Articles Posted in Education Technology

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The Games Learning & Society Conference (GLS) kicked off this morning in Madison WI with a packed breakfast sessionat 8 AM.

gls_logo.gifThe 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.

James Paul Gee gave a great summary of the state of things as we munched on bacon and looked out over Lake Monona. He reminded us of the gaps that exist between kids experiences with games and their experience of school. One of his main points was that literacy is far more than phonics and decoding. The real challenge is helping kids master the complex academic language they need to succeed in Middle an High School. Young kids have no problem navigitating rich complicated technical text as they play today’s games. He got a good laugh by reading instructions from the back of a Yu-gi-oh card. These same students are not challenged in the same way at school. The money quote:

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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 and teachers for their successes. All stick, no carrot.

Truncheons-OK.jpgNo-Carrots.jpg

Of course he never mentions NCLB – what he talks about is one of the most effective ways of getting people to change their behavior. Don’t believe me – go read it here.

Don’t get me wrong – finding out where schools are not performing and shining a light on it has helped in many ways. That is essential and vital work that needs to be done. But by being fear based NCLB will probably not produce long term systemic change in the ways it’s authors hoped for.

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BlackboardNECC071.jpgBlackboard’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 several hundred of them all over the booth. In an inversion of current trends they created a real version of a virtual community. It was fun and interesting to browse the cards and it made a strong visual statement.

Blackboard started a real dialog and also provided the foundation for a series of ongoing conversations. Shana Glenzer, Sr. K-12 Marketing Manager at Blackboard, told me that they were getting ideas for uses of the product that they hadn’t thought of, like connecting pregnant teens to classroom resources. They also intend to use the ideas in conversations with senior administrators at districts – “6 of your teachers visited with us and here are some of the ideas they had…”

Blackboard120072.jpgIt was arresting in its simplicity and represented a validation of the products in the words of end users. It also showed that great marketing doesn’t have to cost a lot.

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necc-atlanta.gifThe 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 like it is over. 18,000+ attendees thronged the World Congress Center in Atlanta for SRO sessions and a mobbed show floor.

The International Reading Association Conference which was held just six weeks ago was sleepy backwater compared to NECC. Even with valid reasons for IRA having a slow year the difference in these shows is so dramatic that one has to conclude that educators are voting with their time and money on the best tools for teaching today.

To bring this point home look at the two pictures below. The one on the left is from NECC and the one on the right is from IRA. Both were taken at the height of show floor activity. At IRA one could have set up pins and bowled in the aisles. At NECC one had to move at herd speed to navigate the hall.

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MathOnNECC07.jpgThe 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 step in the world of educational gaming. NT Etuk, the President of Tabula Digita, just said that this is really about the students. It is about meeting them where they are – kids living in a gaming world bringing the skills and abilities that go with that to their work as learners. Students have come from as far away as New York, California, and Oregon to compete today.

A new generation of educational games is reaching the market that is multiplayer, on-line, and richly three dimensional. Tabula Digita has the pole position in this emergent market and they are putting on a great show for the educators gathered to watch. The contest will pit teams of students against each other in game of using math skills to navigate and solve problems in an on-line world.

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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 you to all their friends.

* Annual growth consistently beats your peers – your market share is growing.

There are two core questions that constitute what I call “Big M Marketing.”
handshake.jpg1. What promise are you making to the market?

2. How are you aligning the entire business to fulfill the promise?

The first question drives the strategic vision and the second drives the tactical execution. Yin and yang – you have to embrace both.

yin-yang.jpg It really is this simple – but simplicity is difficult for most companies. You must put the time in up front to get the promise nailed down and then you have to sustain your focus on it long enough for the market to believe you.

So how can you get away from empty sloganeering, sales support masquerading as marketing (you need both), and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey marcom? Here is a brief overview of one way to start doing Big M Marketing.

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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 paying attention to the restrictions the educators are putting in place. Fear and hope in sharp contrast.

AEP-Logo.gifThis disconnect was starkly drawn at the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP) annual summit in DC last week. A meeting ran long and I arrived at the sessions a few minutes late. I intended to lurk in the doorway of a couple of different presentations to see where I wanted to spend the next hour. What I observed sent my head spinning.

access_control_keyboard_version_1.jpgIn one room a panel of distinguished educators was discussing the challenges of bringing in new technologies. Their discussion centered on what the lawyers would let them do and the endless committee structures they had set up to screen what was permissible with blogs and other social media. Short answer – not much.

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166x133.aspx.jpgWhere 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 the customer’s core needs. For example…
* More foil on the cover!
* On-line lesson plans!
* 4 million item bank questions!
These efforts all mask the underlying problem. With everyone writing to the standards for the same 4-5 states textbooks are becoming a low growth zero sum commodity game. In an attempt to differentiate their basal textbooks the major publishers are increasingly cannibalizing their supplemental book bags for “free with order” goodies. They are also bolting technology on in an attempt to sex up the offerings.

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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 is few and far between.

I moved into the publishing world 4 years ago from ed tech. From my perspective on both sides of this fence the problem has more to do with the vendors clashing paradigms than with customer demand.

The paradigms are radically different along several key vectors and reconciling these will be the central challenge as Riverdeep and Houghton merge and as Pearson absorbs Harcourt (announced today).

Follow me to the flip for a more detailed look at this problem.

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