London – BETT claims to be the largest education technology convention in the world. From what I could see the scale of the show is about the same as ISTE (nee’ NECC) in the US, although the content is distinctly more international. There are some differences from US education trade shows, but the differences were not vast.
What follows are the impressions of a first time attendee and the lessons I hope I remember for next year.
Overall Take
Ed Note: One of my favorite thinkers and practitioners on engaging kids deeply with Math and Science is Jim Bower. Jim is that rare combination of theorist and practitioner who is successful in both realms. He is both a Professor of Neuroscience at UTSA and the Founder/CEO of Whyville.net, arguably the stickiest web destination for learning ever created.
Jim has strong opinions, but he has earned the right to hold them through deep thinking and risk taking that applies his theories successfully in the real/virtual world.
Please invest the time to read Jim’s post where he challenges us to see why the web is making us smarter, not dumber. The TEDx video then answers the question of exactly how you do this.
Education spending patterns have been abnormal for several years. Publishing used to follow very predictable patterns – no more.
Between the Great Recession and ARRA Stimulus funds we have been living in an era of seesaw budgets for three years. Since education spending lags the general economy by up to 3 years this will continue until at least 2014.
I can remember entire decades where budget flows were so steady that you could predict the entire year within +/- 10% after the first three months. In 2008, 2009, and 2010 the first half of each year told you very little about the second half.
Data visualization is a tough thing to do really well – in fact this is one of the essential 21st Century Skills in extremely short supply today.
But the world is slowly becoming a much better place to live and this outstanding video by Hans Rosling shows it clearly and with a great narrative.
Take a couple of minutes and you will get a measure of hope that over the long haul life continues to improve for the vast majority of humanity.
Education publishers and Learning Management Systems have a long and somewhat checkered history. Open source publishing, XML, and content digitization are changing the LMS landscape rapidly. In today’s guest post Louise Dube outlines the issues facing companies creating instructional materials.
By Louise Dube
What to do? Educator Buying Trends, a recently survey by MDR reveals that Moodle has the largest installed base of Learning Management systems (LMS) in K-12. Equally interesting is that Moodle’s strongest presence is in large districts. These districts have the IT infrastructure to support the development and customization of an open source platform.
Today’s walkabout focuses on a fundamental shift in the instructional materials industry away from the scale economics of the big textbook publishers to the value of niche focused expertise. I believe this is the future of our business.
In a world where Home Depot crushes the local hardware store only themselves to be crushed by Lowes this probably sounds foolish. Why shouldn’t Pearson and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt do the same in education? In their business model everything becomes a commodity and low prices rule. Indeed – that is precisely what has happened over the past couple of decades in education.
But there are fundamental and intersecting trends that are leading us away from this model and in a fresh new direction.
Over the past couple of decades education publishing has been characterized by waves of consolidation into a handful of giant conglomerates. This is a typical pattern in an industry as products commoditize.
If products are effectively interchangeable (commodities) competitors gain competitive advantage through industrial scale cost management (economies of scale). Bigger warehouses, off-shoring production, distribution networks built on fleets of professional salespeople, and access to capital drove smaller players into the arms of Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin (Harcourt), and Scholastic.
We can see that they became huge – but what were the market forces that drove them to do this?
PCI takes Halloween very seriously – but in a fun way.
Basically it is an additional holiday since we have a big party over lunch including a street parade. Competition in the pumpkin carving and costume contests is fierce.
In the picture below you can see my meeting with one of the judges.
An understatement – education publishing is changing.
Heck, publishing writ large (trade books, music, movies, news, etc.) is shifting in dramatic and unpredictable ways. Textbooks are one of the last little corners of the intellectual property world to enter this new era.
Today’s post is a teaser for a longer piece I’m going to publish in the next few days. Mark Sumner’s “The Evolution of Everything” got me thinking about our industry in biological terms as we enter this era of rapid change.
50% of the men did not wear neck ties at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. Traditional publishers are struggling with appropriate responses to digital transformation and aping the casual style of Silicon Valley seems to be popular. Interesting fact – if you wear a suit without a tie you still look like a Book Rep.
This sartorial mis-match of rhetoric and reality summed up a lot of what I observed. Publishers are saying all the right things, but they haven’t quite figured out how to do them.
Educational Publishing Leaders
