The Education Business Blog

I'll be reviewing the findings of the white paper I wrote for SIIA on Best Practices for Implementing Games & Simulations in the Classroom today at 4 ET (corrected). The webinar and the paper are free.

We interviewed teachers, administrators, and vendors who have successfully implemented edugames and distilled the lessons they learned about how to sell the idea, how to prepare, and classroom management issues. It is a very practical hands on look at this arena and has implications for educators and people designing edugames.

The webinar is part of EdWeb's lively Game Based Learning Community (500+ members). It is the first in a series of webinars with luminaries like Jim Bower, Chris Dede, and Dan Norton.

Links:

Webinar Log In
EdWeb Game Based Learning
SIIA

Will e-publishing kill traditional publishing houses? The following is presented as an antidote to this meme.

John Scalzi is not only an extraordinarily good science fiction writer he is also a pioneer in e-publishing and a very funny blogger. I loved this piece because it encapsulates so much of the current self-absorbed silliness and wishful thinking that poses as strategic thinking in publishing and those trying to kill it.

Take a deep breath and ask the questions deeply about what it means and you will see how wrong most of these statements are.

Scalzi gets the last word:

"... if you see one or more of your favorite arguments for how ZOMG EPUBBING WILL CHANGE THE WORLD FOR EVAR on the bingo card, you can be assured that your argument is not, in fact, anywhere as good (or original) as you might think it is. You might wish to cultivate new ones, or at least learn why your favorite argument isn’t always super-mega-ultra-convincing to those of us who have to think about this stuff as it regards our professional lives."

What is good product development? The answer is deceptively simple to answer and devilishly difficult to pull off. Basically people want three things - better, faster, cheaper. All the complicated analysis in the world boils down to these three fundamentals. Get them right and your odds of success go way up.

You need to nail at least two of them, preferably all three. You need hard evidence to prove you are doing them - and the definition of success must be from the customer's perspective.

While it is easy to see how this plays out in technology (better/cheaper = iPad 1 vs laptop, better/faster = iPad2 vs iPad 1, cheaper/faster = Netbooks vs. iPad) it is more difficult to suss out what this means in education.

Tailoring your mix of these benefits really depends on what specific customers need. Here are a four examples - one from each possible combination.

Variations on a Theme

Better/Faster/Cheaper - For certain students self-paced on-line curriculum fits this bill (Apex). It isn't a universal solution but for self-motivated students it can accelerate learning while holding costs down.

While many technology solutions claim they meet all three of these, in truth very few do. The reason is the infrastructure required - high end computers, broadband, professional development, and wi-fi, etc.

Better/Faster - High end interventions that take unorthodox approaches to teaching and learning often fit in this category (like PCI's SpellRead). If there is solid research to back up the claims these solutions can be winners even though they don't compete on price. They often come with a real commitment to staff development. Versus the cost of students dropping out they are not expensive, but versus traditional reading programs they are. You don't use it where you use traditional programs so this trade off works.

Better/Cheaper - Sometimes a book is all that is called for, and renting that book is better than buying it. Welcome to Chegg. There is evidence that students at the university level who have access to digital textbooks migrate back to print after 2-3 semesters. Print is still cheaper and easier to manage than digital in many cases. This won't be the case forever - but this highlights the essential insight that the only thing that matters is your customer's viewpoint on these issues.

Faster/Cheaper - Given the evidence we have today many of the flash based learning games fall into this category (Food Force, Peacemaker). We don't have enough hard evidence that they are better yet - but they certainly get students engaged with the content more quickly than traditional materials and many of them are free. When we have definitive evidence that they are better they will be a home run.

Success in this arena is tightly linked to picking the right target market. My thoughts on that are here.

I'm surprised we haven't seen more of this.

Notice to All Banker Types from a Teacher

Also too:

The hypocrisy is staggering. Bail out banks with trillions of taxpayer dollars - "bonuses are contracts and you can't touch them." Banks drive economy into the ditch and cause funding crisis for schools - "teachers are overpaid and coddled so unwind teacher contracts to solve the problem." Sociopaths is the most charitable term I can think of to describe the people making these arguments.

My take from another angle on this subject from the middle of the healthcare debate:

Pre-Existing Ignorance - Healthcare vs. Education

OPOL

What are the missing skills needed in education publishing to create 21st Century products for 21st Century learners? I penned a thought experiment for EdNet on this topic.

Education Publishing’s Own 21st Century Skills Gap – Change Begins At-Home Edition

Fun Architects, Content Marines, Talent Wranglers, and Shibboleth Hunters all get shout outs.

It was fun to step back and think about "the dog that didn't bark."

What gaps do you see that will require new skills?

A fresh batch of piping hot links that may be of interest to those in educational materials.

Are game mechanics the key to great social media marketing? The following link weaves some fascinating connections between the world of gaming and the world of encouraging people to try new things (the essence of marketing).

Everything I ever learned about marketing I learned from Dungeons and Dragons by Ian Lurie at Conversation Marketing.

What does this mean for students AND teachers?

Can authors simply ignore publishers in the world of Kindle and iBooks? Amanda Hocking, a 26 year old living in Minnesota, is minting coin at an astounding rate with no publisher.

The Very Rich Indie Writer over at Novelr.

Can this happen in education? You betcha.

How does ePub overturn the economics of print distribution? Mike Shatzkin's take on the demise of the wholesale model in trade publishing is worth a look. These economics are headed towards education and we'd better sort it out sooner rather than later.

Random House joining the (formerly) Agency 5, and what it might mean at the Shatzkin Files.

As Ted Turner is fond of saying "Lead, follow, or get out of the way."

Seth has a new book. Go read it (in your iPad).

Who Will Say Go?

We need a whole lot more of that in our business.