The Education Business Blog

Tom Chapin's satirical song "Its Not On The Test" is worth a look. Even if you are a fan of No Child Left Behind this issues he raises need an answer.

I particularly like the jab at shout TV which reduces all discourse to name calling. Education reform is a deep and important topic and our current confrontational political culture isn't serving us well in this - or many other - areas.

He has a web site with good links and more information at Its Not On the Test.

Yeah the video production values could have been better - but the music is great and the message is delivered in a fun way using the kids.

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Posted In: Culture , Education Technology

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Crayon Physics from Kloonigames is a very cool serious game. I can see young kids in particular playing with this for hours. The designer said about one comment "Chris Baker wrote a great article about Crayon Physics Deluxe for Slate. He wrote that the game looks like it was designed by a third-grater. I take that as a compliment."

If you don't get video games this is an excellent video to watch. The kinds of puzzles kids are solving in Portal and World of Warcraft are very similar to the ones you see here. But with the interface stripped down to bare essentials you can get a sense of the brain work that is going on while players wrestle with the more complicated games.

If you want a sense of how engaging this kind of simple interface with some basic physics can be go play Linerider for a while. It only take a couple of minutes to learn it - then see if you don't want to just PLAY.

This also reminds me a lot of And Yet It Moves - a great indie game that got some attention last year at GDC.

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Posted In: Serious Games

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Information Overload and Education Publishing Marketing penned (keyed?) by yours truly was published today on the AEP blog. This is a summary of the longer series I did last year on information overload. If you want a quick introduction or need a refresher hop over and take a look.

While you are there bookmark the blog or better yet drop it into your RSS reader - on a regular basis senior people from the publishing industry will be writing about the business.

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Posted In: Education Technology , K12 Publishing , Marketing Management

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Advertising isn't working as well as it used to. In an age of information overload people are tuning out distractions as a matter of survival.

Here are two visuals to help make this point.

1. It is far more important to be found when someone is looking these days than to be visible when they are just scanning. To visualize this look at the graphic below

When someone is scanning (watching TV, reading a magazine, walking a tradeshow floor) it is relatively easy to fall into their visual field. When they are seeking (googling, reading blogs, using RSS) you have to be right on point for them to see you.

2. Don't believe me - take this 20 second test.

As people adapt to the world of information overload they will scan less and seek more and advertising will become increasingly difficult to justify.

As usual Seth Godin sums it up nicely:

"Media rule of thumb: if people wouldn't miss your ads/content/noise if it went away, you should find somehting else to sell to advertisers. Not because it is ethically wrong to annoy people just because you can, but because in a world with a bazillion channels, people just ignore you if they choose to."

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Posted In: Bad Marketing , Marketing Management

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Curious about how Web 2.0 is going to affect education? Steve Hargadon has distilled into one blog post an excellent summary of the trends that are leading us there and what teachers can do to help their students thrive in this new environment.

Much of what Steve talks about has been part of a vision for education long before computers were going into schools. There is a clear link from Dewey, Piaget, Vigotsky, and even the constructivist critic Mayer to the ideas Hargadon lays out.

Both the technology and the culture that surrounds it have matured to the point where this vision can transform into the dominant paradigm. Quantitative and anecdotal evidence backs this assertion up.

He describes in some detail the following shifts that are taking place:

• "From consuming to producing
• From authority to transparency
• From the expert to the facilitator
• From the lecture to the hallway
• From "access to information" to "access to people"
• From "learning about" to "learning to be"
• From passive to passionate learning
• From presentation to participation
• From publication to conversation
• From formal schooling to lifelong learning
• From supply-push to demand-pull"

"We've spent the last ten years teaching students how to protect themselves from inappropriate content – now we have to teach them to create appropriate content. They may be "digital natives," but their knowledge is surface level, and they desperately need training in real thinking skills. More than any other generation, they live lives that are largely separated from the adults around them, talking and texting on cell phones, and connecting online. We may be afraid to enter that world, but enter it we must, for they often swim in uncharted waters without the benefit of adult guidance."

For publishers I've outlined similar ideas about what is happening and what you can do to participate in this movement in the following series of posts.

Information Overload Series

Part 1 - It’s all in your head - really

Part 2 - A cure for “a poverty of attention”

Part 3 - 10 Ways to Build Instructional Products For 21st Century Skills

Part 4 - 10 Ideas to For Marketing & Selling In An Age of Infinite Input

Summary - Closing Thoughts and Resources

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Posted In: Education Technology , K12 Publishing

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What is the future of publishing? I moderated a distinguished panel at the IIR Education Industry Investment Forum in Phoenix last week that tackled this question. The general thrust was that publishers need to adapt to a new environment or they will be left behind.

Nader Dareshori CEO of Aptius Learning and former CEO of Houghton Mifflin addressed the real business of publishing – spreading ideas.

Reid Lyon (bio) the architect of Reading First and CEO of Synergistic Education Solutions tackled the question of context – how materials are used matters more than the materials themselves. Publishers need to think build this into their products and business models.

Hakan Satiroglu CEO of xPlana covered how new tools are changing the structure of what is offered and how traditional publishers are struggling with this new paradigm (see my post on this topic here).

Bobbie Kurshan CEO of Curriki talked about how the Open Source community is going to play in the creation of content and how publishers can benefit for participating in the community. (see my post on Open Source in Education here).

As moderator I discussed how publishers need to move away from trying to recreate the book experience on-line to leveraging experiences only the technology can provide like virtual worlds and video games.

Follow the “keep reading” link to find an extended description of each panelist's key points and some notes on the Q&A portion of the session. (If you are on an RSS reader you may need to click through to the original article to see this link).

Continue reading "The Future of Education Publishing - Panel Report from the Education Industry Investment Forum" »

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Posted In: Education Technology , K12 Publishing

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