Evergreen was incorporated by John Watson in summer 2000. John had recently left eCollege, where he’d planned and helped launch the K-12 division of the company. 

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, eCollege was one of several hubs of activity in K-12 online learning across the country (FLVS, K12 Inc, Connections Academy, and Virtual High School were among the others). Because eCollege provided services along with a learning management system, it was used by several of the first state virtual schools, which were also the earliest and most prominent K-12 online learning entities. After John left, Justin McMorrow and Chris Rapp launched the Virtual School Symposium for K-12 online schools. VSS was essentially an eClassroom user conference but welcomed entities that were not yet using eClassroom.

Much of the history of DLAC is interwoven with the history of NACOL (now the Aurora Institute).

In the late 1990s UC Santa Cruz had developed the University of California College Prep (UCCP) Initiative under the leadership of Francisco Hernandez. In the early 2000s Dr. Hernandez became interested and involved with other state virtual schools and commissioned three consultants (John along with Gordon Freedman and Rob Darrow) to study whether UCCP could grow in California and whether it could play a role at the national level. This study led to one of the early meetings attended by many K-12 online learning pioneers including Linda Pittenger, Julie Young, and Liz Pape, and discussions about creating a new organization focused on K-12 online learning. This and other meetings led to the creation of NACOL/iNACOL several years later. Because John had been involved with key people in this group both via eCollege and UCCP, he was hired to facilitate the first strategic planning meetings to plan and form iNACOL. That began a long working relationship between iNACOL and Evergreen. In addition, a few years later iNACOL purchased the Virtual School Symposium to become the iNACOL Symposium, which later grew to become the largest K-12 online and blended learning conference in the United States.

In 2003 Stevan Kalmon of the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) approached John about doing a study of online learning policy in Colorado. That study grew into a national report supported in the first year by CDE, the North Central Regional Educational Lab, Illinois Virtual School, and Wisconsin Virtual School. Matt Wicks, then of Illinois Virtual School, and Dawn Nordine, then with the Wisconsin Virtual School, were instrumental in developing the report along with Steven Kalmon, and Cathy Gunn of NCREL. Originally the study was planned to go just to the funders, but Cathy saw the potential for a larger release and put extra funds into a basic design and printing. Someone at NCREL—we will never know who—suggested that the report be named Keeping Pace. 

The first Keeping Pace was published in 2004, and within a few years it grew into a 150+ page annual report that was printed and distributed at the iNACOL Symposium. More than a dozen annual reports and special issues followed. Keeping Pace became widely known, cited in policy, research, and other venues, helping to shape K-12 online and blended learning.

The book Disrupting Class was published in 2008, marking a period in which blended learning became increasingly prominent as forms of digital learning flourished. Evergreen was a key element of the set of colleagues, friends, and (mostly) friendly competitors who defined the first decade or so of K-12 innovation as the field shifted from state virtual schools and statewide online charter schools to increased blended learning and district-level activity. Evergreen’s work shifted and grew as well. 

For several years Evergreen helped districts and individual schools implement online and blended learning programs. At other times Evergreen evaluated programs and moved into an external advisory role. We continued to report on digital learning and consult with and advise many of the state agencies, school districts, state virtual schools, and companies in the field.

In the mid-2010s the Evergreen team felt a need to shift gears. The Keeping Pace reports had been published for more than a dozen years. As a company, we felt like a band with a series of well received albums faced with the choice of doing more of the same (in which case critics say you didn’t evolve), or changing to something new (in which case fans ask why you abandoned them).

At the same time, the education landscape was shifting. For many years, online and blended learning were a focus of foundations, state agencies, politicians, and other people and organizations that collectively define and determine what types of activities and programs receive attention and funding. In the latter 2010s, some of that focus moved away from online and blended learning and towards personalized learning, competency-based learning, and other areas which may be linked to, but are separate from, digital learning.

We decided that we wanted to alter our approach but not our focus. Online, hybrid, and blended learning were too important to leave behind, regardless of the whims of foundations and politicians. In 2017 we began planning the Digital Learning Collaborative, to create the community of educators working in some of the most impactful, innovative schools in the country.

What do most geographically scattered communities have? A conference! In 2018, with a push from our founding DLC members, we began planning the first DLAC. Debuting in 2019, DLAC attracted 525 attendees, a sign that the interest we had heard about did in fact exist. However, attendance was below our projections. We had not fully accounted for how long it would take to spread the word about a new conference, and how many people would have interest but would not have funds available for a new conference. Still, attendees were overwhelmingly positive and supportive of the conference goals, ideals, and format. We ran DLAC again in 2020; attendance was up by 80% year over year, demonstrating the success of the first year and growing interest. As proof that sometimes being lucky is more important than being good, DLAC 2020 ran just before the world shut down due to the pandemic.

A few weeks after DLAC 2020 concluded, the pandemic shut down schools. So much has been written about emergency remote learning during that time that we won’t get into it here, except to say the digital learning community gained more prominence than ever. Over the next couple of years the DLC membership grew as did  the DLAC conference, between onsite and online attendance.We were happy to have 500 people join us in Austin, and over 700 attendees online in 2021. The DLC created a constant stream of year-round webinars, state gatherings, affinity groups, and other networking and learning from afar. In Fall 2024 we ran our inaugural Digital Learningpalooza, re-defining what an online conference can and should be.

With increasing complexities of operating our community, conference and consulting under three brands: operating DLAC, DLC, and Evergreen, it was time to consolidate everything under a single brand: The Community for Advancing Digital Learning.