The Education Business Blog

When textbooks go fully digital what will schools buy? Will they buy individual lessons, units of 2-3 weeks length, or full curriculum that span a year the way they do today? This is the $5 billion question facing our industry.

Mike Shatzkin has an excellent post on this topic over at The Shatzkin Files. His framing is concise and revealing for those of us mapping out strategy for the analog to digital transition in instructional materials.

He was on a working group preparing for a talk about copyright across different publishing markets:

[I needed to say]..why the problems caused by digital change for newspapers and magazines and record companies were so much more grave than they were for book publishers (so far.) It is simply stated.

For those businesses, the unit of appreciation does not match the unit of sale.

By that I mean that record companies sold us albums when what we wanted were songs. That’s what their economics were built on. The minute we could buy songs, it blew up their business model. Newspapers sell us the weather when what we want are the box scores, or the horoscopes when what we want are the comics. There are many books which will be read cover to cover. Newspapers and magazines are rarely read cover to cover. It was never thought of as wasteful or uneconomic that most people actually consumed a small percentage of every newspaper and magazine they bought. But it gets harder and harder to make that sale in a digital environment.

The Answer - All of the Above

I've noted elsewhere that Education is not a lone target market - it is an industry with many niches. If we think about units of appreciation we can see that there will be instructional products like novels that are already sold in the unit of appreciation and products like music "albums" that will shatter on contact with digitization.

As I turned this over it occurred to me that what is being taught will be a major factor in this. In a nutshell skills development requires products very similar to what is offered today, knowledge development demands a variety of source materials, and fundamental reform efforts may demand a larger horizontal and vertical integration not available today.

Baby Bear - Just Right - For instruction in basic skills (reading, math) where the focus is on developing fluency and automaticity full curricula that use a consistent pedagogy and emphasize a predictable lesson structure will always be valued. A consistent approach puts the focus on the skills not on the structure.

This is not the same as "kill and drill", the focus is on consistency not rote learning (not that there is anything wrong with that...).

This will also apply to materials for students who are struggling - reducing the distractions between their reading skill and the grade level content is essential. One huge distractor is jumping around to a lot of disparate materials. Considerate text makes a big difference here.

Mama Bear - Too Big - Knowledge acquisition for on-level students is an entirely different kettle of tea. If we want to model 21st Century Skills for learners it is incumbent on teachers to use a wide variety of source materials so that students can experience how knowledge is developed in the real world. Social Studies, Science, Literature, Career Readiness etc. all demand a catholic approach to content. The unit of appreciation is a lot smaller than a textbook - in many cases it is a single page document.

Whether this breaks down to the individual lesson or learning atom or is a the unit level remains to be seen (again - probably all the above). Given the time pressures on teachers we will probably see multi-week units that are packaged as a very popular option (many teachers do this on their own today). While it is a threat to the industry it is also an opportunity - digitization makes it easier for publishers to play in this game as well.

Papa Bear - Too Small - At the other end of the spectrum some schools and districts may be in the market for comprehensive reform. Individual textbooks that are siloed into disciplines may actually be too narrow a unit of appreciation for these customers.

One option for them would be curricula that are integrated across disciplines and which are horizontally and vertically aligned to student skill levels (e.g. multiple reading levels for the same content and/or spiraled strands through the standards). Another option might be platforms like Blackboard that provide some structure, but which can be filled with content.

Equally important in this may be bundling additional services with content - specifically ongoing professional coaching targeted at improving teaching. not just product orientation.

Summary

I really appreciate Mike's crystallization of this concept because it gets to the heart of many of the critical strategic decisions the companies in our space will face in the next 5-10 years. Get the units right (from your customer's perspective) and your business will be right.

This is genius. Someone carefully thought this through and executed well. I laughed out loud several times. You have to engage as you write the story.

And we know that stories are powerful learning tools...

There is some cussing - but whether it is truly NSFW is up to you.

My personal favorite? Shooting the bear.

Marketing As A Group Activity - Morgan's Wonderland Trip

Sometimes you don't have to go it alone with a marketing campaign - in fact when you partner well the sum is a good deal greater than the parts.

PCI is sponsoring a family to visit Morgan's Wonderland - the first amusement park designed specifically for individuals with special needs located in San Antonio. If you know a family that has contributed in their community and you want to give back to them send in a nomination via We Are Teachers.

This is a three way partnership between Morgan's Wonderland, PCI, and We Are Teachers and is designed to deliver a real benefit where our audiences overlap. We are leveraging the social network of We Are Teachers, the reach of PCI into the special needs community, and the innovative work the Morgan's team have done.

E.D. Kain over at Balloon-Juice has a fascinating saunter through crime stats since video games became widely popular.

According to the FBI, since 1990 violent crime has been on a steady decline. E.D.'s basic hypothesis is that some of this can be attributed to people experimenting with rage and mayhem in video games and learning how to manage their emotions more effectively as a result.

Those of us advocating for video games in the classroom have been making a related argument. By allowing kids to experiment with activities that are too dangerous, too expensive, or too time consuming we can broaden their experience and expose them to epistemic frames they would not normally have access to. In the case of violence - it is far safer for everyone to experiment with it virtually.

At the end of the day attributing this decline to any one thing is unrealistic - but it is significant that the statistics flatly contradict the popular meme that violent video games are desensitizing young people and causing a rise in crime.

It just aint true. The next time you hear some cultural scold go off on this topic change the channel.

Go read the article - it is short and makes a good case.

"With the right support and intervention...people with learning disabilities can succeed in school and go on to be successful later in life." Wikipedia

Last week PCI acquired SpellRead, Momentum Math, Text Connections, Summer Ventures, and an unreleased Algebra program from Kaplan. I don't normally use this blog to talk about what we are doing specifically at PCI, but given that this is an unorthodox move in these economic times I thought I'd lay out the case for the acquisition.

These intervention programs target reading or math and they fit snugly into our line of products for academically challenged students. They are age appropriate for middle and high school students who are significantly behind grade-level expectations and need intensive, small-group instruction.

They also have some outstanding research results - in fact SpellRead was the small group intervention program rated the highest by the What Works Clearinghouse.

Really? In this economy?

It may not seem like the optimal time to be making a move like this with the economy and education budgets looking like they will stagnate or decline for the next several years.

But as we look ahead we see an ongoing emphasis on serving all students and in particular reaching those students that traditional approaches have failed. A quick review of the policy directives coming out of the Obama Department of Education makes clear that accountability is not going to be sacrificed to short term economic pressures. That in turn means schools will continue to invest in reaching students who are struggling.

Evidence also shows that companies that invest wisely during downturns emerge stronger than competitors who pull back. We have increased our catalog distribution, hired sales reps, and boosted our on-line presence in the last 18 months. These new products fit nicely into our channel mix and should help fuel our market beating growth record of the past couple of years.

The Strategic Context

The supplemental publishing world has been in transition for several years. The traditional market for small scale ad-ons to basal materials is still there, but alongside it a world of comprehensive targeted intervention curricula has sprung up. In fact, most of the growth has come from the comprehensive side - examples include Read 180 and Wilson in reading and Carnegie Learning and TouchMath in mathematics.

The reason for this is rooted in student outcomes. Educators have figured out that instructional materials designed specifically for the job at hand are much more effective in reaching these students where they are. It is possible use adaptations and modifications of the basal textbook materials - but it isn't optimal.

All of these products fit into this new category.

A More Complete Product Line

PCI has traditionally served both the Learning Disabilities (LD) market and the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) market. For the past 3-4 years our internal product development focus has been on filling a huge gap for IDD focused academic programs. The PCI Reading Program and Environmental Print are behind our rapid expansion in 2009 and 2010.

The acquisition refreshes our line on the LD side with 5 top notch programs. Our Development Team's first reaction on seeing the materials was "this is exactly what we would have written." We were impressed by the simplicity of design and the thoughtful structure provided for instruction in the materials.

If you are interested in seeing where we go with them be sure to tune into our web site for further developments. We have some pretty cool ideas about how to take rock solid programs and wrap them with innovations that build on 19 years of expertise in serving these students.

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