This needs no comment. Appropriately placed rude gesture warning.
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Seth Godin makes a critical point for instructional materials.
The platforms are changing all around us. Mobile phones, iPad, Kindle, Android, white boards, Moodle, etc.
Are you paying attention?
I refer you to four part series about technology substitution in the textbook publishing industry. Don't write the changes we are seeing off to temporary market fluctuations. By the time you notice the real trend it will be half over and you have little chance of catching up as the change accelerates.
The economic meltdown is only adding gasoline to a fire that was already going. The tighter funds get the more motivation our customers have to seek efficient alternatives to print.
How much of your development budget are you spending on R&D? The temptation in a down market is to hunker down and focus on low risk projects. I suggest that if you are not spending at least 10% of your development funds on cutting edge projects you are at a high risk of being irrelevant by the time the education market turns in 2014.
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Today's hotlinks include Pearson's take on publishing for the iPad, designing playful experiences, the coolest marketing program I've seen in a while, a new augmented reality game to promote social change in Africa, and Photoshop disasters.
John Makinson of Pearson Penguin gave an interesting talk on the future of publishing in an iPad world. Textbook publishers take note - he specifically cites one as part of his examples. This isn't just for Penguin.
Pearson gets it - mostly. But they can't escape the book metaphor. Essentially this is the sidescroller stage of evolution. Beyond Pong, but no further than Mario Brothers. Do something interactive, flip a "page." 3D, embedded social connections ("who else in the world is looking at this page that i could talk too...") etc. is still in the future and will require some radically different ways of constructing and navigating content. Hopefully they are working on that in the back of the back room. Hat tip to personanondata.
Katie Piatt: The Process of Play - shares a solid framework for designing playful experiences in educational settings. The emphasis is on playful not on games. It could be used in a wide variety of products.
ISU study shows that violent video game play makes more aggressive kids. This broad study confirms common sense. What the headline writers miss are two key points. First only a small portion of games are violent, this is not a blanket indictment of games. Second, the effect sizes while real are not particularly large. So lets build some more cool non-violent games like:
Portal 2. I. Can't. Wait. If you missed the original Portal go get it. This is also one of the coolest product sneaks I've ever heard of - marketers take note.
OR - play Susan McGonigal's new game Urgent Evoke designed to politically empower people in Africa. She did great work with World Without Oil - this one looks even more interesting.
And for your amusement go visit PhotoshopDisasters. Warning: you will waste at least 5 perfectly good minutes chortling over this site. You must read the captions - hot piping snark.
Have a great weekend.
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Been fighting the crud since Saturday. The best I can muster so far this week is an overdue iTunes Mix for your listening pleasure.
I found a couple of particularly good new artists (for me) - Richard Shindell (also in Cry, Cry, Cry), and Pink Martini. Thanks to Rich Geist at Winsor Learning for the Pink rec. Shindell was an iTunes rec.
A thread that runs through these songs are strong and unusual story lines - better than your average batch of "love ya/miss ya/can't wait to kiss ya" that makes up most pop. A marine captain drowns in the Mississippi, hippie band camps by the river and wins the town over, a tempestuous Russian/Italian love affair, Geronimo's Cadillac, and Guantanamo Bay all grace this list.
Yes - narrative is as important in making music memorable as it is in making classroom instruction memorable (and engaging).
More iMixes from Lee
Summer 09
Spring 09
Winter 08-09
Summer 08
Winter 07-08
Spring 07
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Lee Wilson is President & CEO of PCI Education in San Antonio. He has spent two decades in the education business at Apple, Chancery, Pearson, Harcourt, and Headway Strategies.
This blog covers strategy, products, marketing, and sales issues for technology and print publishers.
