The Games Learning & Society Conference (GLS) kicked off this morning in Madison WI with a packed breakfast sessionat 8 AM. The conference has about 350 attendees and is an interesting mix of academics, teachers, and some business types. The agenda is so rich that it choosing sessions is agonizing.…
Scott Adams captures in a nutshell what is wrong with No Child Left Behind in his post today. By focusing exclusively on the negatives – who is failing and what punishment will be meted out – the program misses the opportunity to recognize what is working and to reward students…
Blackboard’s booth at NECC in Atlanta was one of the best examples I’ve seen recently of Socratic Marketing. They asked teachers to write a brief paragraph on how they intended to use a free trial of the product in their classrooms. Then they took a polaroid of them and pasted…
The National Education Computing Conference NECC put on by ISTE in Atlanta this week was the most active education tradeshow I’ve seen since the dot com bubble burst in 2000. Ironically the 2000 show was in Atlanta, the Big Peach bookended a lull in the ed tech market that looks…
The first mutliplayer game tournament for education is being held. The event is being put on by Tabula Digita at ISTE in Atlanta (the show formerly known as NECC). A large crowd has gathered in the atrium above the exhibit floor to watch the final round. This is a major…
Few education companies do marketing well. Many are good at sales and distribution, others are product driven and innovative, but very few are able to drive high growth through world class marketing. What does great marketing look like? * Reps have so many leads they triage them. * Customers recommend…
Students and Educators might as well live on different planets when it comes to social media, blogs, and other Web 2.0 technologies. The educators are making fear based decisions because the new technologies are unfamiliar to them. The students are too busy figuring out how it all works to bother…
Where are breakthrough products like the Wii in education? Textbooks and education technology are stuck in a rut. Just like Sony and Microsoft got locked in a war over processor speeds and cutting edge graphics most of the competition in the education market seems increasingly focused on tangential issues to…
In a conversation with Randy Pennington he pointed out that in my post textbooks vs. education technology – clash of paradigms I alluded to the financial paradigms but didn’t address them directly. Theres more… Textbook Publishers – Their financial model depends on winning large adoption contracts that yeild a high…
The worlds of textbook publishers and education technology companies are colliding. The market is driving this convergence – schools have had technology around long enough that they have figured out how it can integrate in with existing practices. Yet the list of successful educational products that blend print and technology…