Articles Posted in Education Technology

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On-line games and virtual worlds were the theme at this year’s Austin Game Developers Conference (AGDC). This is the third of a few roundup articles about the conference with a focus on topics of interest to education and education publishers.

The parallels between how the web is changing the game industry and the world of education publishing are fascinating. Because of the inherent lag in the education market we can learn a lot from how gaming companies are adapting to the web’s incursion into their business.

Raph Koster – Designing for Everywhere

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influencer.jpgThe panel on Managing Influencers at the Austin Game Developers Conference yesterday got me thinking about a frequently ignored aspect of the K12 publishing world – building and nurturing communities of key influencers around education products.

In education influencers are the people who speak at regional trade shows, who write blogs and podcasts, who participate in on-line forums, and who serve on state and national committees. We often rely on our Sales Reps and the Curriculum Consultants to handle this aspect of the business. But managing influencers is very different than maitaining good relationships with key customers and it is fundamentally a post sales responsibility.

“Managing key customers” is a transactional view – it is about the next sale. Reps will tell you that relationships are the key – and they are – but they are based on transactions. Influencers want a different kind of recognition – they want to be respected for their ideas not for their wallets. This means they need a different approach. As one of the speakers put it – “Marketing brings customers in – Community Management keeps them there.”

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Mike Morhaime, President & Co-Founder of Blizzard Entertainment kicked off the Austin Game Developers Conference (AGDC) this morning. Blizzard produces the wildly successful World of Warcraft on-line multiplayer behemouth (9 million+ players worldwide). AGDC is focusing on on-line games this year and a packed auditorium was eager to pick up some pearls of wisdom from the industry leader.

wowlogo.jpgBlizzard matters to education because when you strip away the Orcs and Elves under the hood they have built an extremely elegant learning management system. As the undisputed world wide leader in the MMO space we have a lot to learn from their approach to building products and structuring their business.

Morhaime started by taking us over some familiar ground – the extreme rate of change we are living through and how it is difficult for us to see it from the midst of it. For example, in 1991 it took 9 hours to fly from Los Angeles to Paris. If airlines had kept pace with the rate of improvement in computer speeds it would now take 2 minutes.

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Textbook publishers have a checkered history with developing technology products – which I’ve already commented on here and here.

Yesterday Richard Carey sent me a link to Rockets, Cars, and Gardens, which does a very elegant job of explaining different software development paradigms.

One of the concepts that jumped out at me is the idea of developing products in a portfolio model. To quote:

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I’m assuming this is just a rhetorical device but Wesley Fryer over at Infinite Thinking Machine is calling for a textbook moratorium so we can get laptops and digital curriculum in everywhere.

I don’t disagree with his urge to shake things up and increase the rate of change in the market towards digital resources but the suggestion flys in the face of our experience with every other new technology that has come along.

YouTube hasn’t killed Cable,

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Brass-At-Sign.jpgVirtual Worlds and Video Games for Education are getting a lot of press these days. With all the hoopla it helps to bring a little perspective to where we are in the development of this new market. It is feeling a lot like the web in 1997 and perhaps we can take some lessons from that era to help us make sense of today’s emerging opportunities.

Nick Wilson over at Metaversed did an excellent piece titled 7 Reasons Why Virtual Worlds are Like the Web Circa 1997. In this post is I delve a little deeper into his list as it relates specifically to education and the companies that serve this market.

Here is Silver’s premise:

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Collective writing is a critical 21st Century Skill. Wikis are the primary tool for teaching this skill today. What resources exist to help teachers use wikis in the classroom? Recently this issue has been bubbling up on several places.

The Wall Street Journal had an article on the discussions behind the Wikis. For educational purposes there is more meat in the discussion threads for classroom conversation and interesting opportunities for students to engage actively with content than there often is in the articles themselves. Money quote:

“But discussion pages are also where Wikipedians discuss and debate what an article should or shouldn’t say.

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An idea for reforming the textbook market in higher education was floated on the editorial page of the New York Times this past Sunday. Fellow Austinite Michael Granof proposed converting the textbook market to a site license approach used in the software world. His ideas, while thought provoking, fail the reality test.

Book_a_finger_.jpgWith a 16 year old son headed off to university in a couple of years I’m sensitive to the rapidly rising costs of higher education and the portion that textbooks represent. But I also think it is disingenuous to point at books as a major cause of this inflation. Students spend about 5% of their budgets on books, and the total is declining 1.8% this year. Compare this with the market for electronics where students spend twice as much and it is increasing at 25% per year. Was this topic worthy of a NYT Op-Ed?

But putting relevance aside lets look at his arguments. First – the numbers seem high. The article cites costs ranging from $120-$180 for a complete textbook. The Association of College Bookstores puts the average cost of a new textbook at $52. Even assuming his numbers are correct Granof overstates the problem by implying that this is a cost born by every student every semester. Oddly, his own statements contradict this central argument.

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Unpacking the Zeitgeist is an amusing post about World of Warcraft (WoW). In it Sci Fi Author Charlie Stross attempts to explain to someone from 1977 how Gnomes dropped from the sky in the shape of a URL advertisement in WoW. He unpacks 30 years of assumed knowledge (what is the internet, what is a PC, why do people play games dressed up as furry animals?). As Raph Koster noted this represents pre-traumatic stress disorder as we contemplate what this means for 2037.

Think of the ingenuity and focus it took to pull this stunt off. The intellect behind it is creative, transgressive, technical, and funny – all at the same time! Where are we teaching these skills in today’s classrooms? Talk about your 21st Century Skills.

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As a side note I happened to be wandering through Ironforge that day on my toon (Embir – Level 70 Mage on Stonemaul). I was stumped when I happened upon the neat piles of gnomes in front of the bank. It was only later that I realized what I’d seen.

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Statewide Web 2.0 applications for education are a growing force in the market. This has huge implications for how schools will organize and manage information.

Education Enterprise Software has always played a critical role in the adoption of new technologies. For example, when web applications first debuted in schools many of the earliest and longest lasting applications connected parents to student information systems. Yet, with all the noise lately about School 2.0 the focus has been on social networks and classroom applications.

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Here is an interesting case study from Holland where they are deploying a Web 2.0 attendance application across multiple districts to help reduce truancy rates. Eventually over 200,000 students will be tracked. All the professionals involved (teachers, counselors, administrators) have custom work-flows that help them make sure the right kids are in the right schools.

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