I will be blogging today from the Software Information Industry Association’s Ed Tech Forum 2008. The event is taking place at a monument to mid-20th Century American hegemony – the Princeton Club in New York.
This is the first year they have had a real blogger friendly environment – they have set up a table with power and easy access. The other bloggers here are Annie Teich and Ken Royal. Several of us will also be tweeting the event – look for the tags edtech08 and #etbf.
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 be a core competency at any education publisher.
Today we tackle issue #4 in the series on selling and marketing to educators.
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 actually a lower risk approach. If you are taking risks in your job and trying to invent the future you are actually in a safer position than those who cling to the status quo.
Education Market Forces
Piping hot education related blog topics served here! The debate over formative assessment, the top 10 sites for educational games, crowd-sourcing the next great novel, controversy around Microsoft’s new ads, the relationship between quality and advertising, and a hilarious spoof of Politicians all get the nod this week.
Education Week has a very interesting article about Formative Assessment. Given the burgeoning mantra that formative assessment makes the biggest difference in outcomes it is revealing to see how little consensus there is on what it really is. Is it a practice or is it a product?
John Rice has a list of the top 10 sites for free EduGames. It is worth a peek and linking through to get a sense of what kids are actually playing. This should dispel the myth that EduGames need to rival commercial games in graphics and sound. What matters most is fun game play.
Barack Obama is proposing significant new investments in early childhood education. More attention has been focused on his drive to recruit an army of new teachers but I believe the early childhood focus is equally important.
Why? As students age the gap between low performers and even average performers gets so wide that it becomes much harder to bridge it. The chart below illustrates this concept.
[This chart is for illustrative purposes only]
As print and technology products in education blend together the distinctions between textbook publishers and ed-tech providers are blurring in some very interesting ways.
A recent report by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press on how on-line and traditional news media are blending together raises some provocative questions for how this will play out in education.
Several years ago schools bought technology and print products from completely different budgets and with very different purchase processes. As educators have become more sophisticated about what technology can do and what it can’t do they are demanding that providers blend the best of technology with the best of print.
Hot sizzling education publishing and ed-tech related links here! Obama’s call for more teachers, kids media preferences, 2.0 de jour, and assessing 21st Century skills all get a nod in a short week.
Eduflack talks about Obama’s call for an army of teachers. I confess that I worry about federalizing education too much, we don’t need more Reading First scandals. Having 50 laboratories is better than 1. Another wag noted a contradiction on the right – if the free market knows best and if education is the foundation for economic growth why aren’t conservatives fighting to pay teachers more? That would bring higher quality candidates into the profession via market forces.
Kids 10-14 prefer the internet to TV. AHCI Lunch has commentary on a New York Times article that revealed this finding about teens media preferences. Here is my question – why didn’t TV take off in the classroom given the power it holds over our culture? One of the core arguments about why internet tools, social media, and virtual worlds should be in classrooms is that they are where the kids already are. The same could be said for TV at any time in the last 50 years.
Fresh hot blog links to education topics here. These are some of the posts that caught my attention recently – enjoy.
Facebook for Teachers. This article is sad – lots of promise and money invested by people who just don’t get it. One district can not support their own social network – it takes hundreds of thousands of users to make these communities vibrant. How about we look at what is actually happening on Facebook for teachers? I Am Teacher – a Facebook plugin from We Are Teachers – already has almost 10,000 active users and over registered 50,000 users.
Video Games Improve Cognitive Skills. The title says it all. Go read about it on Richard Carey’s blog.
Videogames in the Library? Wouldn’t installing a Wii or an xBox bring a lot of unruly teenagers into a refuge of quiet and intellect? It turns out that putting computer games in a library brings in a huge wave of new patrons and dramatically increases circulation – of books!
Two recent items support the thesis that games can benefit libraries and patrons. The most interesting aspect to me is that it may move libraries from being relatively static storehouses of knowledge to dynamic studios where knowledge is crafted, shaped, and extended.
The American Library Association is sponsoring a study to gauge the impact of games on learning and literacy. Why? The gamer blog 1Up has the money quote from Dan Barlow:
Information is expanding exponentially. Applying database concepts to your information diet can mean the difference between overload and sanity, chaos and productivity. Database fluency is mandatory in a digital world. Students and teachers should be practicing and refining this skill so that today’s learners can make the most of the sea of data they swim in.
Almost anything you encounter in digital format can be managed using database techniques. At their root Facebook (relationships), iTunes (music, movies, tv, books, etc.), del.icio.us (bookmarks), flickr (photos), Moodle (lesson plans, learning management), and We Are Teachers (referrals) share a common database DNA. Even blogs through their categories and tag clouds are databases.
Email is an example. Treat the sender’s address as a data point. Then set up rules (database queries) to have all your boss’s emails sent to a high priority folder and Aunt Mabel’s political ravings sent straight to the trash. This approach allows you to target the urgent items amidst a sea of dross.
The Education Need
Educators and educational publishers have a vital role to play in our move to a database driven world. Why?
Every one of these needs is best met by a database and fluent users.
The Goal
The end result should be personal growth, valued relationships, and effective organizations. But in the first flush of widespread adoption we are losing sight of this. Consider the statement “I “friended” 1,000 people on Facebook therefor I have 1,000 friends.” Wrong. Many people are confusing the database with their relationships.
A teacher could take the Facebook example above and build an interesting set of discussions around the meaning of friendship, how to find a small network of people who are interested in the same things you are, what you can do to contribute, and how to manage the relationships that emerge. It isn’t creating huge numbers of meaningless connections that matters – it is finding the needles in the haystack of humanity that you want to build bonds of friendship with.
Database Fluency
What is database fluency – what are the core skills proficient users need to master?
None of this involves database programming. That is a skill more akin to auto mechanics – I don’t need to know how to tune my engine to drive a car. I also don’t need to know SQL to use a social networking site. However, for driving and networking I do need to know the rules of the road and how navigate where I want to go.
How these elements appear in different applications varies widely – understanding the underlying dynamics helps harness their power across many environments.
RSS readers click through to see the full article – 3 detailed examples that bring these concepts to life and some suggestions on where to start.
The Education Business Blog