Education Technology Progress

A pretty amazing week at Scholarity as we begin to see some amazing responses to the education technology platform we have built. We already have a partnership with an Indian test preparation provider and have two more partnerships close to moving forward. This will allow us to allow people to see a better demonstration of the power that dynamic insight technology can bring to a curriculum.

We will keep you posted!

FREE

In addition to staff training on Tribes last week I spent a lot of time with the ABCTE team discussing FREE: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson who also wrote The Long Tail (Free ironically cost me $26.99 at the book store). The important premise for Scholarity is that digital content will all be free at some point. Companies that survive will find alternative ways to make money. It dovetails nicely with Liberating Learning by Chubb and Moe which claims that publishers will no longer be able to charge for digital content but will have to find ways to help students learn in order to make money. The winners will win on content delivery - not the content.

The demand for inexpensive digital content for education or for wiki-like education materials is going to radically change the dynamics of the education publishing business. It will take cutting edge concepts of digital delivery to create a new revenue stream for those who are really paying attention.

Free education content is already here and rapidly taking over the industry. It remains to be seen as to which publishers can survive the onslaught.

Student Customization

I was fortunate enough to attend AEI's Education Entrepreneurship conference this week. It was fortunate because it reinforces the need for more technology to create truly customized learning for every student. This has become the mantra of education reform as of late. If we don't customize and fully leverage technology, we cannot hope to advance. If you watch the conference video you will see this as a prevailing theme from many of the speakers.

And Scholarity has that customization ready - we just need some great content.

We already have a parnter in India to create customized test preparation and we are presenting like crazy here in the states to other content providers who understand this need. After the AEI conference, we have even more opportunities coming our way.

It always takes time, but customized learning is coming to students - and coming fast.

Web 2.0 in the Classroom

Here at the iNACOL Virtual Schools Symposium and it is THE highest energy education conference I have ever been to. These are the people that will transform education and it shows. Entrepreneurs working closely with outstanding educators with an incredible focus on students.

Yesterday I attended a Web 2.0 session and it was pretty cool. The number of tools available to teachers today is just outstanding. He demonstrated the following which can really bring any class to life:
GoAnimate.com - great way to animate
Xtranormal.com - text to video so cool
The Week in Rap - amazing current events
Moviestorm - 3D video
Wikispaces - great way for students to collaborate
LearnCentral - amazing teaching community

These are great ways to create improved learning – not just using technology for technology sake. And so very cool - -

Education Technology Fail

The “coolest education map ever” award has to go to the Leaders and Laggards report on education innovation from AEI, Center for American Progress and the Institute for a Competitive Workforce. Besides being very slick, it presents some interesting information on education innovation. It will be really cool to see if the billions spent actually move any of the state grades on innovation.

We care about technology so it is good to some of the states with strong technology in use scoring high. They used four indicators to rate states on technology and assigned a grade. The first was students per high speed Internet connected computer with 3 being the highest grade – so still not all that great. The second was an established virtual school (oh yeah!). The third was computer based assessment for students and the final indicator was requiring teachers to demonstrate technology competence (not mastery - let's just get some basic competence to start).

Only one technology fail which was Nevada. Sad as the requirements to pass were really low. A lot of states receiving a D including Washington and California - so the tech capitals of the US can’t put tech in their schools. Really sad. Other D states include Utah, Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, Tennessee, Indiana, Alabama, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware and DC.

Hopefully this is a wake up call to these states and with all the money floating around they can at least get to average. Wow – striving for a C – that just doesn’t feel right.

Note: ABCTE just received a grant to create a course for using technology in the classroom! So give them a call to boost your tech grade.