Articles Posted in K12 Publishing

By

1135507_paletteHow is the marketing mix for companies that sell to K12 schools evolving? At a time when we are experiencing an explosion in the number and type of marketing programs we are also seeing rebalanced budgets and a consolidation among the large support organizations. The economic downturn has only accelerated these trends – it isn’t responsible for them.

The Paradigm is Shifting – Slowly

To begin with – maturing internet search and peer to peer social media networks are changing some of the underlying assumptions of what marketing does. Put simply, it is far more important to be found today when someone is searching than it is to interrupt them when they are not. A customer who has typed in relevant search terms and come upon your site or who reaches out to their network to help them solve a problem and been referred to you is the highest quality lead you can possess. They are actively seeking a solution that may include your products.

Continue reading

By

image001Clive Thompson over at Wired has a great short essay on the modern revival of the written word in the age of social media. He cites work done at Stanford that shows that todays students are writing more than their parents – in fact 38% of their writing is has nothing to do with school. Better yet – they are writing for an audience – or at least an audience wider than a single Professor.

Here are a couple of key quotes (emphasis added):

…young people today write far more than any generation before them. That’s because so much socializing takes place online, and it almost always involves text.

Continue reading

By

image020EdNet 2009 starts this Sunday in Chicago. This is one of the three most important events of the year* for networking and professional development in the education industry. I’ve been attending since the early 90’s with only a couple of absences.

Nelson Heller, EdNet’s founder, has also been a friend and mentor – as he has so graciously been to many of us across the industry. This year the conference is under MDR‘s aegis – and it will be the same top-notch opportunity to expand your consciousness it has always been

Why is this event important? In a nutshell it is all about conversational efficiency. You can talk to more people about partnerships, recruiting, selling, or just “gettin ta know ya” in a few hours at EdNet than you could in two months on the road.

Continue reading

By

card2160Special Education appears to be the first K12 market segment seeing the education stimulus dollars flow in volume.

At PCI Education we saw our numbers start to move up towards the end of May. By August we were roaring on all cylinders. As a private company we don’t report out our details, but July was up over prior year and orders booked in August were more than double what we saw in 2008. I’ve heard through the grapevine that Cambium is in the same boat.

What is particularly stunning for us is that according to the reports on the USDOE’s site by the end of August only about 15% of wave 1 of the IDEA ARRA funds had been committed. This handy report shows all the stimulus buckets for education and how much each state has already spent – bookmark it if you don’t have it.

Continue reading

By

iStock_000006814674LargeStudent Information Systems (SIS) and Data Warehouses (DWS) are the bedrock enterprise software systems in K12 school districts. The K12 Decision Support Systems Market Report is now available. The 118 page report is based on a survey of over 300 district level IT Directors.

ARRA Accountability Market Intelligence

Given the strong emphasis in ARRA on data-driven decision making (D3M) and accountability auditing, the information in this study will provide valuable insight into a market with an urgent and well funded need. The report is a map of territory that has been uncharted.

Continue reading

By

In this second of a two part series, guest blogger James Mayfield Smith responds to my post on Storyline in Textbooks and Video Games. James is an educational consultant, sales executive, and trained applied mythologist.

Part 1 can be found here.


Part 2 of 2: The Tactical Use of Story to Sell

Continue reading

By

fail-owned-basic-skill-failWhy did I destroy a perfectly good book today? Actually more than good – Murukami never disappoints. Kafka on the Shore isn’t in quite the same league as The Windup Bird Chronicle – but it is a damn fine book.

Did I burn it? No.

Did I rip out the pages and make airplanes? No.

Continue reading

By

1019383_white_chess_army_3Interactive Whiteboards (IWB) are all the rage in education right now. Market penetration is about 15% of classrooms and climbing like a rocket. Is it time for publishers to jump on this bandwagon? If so, which digital whiteboard is right for you?

I spent the better part of my time at the National Education Computing Conference (#NECC09) in Washington DC this week attending presentations put on by Smart Technologies and Promethean. My goal was to evaluate whether PCI Education should embrace these tools as part of our publishing plan.

The Good

Continue reading

By

Doug Stein of Memespark has some commentary to share on ARRA and innovation.

By Guest Blogger Doug Stein

s-HUMAN-WHEEL-largeI don’t know if you saw this article. It details how one district is spending the ARRA education stimulus money:

Continue reading

By

384574407_2b4b7295ea_oHow 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 I put together the following extended comment to add the perspective of someone who was there, did that, and got the t-shirts.

As someone who has spent the last 18 years in the Education Technology and Instructional Materials businesses I feel the commentary misses the mark from a business perspective. This isn’t a critique of what was was covered – many of the participants are people I admire and cite frequently – Danah Boyd, Fred Wilson, Katie Salen, Steven Johnson , NT Etuk etc. It is meant to talk specifically about the business challenges of translating these great ideas into practice.

It might be tempting to dismiss folks who have been in the trenches as old school – people who “don’t get it” – but some of us are not clinging to old paradigms but working hard to create new ones. Experience may blind us to new possibilities – but it may also guide you around some of the land mines many of us have already stepped on.

Continue reading