The Education Business Blog

London - BETT claims to be the largest education technology convention in the world. From what I could see the scale of the show is about the same as ISTE (nee' NECC) in the US, although the content is distinctly more international. There are some differences from US education trade shows, but the differences were not vast.

What follows are the impressions of a first time attendee and the lessons I hope I remember for next year.

Overall Take

Lesson - be very clear on what you are after and focus your efforts.

With over 600 exhibitors even the most intrepid and well shod attendee couldn't make it around to every stand. I planned ahead with the PCI team and then took the better part of the first morning just mapping out my plan of attack. Even with all that I'm not likely to reach every vendor I wanted to talk to.

Lesson - you may not see the future by attending this show, but you will learn that the problems with implementing technology are relatively universal. You may glean an idea or two on how to tweak your offerings.

I'd heard that the UK is about 2-3 years ahead of the US on the technology diffusion curve, but that isn't evident at the show. What is hot and what is not are not all that different (white boards, iPads, etc.). It may be that while the solutions sets are similar they are simply faster at implementing because the market is more concentrated.

That said it is really valuable talking to people who are tackling the same problems from a different perspective. It helps bend your thinking to see the issues in a different cultural context.

Lesson - know where funding for your type of solution is coming from - just like home this will determine more about the health your business than anything beyond your product offerings. BESA and NASEN are good sources of this kind of information.

The economic climate in England is just as dreary as the weather. The funding issues here are worse than in the US because there was no stimulus. Given this environment the show was surprisingly crowded and busy - I was impressed by the crush of people. What I heard was that technology is the place people feel they need to invest to prepare kids for the future. More specifically, like the US, Special Needs is also likely to be protected a bit more to insure accessibility. Another parallel to the US is that while national spending isn't likely to be cut drastically, local spending is where the real pain will be felt. This is very similar to the state budget crisis in the US.

Lesson - come prepared to get the most learning done on the show floor not in sessions. If you want to attend sessions plan on rising early (not so easy if you are on US time).

Don't come for the sessions. I was excited to see a strand of presentations just for Special Education Needs (SEN as it is called over here) and showed up the first day only to learn that sessions are by reservation only. There are also relatively few of them - meaning unless you get here first thing every day and get your seat booked you won't get in. But this show is far more about the exhibit area than shows in the US - the sessions seem like an afterthought.

Lesson - Perhaps CEC and the SPED vendor community in the US should start advocating for named strands at NSTA and IRA and other major shows.

One of the things that really impressed me about the show is the focus on Special Needs. There is an entire area of about 30 stands on the show floor dedicated to vendors who are focused on SEN and an additional Fringe exhibit hall off premises with another 15 vendors or so.

This is unlike anything I've ever seen in the US. The general education shows like NSTA (NECC), IRA, or TCEA don't go out of their way to create a focus on SPED - either in the exhibits or in the sessions. Yes we have specialized shows like CEC and ATIA but since inclusion is a huge focus we also need to be part of the generalist shows in a more meaningful way.

Two Travel Tips For USA Newbies

Lesson - Do a little legwork and figure out where you want to stay to maximize your London experience.

Don't worry if it is far from the convention hall. The experienced crew was down by Parliament, newbies like me were in Kensington.

Public transportation is really good. Unlike US conferences there is very little value in staying close to the venue (although it is in a very nice part of town).

Lesson - Be sure to check up on TripAdvisor or Fodor's or similar sites for reviews of the hotels.

Don't expect a large room. I moved hotels after I found out that my room was so small that I had to sit on the bed to use the desk and had to stand my suitcase upright in order to open the door. Even by European standards it was a very small space.

Better yet - if I attend again I'll use VRBO and rent an apartment. If space is really an issue for you consider staying in one of the US chains where you will find amenities you are used to - although it does feel a bit like cheating (yes I moved to Marriot).

Cheerio!

Ed Note: One of my favorite thinkers and practitioners on engaging kids deeply with Math and Science is Jim Bower. Jim is that rare combination of theorist and practitioner who is successful in both realms. He is both a Professor of Neuroscience at UTSA and the Founder/CEO of Whyville.net, arguably the stickiest web destination for learning ever created.

Jim has strong opinions, but he has earned the right to hold them through deep thinking and risk taking that applies his theories successfully in the real/virtual world.

Please invest the time to read Jim's post where he challenges us to see why the web is making us smarter, not dumber. The TEDx video then answers the question of exactly how you do this.

By Dr. James Bower

Recently, I was asked to participate in the awards ceremony at the White House for the “Apps for Healthy Kids Competition”, announced by Michele Obama and the United States Department of Agriculture last March. The program was designed to encourage game developers to make online games and mobile apps to help kids learn about nutrition.

After the ceremony I took advantage of a beautiful crisp day and walked to one of my favorite book stores, Kramer’s Books in DuPont Circle, to browse the newly released books in Science and Technology. I usually make this pilgrimage to see which of my friends have finally finished their books, but on this particular occasion a book titled ‘What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains: The Shallows” by Nicholas Carr caught my attention.

Suspicious, I skimmed the liner notes, to find that, indeed, it turns out that there is yet another danger now posed by the Internet to our way of life: it is altering our brains to make us dumb and superficial – and we are, as a consequence, loosing our capacity for “concentration, contemplation and reflection”. Claimed support for this assertion comes from “pioneering” neuroscientists Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel.

After scanning the liner notes and chapter headings, I didn’t buy the book, I suppose making me potentially yet another example of the deleterious effect of the Internet on human brains. However, with respect to this particular subject, I may sit in a particularly interesting place.

First, I am, in fact, a neuroscientist who has spent 30 years building computer models of cerebellar cortex trying to figure out how it works.

Second, I have spent the last 25 years studying how to actually use computers and computer networks to make us smarter, deeper and more engaged, not less.

Third, the reason I have been invited to contribute to this august part of the evil blogosphere, is that I also founded and for almost 12 years have run the children’s learning virtual world, Whyville.net.

And, I simply don’t see it.

Last fall, I found myself making a presentation at the Center For Technology in Teaching and Learning at Rice University to a group of middle and high school teachers interested in using online games and the Internet in their classrooms.

At the start of the presentation, I asked the teachers why they were there? The first teacher said, ‘because we have to do something, our schools are failing’. (Just as a side note, I believe that learning in those schools is built almost entirely around the deep contemplation of the printed page.) The second teacher however said, “I want to see the light in my kids eyes at recess, when they are on the computer playing games, in my classroom.”

I now know that I should have responded that the apparent light was an illusion, reflecting only the natural tendency of humans to prefer the superficial, but I didn’t. Instead I asked the teachers how many times, when they introduced a new subject in their classes, one of their students already knew more about it than they did. 100% of hands went up.

So, what is going on here? Why the endless drum beat of warnings about what the Internet is doing to our kids and their minds on the one hand, and then on the other, the growing experience seen by teachers and in Whyville that the Internet is actually much more deeply engaging kids than is traditional school, or their textbooks?

It is probably inappropriate to launch into a political polemic about who benefits and who is hurt by the massive disruption of business as usual represented by the Internet. But it seems pretty straight forward to me that people who make a living writing books, reporting for newspapers, and broadcasting TV might have an ulterior motive in suggesting that the internet is a bad thing.

But no space for political polemics here, instead in my remaining 100 superficial words or less, I want to tell you what we at Whyville are trying to do to set the record straighter.

First, we have always made every effort to have parents, or other adults for that matter, engage with kids in Whyville. IMHO, the disconnect between the lives of kids and the lives of adults is a particularly serious dysfunction in modern society, which the Internet can also help fix.

Working with our partner Media Chaperone, last fall we launched a new face book application, called “Piggy Back”, that is designed to keep parents informed about their children’s use of sites like Whyville.

When originally approached by Media Chaperone, their focus not surprisingly given the general media ‘internet scare’ story, was principally on providing information so that parents could be certain their kids were safe and behaving properly on the web. In our first conversation about a potential partnership, I pointed out that, actually, parents are much more interested in hearing positive than negative things about their kids and that in Whyville, there was a great deal positive going on.

As a consequence, parents using Piggy Back (it is free), now get daily reports on their children’s progress in understanding the physics of angular momentum, or their success in saving virtual money over time to buy a virtual car, or even, when their child contributes an article to the Whyville Times, Whyville’s online newspaper. All of these activities require deep serious effort, and concentration, BTW.

It seems to me that the problem isn’t that the Internet is making us dumb or superficial, the problem is that too little attention is being paid to the ways in which kids, in particular, are actually using the Internet and few have been interested in providing that information to parents.

Oh yes, there is also the problem that many sites built for kids assume they are superficial, but that will also likely change, as parents, publishers, authors, elected officials and especially venture capitalist finally recognize that people, and especially kids, want to be smarter, not dumber and the Internet is increasingly how they will do it.

Ed - For for more insight how how Whyville engages kids more effectively than traditional textbooks watch this video of Jim at TEDx

Jim Bower contact Information:

Twitter: superid101
Mail: Jim at numedeon dot com

Education spending patterns have been abnormal for several years. Publishing used to follow very predictable patterns - no more.

Between the Great Recession and ARRA Stimulus funds we have been living in an era of seesaw budgets for three years. Since education spending lags the general economy by up to 3 years this will continue until at least 2014.

I can remember entire decades where budget flows were so steady that you could predict the entire year within +/- 10% after the first three months. In 2008, 2009, and 2010 the first half of each year told you very little about the second half.

Let us review.

2007 - This was generally a normal year but the slowdown began to appear in the summer when property values began to decline. District Administrators could see the writing on the wall for state and local budgets that depended on property assessments and started to pull back discretionary spending.

2008 - The first of half of the year was slow but relatively normal. As the economy tanked the market dropped off a cliff in the second part of the year. The uncertainty of the election contributed - which Districts harboring funds to make sure they had enough to meet payrolls.

2009 - This year started like 2008 ended, but with the ARRA stimulus there was hope in the air. By September the market flipped to a boomtown through the end of the year as ARRA kicked in.

2010 - Stimulus spending continued to fuel unseasonably high purchases right through the summer months. In the fall the market began to stutter - one month up, one month down. The elections and the uncertainty about the role the Federal Government is going to play in backstopping State and Local budget shortfalls has got many Districts sitting on their hands again - just like 2007 and 2008.

2011 Prediction

So what will 2011 look like? The honest answer is "who the hell knows?" But that has never prevented me from having an opinion.

The big story this year will be the disaster in State budgets. Since over 50% of all spending on education nationally (and more depending on the specific state) comes from this source the crisis here will have a significant impact on education spending no matter what happens at the Federal level. Every penny of stimulus will help - but I don't see a scenario where the Feds can cover the shortfall - palliative care is all we will get.

January to to May - the market will look more like the second half of 2008, with schools and districts conserving funds as the Feds and States sort out who is going to pay for what. A government shutdown over the debt ceiling or other partisan wrangling in DC would exacerbate this further, particularly if the threat of recisions are in the air (which they are).

June-September - Barring changes to ARRA the remaining funds have to be spent by mid-September. Educators will scramble to make sure they maximize their access to these funds before they expire leading to a boomlet in instructional materials. One option on the table is extending the spending deadline - which may actually be a good thing for publishers if Districts get another year to spread the funds over.

This presents a unique challenge to publishers who will need inventory and staff to supply the boomlet. Sustaining this commitment through the first few months of the year will require some fortitude and more attention paid to the pipeline than to actual bookings.

October-December - Free fall. Post stimulus and deep into state budget crises I expect spending in these months to fall to late 2008 levels. Districts will be struggling to meet payrolls and funding for other resources will be very very tight.

Summary

The politicians are in an unenviable position. On the one hand the money really isn't there - particularly at the state and local level where balanced budgets are the law. On the other hand a child's need to learn isn't linked to the economic cycle - and in fact the forces driving the realignment of our economy call for a more educated workforce.

Short changing education helps balance out of whack budgets - but it also puts us as a competitive disadvantage on the world stage. How this question is resolved in the next 2 years will be THE central factor in how the instructional materials market evolves. The ESEA reauthorization will be the pivot point for this national conversation.

As always - getting involved in legislative affairs is one of the best investments a publisher can make. Even if you don't have an impact on actual legislation staying in the loop on what is coming out of the budget sausage maker will give you a leg up on the market.

Update - See this New York Times article for details on how this is playing out in Illinois. ht Tim McHugh at Saddleback.