The Education Business Blog

Interactive Whiteboards (IWB) are all the rage in education right now. Market penetration is about 15% of classrooms and climbing like a rocket. Is it time for publishers to jump on this bandwagon? If so, which digital whiteboard is right for you?

I spent the better part of my time at the National Education Computing Conference (#NECC09) in Washington DC this week attending presentations put on by Smart Technologies and Promethean. My goal was to evaluate whether PCI Education should embrace these tools as part of our publishing plan.

The Good

I'm excited about what IWB's can do for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) (the market PCI serves). The ability to project large images and the engagement that comes with directly interacting with the media have the potential to improve instructional outcomes. The boards are kinesthetic, visual, and with the addition of speakers even auditory. All students can benefit from this, but IDD students in particular should get a boost.

Both companies have created on-line spaces where teachers can share lessons they have created. Promethean has the edge here - they have over 350,000 teachers in their community Promethean Planet, making it one of the largest on-line teacher communities in the world. Smart's Teachers Hub is smaller but has a nice mix of resources and professional development.

Another very strong development is a range of tools that are platform independent. One of the metaphors that the white board companies are batting around is that their toolsets (IWBs, response systems/clickers, and audio projection systems) are the "operating system of the classroom." The problem from a customer standpoint and a publisher standpoint is that realistically you only want to support one OS. RM's Easyteach has long had a suite of tools that run on any board. Promethean is promising that if you develop with their tools that the projects can run on other's boards. From a publisher's perspective this is good - but the reality is that few schools will want to invest in a white board which includes software and then go buy a different system. A solution exists today - but for this market to mature more work remains in this area.

The Bad

The tools are still evolving. Many of the examples that I saw were eerily like HyperCard projects from 15 years ago. The gap is that there isn't very much database functionality behind all this - just a flip chart based screen by screen metaphor. Both companies will kick me for saying this - but the closest application to what they provide today is PowerPoint.

Doing animations, and creating interactions seems to involve a series of tricks and work-arounds. Teachers who embrace the technology won't have any difficulty mastering these techniques - but for the rest of the world the tools are not quite as robust as they need to be for easy local authoring. With the amount of investment going into this space it is only a matter of time before the products mature.

If I were in the white board companies' shoes I'd go buy HyperStudio and build out from there. If I were a teacher and wanted to author a bunch of stuff this is the tool I'd use. Maybe a new entrant like Polyvision's Eno will will do this - they seem to be willing to break the mold and they don't have too much invested in a proprietary tool set.

Very little energy has gone into protecting copyrighted materials even as both companies are wooing publishers. Digital Rights Management is a hornets nest and I can understand why the white board providers want to shy away from it. I'd give the edge to Promethean on this one - they have created a "safe" mode where a publisher can release materials but local printing can be blocked (even screen scraping).

A side note - in many cases this is not an issue of the publisher wanting to place unreasonable restrictions on the use of materials. For a lot of older content they simply don't have the rights for open digital distribution.

The Ugly

As Doug Stein wrote on this blog recently the biggest danger of focusing on IWBs is that without systematic reform and professional development it reinforces the Sage on the Stage teacher role.

At its root the competitive arena is a complete rehash of the Mac vs. Windows battles of the early 90's.

The companies are going at each other with the same arguments that Apple and IBM/Microsoft used. Smart touts their worldwide market share (60%) and the need for kids to use the same tools they will encounter in the workplace (see IBM PC marketing). Promethean pushes the meme that their tools are designed specifically for education and are therefore more appropriate for schools (see Apple education marketing). On this one I have to side with Promethean. Their tools do look much more appropriate for the classroom and their student response system (clickers) are much more advanced for input and assessment.

On the customer side we are seeing administrators make the same mistake of assuming that the technology in and of itself has some magical quality that will change and improve what happens in the classroom. In many cases this is driven by a hard nosed career calculus - in the early '90's one of the most visible statements a new Superintendent could make was putting computers in schools. It was expensive, visible, and doable within the 3 year average job tenure they had. IWBs fit the same bill.

Sadly what we learned was that technology without extensive professional development changed absolutely nothing. This was the real lesson those who want to learn from history should take away from this battle. Fortunately Secretary Duncan appears to get this and while he has touted white boards as something ARRA funds should go towards he has also stressed the need for training.

Summary

What do I recommend?

Publishers should start working with IWB toolsets and figuring out the design challenges associated with creating interactive content in large screen format. IWBs are here to stay and their penetration into classrooms is going to climb. Getting familiar with the tools and how your materials can be developed so they are IWB friendly is important. I'd pick one of the cross-platform toolsets - Promethean or RM - or even just work in PowerPoint or HyperStudio.

On the school side I think both solutions are viable although I'd skew towards the Promethean solution since they are so focused on just the education market. It shows in their on-line resources, their development tools, their peripherals, and in the maturity of their approach to the market. New entrants like Polyvision's Eno also deserve a close look - they have a smaller footprint in the classroom and on your budget.

How can technology and innovation reshape education? Union Square Ventures put on Hacking Education - a conference that brought educators and entrepreneurs together to hash this out. Unfortunately they didn't have any practitioners from the education technology and publishing industries there. After reviewing the well written summary of the discussion I put together the following extended comment to add the perspective of someone who was there, did that, and got the t-shirts.

As someone who has spent the last 18 years in the Education Technology and Instructional Materials businesses I feel the commentary misses the mark from a business perspective. This isn't a critique of what was was covered - many of the participants are people I admire and cite frequently - Danah Boyd, Fred Wilson, Katie Salen, Steven Johnson , NT Etuk etc. It is meant to talk specifically about the business challenges of translating these great ideas into practice.

It might be tempting to dismiss folks who have been in the trenches as old school - people who "don't get it" - but some of us are not clinging to old paradigms but working hard to create new ones. Experience may blind us to new possibilities - but it may also guide you around some of the land mines many of us have already stepped on.

Most of us who have followed this path have been guilty of advocating massive changes through technology. Sometimes this takes the form the kind of carpet bombing Danah talks about - just throw enough CPUs/Bandwidth etc at the problem and it will magically happen. Other times it is the old saw about having a hammer and the world looking like a nail - see game based learning.

Both approaches share four problems:

1. They never address the scale issue. You can always find success with a few small experiments. If you have been around the market you see the same examples trotted out again and again. As a sales rep for Apple 18 years ago I told stories exactly like Gepettos. They are heart warming inspirational tales of learning and adventure - they are not a scalable business model.

We educate 54 million children in this country - develop a solution that will work for more than 500 at a time and you have something. Remember that in most communities the school system is the first or second largest employer. We spend $550 billion a year on education in the US - second only to the military. You can't run from the scale issue if you want to create businesses that serve the market as opposed to a very narrow niche.

2. Educational practice evolves incrementally and nothing ever goes away. Video games will have a huge impact on learning (they already are) but they are just one more tool in the bag. When a teacher uses and interactive white board it is the functional equivalent of scratching charcoal on a cave wall.

I believe we are at an inflection point and that education is ready for real technology substitution (see this in depth series here about it) but it will probably take a different form in education than it has in our personal media diet.

The most interesting design challenge in our market today is designing systems of instructional products (print, tech, professional development, social media) that amplify and compliment each other. To date most of the energy has gone into siloed products created by technologists or print publishers without any meaningful cross over. Most print publishers create technology that attempts to recreate the book experience on-line - snore. Most technologists are on a mission to kill traditional practices. Both miss what educators are asking for - blended products that use the best of all media.


3. The user developed content model assumes a motivated learner. On-line classes work best for the same students traditional correspondence courses worked for - i.e. not your potential drop outs but those with an extra dose of motivation. See item 1 - I've seen dozens of businesses that were able to get a few hundred users doing creative and interesting learning on-line that were never able to scale up.

Apex Learning which does on-line classes finally settled on AP level courses because those students work well for the environment. The rest of our learners need an actively involved coach and guide to work with them - a teacher. Products that are designed for a blended environment are the scalable answer for broad numbers of students - some on-line some real world.

The group talked about how kids are required to attend school by law. You also need to factor in that schools are required by law to educate all kids, including the ones who don't want to be there. It is a two way street. Innovative materials can go a long way towards addressing this - Tabula Digita's Algebra games are a great example of using technology to improve engagement with the content. UGC won't magically help these kids.

4. Poorly designed economics. Every time an idea runs into problems addressing scale or market needs people start talking about the home school market followed by the private school market. My BS meter goes off whenever I see this in a business plan (or comment thread). These are sizable markets - but each is only about 10% of the whole in students and considerably less than that in dollars. From a distribution standpoint they are also the most diffuse - making it extremely expensive to reach them for very small sales.

The web is definitely helping here, but at the end of the day if you are only going after these segments you are not hacking education - you are chipping away at the fringes. The biggest change will come from working with public schools to address the needs of a broad range of learners.

Christiansen's work would tell you that these are the markets where the innovation will occur first, but I'm not convinced. I think there are segments of the public system where disruptive changes can flourish - ELL and Special Education are two examples. Traditional materials don't work for these kids (disclosure - I'm CEO of a Special Ed Publisher).

Atomized Instructional Content as a Business Model

Another idea that runs into problems with the economics is atomized content. There has been a huge amount of buzz around this for the past few years - the idea being that if we can just turn instructional materials into the equivalent of iTunes teachers will be free to pick and choose the best bits and assemble them in meaningful ways.

This is a very seductive concept but misses an important distinction about educational content. A lesson structure is a bit like an operating system on a computer. If cut/copy/paste are done differently in every application it is very difficult to scale a platform. The user can't use a common base of experience to manage other tools. The same holds true for instructional materials. I'm not advocating traditional textbooks but something in between. Strands of content that can drop in for a week or two rather than an entire years worth.

Try this thought experiment from a business perspective. Assume you have a front line supervisor who has 25 direct reports. Best practice would argue for between 5-8 reports. How much time will that Supervisor have to think strategically about the business? Now imagine that they are required to submit daily and weekly progress reports on all 25 employees - no slacking off on a few of them for a week or two. This is your average teacher. They don't have time to assemble mix tapes of content for all their students.

This conference asked all the right questions. But Education is not a mirror of other markets. I stopped reading the newspaper and my life became richer through social media and blogs. But I can't imagine my kids getting a great education (as they have) if it was left up to our family to sort it out on our own. We need an educational system and if you want to build a business (at least in the near term of the next 5-10 years) you will need to find your entry point into the one that exists.

This is an enormously interesting time to be in the education market. We share the belief that the ultimate killer app is learning - the mind is wired for it. The businesses that can re-engineer publishing to support 21st Century learners and educators will have a bright future.

Related Blog Posts

Education Marketing 101 - A four part primer on entering the K12 Education Market.

Technology Substitution and Textbooks 4 part series

10 Ideas for Building Education Products for 21st Century Learners part of the Information Overload series

Serendipitously the New York Times published a front page article yesterday about "The Story of Stuff", a short movie about man's impact on the environment. It makes the point I was after in Sunday's post about the power of story-line in instructional materials. The movie has gone viral globally (7 million views) because it encapsulates the lesson in a broader narrative that kids (and grown ups) can connect to their own lives.

Some quotes from the article that support the contention that we can use stories more effectively in instruction and that we can trust kids to make up their own minds when given a chance to.

"...many educators say the video is a boon to teachers as they struggle to address the gap in what textbooks say about the environment and what science has revealed in recent years."

"Mark Lukach, who teaches global studies at Woodside Priory, a Catholic college-preparatory school in Portola Valley, Calif., acknowledged that the film is edgy, but said the 20-minute length gives students time to challenge it in class after viewing it....Mr. Lukach’s students made a response video and posted it on YouTube, asking Ms. Leonard to scare them less and give them ideas on how to make things better. That in turn inspired high school students in Mendocino, Calif., to post an answer to Woodside, with suggested activities."

Ironically Missoula banned the movie because of something they call "academic freedom" but which is the direct opposite of it. They banned it because it is one sided and biased and isn't kind to Capitalism. Rather than bring in competing narratives and letting the kids decide (academic freedom) they prefer to have watered down he said/she said materials that sacrifice academic freedom to "balance." I'm confident Capitalism can withstand this little movie, too bad the burghers of Missoula think it is shakier than that.

We are collectively discovering the value of social media tools like Twitter. As we do this we wander blind alleys and make surprising discoveries. Forthwith a peeve and a rave about micro-blogging.

Peeve - People who tweet that they are about to do something. So what? How about you tweet after you have done it and have something interesting to say. "I'm off to the mall" Fascinating - yawn.

Rave - Genuine kudos handed out freely. Yesterday a friend (@perludus) had to return a pair of shoes. He tweeted "Three cheers for @Footwise! Returned my shoes that wore through the sole in 2 months w/no questions asked!" Positive energy put into the system always comes back to you. It also makes others feel positive about the world. All that in 140 characters - cool.

Bonus Round

Peeve - Overposting. I now routinely check the tweet thread of people I might follow to see how frequently they post. Any more than a couple of times a day and forget it. Sorry - no one is that interesting. (An occasional burst when you are live tweeting an event is fine.)

Rave - Breaking News (@breakingnews). Get headlines long before they show up on mainstream web news sites.

Productivity Tip - Treat twitter like a room with friends in it. When you are busy elsewhere you don't hear the conversation and that is just fine. When you can drop by you get to hear what is going on and chime in. If you try to experience it like email where you have to see every tweet you will develop the twitter twitch (twittcher?).

Danah Boyd - one of the most incisive thinkers about how new technology is reshaping our lives (and more importantly to readers of this blog the lives of teenagers) - was recently hired by Microsoft Research. She gave a talk that summarized at a high level the history of social media, how teens and adults use it differently, and policy and behavioral implications for all of us to consider.

Social Media Is Here to Stay - Now What?

Its brilliant. Go read it. It will only take about 15 minutes and you will learn something - I guarantee it.

Here are a few select nuggets:

"For users, Web2.0 was all about reorganizing web-based practices around Friends....While many of the tools may have been designed to help people find others, what Web2.0 showed was that people really wanted a way to connect with those that they already knew in new ways. Even tools like MySpace and Facebook which are typically labeled social networkING sites were never really about networking for most users. They were about socializing inside of pre-existing networks."

"Many who build technology think that a technology's feature set is the key to its adoption and popularity. With social media, this is often not the case. There are triggers that drive early adopters to a site, but the single most important factor in determining whether or not a person will adopt one of these sites is whether or not it is the place where their friends hangout."

"Social network sites became critically important to [teens] because this was where they sat and gossiped, jockeyed for status, and functioned as digital flaneurs...Adults, far more than teens, are using Facebook for its intended purpose as a social utility. For example, it is a tool for communicating with the past."

"The key lesson from the rise of social media for you is that a great deal of software is best built as a coordinated dance between you and the users."

"Policy makers in this country are hell-bent on "solving" the safety problem, but what they're trying to fix is not what's really happening. Yet, in trying to address public fears, they run the risk of putting more kids in harm's way AND forcing companies to build technologies that would help no one. As parents, citizens, and a corporation, we have a responsibility to understand what is actually going on here. (One of the advantages of adult participation is that they're starting to grok what's really going on on these sites and the fears are subsiding.)"

"This is a systems problem. We are all implicated in it - as developers and policy makers, as parents and friends, as individuals and as citizens."

It has been amusing for the past 10 years to smirk and say "Well, this internet thing - it's just a fad..." when discussing educational policy with print advocates. The reality is far more sobering and frankly more uplifting than the arch cynicism of the joke.

Below is a chart showing internet usage around the world and the growth since 2000. Staggering growth is an understatement. While we reach saturation in North America (at about 70% of the population) Africa is only at 5.6% and Asia is at 17.2% and already has has the most users of any area even at this low penetration level.

I'm inspired by this data - it speaks to a potential for building connections between people that is expanding at a dramatic rate. In the world of education this brings home how essential the skills of communication, team building, and diversity already are and how central they will be to the world today's First Graders inherit.

This growth also means there will be millions more voices we can listen to easily - making sense of this is one of the central challenges of our time as educators and as a culture.

Let's use our powers for good.

------------
Hat tip to John Hamalka for this graphic at the Life as a Healthcare CIO blog. I find his insights about IT in healthcare provide advance warning of what we will see in education. He also does a "Cool Technology of the Week" post every week that I enjoy.

This article is based on notes from a panel at the Ed Tech Industry Forum in New York that took place in December. The insights the panelists shared are no less relevant now that we are into the new administration and sorting out the economic stimulus.

The panel consisted of:

• Moderator - Todd Brekhus - VP and CMO Plato Learning
• Francis Alexander - VP - Scholastic
• Robert Iskander - CEO VIP Tone
• Dr. Steve Ritter - Chief Scientist Carnegie Learning

The panel members are operators which stood in contrast to most of the investor oriented agenda at the ETBF.

The common threads that emerged from the comments are summarized as:

• There is opportunity in this economic climate - children still go to school and it is a political priority.
• Everyone needs to sharpen their game and focus on articulating value more effectively.
• SaaS is a mixed bag - lowering initial costs but setting up a long term commitment School Districts may hesitate to commit to in this climate.
• The Obama Administration will be friendly to NCLB reform and technology.
• Technology enabled individualized instruction is a growing trend.
• Customers are implementing books first, technology second.

The panel organized the discussion around a few core questions and it is presented below in that format and sequence. I have generally refrained from editorial comment - even when I disagree with a panelists statements. As you read the comments remember that some of the them were tempered by the fact that both Plato and Scholastic are publicly traded.

Q - The Education Market has observed downturns in the past, yet companies have come out stronger with new products and more efficient business models. What is your view of the current economic situation and the education market.

Francis Alexander (Scholastic) - There is one evergreen resource - children. There is opportunity - but you have to be a lot more focused and sharper about how you approach your customer base. Even in California there are categorical funds that are available. Warren Buffet still sees education as the one growth sector in this economy. There is still a demand for innovation and schools have an urgency around closing the achievement gap and improving test scores.

Scholastic has found that a message about being safe and proven and being proactive about helping customers find federal funding for products resonates.

Robert Iskander (VIP Tone) - The economy is disruptive on a scale that was unanticipated even 3 months ago at EdNet. Education is going to be fine - the downturn will be selective. Companies that have a balanced portfolio of consumer and enterprise will do better than pure play on one side or the other.

There are areas of growth - but they share a focus on cost savings for the customer. Virtualization, technology consolidation, etc. Value propositions that will save money based through innovative technologies will be the winners. It will be a selective process. Virtual learning will keep travel and other expenses down.

Steve Ritter (Carnegie Learning) - Making the transition from relatively good times is going to require a huge amount of focus. It requires knowing your customer and keeping them satisfied. One of the nice things about education is that doing well saves them money by reducing dropouts - efficiency is not just about running operations less expensively but about improving educational outcomes the first time around.

Todd Brekhus (Plato) - Subscription based SaaS models are going to be a real challenge from an ongoing retention model because budgets are under pressure. On the flip side the up front cost of SaaS is lower so it is a mixed bag. They work hard to define a return on investment in dropout prevention etc. and articulate that for their customers. The ubiquity of data systems is helping here. Forty two states now have data systems to monitor policy in action.

Q We are at an inflection point. What is your long term view of long term trends.

Steve Ritter (Carnegie Learning) - More individualized instruction is a broad trend.

Robert Iskander (VIP Tone) - Everything is going to move to a web service given the cost savings vs. legacy systems. Content as a Service, Software as a Service, People as a Service. How do we integrate all of these into a single platform with 24/7 delivery and platform independent. This is what his company does - so his perspective is understandable but a bit narrow on this topic.

Francis Alexander (Scholastic) - ACT.

• A - Accountability is stronger than ever even post NCLB but the nature of the assessments will change. Obama's people are tired of "autopsy" assessments - they want more "well kid" check ups (more formative assessment and less focus on summative measures). Response to Intervention (RTI) is going to accelerate because of this.
• C - They expect a big push to college readiness starting all the way back at early childhood education. This will be accompanied by a move to IEP's for all students and long term mentors beyond their teachers.
• T - Technology is the enabling environment for this. It will move the emphasis from textbooks to on-line delivery.

Todd Brekhus (Plato) - Interoperability is a big issue. SIFA is going to a web services model. When combined with content metadata from the publishers we are approaching a point where differentiated learning can be tied to accountability.

Q - We have a major political change in Washington and throughout the country. What impact will will these changes have on funding at the federal, state, and local level. How will this affect the education market?

Francis Alexander (Scholastic) - Obama's team are starting to talk about where education fits into the stimulus package. The UKs stimulus package does address this - particularly for infrastructure things like e-Rate. Obama has talked about $500 million education in matching grants for education technology. [Note: the final Education number in the stimulus was over $50 billion].

Robert Iskander (VIP Tone) - e-Rate is tied directly to the economy since it is tied to phone bills. As people switch to VOIP it will decline. NCLB is a bit question mark. The eventual revisions may involve more technology but it isn't clear yet. Hopefully the bailouts will affect the Department of Education as well.

Steve Ritter (Carnegie Learning) - He expects Obama's administration to be more friendly to education technology. They also expect to see technology spending to become more mainstream in schools - it is becoming part of the way they do business.

Q - What tactics can companies employ during a time of economic difficulty to remain healthy and vibrant.

Robert Iskander (VIP Tone) - If you don't have cash you were expecting business as usual. Companies in this position are going to be making severe cuts. Strategic investments will have to wait. If you do have cash in the bank this is a great time to buy people who don't have cash.

Steve Ritter (Carnegie Learning) - The key is focus. Don't try to be everything to everyone. Geographic focus on a state by state basis. A lot of schools don't have enough bandwidth to run SAAS - so a local installation option is important.

Francis Alexander (Scholastic) - Everyone needs to control costs and cash. They expect the market to come back and when it does being in technology will put you in the right place.

Todd Brekhus (Plato) - Stay hyper-focused on delivering only the features that are essential and usable to drive renewals and keep your costs down.

Q - There are a lot of smaller companies and start ups here at the conference. What advice do you have for them to keep in mind during this time in our economy?

Steve Ritter (Carnegie Learning) - Focus more on your customers than on your technology. This is the time to understand what they need and how they operate. Your technology may be great but if isn't filling a real need you won't go far.

Robert Iskander (VIP Tone) - If you don't have money in the bank then stop what you are doing and go raise it. If you do have it focus on profitability in the short term.

Francis Alexander (Scholastic) - Be a good smart partner to school districts.

Todd Brekhus (Plato) - Focus on solutions not products. Make sure your return on investment is well articulated for all stakeholders and customers.

Audience Questions

Q - With all the emerging SAAS models are we exposed to a global marketplace? (Asked by Nelson Heller)

Robert Iskander (VIP Tone) - Knowing customer requirements is essential - US companies have a leg up in servicing this market. With a strong dollar there are some interesting opportunities to invest outside the US (India, Australia). Open source is going to play a big role in this economy.

Todd Brekhus (Plato) - This panel is made up of content companies - we believe good instructional design sells. There is a play for the objects - but the value chain hangs on how the content is presented to students and how it demonstrates improvement against standards. Most of the open source materials don't do this.

Q - Should you focus on print or technology in this climate?

Francis Alexander (Scholastic) - Scholastic drives delivery of book content across multiple media. They are working towards blended delivery. It isn't an either or but what serves the current need best.

Steve Ritter (Carnegie Learning)- They have seen strong growth in the print line. They expected it would be blended - but currently districts are phasing product in by doing the print first and bringing in the technology later.

A new free white paper that tackles the practical challenges teachers face when they use video games was released this week by the Software Information Industry Association (SIIA). I was the author of the paper and the co-chair of the working group that produced the paper.

Barrels of ink and pixels by the gigabit have been spilled trying to answer the question "Do video games work as teaching tools?" We started from a simpler perspective - assuming that games can support learning what are the practical tips that teachers can use to boost the odds of success? We interviewed the pioneers in the classroom and at the companies that have developed successful games and summarized their hard won insights in the paper.

I excerpt the executive summary below and over the coming days will post some of the more detailed findings. For the complete paper visit the SIIA's website and download the PDF.

Most of what we surfaced is applied common sense that goes with any supplemental implementation. There are some key differences with games that we emphasize in the paper.

The paper is organized into three main sections:

1. Selling the Idea - How can you convince your school to try games?
2. Preparation - What should the teacher do to prepare themselves, their students, the classroom, and the technical infrastructure?
3. Implementation - What classroom management approaches work best with games and simulations?

Each of the points in the summary are expanded upon in the paper.

Summary ...

Phase 1 - Selling the Idea

The effective deployment of any instructional resource requires the support of teachers. Educators cannot feel threatened, be uncomfortable, or lose control when they use something new. With EduGames, the potential for all three of these issues is higher, so a well crafted strategy to address them is essential. Administrators need to understand their unique role and see resources that they can use to explain the project to stakeholders. If an administrator is driving the deployment, he/she needs to be prepared to support a wide range of teacher familiarity and comfort with EduGames. Administrators will need to be equipped with research and references that can be shared with parents and the press. Information Technology groups will prioritize stability, efficacy, network safety and cost control when they evaluate new products. Advocates for EduGames need to earn the trust of IT early in the process, or the project can be shut down before it even begins. Students should not feel threatened, and they need to understand how it will work. They also have sophisticated filters for good games and won’t easily tolerate poor design. As with any new instructional resource, gaining parental support is an important part of the political process. Widespread misconceptions about games can stall efforts unless you are prepared to address them. Regularly inform parents of the purpose, scope, and results of the project. Demonstrate the connection to 21st Century Skills to earn the support of the community. Where possible invite parents into the process.

Phase 2 – Preparation

A holistic approach that addresses technical infrastructure, installation, support resources, professional development, and lesson planning covers most of the bases. Because EduGames are still largely unknown to most educators, implementation services can not be optional. In order to reach sustained -- rather than experimental -- usage, schools and districts need to dedicate time and money to preparing the environment thoroughly. Districts vary widely in technology infrastructure, the openness of IT to new solutions and their general policies about games and learning. However, in general, advocates need to acknowledge that games need extra support and cooperation from IT. Implementing any new instructional approach requires professional development. Even teachers who are gamers do not intuitively know how to use games in the classroom. Tightly link professional development and initial student use -- any delay can lead to problems. Plan on a minimum of a ½ day on-site with hands-on time in teams. Teachers need to understand how the activities connect to the standards, what the goals are for the exercise, and which students it can benefit the most. They should also introduce the games at a pace they are comfortable with. Teachers are the lynch pin to success. Get the right teachers on board, and they will inspire their students and the other teachers in your building. Ideally you want people who are leaders – politically, technically, and pedagogically.

Phase 3 - Implementation

The majority of the comments we received on teaching strategies related to blended learning. Mix game play with discussion, lecture, reading and writing to gain the most benefits.

Panelists encouraged others to tap those aspects of games that make them fun – competition, failure, and transgressive play.

Lessons and game activities should be organized so they can be “consumed” in a 45-50 minute class period. It can be useful to start small in order to accommodate the natural learning curve teachers and students will need before they become proficient with a new resource.

There are pedagogical and practical reasons for having students play in teams of 2-4 rather than alone. Pedagogically, games force collaborative decision making. Grouping helps reduce barriers to learning by grouping proficient gamers with non-gamers. Practically, working in teams lowers the technology footprint needed, and it allows students to cover for each other during absences.

Classroom management for EduGames is very similar to any hands on activity.

An actively involved teacher providing content expertise and focus moves things along.

Games appear to be particularly good at encouraging peer tutoring.

To date, behavioral issues like bullying have not been an issue.

Backend integration with the school’s management systems relieves a lot of the administrative burden from teachers.

Given the novelty of game-based learning, many educators remain skeptical of the games’ ability to facilitate learning or to embed assessments appropriately. It is important to provide external validation of the learning that is taking place. Over time, if games deliver as promised, we expect educators to become more comfortable with in-game assessments.

I want to express my thanks to the SIIA and the Games & Simulations Working Group for the opportunity to work on this project. It was fun, informative, and I hope it contributes in a meaningful way to the growth of the EduGames market.

Guest blogger Michele King provides a practitioner's perspective to Randy Wilhelm's post Web Content is a Source for Differentiated Instruction. Michele is an administrator at a large urban school district and a former 1st Grade bilingual teacher.

By Michele King

As the Instructional Support Coordinator for a large urban district, I am responsible for transitioning our district away from print-based instructional resources to a database driven solution accessed by teachers over the Internet. I read Mr. Wilhelm’s post with great interest and my experience working with teachers closely aligns with the “Schools and Generation Net” survey results.

A compelling finding out of this survey is that 60% of educators agreed districts need to be investing more in digital resources, shifting dollars away from print materials. Teachers perceive (and rightly so) that district level staff typically drive this decision. Instructional trailblazers are often on their own in the digital frontier.

Who are the 40% that disagree with investing more in digital resources? I call them the “binder” teachers – those that cling to papers from days gone by as their primary source for instructional planning. I’ll never forget the occasion in which I visited a teacher’s classroom and found her preparation centered on boxes labeled by months. I could almost hear her thinking, “Oh, it’s January, I better dust off my February box and pull out my Valentine activities. What copies do I need to be making?” The only differentiation I observed was by calendar month.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of the current New York Times best-seller, Outliers, wrote a very interesting article for The New Yorker called “Most Likely To Succeed”. The article discusses how to determine what makes one a “bad” teacher versus a “good” teacher. A key premise of the article is that teachers have to be sensitive to the individual needs of students (hello, differentiation). I wholeheartedly agree with that premise, however, what the article does not discuss is that teachers need help in gaining access to appropriately aligned resources that enable them to deliver instruction in a more targeted and effective fashion.

The first phase of our online instructional guide initiative is to flat line the current curriculum and restructure it into a web-friendly format. The idea is for content to be easily accessed and consumed by the teacher for instructional planning purposes. As I rolled out our pilot program to a dozen or so schools, every single time I presented at least one person brought up the need for more efficient access to web-based resources. Our teachers are hungry for a cultural transition in the schools (and school districts) away from the binder-based mentality to the 21st century notion that teachers should be able to efficiently access what they want when they want it.

Imagine that!

Are you Twitter curious? For the past few months I've been on the fence about Twitter - lurking but minimally engaged. Like all new technologies as people play with it they are discovering what it is best for. Recently I've watched as my friend Charlene Blohm has begun leveraging it to help drive her business.

Twitter seems to be following a similar path to other new technologies. The enthusiasm of early adopters misrepresents what the technology is really capable of. Think LaserWriters/Postcript and flyers with 23 different fonts on them (circa 1986) or web pages cluttered with frames (circa 1998). Once the dust settled and a "grammar" of usage emerged we all benefited. But every new technology has to pass through a stage of wild and random experimentation to get there.

Twitter is passing out of this stage right now so it is a good time for the rest of us to engage with it.

I was picking Charlene's brain yesterday about Twitter commands and resources (the company's web support sucks) and she gave me this list of articles and resources that can help you get started.

Getting Started With Twitter (by a teacher)
Twitter Tools for Community and Communications Professionals
List of Twitter Commands
How to Use Hastags [to track topics and events]

Coming Attractions

In the next couple of weeks I'll do a post on What Twitter Does Well and another on How to Abuse Twitter. In the meantime you can start following me by tracking Embir.

Other Education Publishing related twitterers that I know if (there are 10's of thousands out there).

Charlene Blohm & Associates
Nettrekker / Thinkronize
Gary Stager
Cool Cat Teacher
TechnoLibrary - Carolyn Foote
360Kid - Scott Traylor
Terry Anderson
Richard Carey
Liz Strauss
Education Week
School Library Journal
PBS Learning Now

Please add others in comments. If you are new to Twitter - welcome to the conversation.

Today guest blogger Randy Wilhelm - CEO of Thinkronize shares insights from the 3rd Annual "Schools and Generation Net" survey.

By Randy Wilhelm

As the father of five school-age children, I am reminded daily that each child is special and each one learns differently. For instance, I have one son who learns best when he can hear the text he is reading at the same time. Another of my children is very tactile and has to touch something to understand it.

When we set out to commission – our 3rd annual “Schools & Generation Net” survey – I expected that teachers and principals well understood the critical need for differentiated instruction. However, when the results were tabulated, what made me sit up (and put down my iPhone) was the overwhelming majority (85%) that looked to the Web as a solution – and even more telling, the 60% of educators that agreed that their districts should invest more in digital resources, shifting dollars away from print materials.

The headline from the survey results, “Educators Want Web Solutions to Avoid Traditional Cookie Cutter Instruction,” points to the fact that today’s classroom is not well equipped for customized learning. Because kids learn differently and assimilate information differently, “one text for all” doesn’t cut it. Teachers need other instructional materials to help kids learn.

Today’s teachers are challenged to find resources that are both aligned to state standards and designed to engage every child in the learning process.

• The survey found that more than 70% of principals and nearly 70% of teachers expressed a need for assistance in finding resources that meet state curriculum standards.
• Four out of five educators (80%) agreed that they need multimedia Web resources, such as digital images, video, animation, and voice, to both stimulate and motivate their students.

In a utopian society, teachers would have the flexibility to invest in digital resources that they believed would help each child learn. But the decision doesn’t lie with them. It usually lies with the districts. And in some states, investing instructional materials dollars in digital Web-delivered resources isn’t even allowed. As David Thornburg, Futurist, Lecturer, Author and Director of Global Operation, Thornburg Center, put it, “At a time when the need for powerful educational resources has never been higher, this study of educator's needs and wants shows a strong desire to transition from print to online resources delivered through the Web.”

Bottom line? In today’s critical economy, where the squeeze is being put on everyone – including our precious schools, we are spending a disproportionate amount of dollars on print instructional materials. We need to re-look at the 1-2% of state expenditures that go toward instructional materials and the $4 billion spent on print materials and invest those dollars in digital resources that provide every child with a customized learning experience, every day.

Update: Michele King responded to this post with a practitioner's perspective on how web tools can help teachers plan for differentiated instruction.

Related Posts:

Instructional Monocultures

Print and Technology Blending

Teachers and the Internet: Five Things You Need to Know

A Wave of Change Sweeps Over the Industry (series on Technology Substitution)

What are the prospects for raising capital for education technology companies in the current financial meltdown? Last week at the SIIA Ed-Tech Business Forum a panel of investors tackled this question. The panelists presented some solid and detailed advice for investors and companies seeking capital during the recession.

Key Points:

• Many investors are seeing Education as a safe harbor in a turbulent market, it is seen as relatively recession resistant. Education's profile is rising as a marquee investment arena for the next 10 years - it is a good time right now for education.
• Take in as little as possible at as light a valuation you can get because valuations are going to be low for a while.
• The strong are going to win big in this downturn. Access to capital is going to be an important differentiator in this market.
• Most venture firms are not looking at new deals, they are focused on down rounds and propping up existing investments. They are also all moving up the deal chain to safer investments than they make in normal times. If you are raising money be aware of this.
• It is all about being profitable per customer in this market. Hope isn't a strategy - go get paying customers and drive a lifetime revenue model
• Focus down on the core of what you have to provide and strip the organization down to doing just that. Have a crystal clear picture of who your customers will be, how they will find the money, and what are the essential features.

The panelists were:

• Moderator - Chris Curran, Managing Director Berkery Noyes
• Frank Bonsal III, Partner New Markets Venture Partners
• Kevin Custer, Founding Partner, Arc Capital Development
• Lou Pugliese - President Learning Diagnostics

Chris began with an overview of the market trends. Many investors are seeing Education as a safe harbor in a turbulent market, it is seen as relatively recession resistant. He noted that there is a huge capital overhang - investors have lots of funds but are making few investments. In education fundraising is actually up this year but we are seeing deals that are over capitalized. Later on Frank made the case that this is a bad deal from the entrepreneur's side.

Most investment groups are setting the bar higher for new deals. Investors are looking for $10m Revenue and $2m EBIDTA which leaves out most K-12 Ed-Tech companies. Companies at this size need capital to invest in Sales and Marketing to scale up. Lots of education companies with good products in the last 10 years have failed because they couldn't get past this hurdle.

His slides include a list of the private equity investors in education and a list of 100 deals that have been done in the education space in the past two years.

Follow below the fold for details on each panelists comments and the audience Q&A.

Continue reading "Raising Investment Capital - Strategic and Private Equity Perspectives - Education Technology" »

This panel is made up of seasoned veterans of the M&A markets for Education Technology companies. They addressed the K12, Higher Education / Post-secondary, and general M&A climate.

The panelists are:

• Moderator Jeff Fromme - Dorsey and Whitney LLP
• Robin Warner - Managing Director at Van Tulleken Company. K-12 Market
• Vivek Kamath Director Berkery, Noyes & Co. - Higher Education.
• Mark Marchesano with the Jordan, Edmiston Group (JEGI). M&A in a Turbulent Market.

It is sponsored by Empirical Education.

Key insights:

• Look to the UK market - it is an 18 month leading indicator of what is going to happen in the US market.
• Professional Development is now mandatory for all solutions in the UK. Are publishers using this to hold open source at bay or is this a real switch taking place?
• The US market is contracting - there are fewer strategic buyers because they have all merged and the Private Equity guys are sitting things out for a while.
• Buyers don't want to take any risk right now - only companies with proven business models, strong teams, and organic growth need apply.
• For profit higher ed is growing - the economy is actually helping with this as people look to expand their skill base.
• Expect to see many buyers looking for bargains over the next couple of years. Don't expect to see much in the way of IPOs.
• In K12 multiples are higher (almost double) for companies that have a strong technology component - but it has to be integrated well - it can't be a bolt on.
• Multiples are higher for Higher Ed than K12.

For my more free form notes follow below the fold.

Continue reading "Financial and Industry Analyst Views on the Education Technology Market" »

I will be blogging today from the Software Information Industry Association's Ed Tech Forum 2008. The event is taking place at a monument to mid-20th Century American hegemony - the Princeton Club in New York.

This is the first year they have had a real blogger friendly environment - they have set up a table with power and easy access. The other bloggers here are Annie Teich and Ken Royal. Several of us will also be tweeting the event - look for the tags edtech08 and #etbf.

Products designed for the classroom must meet the needs of teachers first. If students are the primary users of your instructional materials this may sound a little backwards - but it isn't. Teachers can make or break your product before a student ever sees it.

Designing for teacher ease-of-use should be a core competency at any education publisher.

Today we tackle issue #4 in the series on selling and marketing to educators.

Part 1 - Obey the Calendar
Part 2 - Education is not a target market - it is an industry
Part 3 - Education is a zero sum market

In the rush to get a product to market too often education publishers overlook the features and resources that make life easy for the teacher. The problem isn't that teachers are lazy, as many in the business world tend to fantasize, quite the opposite. The challenges and demands on a teacher are every bit as daunting as mid-level supervisors in large companies. Their time is at a huge premium and to manage their workload they develop detailed processes and structures - known more commonly as lesson plans.

Your Challenge

Your product has to insert itself gracefully into this workflow or it will fail because the teachers won't make room for it. They already have things humming along, thank you very much.

If students can learn more effectively with your products shouldn't teachers be willing to bend a little to make this happen? Yes they should - but even the most elegantly designed product requires the teacher to go through a learning curve. The time they invest in learning how to use your product shouldn't be amplified by additional time demands because your product isn't complete.

Almost anyone can find a small group of teachers willing to go to extraordinary lengths to make a new product work. Don't be tempted to conclude that all teachers will be willing to put this amount of effort in. If your goal is to reach a broad cross section of classrooms you have to design for the average teacher.

Poor teacher design surfaces differently for technology providers than for print publishers. The software paradigm of iterating to success tempts ed-tech companies to cut corners on teacher tools. The most common oversight is that companies assume that teachers will key in student rosters. I can almost always tell who knows something about the market when we get to this part of the presentation. Inexperienced companies will hand wave past this topic - assuming some kind of magic will occur to get student names into the system. Those who have been around the block a time or two will have a thoughtful approach that doesn't burden the teacher too much.

Populating rosters is tedious and time consuming. In districts with high mobility rates accuracy is a huge problem - the average district has a mobility rate of 20% but I've seen extreme examples of up to 90% where there is a high migrant farm labor population. There are simple solutions (.csv files) and more automated options (SIF) but you must think this through.

Textbook publishers have a different problem - since they tend to see a product as complete and done when it is published any aftermarket additions are outside of the normal workflow and are unanticipated expenses.

In these cases it is more often a case of not including supplemental resources that your target population needs and/or that your competition is providing. Examples include ELL teaching guides, standards correlations, presentations for electronic white boards, and on-line homework help. None of these things are particularly hard to add to a product - but they erode your profitability, and play havoc with your schedules - and you can't sell much until you have them.

A Caveat

Is it possible to go too far in accommodating teachers? Yes. The trick is to balance an almost endless set of feature requests and enhancements with what is essential and compelling.

Companies in this market have to strike a balance between business and learning - and the best way to do this is to have a team that is a mix of former educators and business people. Go too far in either direction and you are out of business. If the educators rule the roost your products will be perfect but marginally profitable because of all the extras tossed in. If you apply rigorous business standards only you won't address the core needs of teachers and you won't sell much.

Your goal should be sound business decisions that are educationally appropriate.

The Solution

There are a few things you can do to reduce your risk of alienating teachers with a new product.

• Ask at every turn during the product planning and development "how will a teacher implement this and how can we make it easier?"
• Make sure you understand teacher's priorities so you can optimize your development options. Talk to a lot of teachers, visit classrooms, observe how things are done today. Dig into the details. Make sure everyone on your team has an opportunity to do this if possible. Don't extrapolate from a small sample - talk to as many people as you can afford to.
• Hire former teachers if they have the right skill-set. Sales, mar-com, and product marketing are all areas ex-teachers can thrive in.
• Many education companies encourage employees to volunteer in local schools partly because it is a good thing to do and partly to get exposure to the reality of the classroom.
• Develop an educator advisory board and challenge them to think about the average teacher (the folks who participate in advisory boards tend to be the same ones who would put extra effort in to use your product).
• If your budget and schedule permits, build a pilot phase into your roll out where you do a limited deployment to a handful of classrooms. Incorporate the feedback prior to general release.
• Watch the competition closely. Often something that wasn't required becomes so once a competitor is offering it. Better yet - make the competition respond to you by innovating.

In times of disruptive change the cutting edge is the safest place to be.

To many people this seems counterintuitive. If there is rapid change the inclination of most people is to circle the wagons around the familiar. But, when the market is moving, breaking camp and moving forward is actually a lower risk approach. If you are taking risks in your job and trying to invent the future you are actually in a safer position than those who cling to the status quo.

Education Market Forces

The education market is in a period of rapid disruptive change driven by multiple forces.

• Technology is upending traditional textbook markets
• State budgets are under assault from the financial meltdown
• The textbook industry has consolidated into three major players who are using global sourcing to drive down costs for an increasingly commoditized market
• Open source and Web 2.0 technologies are putting the tools of production directly into teacher's hands
• Content is atomizing and moving to the web
• Teachers are buying everything else on the web - you're next

Consider the following graphic.

"A" is an incrementalist. In a normal market she will prevail through a steady series of improvements in products and processes. The education publishing world is largely made up of A's.

"B" is an innovator. In normal times B's position is really risky but it is the safer place to be during disruption. Generally speaking there are more B's in Educational Technology.

Whose shoes would you rather be in today? An A trying to hold a position by doing more of what "always worked" or B who is already where the puck is moving?

Like all generalizations this doesn't do justice to the complexity of the environment but I think it speaks to the major trends we see going on in the market. The old line publishers are struggling to respond to the market changes because the balance of power still tilts to the "A" textbook publishing executives. Their incremental approach isn't working but they don't know any other way to tackle the problem.

Sources Of Innovation

Look to the small and mid-size companies - both print and technology based - for the innovations that will drive the future of this market. These companies are being forced to deal with the disruptions more directly since they have a smaller margin for error than the big guys. They are also scrappier in their general approach and more amenable to innovation. I also expect to see change sweep the supplemental market long before it comes to the basal materials market for the same reasons.

Consider the book - not all the innovation we are going to see will be technology based. Books themselves will evolve to reflect the new learning ecosystem. Publishers need to look at every aspect of books and consider what can go in the age of the Kindle, youTube, and Wikipedia. Will the textbook of tomorrow be shorter and have a fully integrated companion site where most of the content is created by students? Its possible. Are you waiting for someone else to try it? Why?

There is innovation going on in the large companies (e.g. Pearson's forays into blended tech/print products) but most of it is not life or death the way it is in the smaller players.

Innovation is needed across the entire business model - sales, marketing, editorial, operations, and support are all being affected by the explosion of information in the hands of our customers. This kind of systemic change is really difficult and will take several years to sort itself out.

So step out of your comfort zone, try a few things that scare you a bit. The first step is just to become familiar with the new technologies for your own use. Once I got started it was like going back to graduate school - it was a blast to be learning new things every day. You need to re-experience this kind of learning - because it is precisely what we should be providing today's students in school.

There is a global community waiting for you.

Related Posts

Here are several related posts which expand on concepts in this article.

Textbooks vs. Education Technology - Clash of Paradigms on the different management cultures and how they put the "fun" in disfunction.

Education Publishing - A Wave of Change Sweeps Over the Industry lays out the quantitative case for technology substitution finally happening at scale and what it means for publishers.

10 Ways to Build Instructional Materials for 21st Century Skills presents some ideas on what innovations to focus on if you want to make real change.

Piping hot education related blog topics served here! The debate over formative assessment, the top 10 sites for educational games, crowd-sourcing the next great novel, controversy around Microsoft's new ads, the relationship between quality and advertising, and a hilarious spoof of Politicians all get the nod this week.

Education Week has a very interesting article about Formative Assessment. Given the burgeoning mantra that formative assessment makes the biggest difference in outcomes it is revealing to see how little consensus there is on what it really is. Is it a practice or is it a product?

John Rice has a list of the top 10 sites for free EduGames. It is worth a peek and linking through to get a sense of what kids are actually playing. This should dispel the myth that EduGames need to rival commercial games in graphics and sound. What matters most is fun game play.

HarperCollins launches Authonomy. The site uses crowd-sourcing to allow readers to vote on the next best seller. Springwise has a quick overview - Publisher Hopes Crowds Will Spot Next Bestseller. I'm working on a similar project for a client in education - should be interesting.

Microsoft's new ads - love 'em or hate 'em? Seth Godin thinks they are rot that won't fix what is wrong - What Ads Can't Fix. His thesis is that the company has a solid business serving the stolid core of the market, and ads are not going to turn it into Apple. Ben McConnel believes they are a great opening salvo in redefining who Microsoft is by reclaiming the definition from Apple. As a bonus all the ads are in his post if you want to see them. In this debate you could substitute mainline textbook publishers and come up with largely the same analysis - both posts are worth a 2 minute read and some reflection.

As always Indexed nails her topic. This graphic about quality vs. advertising is amusing and revealing. We know this is how the education market works - one teacher tells another when they like something. I think of her wry charts as Mad Magazine for grownups. There is no connection to the link above about Microsoft. Really.

The Front Fell Off. Perhaps because we are dealing with a financial disaster this comedy skit resurfaced recently. It is a drop-dead funny take on a Politician evading the truth and trying to sound like they have a clue when they really don't. It is non-partisan so enjoy.

Barack Obama is proposing significant new investments in early childhood education. More attention has been focused on his drive to recruit an army of new teachers but I believe the early childhood focus is equally important.

Why? As students age the gap between low performers and even average performers gets so wide that it becomes much harder to bridge it. The chart below illustrates this concept.

[This chart is for illustrative purposes only]

In the early grades - K-3 - the focus is on acquiring basic skills in reading and math. As soon as the shift to applying those skills to learning other subjects occurs in 4th and 5th grade the gap begins to widen. By the time students have reached 7th grade it is often so great that only heroic efforts can help. When a student drops out in 10th grade the cause can be traced all the way back to 2nd grade or even Kindergarten. Obama's experience in the Chicago Public Schools taught him this lesson.

We can see this clearly in the product lines of the supplemental publishers. Their materials for the early grades are mostly targeted interventions, what a friend dubbed "workbookity" stuff. Their materials for secondary schools are comprehensive alternative textbooks. In secondary schools the gap has widened so far that you can't teach all students with the same textbook because the low performers simply can't read it.

Oral language is hard wired into humans but reading and writing are acquired skills - very similar to music in that practice helps enormously. Hence the focus on fluency in the National Reading Panel's report. By the time students reach the 6th grade students who read regularly have often read at least 1 million more words than students who do not. That makes a huge difference.

So targeting the early grades - when the gap can be closed quickly and easily - is an essential part of school reform. Yes - it will take 12 years to see the benefits - but they will be long lasting throughout the lives of the children who benefit. I believe Obama has got this issue right.

Does this mean that there is no hope for kids in the higher grades? Absolutely not. One of the reasons I'm so passionate about video games for learning is that the research out of Harvard and other universities who are studying this topic shows that it disproportionately benefits students in the lower third of performance and that the biggest benefits come in the middle school years. The Tabula Digita study out of Florida is only the latest in a string of studies suggesting that this one way to reach these kids. One other interesting finding - for every 2 hours that kids play game they spend an hour reading about them.

As print and technology products in education blend together the distinctions between textbook publishers and ed-tech providers are blurring in some very interesting ways.

A recent report by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press on how on-line and traditional news media are blending together raises some provocative questions for how this will play out in education.

Several years ago schools bought technology and print products from completely different budgets and with very different purchase processes. As educators have become more sophisticated about what technology can do and what it can't do they are demanding that providers blend the best of technology with the best of print.

We are already seeing this play out in how people consume news and the Pew study sheds some valuable light on this topic. Here are four big ideas that came out of it for me.

1. The Integrators - the 23% of the population who are actively using traditional and new media - tend to be affluent, highly educated, and middle aged. They grew up with traditional media and are comfortable with it, but due to their interest in politics and sports are using on-line media to dig deeper and in more personalized ways than the general public. This group corresponds to the teaching corps in this country. If you want to sell instructional products to schools teachers are the gatekeepers - if they won't use it in their classroom you have no sustainable business. To reach their comfort zone you will need to blend the old and the new.

2. Net-Newsers - this is the most affluent and best educated group but also the youngest. 30% of them watch news clips on the web - only 18% of them watch the evening news on TV. They also are the heaviest consumers of news - digging in all day long. This group corresponds to students. While you may produce blended products in order to sell to teachers you need to make your on-line offerings rich enough to satisfy the younger users - it will be their primary interface to the content.

3. The use of print will decline - but not go away. The numbers in the report about newspaper usage are a wake up call to textbook publishers. In 1993 58% of the population read the paper daily, by 2008 this was down to 34%. Nightly network news saw an even greater drop - it went from 60% down to 29%. Meanwhile on-line went from 0% in 1993 to 37% in 2008.

The pied pipers of ed-tech who sing sweet songs about the end of print are going to have a wait a long time for that to happen. But - I do believe that just as newspapers and magazines are getting thinner and thinner our textbooks will slim down as more of the content moves on-line. The rise of the Kindle and other reading devices may also spark an evolution in how we consume "print" in the same way the youTube is changing how we consume video.

4. Politics and sports are a key drivers of on-line usage. Both the Integrators and the Net-Newsers valued the on-line tools for the insights into politics and sports. Social studies is probably the area where having on-line content that changes on a daily or weekly basis has the most value. Districts that want to bring parents into their own web resources might stress school sports - something that not even the most dedicated local paper can do for every school in their area.

Publishers can learn valuable lessons about how this transition is likely to play out in schools by watching what has happened in the news arena. This study is worth a look if you are interested in this topic.

Related Posts

Textbooks vs. Education Technology - Clash of Paradigms
The Future of Education Publishing
Web 2.0 and Education Publishing
Open Source and Education

Hot sizzling education publishing and ed-tech related links here! Obama's call for more teachers, kids media preferences, 2.0 de jour, and assessing 21st Century skills all get a nod in a short week.

Eduflack talks about Obama's call for an army of teachers. I confess that I worry about federalizing education too much, we don't need more Reading First scandals. Having 50 laboratories is better than 1. Another wag noted a contradiction on the right - if the free market knows best and if education is the foundation for economic growth why aren't conservatives fighting to pay teachers more? That would bring higher quality candidates into the profession via market forces.

Kids 10-14 prefer the internet to TV. AHCI Lunch has commentary on a New York Times article that revealed this finding about teens media preferences. Here is my question - why didn't TV take off in the classroom given the power it holds over our culture? One of the core arguments about why internet tools, social media, and virtual worlds should be in classrooms is that they are where the kids already are. The same could be said for TV at any time in the last 50 years.

I believe the reason on-line tools will take off is that TV is passive while the internet and social media are interactive and social. TV is a baby sitter, the internet is a tutor. But it could be that there are larger institutional barriers to technology diffusion in the classroom that we can learn about from TV's failure to penetrate deeply into teaching and learning.

Web 2.0 vs. Enterprise 2.0? Elearnspace does a nice job of mapping out the differences and talking about what it means for learning. K12 Education is most definitely in the Enterprise 2.0 camp which has implications for the kinds of products that need to be built and the speed at which they will be adopted.

Will Richardson has some great comments about Assessing Network Building and how critical this 21st Century skill is. It is related to the observations I've made about homing - the ability to vector in on the most important information in a sea of data. If you know of anyone doing interesting work on assessment in these areas post a comment. I've seen a lot of talk, but very little in the way of real solutions or products.

Fresh hot blog links to education topics here. These are some of the posts that caught my attention recently - enjoy.

Facebook for Teachers. This article is sad - lots of promise and money invested by people who just don't get it. One district can not support their own social network - it takes hundreds of thousands of users to make these communities vibrant. How about we look at what is actually happening on Facebook for teachers? I Am Teacher - a Facebook plugin from We Are Teachers - already has almost 10,000 active users and over registered 50,000 users.

Video Games Improve Cognitive Skills. The title says it all. Go read about it on Richard Carey's blog.

John Rice has a nice summary of Seven Question to Ask Before Using a Video Game in the Classroom. I do disagree with John on two points.

• I don't believe the majority of teachers want to modify games - even in the commercial game world modding is restricted to small group of devotees.

• I also don't believe Edugames need to match commercial grade production values. Look no further than the casual games kids are playing on the web by the millions for evidence. Game play trumps graphics (see the Wii too).

Millions for new schools does not improve academic performance. Crap - there goes another excuse for missing AYP. From years of walking into schools (good and bad) my survey-of-one agrees completely with the thesis that the leadership of the Principal is one of the most important characteristics of high performing schools. The money quote is from the former Board President -

"I suspect a lot has to do with the principal - whether the school is together as a unit...I never believed you solved the problems with a better building."

WTF? Why didn't you stop this then? If I lived in Milwaukee I'd be voting for a little accountability this fall.

A kid booted from Little League because he is too good? Eduflack has a suitably angry take on this. This story is "man bites dog" rarity - but the overall point is well taken. Punishing gifted kids is how you turn a country dumb.

The Ignite Presentation Method - this is a pretty cool concept. 5 minutes to present your idea and the 20 slides automatically change every 20 seconds. One idea per slide - razor sharp focus on your message. See my post Powerpoint=Billboard on a related topic. Imagine the power of teaching kids to communicate with this level of focus and discipline?

Videogames in the Library? Wouldn't installing a Wii or an xBox bring a lot of unruly teenagers into a refuge of quiet and intellect? It turns out that putting computer games in a library brings in a huge wave of new patrons and dramatically increases circulation - of books!

Two recent items support the thesis that games can benefit libraries and patrons. The most interesting aspect to me is that it may move libraries from being relatively static storehouses of knowledge to dynamic studios where knowledge is crafted, shaped, and extended.

The American Library Association is sponsoring a study to gauge the impact of games on learning and literacy. Why? The gamer blog 1Up has the money quote from Dan Barlow:

"...once teens come to library because of gaming, they also find time to study, to check out books. Most importantly, they also find time to learn. They learn about information technology, they develop research skills that will serve their life-long learning needs.

"Gaming in libraries? You bet! with an investment of about $900, (less than 1 tenth of 1% of budget) we have over 3,000 new young adult library users."

30-40% of libraries already circulate games so this movement is well under way. It is a natural extension of library support for leisure activity - but it is becoming a learning activity.

Maggie Hummel presented at this year's Games Learning & Society conference gave a detailed preesentation on how the Park Ridge Public Library outside of Chicago transformed their relationship with teens by incorporating games. She made several excellent points:

• Public libraries can't force kids in -they don't have the leverage a school does - but they share the same mission of learning.
• As a result they are freer to experiment and try new things (yes lots of innovation is going on in school libraries)
• This was a tough sell to the board - they feared that kids would only come to play
• Actual results - they doubled book circulation for young adults. Their summer reading program went from 280 to 420 in one year.
• They moved to sponsoring competitions - which has brought out whole families
• In a natural progression the library is now sponsoring game writing workshops and youtube movie workshops taught by High School students.

This progression makes sense. In their most traditional sense libraries are where you went to dig up research, to find things out. You almost always wanted the information so that you could do something - build a porch, quote Cicero, or while away a summer afternoon with a good story. But the researching and the doing were in separate places. Digital media unify the research and the action in one space - the computer and the web. I can take what I learn in a game and turn around and build a game like it. I can go read a book on urban planning and then play SimCity with a whole new set of insights.

It is important to note that this is all additive - the existing role of the library does not go away. The library experience is richer not poorer when games are added to the mix.

Impact on School

What greater or better gift can we offer the republic than to teach and instruct our youth? - Cicero

The implication for schools is fairly direct. Find something the kids are engaged with, provide a space for them to explore and play with it, then use the other resources at your command to encourage them to dig deeper. Reading, discussing, and creating are all natural follow on activities to playing games.

If you can't convince the School Board to allow games in the library perhaps the Library Board will be more open minded - the evidence says they should be!

Additional Reading

Study on penetration of games in Libraries

Information is expanding exponentially. Applying database concepts to your information diet can mean the difference between overload and sanity, chaos and productivity. Database fluency is mandatory in a digital world. Students and teachers should be practicing and refining this skill so that today's learners can make the most of the sea of data they swim in.

Almost anything you encounter in digital format can be managed using database techniques. At their root Facebook (relationships), iTunes (music, movies, tv, books, etc.), del.icio.us (bookmarks), flickr (photos), Moodle (lesson plans, learning management), and We Are Teachers (referrals) share a common database DNA. Even blogs through their categories and tag clouds are databases.

Email is an example. Treat the sender's address as a data point. Then set up rules (database queries) to have all your boss's emails sent to a high priority folder and Aunt Mabel's political ravings sent straight to the trash. This approach allows you to target the urgent items amidst a sea of dross.

The Education Need

Educators and educational publishers have a vital role to play in our move to a database driven world. Why?

• Students need to develop database fluency if they are going to get the most out of their digital lives. Learning Management Systems (LMS), social networks, and on-line research are all core tools for 21st Century education. Database fluency should become part of the curriculum along with textual, numerical, and visual fluencies.
• Teachers need access to networks of peers, experts, and content to be able to deliver on the promise of individualized instruction.
• Administrators and Policy Makers need to measure results across groups and efficiently allocate resources.

Every one of these needs is best met by a database and fluent users.

The Goal

The end result should be personal growth, valued relationships, and effective organizations. But in the first flush of widespread adoption we are losing sight of this. Consider the statement "I "friended" 1,000 people on Facebook therefor I have 1,000 friends." Wrong. Many people are confusing the database with their relationships.

A teacher could take the Facebook example above and build an interesting set of discussions around the meaning of friendship, how to find a small network of people who are interested in the same things you are, what you can do to contribute, and how to manage the relationships that emerge. It isn't creating huge numbers of meaningless connections that matters - it is finding the needles in the haystack of humanity that you want to build bonds of friendship with.

Database Fluency

What is database fluency - what are the core skills proficient users need to master?

• Ubiquity - See every digital file you touch as a potential data point. Emails, MP3 files, Word documents, student records, and your photos are all potential data points.
• Searching - Understanding how to craft logical questions that return useful information takes ongoing practice ("and", "or", "greater than", "before", etc.). Learning to to harness the advanced search features almost all applications have is another part of this skill.
• Homing - The ability to find what is meaningful and valuable in large data sets by asking the right questions at the right time. Is this a reliable source? How recent is the data? Does this address the question I set out to answer? Is it usable or a tangled mess? How does it compare with other results?
• Tagging - Users tag data elements to personalize them. This can be through formal taxonomies provided by the database author ("Male, Female") or informal folksonomies created on the fly by users (flickr tag clouds). Since tagging is so open-ended having some basic rules in place can help insure you are able to use the tag cloud later to search the data.
• Cleaning - Any collection of data gets messy after a while - knowing how to clean your data just like you clean your room is an essential part of working with large data sets. Without maintenance your searching and tagging get bogged down.
• Reporting - Creating clear usable reports that make the point you are after is an important part of turning data into information and eventually into wisdom. When is a table better than a bar chart? Should I focus on 5 or 500 names?

None of this involves database programming. That is a skill more akin to auto mechanics - I don't need to know how to tune my engine to drive a car. I also don't need to know SQL to use a social networking site. However, for driving and networking I do need to know the rules of the road and how navigate where I want to go.

How these elements appear in different applications varies widely - understanding the underlying dynamics helps harness their power across many environments.

RSS readers click through to see the full article - 3 detailed examples that bring these concepts to life and some suggestions on where to start.

Continue reading "Database Fluency - Core Skill for the 21st Century" »

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.)

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.

In a Man Bites Dog article this piece highlights children's concerns about their parents web habits. Add video game obsessions to the long list of things parents do to ruin their kids lives. Clean the keyboard - yuck.

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!

ISTE's National Education Computing Conference (NECC) 2008 is in full swing in San Antonio.

The Education Technology maven's tribal gathering is bigger than ever. A sign over the entrance reads "The Worlds Largest Education Technology Exhibit." That's a Texas sized ambition.

Here are a few impressions from day one. I'll write a more detailed analysis after the show closes.

There is a huge amount of energy here. The show floor was thronged until closing and sessions are well attended. Even the Press Suites are jammed. Oddly, the scene on the Riverwalk tonight was a bit subdued (I don't know if that is because people were tired from a long day or if we just missed the big party).

The electronic whiteboard guys rule the roost. It appears that Promethean (who has the most prominent exhibit at the show) is spending well over $100k just to have staff here. Smart has a big presence as do RM and all of the players in that space.

Meanwhile the computer companies are largely AWOL. Apple doesn't even have a booth.

Who is making the smarter decision? Are the whiteboard companies making hay while the sun shines or are the computer guys moving all their spending to the web where they can reap the rewards year round rather than over 3 days?

There are still lots and lots of really interesting little companies springing up - ed tech is a lively sector. While education funding may be static or down slightly the ed tech niche is up considerably. This is based on both the number of attendees and the word from vendors.

Am I getting older or is the hall getting noisier? It seemed to me that the noise level is getting ratcheted up as more people do booth theaters with mic'ed presenters. Part of this is just the high level of activity on the show floor, but some of this is an escalating problem that will spell trouble in the long run. Vendors need to have consideration for each other and for their prospects. One large whiteboard vendor that had a huge staff presence (ahem) was making so much noise for most of the day that it was hard to conduct a conversation two aisles over. Ultimately this will drive people outside for some peace and quiet. Oh, and you kids stay off my lawn.

San Antonio's exhibit hall has a weird layout. It is so long and twisty that it takes forever to get from one end of the show to the other. This didn't seem to hurt booth traffic, but it did make finding people a real pain in the rear.

So far it is shaping up to be a great show. All Y'all come back and read more about it later.

The Obama and McCain campaigns squared off at the Great American Education Forum sponsored by the Association of Education Publishers (AEP)* in Washington DC today. Educational policy experts from the campaigns addressed a wide range of positions the candidates are staking out from vouchers to the federal role in education.

Jeanne Century, Director of Science Education, University of Chicago represented the Obama campaign and Lisa Keegan, former Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction represented Senator McCain. A panel of publishing industry experts** posed questions followed by a press conference. This is the first head to head discussion of education priorities between the two campaigns.

Given that Education is consistently rated as one of the top 2-3 issues (Pew May 29th) it is surprising that it hasn't been more visible in the campaign trail so far. The forum was valuable because differences in approach, philosophy, and policy emerged during the discussion.

On most of the issues the differences between the candidates positions are more matters of emphasis. Generally speaking the McCain position is that we already know what works, we just need to let the states sort that out and help them do more of it. Obama wants to take a more pro-active and comprehensive approach to addressing not just K12 but lifelong learning. Both camps support helping teachers be more professional and helping them follow best practices that help kids prepare for the 21st Century.

Follow below the fold for a detailed look at the positions of the campaigns. RSS readers click through for the full article.

Continue reading "The Great Education Debate - Obama vs. McCain at AEP" »

How will the economic downturn affect education budgets? How are executives at publishing houses and education technology firms planning for the recession?

Education Week noted a couple of weeks ago:

"...states across the country are confronting deteriorating budget conditions that have tied the hands of legislators and governors hoping to spare K-12 education...Altogether, the 2009 budget gaps—the difference between what states are expected to collect in revenue and what they’re expected to spend on services—will exceed $26 billion, the NCSL says."

I recently conducted an informal poll of 30 Education Industry executives on this topic. They expect that the impact will be far more immediate than past downturns but generally they expect it be moderate.

Most of the respondents are President or Vice President level executives. They come from a nice mix of large and small companies and a combination of print, education technology, and companies that serve those companies. This is not a scientific survey, take it as a directional pulse of what people are thinking as they do their business planning for the 2008-2009 school year.

In today's post I share some of the high level findings. In the next few posts we'll hear the detailed comments from some of the respondents to give you a more nuanced view of the data.

Across the Board - Pessimism

The is an almost universal expectation that the downturn will affect education budgets. 23 out of 30 expect a negative impact on business. Not a single respondent expected an increase in spending and only 7 said the market would remain flat.

Immediate Impact - Something New

Perhaps the most significant finding is that 63% expect the impact to be either immediate (they are already seeing it) or in the next six months. This is a big shift from past downturns where it took 18 months for the downturn to flow through tax receipts to school budgets.

In part this is attributed to the heavy reliance of many districts on local property taxes. With housing prices dropping across the board it is clear locally what the impact will be. Because schools will always try to avoid laying off people if they can many companies saw cutbacks as far back as last fall as districts anticipated lower 2009 budgets.

Another interesting insight is that ed-tech companies think the impact will be longer term while the print companies expect it to be more immediate. My guess is that seeing a couple of adoptions postponed really rocked the print world.

One additional reason cited for a more immediate impact by several people was the impact of increased prices for fuel and food.

Several respondents noted that Federal spending will remain constant or increase after the election in the fall. The downturn will be concentrated in the 88% of education spending that comes from state and local taxes.

Impact Will be Mild

The good news is that the general expectation is that the downturn will be relatively mild. Only 8 of the respondents expected it to be a significant downturn. Several people noted that the impacts are being felt in 23 states this time as opposed to 48 in 2001.

Folks who thought it would be mixed expected to see some areas of their business doing better (e.g. supplemental) while others were challenged to make the number (e.g. big ticket items).

This is one area where there was a real divergence between the largest companies and the rest of the market. 6 of the 8 people who think the impact will be significant are with very large firms.

Districts Will Delay Big Decisions

One explanation for the pessimism of the large companies is that people are seeing districts delay or defer large new projects - even adoptions. This would have a disproportionate impact on the largest companies. Smaller company's products fill in gaps and are easier to justify right now (as long as they target an urgent need). Several respondents noted that they are already seeing this in the decisions districts are making today about the 2008-2009 school year.

About the Respondents

I contacted 74 people on my LinkedIn network and 30 responded.* 67% are Executives with a specific industry focus, 23% are consultants who look across a wide variety of companies and the other 10% were Line Managers or Sales Reps.

Responses came from a wide variety of companies.

Industry Services includes management consultants, list providers, market research, and executive recruiting.

We also got a nice mix of company sizes.

*If you are interested in participating in future straw polls lets get connected on LinkedIn.

What do large school districts need from ed-tech providers? Michael Casserly Executive Director of the Council of the Great City Schools spoke at the Software Information Industry Association (SIIA) conference this week in San Francisco. The speech was direct, honest, and well balanced in tackling some difficult issues like NCLB.

Towards the close of the speech he made the following 10 requests of the Ed-Tech community. I've added my perspective from the industry's side of the conversation.

1. Provide tools that build academic vocabulary and develop high order thinking skills. I found this an interesting request given that all the major publishers and several mid and small sized publishers have materials that do all of these things. Either we are not meeting the real need with our products or we are not getting the word out effectively. This should give all of these providers cause to reflect on their offerings and their go-to-market strategies.

2. Provide targeted intervention materials for Special Education (SPED) and English Language Learners (ELL) - specifically age appropriate materials targeting different ability levels. This is a similar problem to issue #1, there are a fair number of existing resources in the market already, but most of them are print based. One area where technology could make a huge difference is flexibly scaling basal textbook content to the student's ability level. Doing this with print presents two intractable problems - the sheer number of variations needed is prohibitively expensive and the stigma associated with the lower level books causes kids to resist using them. On-line everyone is in the same application and the number of variations is limited only by the sophistication of the software engine.

3. Develop virtual environments to stimulate inquiry based learning when the real materials would be too expensive or dangerous. This is an exciting area with a lot of activity. My article in Cable in the Classroom covered this very ground. Virtual worlds do present a challenge in districts with high poverty around equity of access to technology. The path of least resistance here may be cell phone based interfaces similar to what is happening in Japan and Europe.

4. More group learning resources using technology. Honestly - I was writing like crazy and missed the substance of this request. If you were there and recall please explain in the comments. [Update: see Charlene Blohm's take on this in comments.]

5. Clarity from publishers on what our materials do and don't do. There is a feeling that technology vendors have either over-promised or omitted important product shortcomings. Fair enough. The temptation is always there for vendors to do this - but in the conversation economy it can be deadly. Trust is the coin of the realm. Sales Management has a responsibility to set the right tone of integrity and honesty.

6. Provide clear alignments to standards in a deep and meaningful way. They would also like to know where we don't meet the standards - don't force them to figure it out on their own. Vendors might be more inclined to do this if we feel that it is more than a check-off item. The cost of doing correlations and maintaining them is significant and yet from what we can tell once they are submitted they are never used again. We do this little Morris Dance around the standards and then districts buy the book with the prettiest cover.

7. Stick by them - they are in it for the long haul and they need business partners to trudge that road with them. This is a legitimate request but a hard one to implement due to the management turmoil many large districts suffer from on an ongoing basis. It can take years to position a sale in a large district only to see it derailed by a reorganization or funding re-allocation. Only the largest publishers can make this kind of sustained commitment which limits the range of innovative solutions that the large districts see.

8. Longitudinal follow up with effective professional development. He also requested that we bundle PD into the cost of the products - if PD is an add-on option there is the temptation to skimp in this area. This request is consistent with the thesis that we are going to see a Negroponte switch to districts paying for PD and getting the materials for free. Of course, the easiest way for districts to insure that this happens is to issue their RFPs with PD bundled in. Until that happens vendors who are competing on price are going to leave it out. Amplifying this temptation is the fact that PD is frequently the item with the lowest contribution margin at publishers and ed-tech vendors.

9. We should resist customizing our products for one district - too many districts have had been left behind on legacy code as a result of this. I'm really not sure that the vendors are at fault on this one. This usually happens when a large district flexes their market power by demanding special attention. I've known vendors who have walked on these deals because they see the problems down the road, but there is almost always someone willing to bid it exactly the way the district requested it. See my comment below on how the Council itself could play a positive role in these situations.

10. Provide software tools that help them use data more effectively. This includes longitudinal tracking systems, dashboards, and benchmarks. This is an area where lots of companies are doing important work. Student Information Systems, Data Warehouses, Assessment Reporting Systems, and Learning Management Systems are complex software systems that are evolving rapidly. This is also one of the areas where technology, used effectively, can provide real tools for change.***

On top of all this he added a bonus request. He asked that vendors resist selling products when the district wants to use them in an inappropriate way (wrong age level, insufficient infrastructure, etc.). This is related to item 9 above. If a vendor feels they are being pressured to do something like this it is hard to push back, particularly in a competitive situation. Responsible vendors will walk away - but there will always be someone who will make the promise to win the business. I think there is an opportunity for the Council to be of service in this area. If the responsible vendors felt they had place they could go before these deals were sealed it might make a difference. The Council could put a word in with the district that they were headed in a risky direction.

Large Districts (and States) need to resist the temptation to use their market power in ways that ultimately hurt their own interests. There are perfectly legitimate uses for that market power so I'm not advocating unilateral disarmament - just suggesting that some restraint is needed on both sides. Districts shouldn't make unreasonable demands and vendors shouldn't make unrealistic commitments.

-----------------------
***I'm working on the Data Driven Decision Making Report that will be released in the next few weeks. It is an in-depth look at the SIS and Data Warehouse market and is a follow on to the 2003 report. If you would like more information please use the contact us link and reference the report.

By Randy Wilhelm, CEO Thinkronize - Guest Blogger

Did George Washington's dog play multiplication math games with Abraham Lincoln's animals during the Civil War?

I would guess the answer is a resounding no. However, a new Index reveals the most popular keywords that K-12 students are searching for on the Internet. It includes these terms in the top 15. netTrekker d.i.’s quarterly “Top 15 In-School Search Index” for spring 2008 will be announced on Wednesday, with Games coming in at #1, Dogs at #2 and George Washington, at #5.

Search engines like Google™ and Yahoo® frequently pull together lists of the most popular keyword queries, underscoring our nation’s interests and fixations and showcasing trends and patterns. This index, however, offers a different view—a real-time school-based mirror of what our children are searching for—both for academic purposes and out of genuine curiosity.

With five school age kids of my own, an academically curious wife and wireless-device-addicted me, I think our humble family averages about 50 searches a day. And, as my sons are crazy about electronic games and occasionally pine for another dog – I can certainly understand the top results of the netTrekker d.i. ranking. Although it would have been heartening to see more academic search terms in the top 5, it is comforting to know that kids will be kids, whether at school or at home.

Every day, across the nation, our digitally native students are punching search terms into their school’s Internet browsers. Now, with this first-ever quarterly index, we have new insight into what our nation’s students are learning about, care about and want to know more about.

Following are the top 15 most active keyword searches in schools for the spring quarter, from February through April, 2008:

Rank Keyword
1 Games
2 Dogs
3 Animals
4 Civil War
5 George Washington
6 Holocaust
7 Abraham Lincoln
8 Multiplication
9 Math Games
10 Weather
11 Frogs
12 Fractions
13 Planets
14 Sharks
15 Plants

About Thinkronize - They are the creators of netTrekker d.i. the #1 K-12 safe search engine.
--------------------

Lee's Comment

For publishers, teachers, and students who are building on-line activities this index will be a great asset. By using these popular search terms as starting points for long-tail keyword phrase mining you will be able to find phrases that are easy to rank high on.

The Dig function in Wordze is one place this would be invaluable. For example - if you start with "George Washington" you can find 3094 phrases that are possibly related. While George Washington" would be extremely difficult to rank for (30,000+ searches a month and 18,700,000 pages) "George Washington Biography" has much less competition (3,899 searches a month and 440,000 pages). Quantitatively this means the second phrase has 10% of the search volume but only 2% of the competition. With web savvy writing you could create content that would surface at the top of that list much more easily than plain "george washington."

Big kudos and thanks to nettrekker for creating this index.

The reaction of many parents and educators to the idea of playing games in school is horror. School is supposed to be serious hard work. What these people don't know is that in modern video games doing tasks repetitively to slowly build skills and status is the norm not the exception. These games are all about "hard" play.

Gamers have a term for this - grinding. Grinding is spending two months getting your mining skills up so that you can make a special suit of armor for your friends. Grinding is repeatedly doing some menial chore for a faction so you can earn status with them and get access to skills they can teach you.

Educators also have a term of art for this kind of activity - they call it building fluency. We learn most of the hardest skills in life through a slow process of accretion that amounts to building fluency. According to reading experts a child needs to read several million words in order to become a fluent reader.

Accelerated Reader is essentially a game about reading that is a long steady grind. Like a game you get rapid feedback, frequent promotions, and status from completing the tasks. It didn't get to be "the world's most widely used reading software" by mistake.

But the concept of fluency goes far beyond reading. Learning to play an instrument, writing, using a knife, flirting, skateboarding and thousands of other human activities all share the need to grind it out over time to develop that effortless fluency that is the mark of an expert.

This raises the question of why a child would engage in the grind to fluency? My theory, based on gamer culture, is that it is a critical part of building identity. Players will do routine and menial tasks over and over again to build the story line of their character in the game. It is a fundamental building block of identity - if it was easy there would be no status associated with becoming fluent.

How does this apply to school? Many (not all) low performing students don't have a story thread in their lives that helps motivate them to grind in school (doing homework). Students who are high achievers generally have a story line that is central to their identity that gives the grind meaning and a purpose. Without that story line much school work is just tedium.

If this is true (a big if) what is role of publishers in helping educators and parents guide students to the stories that will motivate them? I believe our role is to bring new tools and approaches to bear that have more story embedded in them, stories that students can appropriate and make their own as they build their identity.

If you want clues on how to do that - you only need to head down to your local Game Stop.

It has been a while since I did a round up of blog articles, time to clean a few items out. Rather than dump a long list I've picked four articles I've found particularly interesting in the past few weeks.

Matt Mihaly over at The Forge notes that MMO's/Virtual Worlds are some of the most valuable private tech firms in the world. I would add to Matt's observation that 3 of the 4 firms he cites in the top 20 are for kids. Silicon Alley Insider's original article is here.

Chris Anderson over at The Long Tail has an interesting take on the decline of the newspaper industry that is directly relevant to education publishing. Sure, readership is down, but at $45b it is still twice as big as Google and Yahoo combined. The money quote:

The truth is that the newspaper business is still a huge industry and will be around in one form or another for the rest of my life. That is not to dismiss the declines, but only to note that there's still a lot of money there and what is required is strategic change, not giving up the ghost.

New information is like opium? Wikipedia as an act of love? Will Richardson, as ever, is interesting.

The Happy Worker Kit - coming to an office near you soon. Funny.

Virtual Reality and Education have a long and checkered history.

On-line worlds give students opportunities to experience things that would be too expensive, too dangerous, or too time consuming in the "real" world. It allows us to distill an experience into it's essence while allowing learners to be active agents rather than passive recipients.

That said I would argue that the word "virtual" has little or no meaning for today's students. It is an artifact from a time when the internet was not a pervasive presence. In todays on-line social spaces teens are making friends, sharing experiences, flirting, competing, earning status, and defining their identities. There is very little that is "virtual" about any of this for them - it is just one more aspect of reality.

As anyone who has spent more than an hour or two developing an on-line avatar can attest you begin to invest your identity in that character - it starts to have a "real" world impact on your self-perception. As a testament to this one on-line world for teens knows that if they can get students to visit at least 10 times they will be on the site for 2-3 hours a week for at least 18 months. Once the on-line identity has progressed past a certain point it begins to address real needs for recognition, status, play, and identity.

For publishers this means thinking of ways to tap these virtual worlds to support the core goal of teaching in the classroom. How much could you improve outcomes if you could find a way to have students voluntarily engaging for an additional 2-3 hours a week for a year and a half? Those improved outcomes are very real, not virtual.

Seeing virtual and real world experiences as separate is an outdated paradigm that may be limiting what you can do with your products to improve learning.

New York, Texas, California, and Florida have opted out of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and will be abandoning all high stakes testing. It is unclear at this time if other states will follow, although indications from across the political spectrum are clear there is strong interest.

In a joint press conference the Chief State School Officers for the big 4 expressed a commitment to move the money they are currently spending on high stakes testing into Art, Music, and Intramural Sports.

"Frankly we were not seeing real gains. We kept tweaking the tests and measurements to give the illusion that progress was being made - but at the end of the day it was the same old same old" stated one Chief. Another added that it was difficult to measure whether the tests were really making a difference. As he pointed out - "the mortgage crisis was driven by people educated 15-30 years ago, it is hard to see how today's students could be dumber than that."

In related news Pearson announced that in response to the announcement that they have added Video Professor to their eLearning line-up and are excited about the opportunity to start adding the Pearson portfolio into the beloved late night cable advertorials. "We think NovaNet and Pearson Inform will be big hits with this audience and we are excited to be extending our elearning reach into new markets."

They plan on rolling out new video products targeted at the revived art, music, and drama markets. The announcement stated "Schools have thousands of laserdisc players in their inventory and we are proud to offer them a new use for this technology. Think of it as Gray-Ray and we all win!"

In response to these developments a spokesman for Houghton/Harcourt sniffed that this was a clear sign that it is time for Pearson to drop out of the race for dominance so that the nation can come together for the fall back to school season. He then added that if Pearson was as experienced as they keep claiming to be why did they buy the now moribund testing side of Harcourt? He added "Books, books, books - thats where we see all the action and growth over the next 15-20 years. Glad we dodged that assessment bullet in the Harcourt acquisition."

Tom Chapin's satirical song "Its Not On The Test" is worth a look. Even if you are a fan of No Child Left Behind this issues he raises need an answer.

I particularly like the jab at shout TV which reduces all discourse to name calling. Education reform is a deep and important topic and our current confrontational political culture isn't serving us well in this - or many other - areas.

He has a web site with good links and more information at Its Not On the Test.

Yeah the video production values could have been better - but the music is great and the message is delivered in a fun way using the kids.

Information Overload and Education Publishing Marketing penned (keyed?) by yours truly was published today on the AEP blog. This is a summary of the longer series I did last year on information overload. If you want a quick introduction or need a refresher hop over and take a look.

While you are there bookmark the blog or better yet drop it into your RSS reader - on a regular basis senior people from the publishing industry will be writing about the business.

Curious about how Web 2.0 is going to affect education? Steve Hargadon has distilled into one blog post an excellent summary of the trends that are leading us there and what teachers can do to help their students thrive in this new environment.

Much of what Steve talks about has been part of a vision for education long before computers were going into schools. There is a clear link from Dewey, Piaget, Vigotsky, and even the constructivist critic Mayer to the ideas Hargadon lays out.

Both the technology and the culture that surrounds it have matured to the point where this vision can transform into the dominant paradigm. Quantitative and anecdotal evidence backs this assertion up.

He describes in some detail the following shifts that are taking place:

• "From consuming to producing
• From authority to transparency
• From the expert to the facilitator
• From the lecture to the hallway
• From "access to information" to "access to people"
• From "learning about" to "learning to be"
• From passive to passionate learning
• From presentation to participation
• From publication to conversation
• From formal schooling to lifelong learning
• From supply-push to demand-pull"

He concludes:

"We've spent the last ten years teaching students how to protect themselves from inappropriate content – now we have to teach them to create appropriate content. They may be "digital natives," but their knowledge is surface level, and they desperately need training in real thinking skills. More than any other generation, they live lives that are largely separated from the adults around them, talking and texting on cell phones, and connecting online. We may be afraid to enter that world, but enter it we must, for they often swim in uncharted waters without the benefit of adult guidance."

Hat tip to Carolyn Foote for flagging this.

For publishers I've outlined similar ideas about what is happening and what you can do to participate in this movement in the following series of posts.

Information Overload Series

Part 1 - It’s all in your head - really

Part 2 - A cure for “a poverty of attention”

Part 3 - 10 Ways to Build Instructional Products For 21st Century Skills

Part 4 - 10 Ideas to For Marketing & Selling In An Age of Infinite Input

Summary - Closing Thoughts and Resources

What is the future of publishing? I moderated a distinguished panel at the IIR Education Industry Investment Forum in Phoenix last week that tackled this question. The general thrust was that publishers need to adapt to a new environment or they will be left behind.

Nader Dareshori CEO of Aptius Learning and former CEO of Houghton Mifflin addressed the real business of publishing – spreading ideas.

Reid Lyon (bio) the architect of Reading First and CEO of Synergistic Education Solutions tackled the question of context – how materials are used matters more than the materials themselves. Publishers need to think build this into their products and business models.

Hakan Satiroglu CEO of xPlana covered how new tools are changing the structure of what is offered and how traditional publishers are struggling with this new paradigm (see my post on this topic here).

Bobbie Kurshan CEO of Curriki talked about how the Open Source community is going to play in the creation of content and how publishers can benefit for participating in the community. (see my post on Open Source in Education here).

As moderator I discussed how publishers need to move away from trying to recreate the book experience on-line to leveraging experiences only the technology can provide like virtual worlds and video games.

Follow the “keep reading” link to find an extended description of each panelist's key points and some notes on the Q&A portion of the session. (If you are on an RSS reader you may need to click through to the original article to see this link).

Continue reading "The Future of Education Publishing - Panel Report from the Education Industry Investment Forum" »

Does real learning happen in virtual worlds?

Cable in the Classroom Magazine published an article I wrote on this topic in their March issue.

The premise is:

"There have always been scientific concepts our children should experience that are too dangerous, too expensive, or too time-consuming for school. For these activities - some of the most thought provoking in science - we have had to settle for lectures and reading.

Virtual worlds change this equation. In a virtual world, students can use million dollar apparatus, experiment with lethal substances, and compress years of activity into a few weeks...."

The article goes on to describe how the Texas Workforce Commission is using Whyville as an outreach vehicle for biotechnology. It also addresses why virtual worlds are particularly attractive to tweens because of where they are developmentally.

If you have thoughts on what I wrote leave a comment here and I'll respond.

Download the complete article (PDF) by clicking on the image to the right.

All the links referenced in the article are below the fold - continue reading to see them.

Continue reading "Virtual Worlds = Real Learning" »

Students at Westlake High School in Austin TX are in their second year of creating a virtual Vietnam Memorial to those who died in the war. Carolyn Foote, the Librarian at Westlake, has written movingly about it on her blog.

Students are assigned a soldier, conduct research, assemble a presentation, and then post it all on the web. This has spurred the interest of veterans one of whom said:

“Your school is about to do something that none of us thought would ever happen. Our beloved leader will be known to many in a time that others have been forgotten. You truly are paying a tribute to one of the finest men that ever lived.”

This is the kind of project that engages students in the larger world using Web 2.0. The fact that people who knew and loved the soldiers are paying attention makes it meaningful in ways that most schoolwork never addresses. Using a mix of music, photographs, and text the students are painting a bigger picture of each of those honored than found on traditional memorials.

It is part homework, part public service, and all heart.

I'm pleased that my son is one of the students working on the project this year. We've already had some interesting dinner conversations about it and we are looking forward to seeing the final results posted online.

If you want to track the project the students have a blog.

In Japan novels are serialized for cell phone delivery and published as dead tree editions only after they are hits. John Rice has a great post on on this at his Educational Games Research blog.

While this works because of Japan's rather unique commuting environment the central point that any reading helps build fluency is well taken. Here is the money quote:

"It boils down to literacy events in the life of a child. The exposure to text, in whatever venue, increases the reading and writing skills of children. If children read a book, a comic book, or the story line in a videogame, they are reading. And that makes all the difference."

This novel approach hits on two interesting themes. First, it takes advantage of the new format rather than trying to shoehorn the old way of doing things into the new platform. Publishers have worked hard to recreate the book experience on-line with very limited success. I would argue that this innovation is the reverse - making an on-line experience into a book, which is why it works.

Second, the Japanese are not fighting the new tools but finding ways to use them effectively. Cell phones can be disruptive in schools and there are definitely places they don't belong. On the other hand the blanket prohibitions that many schools have in place show that they haven't been provided with products like this that take advantage of the new technology for learning.

Products like Amazon's Kindle and Sony's eReader are interesting and may be better platforms for delivering educational content but they cost almost as much as a laptop. On the other hand, most kids have access to a cell phone today at no cost to the schools at all.

Does exposure to classics matter? Of course it does. The quality of what you read helps your higher order thinking by exposing you to new ideas and concepts. But why can't a classic can't come out on a cell phone first? Dickens serialized most of his work in magazines, the broadband distribution network of his day.

It would be interesting to see an ed-tech company partner with a publisher to reach out to students here in the US with something similar.

What do Web 2.0 and Social Networking mean for Education Publishing? On February 7th I was on a panel at the Association of American Publishers (AAP) in Sacramento that tackled this question.

Ann Flynn Director of Education Technology at National School Boards Association (NSBA) reviewed the excellent study they released last fall that explored how these tools are being used in schools.

Sheryl Abshire CTO from Calcasieu Parish School System in Lake Charles, Louisiana talked about they are handling the very real complications that come with introducing these disruptive technologies into schools and classrooms.

My talk focused on why these tools are so wildly popular. If Web 2.0 tools are solutions - what problem are they solving?

In a nutshell - we have moved from a world of information scarcity to a world of information overload. People are adopting these tools because they help them focus their scarce attention on things that are relevant to them, and they know they are relevant because they have been vetted by their collaborative network of peers.

Regular readers will recognize many of the themes from the Information Overload series I did last fall.

For those who are interested here are my slides AAP Lee Wilson-1.ppt (3.8 meg file - lots o' graphics). [Update - Link Fixed]

Related blog posts:

Information Overload
Web 2.0 Education Marketing
Textbooks vs. Education Technology - Clashing Paradigms

Ed Note: Do videogames embody the best in cognitive theory? In Part 2 of his series on educational video games guest blogger NT Etuk explores the work of James Paul Gee. Part 1 is here

By NT Etuk - CEO Tabula Digita

Why do videogames work? Why are gamers so willing to learn in these environments but so unwilling to learn in school?

Fortunately, some of the answers lie in the research of an extremely well regarded literacy professor. Dr. James Paul Gee is the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State, and the author of the book "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Second Edition”

Dr. Gee as an educator was curious about why videogames were able to do so much that our education system was having trouble doing – continuously engaging students, making students feel safe failing (not silly), unafraid to ask questions, and providing contextual learning that makes the learning relevant to the learner.
So he set out to answer these questions. His book is an excellent read and I encourage everyone to read it, but for the sake of brevity, I will pull out a core part of his findings.

Dr. Gee found that commercial videogames are built on a set of design principles, and that these principles translate into some of the more fundamental learning principles that cognitive theory has validated.

Among them are:

1. Active, Critical Learning Principle – [In a videogame] all aspects of the learning environment are set up to encourage active and critical, not passive, learning.

2. “Psychosocial Moratorium” Principle – [In a videogame] learners can take risks in a space where real world consequences (i.e. grades, risk of looking silly) are lowered.

3. Achievement Principle – [In a videogame] there are intrinsic rewards from the beginning, customized to each learner’s level, effort, and growing mastery and signaling the learner’s ongoing achievements.

4. Practice Principle – [In a videogame] - learners get lots and lots of practice in a context where practice is not boring (i.e. in a virtual world that is compelling to learners on their own terms and where the learners experience ongoing success). They spend lots of time on task.
5. Multimodal Principle – [In a videogame] - meaning and knowledge are built up through various modalities (images, texts, symbols, interactions, abstract design, sound, etc.), not just words.

These are principles built into all good videogames. I have listed 5, but there are 36 that Dr. Gee documents.

As you read through them, hopefully it becomes clear how videogame systems can actually translate into tremendously powerful and flexible learning systems. Tabula Digita [link] and other companies pioneering this arena embrace these principles and look to embed as many of these principles as possible in the design of our games.

The good thing is that school systems are beginning to realize the inherent power of simulations. I can only speak from our company’s experiences, but Tabula Digita games and simulations have been accepted in some of the largest and sometimes most conservative school districts in the country, including Plano ISD, Orange County - Florida, New York City Public Schools, Forsyth County, and Chicago Public Schools among others.

Educational gaming methodologies and pedagogical approaches have been accepted as superior by some of the most rigorous judges out there. Orange County educators published a list of 54 intervention products that they recommend their teachers use. Tabula Digita simulations received the highest Rubric score of ‘A’ and the highest educator recommendation rating of 4 stars. Only 4 other products were rated so highly. Two were non-computer based.

And students are singing the praises of educational games and simulations, with approximately 88% of the students who have used our software recommending it to other students and over 90% saying they wished more simulations were in their classrooms.

There is a paradigm shift that is occurring in education and it’s being forced by our industry’s ultimate customer – the student. Today’s child demands immersion. They demand experience. They demand engagement. And their expectations of how they receive, interpret, and absorb information are growing more sophisticated every day. As educators, if our methods don’t adapt to their needs, we run the risk of irrelevance. And if we’re irrelevant then we run the risk that we can’t talk to them. And if that happens, then how will they ever hear what we have to say …. ?

About Tabula Digita:
Tabula Digita is the award winning publisher of the DimensionM series of educational videogame titles. DimensionM titles encompass action and non-action titles and allow students to play other students within classrooms, across schools, and across the country, all while learning and increasing achievement.

Related Blog Posts

Link to Part 1 in this series.

Slaying Myths About Video Games In Schools

Virtual Worlds for Education - 1987 Redux?
Games for Education- Essential Resource Links

Continue reading "Video Games Embody the Best in Cognitive Theory - Part 2" »

Ed Note: Are video games and simulations essential learning tools for the 21st Century? Guest Blogger NT Etuk responds to my post about Ethics in the first of two posts on this topic.

By NT Etuk – CEO and Co-Founder, Tabula Digita.

Video games and simulations are among the most efficient learning tools ever built. Period. This is not a guess. It is not a hypothesis. If you don't agree I'd like to share the perspective of someone who is working with schools to incorporate video games into classroom practice.

But first, let’s reset our minds about videogames. If you can, forget all of the media hype. Forget all of the preconceptions about how good or bad they are for children. Instead, let’s take a fresh look. Let’s view videogames from a new perspective and together let us really see what’s happening …

In fact, let’s look at this through the eyes of a child …

Process Matters

When a child picks up a new videogame, he or she knows very little about the game. He or she knows little about the world the game operates in, the rules of the world, the rules of his or her character, or the rules of the interaction of his or her character with that world. The child doesn’t know what problems they have to solve to advance through the world, and in many cases the child doesn’t even know how to solve those problems ahead of time!

Yet, to win (and that is the goal of most videogames), he or she must learn those rules, master those rules, learn the problems, solve the problems, and fail a hundred times before finally succeeding!

Imagine a system so ingeniously designed, so pedagogically efficient that it takes a child from beginner to master in 40 to 60 hours (the standard amount of time a game plays), forces them to fail dozens of times before achieving ultimate success, but is so inspiring and so engaging that they solve the problems on their own, actively ask friends for help, and even do research to find answers.

Content Matters

Now imagine that what they’ve mastered, what they’re curious about, what they ask for help on, and ultimately what they succeed in is not Super Mario Brothers … but Algebra …

Now – if you were asked to design a system of education, wouldn’t that result be your goal? If you were an administrator or a principal and you were asked to manage a system of education, wouldn’t you be hoping that was the behavior of your students? And if you were a teacher, wouldn’t you be begging for the tools to help that become not just a dream, but a reality?

Of course! We all would! So as educators, we actually owe it to ourselves and to our students not to be frustrated by the videogame medium, not to be afraid of the technology, not to be suspicious of the engagement factor, but actually to embrace it and to ask the critical question “Why?”

In the next post we explore the question of why this works.

A Note from the Author:
This is the first in a series of discussions around the idea of educational gaming, simulations, and immersive learning. It’s a small snippet meant to start a dialogue. I’ll try to keep the piece short so we can dialogue together – so please, any questions, answers, retorts, replies – please post. More than happy to hear them and respond.

About Tabula Digita:
Tabula Digita is the award winning publisher of the DimensionM series of educational videogame titles. DimensionM titles encompass action and non-action titles and allow students to play other students within classrooms, across schools, and across the country, all while learning and increasing achievement. View Tabula Digita titles at www.DimensionM.com

What tools do teachers find useful for learning and teaching? The Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies out of the UK conducted a survey in 2007 that asked people to submit their top 10 tools - they then came up with a list of the top 100.

If you are an educational software publisher the results may not be what you want to hear. Not 1 of the top 10 is an education specific title and only 5 of the top 50 are (if we include Wikipedia). All the rest are general productivity tools and range from Office apps, search tools, social networking sites, mind mappers, RSS readers to name just a few categories. In an even more interesting twist 37 of the top 50 are free.

This survey is very unscientific, 107 self selected responses. Take it with a large grain of salt. On the other hand the questions it raises are fascinating.

• Could it be that the age of education specific software is coming to an end?
• Are educators embracing general productivity tools as the solution?
• Will they need scaffolding to bring these tools into the classroom effectively?
• What will be the business model to support this trend - will it be Professional Development instead of Software Systems?
• Will schools tolerate or even encourage "free" products that are advertising or sponsorship driven?
• If schools do move to a sponsorship model what implications does that have for traditional media like textbooks?

Comment away if you have thoughts on any of this.

If you are attending the panel on games and learning tomorrow the correct room number is 320 EF. I posted an incorrect number yesterday. Hope to see you there.

(First post from the iPhone. Works like a charm. )

FETC 2008 starts tomorrow and I'm looking forward to catching up with friends and colleagues from across the Education Technology industry.

I'm participating in a panel discussion on Thursday afternoon about games and education that will balance practitioners with vendors in a discussion about the state of games and learning. From the practitioner side John Rice of the Education Games Research Blog will be there along with Gary Weidenhamer, Education Technology Manager at Palm Beach County District. Dave Martz from Muzzy Lane Software and I will be speaking from the business perspective and Karen Billings from SIIA's Education Division will be moderating.

The panel runs from 1:50-2:45 PM Thursday in room CS4. Hope to see you there!

PS - Check the on-site notices - the room may change.

By Guest Blogger Randy Wilhelm


Educator's love the internet but they have valid concerns about using it in the classroom. Thinkronize’s study, “Schools & Generation ‘Net” uncovered compelling insights from nearly 1,000 principals and library media specialists. Relevancy, commercialization, information literacy, instructional validity, and children's safety were all significant issues. Today we look at 5 ideas that can help you rethink your on-line offerings to fit into today's classrooms.

1. The Internet is a Valuable Instructional Resource
First the good news. Our survey confirmed that educators value the Internet, with 90% rating it as an “excellent,” “very good,” or “good” educational resource.

2. Concern over Relevancy and Commercialization of the Net
The study found that educators are worried about the quality and relevance of sites students find on the Internet with the following ratings:

• 79% expressed concern about useless or irrelevant search results.
• 78% percent expressed concern about students being redirected to commercial or pay sites.

Publishers have an opportunity to create web destinations that are lively and instructionally relevant without overdue commercialization.

3. Information Literacy is Low
When it came to information literacy, there was concern over students’ ability to judge online information sources critically. Our study results showed:

• Only 4% “strongly agreed” that students were equipped to think critically about the accuracy, authority and possible biases of the information sources they encounter, with the rest expressing responses in varying degrees of uncertainty.
• When asked about the teacher’s role, 88% “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed that teachers need additional professional development in this area.

These findings correspond to another recent study conducted on behalf of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Their key finding was that 88% of voters say they believe that schools should incorporate 21st century skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, technology literacy, communication, and self-direction into the curricula.

4. Web use for Instruction/Curriculum
We asked about teachers’ use of the Internet and student searching being integrated into the school’s curriculum. Our findings included:

• Over one-third of respondents (35%) reported that “almost all” teachers in their schools use the Internet regularly for instructional purposes.
• 81% “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed that student searching on the Internet has been integrated into the curricula.

5. Actions Taken to Protect Students Online
Finally, virtually all the educators report that their schools or districts are taking actions to protect students. The most common precaution that schools take is to install filters. A majority of schools also rely on providing information to faculty, students and parents. However, only about one-third have purchased and installed special search engines to keep students safe. Specific actions taken to improve students’ Internet safety included:

• Installing filters – 97%
• Giving students instructions on safety – 79%
• Giving faculty instructions on safety – 75%
• Providing parents with tips and information – 56%
• Purchasing special search engines – 32%

The Web, though a place of immense value, is creating a new front of concern as it is a place where anyone can post content that may be inaccurate, biased and even dangerous. It is vital that we teach our students how to evaluate sites and be critically aware of the ways they are being targeted for potentially dangerous and commercial purposes.

The bottom line – educators believe there is significant room to improve the Internet as an educational resource. And, in order to keep the Internet a valuable resource, tools like filters, training, and safe and contextually relevant search engines, like netTrekker, are critical.

Link to first article in this series.

Open Source culture in K12 Education will have a profound impact on our industry over the next 10-15 years. Open source already touches instructional content, classroom management, student information systems, and IT services. Where else will it find a purchase?

Ironically, the attempts by the old guard industries to protect their traditional interests in a digital age are accelerating the change. The more restrictive copyright and trademark laws become the more incentive there is to create open source content. Many education publishers are going to find themselves in a Chinese Finger Trap - the more they struggle the worse the problem will become.

The music industry is proving that no one ever "wins" an argument with their customers - the question for education is whether publishers can remain relevant in this new era by learning from other's mistakes.

Success in this new reality is going to require a new paradigm - one that actually takes a less restrictive approach to copyright and puts more focus on services and support. This upends the traditional economics of education publishing where the customer buys the content and services are freebies tossed in to seal the deal.

Producers As Owners

The other profound difference that we are likely to see in the coming years