part of Mashable Spotlight, which presents in-depth looks at the people, concepts and issues shaping our digital world.

In the middle of Brooklyn’s high-end Dumbo neighborhood, 20 inner-city children sit around two wooden tables at what appears to be a small summer camp. Tablet computers are scattered across the tables, punctuated by plates of corn chips and bowls of salsa. The kids are restless on this sweltering July afternoon, fidgeting in their chairs and asking the handful of twenty-somethings if they can play Temple Run or maybe just head home for the day.

These kids aren’t technically campers, and these Millennials aren’t counselors. Instead, the children are product testers (paid weekly in $100 Amazon gift cards) for News Corp., the Rupert Murdoch-founded media conglomerate that began Fox News. The “counselors” are News Corp. employees, tasked with recording these children’s every reaction to the educational games into which News Corp. has poured at least $180 million, according to Bloomberg, on top of the $360 million it spent to acquire the technology.

It's a small part of the corporation's new education arm, Amplify.

Today, the tablets aren’t working well; the group relies on Internet from a building across the street, which has been unstable. Some children begin playing their “real” games, such as the aforementioned Temple Run. These are the titles Amplify hopes to replace with its own “educational” games, for both their own tablet and others (the kids today are testing games on iPads).

The company plans to cash in on education with custom-made tablet computers and curricula, as American classrooms move ever closer to complete digital integration. It began by purchasing a company called Wireless Generation, rebranding it as Amplify and pouring in more than half a billion dollars.

News Corp. owns Dow Jones and Company (which includes The Wall Street Journal) and HarperCollins, among many others. What it hasn’t been involved in, until now, is education. But given the rise of Common Core, a country-wide set of K through 12 curriculum standards adopted by 45 states, News Corp.'s timing makes perfect sense, at least financially.

A teacher implements Common Core education standards with her students in a fourth grade math class at Piney Branch Elementary School in Takoma Park, MD. Image: Linda Davidson/ The Washington Post via Getty Images

Corporations involved in education follow a precedent — McGraw-Hill rules the textbook business — but this level of potential involvement and control does not. In the past, these corporations have always been at least somewhat bound by cumbersome restrictions. Each state established unique curriculum standards those textbooks needed to meet. However, Common Core has forever changed that.

Then, textbooks were always static tools.

Tablet computers are endlessly updatable machines, nearly always connected to the Internet. These are far from static; they’re dynamic. While the Amplify tablet offers teachers a certain modicum of control — each school district decides what apps can to load onto its machines — both student and corporation also have access to those devices.

This is uncharted and controversial territory. News Corp.’s undertaking is lauded by some and pilloried by others. Only one thing is certain: The company is heavily invested in Amplify. But why?

Image: Amplify

Given its location, you might think Amplify is one of the many hip startups that calls Brooklyn home (back when it was still Wireless Generation, it was). Its headquarters’ lobby, three floors above Etsy’s offices, supports this theory. One white wall displays the text “AMPLIFY.” printed in the company’s unassuming orange. As I wait, I keep expecting a Zooey Deschanel lookalike to round the corner.

But these appearances seem deceiving. Aside from location and a deceptively simple lobby, the heavy presence of its corporate parent hangs in the office. Workers keep their heads buried behind two sprawling floors of cubicle walls. It’s only one of many offices, including a location in Midtown Manhattan, where most of the bigwigs work. But here, hundreds of designers, programmers, writers, artists and all manner of tradesman toil away on some aspect of Amplify.

Mainly, that's a tablet computer, created for K through 12 classroom usage, and a Common Core-based curriculum, designed by Amplify.

Amplify’s mission statement declares, “Amplify is reimagining the way teachers teach and students learn.” That message seems drilled into the heads of everyone I meet. Certain phrases tumble out of everyone’s mouth, a corporate mantra that quickly loses steam. The first time I heard “We’re not trying to replace teachers. We’re trying to be the teacher’s assistant,” it rang true. The fourth iteration, less so.

Whether it’s true or not remains to be seen. Given the newness of classroom tablets, there aren’t many studies gauging the devlices' effectiveness. According to the U.S. Department of Education, "technology-based instruction can reduce the time students take to reach a learning objective by 30 to 80%," and a PBS study states that 81% of teachers feel tablets aid education. While the numbers might seem shockingly high, many experts warn these studies are vague at best and don't completely tell the whole story.

Dr. June Ahn, an assistant professor of education at the University of Maryland, says research shows “on average, the delivery method doesn’t matter.” Reading in a book is no different than reading on a screen. “It’s not the device, but the interaction that matters,” Ahn says.

Leonie Haimson, executive director for Class Size Matters, a nonprofit advocating smaller class sizes, says, “There’s absolutely no evidence showing online learning works, especially K through 12.” Haimson thinks it’s actually detrimental. “This trend is likely to undermine education,” she says. “Somehow, [people believe] the idea that putting kids on tablets or computers and giving them software programs to work on is personalizing learning rather than depersonalizing it.”

This doesn’t mean tablets couldn’t be useful. At this point, it’s all purely speculation. Widespread innovation in the classroom doesn't often happen. The two most recent innovations, essentially, were the textbook and The Oregon Trail. So we know reading and writing still works, and that it’s pretty easy to teach kids the horrors of dysentery. Tablets are likely the most expensive gamble American education has yet to see.

Even so, News Corp.’s $540 million investment shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. We seem to be on the precipice of one of the biggest changes education has seen since Socrates coined his method. The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest school district in the country, just awarded Apple a $30 million contract. For $678 apiece, every student will have an iPad. Meanwhile, Florida is rushing to meet a new statewide standard requiring half of all classroom instruction to use digital materials, by fall 2015.

Image: Scott Eells/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Textbook and curriculum creation is a $7.8 billion industry that, until now, Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have mostly controlled. But once 45 states adopted the Common Core State Standards Initiative, it opened the door for companies like News Corp.

Common Core offers a countrywide set of mathematic and English language arts educational standards, effectively making curriculum creation easier. Instead of developing for each individual market, one size fits (almost) all. The margins for profit are higher than ever before, while the investment costs are lower.

Potential financial boons like this don't come around often.

Add in a tablet computer, class management tools and educational video games, and News Corp.'s gamble isn't such a longshot.

The Amplify tablet — a customized Android tablet with a 10-inch, Gorilla Glass screen — is powered by a lithium-polymer battery that can last up to 8.5 hours, about a school day.

Before ever reaching the hands of the curious and easily distracted masses of children in a school district, that district’s leadership decides what apps to download onto the machines. It can restrict access to Chrome or, more likely, Angry Birds. Later, any access-denial requests go through Amplify’s support system.

Like textbooks, the tablet comes in two forms: a teacher and a student version. The teacher uses his or her tablet to control how students interact with theirs; they can temporarily restrict access to certain apps, force students to participate in polls, sort the children into groups, randomly call on students. And don't forget the god-like “eyes on teacher” button — every student’s tablet goes blank, save for those (spine-tingling) words.

The student version, on the other hand, doesn’t have power over other tablets but is connected with them. It keeps a running tab of everything that happens electronically during a lesson, and it can start class-wide discussions (similar to a chat room).

It’s certainly interesting, but whether it will be beneficial is up for speculation.

“Murdoch wants to make money off of public education, so it’s no surprise that Amplify is pushing forward with no evidence that this works,” Haimson says. “My concern is this is taking money away from proven reforms.”

Some, though, theorize the technology could help certain students.

In her New York Times bestseller Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain points to research that proves the whiteboard-focused, crowded-room brainstorming sessions so popular in corporate America are far less effective than Internet collaboration. The screen that separates people is actually beneficial, especially when it comes to introverts, who require more time to process ideas before contributing.

To Cain, social media might be a “game-changer for introverted kids.” She tells me, “What I’m hearing from teachers is when tablets such as these are brought into the classroom … quiet kids are louder.”

“One of the things that most distinguishes introverts from extroverts is that introverts really want to process things and … reflect a lot before they jump in,” Cain says. Anyway, this mirrors the real world. “If you look at the way grown-ups work, it’s a patchwork of interpersonal communications and technological devices."

Indeed, at Fulton County public school, an Amplify pilot school in suburban Atlanta, children averse to participating were suddenly engaged, according to eighth grade assistant principal Chris Shearer. “One of the big things … is it allowed for a lot more participation in class,” Shearer says. “Classmates are seeing kids who are quiet, reserved, laid back that suddenly have something to add.”

Eighth grade Spanish teacher Stephanee Stephens agrees, pointing to an additional benefit: the ability to access updated content. “Anyone who’s had classroom experience knows textbooks are out-of-date,” Stephens says. “To have real-time experience on the tablet was game-changing.”

This small sample size is also a fairly wealthy one, Shearer readily admits. “I think larger school districts are certainly at an advantage [regarding classroom tech], because of the money we have.”

Amplify spokesperson Justin Hamilton claims its tablets are affordable, more affordable, in fact, than textbooks. He insists all aspects of Amplify are made and priced specifically for inner-city schools.

This might be true on the surface — the tablet costs $299 plus another annual $99 subscription fee. For a fancier AT&T 4G model, it’s $349 plus $179 per year. That certainly sounds cheaper when compared to other tablets on the market, but it might not be the most affordable option for schools.

Last year, Mashable compared the price of iPads and textbooks. We estimated that a 2,000-student, four-year high school school would pay an average of $180,000 per year for traditional textbooks (at $75 per book and six books per year, replaced ever five years). The subscription fee alone for Amplify would cost $198,000 per year for that school, and that doesn’t take into account the initial cost of tablets, cost for replacements, repairs or software. Not exactly cheaper.

Pew has found that "teachers of low-income students … are much less likely than teachers of the highest-income students to use tablet computers (37% vs. 56%) or e-readers (41% vs. 55%) in their classrooms and assignments."

Of course, tablets can be updated whereas textbooks cannot, but Ahn wonders how much e-publishers will charge for upgrades. Plus, no one knows how long a tablet will actually last. Fulton saw several shattered screens just this past year. Amplify responded by switching to Gorilla Glass (harder to break, but not impossible, especially for a determined child), but what other weaknesses remain?

“Are they strong enough to hold up?“ Shearer asks. “Certainly I think that’s a concern.”

Watching the 20 young product testers, it's hard to believe any tablets will last three years. They toss them around the blistering room. They grab greasy chips and smear salsa on the screens. This behavior isn’t surprising — these are children, after all.

And what happens when one child in a classroom is left sans tablet? Does the entire classroom have to go digital-less, due to one broken tablet, or does that student simply miss a few lessons? According to Amplify, schools can buy extras.

Upgrades are a concern, as well. Have you replaced an iPod, because Apple no longer manufactured the power cord it needed? Shearer wonders how quickly tablets will become “outdated” and call on News Corp. for upgrades.

Hopefully not often, since in the coming decades, schools might be using nothing but tablets. Ahn says the tablet computer is “going to become as normal as a textbook.” Amplify’s spokesperson hopes so. "We want the money we’re currently spending on print to [be spent on] digital,” Hamilton says.

If print is eliminated, however, instructors will have nothing to fall back on except potentially outdated classroom tech or more expensive devices.

Aside from the obvious questions whether the tablet, as a medium, is beneficial for learning, educational institutions must consider privacy and curriculum.

Joel Klien, Former Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education. Image: Jemal Countess/Getty Images

Amplify got off to a rocky start. Almost as soon as Joel Klein left his post as New York City schools chancellor and took a job as CEO of Amplify in 2011, his new company lost a $27 million contract with New York State schools in reaction to News Corp.’s News of the World phone hacking scandal. The first line of the official letter from the office of Thomas P. DiNapoli, the New York State comptroller, reads:

In light of the significant ongoing investigations and continuing revelations with respect to News Corporation, we are returning the contract with Wireless Generation unapproved.

DiNapoli's press secretary Kate Gurnett writes via email, “We rejected it because there were unanswered questions related to Wireless Gen’s vendor responsibility."

The state of New York isn’t the only entity questioning News Corp.’s motives. Roger Kay, a technology commentator and founder of Endpoint Technologies Associates, Inc, theorized in an op-ed for Forbes that Murdoch sees the education market as a Trojan horse for spreading his political ideology. After all, every school that purchases News Corp.’s curriculum will be teaching classes (somewhat) dictated by the corporation. Amplify makes clear its curriculum will be completely based on Common Core, but that’s merely a set of guidelines around which to build a curriculum. There remains a certain amount of freedom in actually writing lessons. Think of it like a turkey sandwich: the key components are turkey and bread; the rest is open to interpretation.

Selling tablets to schools might be a brilliant way of appropriating a still-juvenile piece of tech for other aims. Kay worries that by controlling the content-distribution platform, and thus, the content itself, News Corp. will be able to push a specific agenda. He says the “the hearts and minds of students” is “the battleground” of political and moral ideology.

In other words, what ideas is Amplify amplifying? The tool is a microphone, and the speakers are aimed at anyone with a tablet.

Amplify’s tablet-based curriculum is offered whether you own its tablet or not. It can run on any tablet computer, and pricing is still in the works. Hamilton calls the Common Core standards that inform its curriculum “essentially the adoption of the transcontinental railroad” for education.

Common Core makes content creation easier. In the past, a textbook company like McGraw-Hill might create a specific textbook for a large market (e.g., Texas), then tweak it to fit the standards of a smaller one (e.g., Arkansas). This square-peg-in-a-round-hole approach has been a point of contention for years, but proponents of Common Core claim it relieves that issue. Not having to invest in those tweaks also makes textbook creation potentially more profitable, and makes the education market more attractive to companies like News Corp.

Because the write-once-use-anywhere concept keeps development costs low, traditionally high-cost tools like educational video games are suddenly feasible. It's why News Corp. has tens of millions invested in them.

Douglas Clark is an associate professor at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College, arguably the country’s top college of education, and the principle investigator on the SURGE and EGAME grants, two National Science Foundation grants aimed at studying and creating educational games. And nothing irks him more than when other people take educational concepts and run them through “gamification,” a practice whereby one “just adds points” to basic tasks.

Points are extrinsic motivations, and “when [kids] get bored with extrinsic, they stop.” Games should provide intrinsic motivation, meaning the game itself is the motivator.

He compares points to frequent-flyer miles: something auxiliary (i.e., you get FF miles from flying, but you don’t probably don’t go flying around the country just to rack up FF miles). Most “educational” games take a task, like math, and add a point system.

Haimson calls games that actually cause learning the “holy grail,” but Clark doesn’t think it's easily accomplished. He says, “News Corp. can’t just decide we’re going to build good games for everything. That’d be too expensive.”

But Amplify’s VP of Games Justin Leitis doesn't mention points when speaking of Amplify’s set of English language arts and STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) games. Instead, he talks about Dr. Carol Dweck, a Stanford psychology professor who found (and subsequently wrote in Mindset: The New Psychology of Success) that people either consider intelligence to be static or malleable. The former don’t usually show academic improvement through the years, while the latter does.

But Leitis says this mindset doesn’t apply to games. “No one is going to be the world’s greatest player the first time you play,” he says. Everyone knows they requires time and repetition. He wants to build on this.

Lexica, Amplify’s flagship game, aims to do just this. Players are tasked to recover disappearing books in world run by librarians. They meet famous literary characters — Tom Sawyer to the Cheshire Cat. All the books are in the game, ready for reading. However some of the science games, in which you run the body’s metabolic system or traverse the interior of a cell, seem less than thrilling. They’re pretty enough but also stink of boredom, recalling the “educational” games parents would purchase from Scholastic book fairs some 10 years ago.

Some, though, think Common Core is simply a marketing tool.

“It’s a huge money-making opportunity for industries to say they’re aligned with the Common Core, without any proof,” says Haimson. This is especially true given the importance and ubiquity of "teaching the test," a colloquialism that prioritizes school-wide standardized test scores over individual student development. Schools that test well receive and/or keep funding, and Common Core has made this testing easier at a federal level.

While Fulton County didn’t test Amplify’s curriculum, its teachers and administrators received a demo. Shearer describes the math curriculum main display as a honeycomb: Each hexagon represents a Common Core standard. If the student has learned the standard, it’s green. If not, it’s red. In other words, it systematically teaches these standards, one after another (just like chapters in a textbook). Not quite the innovation Ahn had hoped for.

Either way, Common Core is the law of the land, and News Corp. has targeted it as a vulnerable point to break into education. Hamilton calls the moment exciting, a chance to “let a thousand flowers bloom,” a phrase he repeats on our second meeting.

Kay, on the other hand, is concerned about the oversight of the curriculum. He says it wouldn’t be difficult to make small changes based on political opinion. “You want a good academic controlling education,” he says, not a corporation.

He's also concerned the company will later decide to show advertisements on the very tablets they control from afar, perhaps as a condition for schools that can’t afford the devices.

Granted, there is absolutely no proof this would happen. Rather, it’s a concern, and not an unfounded one.

Once a textbook is printed, it’s printed. Black and white.

But a tablet involves an outside force with a means to control it or implement radical changes. Be it Apple, News Corp. or Google, a corporation will likely be at the helm of every single tablet a child takes into his home.

The future poses more questions than answers: Will inner-city schools be able to afford tablets, or will only students living in wealthier districts have the opportunity? Will schools even want to participate? Will teachers adapt to tablets or feel replaced? Will training be adequate, or will the learning curve prove too difficult? Will tablets replace “teaching the test," or will they reinforce it?

Most of these questions are transitory. Soon, tablets in the classroom won't be the future — they will be the now. The sooner we address corporate agendas and school district resources, the sooner the tablet can "revolutionize" the classroom.

As Ahn says, “In 20 years, our kids won’t bat an eye at tablet vs. books.”





Editor's Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated News Corp. owned Fox Entertainment Group. News Corp. and Fox Entertainment group split into two companies in June 2013.