Last week the New York Times published a piece titled $200 Textbook vs. Free. You Do the Math by Ashlee Vance. Today we take up the challenge posed in the title and demonstrate that Open Source Textbooks are twice as expensive as books in the K12 market. Let me state…
Common Core Standards (CCS) will have a profound impact on the instructional materials market. The big players like Pearson and McGraw-Hill are on-board as endorsing partners, but smaller supplemental publishers have as much (if not more) to gain if the initiative is successful. Common standards will reduce structural barriers to…
literacy n. The condition or quality of being literate, especially the ability to read and write. Surpise! It turns out that the generation in school today is writing more and reading more. Several recent reports provide evidence to support this startling claim. The internet – a time pig that has…
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…
If you don’t think story-line matters in instructional materials just look at the pie fight over evolution in Texas. At its root this is a battle over which story we use to make sense of how we got here. Advocates on both sides will be unhappy with this characterization –…
One of the fundamental shifts No Child Left Behind (NCLB) caused in Special Education was accountability for teaching reading, math, science, and social studies. Traditionally many Special Ed classrooms focused on life skills – the functional skills students with intellectual disabilities need to live as independently as they can. Academics…
What impact will the economic stimulus have on educational materials and technology? A front page New York Times article yesterday left no doubt that education will be a significant part of the legislation. The Times reports that the total education allocation could be as much as $75-$95* billion a year…
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,…
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…
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…