The Education Business Blog

My prior post on iTunes and Textbooks started with this iMix. As I mulled the educational implications over I realized that this was exactly how teachers should be sharing instructional materials.

As a musician and music aficionado I listen to a lot of new music. My tastes range across genres - what draws my interest is solid musicianship, great lyrics, and a good tune. Over 2-3 months I probably listen to 200-300 new songs inspired by recommendations from friends, recommendations from iTunes and Pandora, and stuff I hear randomly. Oddly, I find some of the best stuff on political blogs (Juan Luis Guerra below). I rank the songs using iTunes and from the short list of 5 star songs I create a mix to share. I also toss in a couple of old favorites that I haven't listened to in a while (like Cocker on this mix).

My musical adventures are not typical - but I hope that is why playlists like this are valuable to others. I've done the leg work of culling through a lot of new stuff to find the best (for my ears).

There are teachers and former teachers who do the same thing with lessons and lesson plans. Most teachers have other priorities - but those that do scan for new stuff should have a tool that allows them to take the best of the best (as they see it) and publish it easily for others to sample.

Ears up! In this mix you will find latin, rock, gospel, folk, jazz, and bluegrass. These are many of the tunes I listened to as I blog.

Sample the ones you like or download the whole mix. Let me know your favorites too.

Next up in this series - why a database in your pocket is the killer app for the age of social media.

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Posted In: Culture

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Why can't teachers buy lessons like people buy songs off of iTunes? Are publishers at risk of irrelevance if they don't proactively solve this problem for their customers?

I have noticed that my music habits have changed dramatically over the past 5-6 years. With the advent of iTunes I was no longer bound to buying albums - I could sample and just buy the songs that sounded good to my ears. Most albums have 2-3 good songs, several so-so songs, and a couple of clunkers. I only want the good stuff thank you very much.

Musicians put a huge amount of energy into creating albums that presented a sweep of music in just the right thematic sequence. Decades of practice dictated that this was something that customers wanted. Only - once they had a real choice - they didn't. It was vanity not reality.

Are textbooks and other "comprehensive instructional materials" the same? Teachers have "lifted the best and ignored the rest" since the first textbook was published, so anecdotally they are very similar.

But publishers pride themselves on providing a "coherent" schema in their materials. They regard this as a huge part of the value they add to the process. Like musicians they can fool themselves because there are no affordable alternatives (in time or money) - yet.

Will textbooks suffer the kind of profitability collapse that the music industry has gone through as the business model shifted? I honestly don't know. One thing the textbook publishers have on their side is time - education moves more slowly than the consumer market. But that shouldn't lull publishers into thinking they can avoid the central question through the usual lobbying, legislation, and front list development. It just means they may have time to adapt before they become irrelevant.

Here are some links for additional reading on this topic.

Links:

iTunes U is Apple's foray into this - but it is mostly at the lecture level for students - from what I can tell it is not optimized for teachers to collect, manage, and share - yet. Apple is probably the furthest along with this - which given their role in transforming the music industry should give all the publishers pause.

Hotchalk is taking a stab at this with their site.

McGraw-Hill has experimented with iTunes University.
MyScribe claims to be iTunes for textbooks - but you still have to buy the whole dang book.

Adaptive Curriculum (a client) is providing atomized content - they have hundreds of science and math activities that can stand on their own and be integrated easily with other materials. Their business model is to sell a subscription to the whole collection rather than the individual bits.

If you know of more projects in this area please let us all know in the comments.

(FYI comments are moderated to filter for spam - they will appear within 12 hours of posting.)

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Posted In: Education Technology , K12 Publishing

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Education technology bloggers have been a busy lot with NECC 08, end of school year, and lots of new products to play with. Here are just a smattering of some of my favorite posts from the past few weeks. Enjoy.

John Rice flagged an article showing that putting games in libraries increases reading. This jibes with a presentation I saw last week at Games Learning & Society - a public librarian started doing game nights and they saw their youth circulation double - for BOOKS. This is going to make several people in my house happy - Mrs. Education Business Blog is a middle school librarian and the EBB spawn are avid gamers and readers.

Danah Boyd shares some meaty insights on status and online behavior for teens. The money quote:

In his book "Geeks, Freaks and Cool Kids," Murray Milner Jr. suggests that teens' particular obsession with status is because "they have so little real economic or political power" (2004:4). He argues that hanging out, dating, and mobilizing tokens of popular culture all play a central role in the development and maintenance of peer status. Just as these activities take place in school, they also take place in networked environments.

Continuing in the meme of bad marketing that I've been on lately David Armano names several bad habits marketers fall into. Funny and instructive at the same time. My personal favorite - shiny object syndrome. Let me know yours.

Want to have your pre-conceptions about school challenged? David Kirkpatrick compiles a list of provactive questions nobody dares to ask about education. I don't agree with everything on the list - but it it made me stop and think.

If you come across something interesting in your web perambulations pass them along!

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Posted In: Education Technology , K12 Publishing , Marketing Management , Serious Games

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Are you interested in how video games and simulations support teaching and learning? Then the 4th annual GLS is where you should be this week. For my money it is the lowest signal to noise event that I attend all year. Oh - and you get to play some really fun games.

Here are a few random observations from day one - by no means a comprehensive review of the event or the topics covered.

In the opening session Cory Ondrejka noted that all the interesting questions about games and learning are interdisciplinary. This is a real challenge because in the institutional structure of a university there is no political base to sustain research.

Katie Salen challenged the group to think bigger - she feels we are in danger of not working to implement the things we are finding out at scale. I'm not sure I agree completely with here given some projects that I'm aware of - but those may not be visible to the academic community.

Kurt Squire noted that we need to move beyond just games and look at the conditions they create. This is in sync with a conversation I had with Atsusi "2C" Hirumi the other day where he talked about focusing on the elements of "interactive media" rather than just "games." I think this is an excellent distinction and could also help address Katie's concerns.

David Shaffer presented some really interesting work on assessment - essentially a model for testing an evolving worldview (epistemic frame) not just discrete knowledge and skills. There is a lot of math - but this approach basically measures the relationship between several important criteria (values, skills, etc.) over time. It has some really intriguing implications for measuring 21st Century Skills. To Cory's point this is possible because David is bringing a cross disciplinary toolkit of psychological techniques together educational theory and interactive media.

There is a strong thread of using game design itself to teach 21st Century Skills. I worry that this is a bit of having a hammer so the world looks like a nail. In the end while many schools are giving lip service to 21st Century Skills they are getting measured and rewarded for improving reading and math scores. Until we can help them directly with that challenge we won't get permission to go deeper.

A random observation - if you want to encourage groups of kids to work together your games need to work more like Craps and less like Blackjack. The whole table wins at Craps together so you get a lot of crosstalk. In Blackjack you can take my "pefect" card - we play against the dealer but we don't play together. It is a quieter game.

The game room is also great - Madison is alive with GTA, Wii Fitness Fanatics, Rock Star. and Portal. Lots of fun stuff to preview and test out. I'm embarrassed about my Wii Fitness score - my only excuse is I'm coming off a month of back problems. Sigh.

The Jason Project previewed Resilient Planet - which looks like a great game for teaching scientific thinking by recreating ground breaking experiments in the field with guidance from experts. Kudos to them for this work.

I did a preliminary release of the white paper I'm writing for the Software Information Industry Association on Best Practices for Implementing Games in the Classroom. It was well received and several practitioners validated the findings as consistent with their experience. I''ll post more on this separately.

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Posted In: Culture , Serious Games

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This video spoofs the phony voice of marketers and advertising. It is "office safe" so don't worry about the volume. Enjoy.

Does your marketing sound like this? You might have been able to get away with this 15 years ago but since social media has allowed people to opt out this kind of insincere over-dramatization you need to be careful.

For education publishers you also need to remember that many teachers teach critical thinking skills - if you are talking down to them they won't react well.

Just like those idiots in the Houston Airport I wrote about last week.

To drive home the point here is another video (props to Microsoft).

It is time to start building an on-line persona for your brand and company that is based on sincerity, honesty, and mutual respect. You can start with the copy on your brochure-ware site - but I strongly encourage you to wade into the world of blogs, Facebook, and We Are Teachers to build a true Socratic Marketing culture.

If you wouldn't say it to someone's face don't say it in your marketing materials.

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Posted In: Marketing Management

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ISTE's NECC 2008 was a success by any measure. The sibilant susurration of schmoozing and selling suffused the show space. Attendance was high (12,250), sessions were well attended (over 924), and the show floor was constantly busy. Even the San Antonio weather cooperated by being a bit cooler than usual.

If you landed on the planet on Sunday and came straight to NECC you would have no sense of the pressure on education budgets that the economic downturn is creating.

Some of this is attributable to Texas, which as an oil producing state is having a milder downturn that many parts of the country. Typically 50% of attendees at national trade shows are from within in 200 miles (double that for Texas). But that doesn't explain all of it since according to the official numbers Texas attendees only made up 25% of the total.

Since budgets for instructional materials remain relatively static what is going on? Don't be fooled by the calm surface waters, there is turbulence down below in the niches that make up the total. Companies that are producing standards based education technology resources and tools are booming. Textbook publishers continue to commoditize and consolidate.

The evidence is piling up that education technology does work - even if it is just at the level of engaging today's digital natives more effectively than print. Given the costs of textbooks ($35-$75 a copy) it is getting easier to justify digital resources ($2-$10 a year). Good teachers know what works even without Scientifically Based Research (SBR) and they are voting with their interest for digital resources.

But some of the same old complaints were heard. No School Board asks the Instructional Materials folks to prove that textbooks are being used in the classroom, but they demand this all the time for education technology. It isn't an unreasonable request - but the standard should be applied equally. If teachers are only using 50% of a textbook that is a lot of useless atoms being shipped and schlepped around. As for SBR and skepticism about technology consider this - if the textbooks were working as claimed we wouldn't have failing schools....

NECC remains the premiere education technology event of the year, the launch pad for the following school year, and the best place to do business with your customers and your partners.

Having said that I am increasingly skeptical that the amount of money spent on these shows is justified. Thee were at least a two companies that spent over $500,000 on this event. It showed in their presence on the floor and around town. But what could they have done with that amount of effort and cash on more plebeian but long lasting efforts like sales force training, new product innovation, or web 2.0 based marketing (which delivers new customers 365 days a year)? For half of what they spent they probably could have achieved the same result and been ahead in other parts of their business.

I'm advising my clients to dial back their investments in trade shows. To be clear - I'm not advocating abandoning trade shows - but I think they need to be relegated to a more junior position in the marketing budget given how much more effective other programs can be.

NECC 2009's Washington DC location drew a mixed review from the vendor community. It will be useful to be in the capital in what is shaping up to be a transitional year for educational policy. On the other hand DC is one of the most expensive places to do business in the country with hotel rooms even at third tier chains going for $250/night. It will also be the height of tourist season - plan for busy and expensive flights as well.

A Few Corrections

Yesterday in my impressions of NECC piece I made a couple of errors.

There were computer vendors on the floor including Dell, Gateway, and RM. While Apple was not exhibiting they were engaged behind the scenes in sponsoring events and providing equipment for registration and other activities (although it was amusing to see IBM monitors hooked to Macs in the reg area). But the overall computer vendor presence was subdued. Even Microsoft had a relatively small space.

I underestimated the number of people Promethean sent - it was over 100. Times are good in whiteboard land. With Nettrekker and Atomic Learning they threw a hell of a party for their customers last night (thanks!).

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Posted In: K12 Publishing , Marketing Management

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