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IMG_0052What could be nerdier than a huge ed-tech trade show? It has technology, teachers, curriculum, and lot of gee whiz bang products. I’m sure a couple of the hotels had mad D&D sessions going late into the night.

I’ll tell you what is nerdier – judging the marketing efforts at said trade show. Welcome to my world.

Most K12 education technology companies launch new products at ISTE. Companies go all out to put their best foot forward which means it is the fairest opportunity we have each year to pass judgement on the quality of their marketing.

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s640x480At ISTE 2011 in Philadelphia this week we were blessed with gorgeous summer weather, hot but not oppressive days and cool evenings perfect for a city walk. The show was hot too, well attended and and well run. So it may seem like an odd time to declare that this trade show’s days are numbered. Tech shows like ISTE and TCEA are surging in attendance while warhorses like IRA go begging for attendees. Received wisdom is that everything is moving to the tech side.

I’m going out on a limb to argue that the trends of the last 5 years, declining core content shows and strong attendance at pure tech shows, are about to reverse themselves. In the coming years we’ll see a resurgence of IRA, NCTM, and other content shows. ISTE will wither to a hard core platform technology event.

After IRA I noted how tech unfriendly the event was – they have a long way to go in encouraging and recruiting tech solutions. As I strolled the floor at ISTE in Philadelphia this week noticed the flip side of this coin. There was very little in the way of core content solutions that are delivered in genuine transmedia packages. It was ALL technology, PURE technology.

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Success SignWhen educators choose new classroom materials their first challenge is to sift through dozens of options and narrow the search down to four to five options. In other words before they say “yes” to one solution they need to find reasons to say “no” to a host of other options.

Prior to Common Core the most significant filter was “alignment to state standards.” If a company couldn’t provide a correlation that showed substantial or complete compliance with a particular state’s requirements it never got past the first meeting. No one really used the correlations once the product was purchased, but it was a useful filter to help narrow the field of choices.

In the last six months I have noticed a significant shift in this process. Most districts now require some flavor of “technology” in any curriculum resource they purchase. Like standards correlations they don’t particularly care what it is – but they won’t consider products that don’t have a technology component.

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Deadrising_boxartMy 17 year old son is in the other room using a kayak paddle with chain saws attached at either end to slice zombies in half. I’m sitting here minding my own business when out of the blue he says “Dad, this game is great for teaching time management skills.”

In Dead Rising you have 72 hours in a zombie infested town to build a bike, rescue your daughter, and escape the military. Along the way anything you find can be weaponized against the slow moving brain noshers. Shovels, gasoline, saw blades, pitchforks, shotguns, drills, buckets, are among the things that can be combined in new and amazing ways. Yes, even a stuffed moose head.

Call me a proud papa – this concept was coming from a teen who is wrestling with time management (i.e. he gets A’s when does the damn work which isn’t often enough). The fact that he was metacogizant of this while playing astounded and pleased me.

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In an age of information overload Librarians are the pilots who can help us quickly navigate to what is meaningful.

Said differently – librarian’s rock and they make a huge difference in schools. Here is a video made by a school for a library aid who got laid off due to the budget crisis. Think this “saving” won’t make a big difference in the education of these children?

Watch the video.

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Home Ebook CoverThe role of textbooks in a rapidly digitizing world is an open question. The publishing industry needs to develop a new paradigm for commercially produced instructional materials or it faces extinction.

These and many more questions haunt the dreams of educational publishing professionals.

Now, thanks to the folks at Nature (a division of MacMillan) and their new eTextbook Principles of Biology, I glimpse a promising path forward. As is so often the case with paradigm shifts once it “clicks” in your head it is so simple that you wonder that you didn’t get it earlier.

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Free RocksThe International Reading Association’s annual conference has been steadily declining in attendance (and thus importance to vendors) for several years now. From a draw of 20,000 attendees the show now attracts less than 8,000. From a content standpoint it remains a top drawer event. That isn’t the focus of this piece. I’m making a more mercenary assessment of the event from a marketing perspective.

Reading Language Arts remains the single biggest segment of instructional materials spending (over 60%). Exploring why the show at the heart of the education market is getting smaller should reveal some telling lessons for vendors evaluating how they go to market these days.

This year’s exhibit traffic was considerably better than last year’s, but the show floor was still a shadow of its former glory. Vendor booths barely filled 70% of the exhibit hall and other than a couple of the major publishers (notably Scholastic) most companies were taking less space than they did even 2-3 years ago.

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moran-7512Email marketing is pretty simple – as much as possible communicate with people who want to hear from you. But a subset of these folks just don’t get it.

If I go to the trouble of clicking “unsubscribe” please do not send me ANOTHER FRICKING EMAIL CONFIRMING I NO LONGER WANT EMAIL FROM YOU.

It insures that I move from the “mildly annoyed” column to “actively pissed off at your company” status.

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EyeinforestJohn Scalzi was interviewed by Library Journal recently. Among other things he addressed ePublishing, copyright, and the role of libraries in our culture. As always he dispatched wisdom with a solid dose of wit.

The whole article is here – it will be a well spent 10 minutes to get your week started.

On the cultural relevance of libraries:

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