Education

Ed Tech Industry Summit: Bridging K12 and Postsecondary

January 27, 2012 By Karen Billings Leave a Comment

Selecting a program focus for the Ed Tech Industry Summit is one of the most valuable, yet most difficult, part of the planning process.

However, given the trends we see occurring within the education institutions and the ed tech companies, this year’s program focus “Bridging K12 and Postsecondary,” was relatively easy.

Closing the Chasm
Historically, there has been a major divide between K-12 and Postsecondary institutions. Years ago, there was little articulation or communication between high schools and colleges. Students in high school chose courses within a college or vocational track, graduated with the required credits and grades, then went off to a two-year or four year school where you started at ground zero with their course requirements.

Nowadays, students are earning college credits while in still high school – either to remain challenged, save money or both. For educational and economic reasons, high schools are becoming more ‘linked’ through:

The tremendous growth of Advanced Placement courses and exams, where students can earn college credit while in high school
The focus by US Dept of Ed and the current Administration on having high school students “college and career-ready”
The development of state and local programs, like:
1) Jump Start to College and Concurrent Enrollment, where students take courses at their high school AND in nearby 2 year or 4 year institutions in the same semester.
2) Early College High School where, in one program, the students take courses that meet high school graduation requirements and provide credit for the courses normally taken during the first two years of college.

The Industry Parallel
The vehicles for acceleration, exam credits and dual enrollments have paved the way for ed tech companies to transition their products and services from one market into an adjacent market.

For some companies, it’s:

Selling course materials originally designed for postsecondary into the high school market (i.e. changing sales and distribution strategies and sending sales teams into high schools or district administration).
Repurposing high school content and context to fit postsecondary course needs (i.e. Transitioning Algebra I and II courses into Developmental Math courses).
Discovering that their professional development programs and assets fit faculty needs, whether it be elementary, secondary or postsecondary levels (i.e. providing video PD segments about pedagogy to pre-service as well as practicing teachers or selling “how to” segments for using a software application to faculty at any level).

In conclusion, we are confident that this year’s theme, “Bridging K12 and Postsecondary”, will:

help distinguish the program content from previous years.
provide a basis for selecting the best speakers and contributors.
exemplify a trend in the education institutions and the industry.
highlight successful strategies for growing an Ed tech business.

Join us this year on May 6-8 and find bridging strategies that grow your business and customer relationships.

See you in San Francisco!
Karen Billings
VP Education, SIIA
202-789-4487

Karen Billings is Vice President for the Education Division at SIIA.

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Filed Under: Ed Tech Industry Summit, Education Tagged With: events, K12, postsecondary

Vision K20: Achieving Personalized Learning through Public-Private Partnership

January 26, 2012 By Mark Schneiderman Leave a Comment

[This blog was also published January 26, 2012 by the Alliance for Excellent Education, sponsor of Digital Learning Day.]

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is pleased to be among dozens of education and technology organizations partnering to promote Digital Learning Day (DLD), 2/1/12, sponsored by the Alliance for Excellent Education. SIIA is promoting DLD to its high-tech member software, digital content and online services companies, and asking them to promote DLD through their networks.

For those with the vision and successful use of digital learning, the idea of a DLD awareness campaign — showcasing how technology supports students learning and teacher instruction – may seem unnecessary. But the reality is that too many of our educators and education leaders have not been provided the support they need to understand what is possible, nor the resources to make it happen. This shift is not simply about replacing print with digital or giving every student a computer. This shift is about reimagining how we teach and learn, and creating more customized, engaging, and productive learning made possible through technology and through public-private partnership with high-tech innovators.

SIIA has developed a series of resources to assist education stakeholders in this process, including:

Vision K-20 Survey: SIIA’s Vision K-20 lays out how we can utilize modern technologies to create a world-class teaching and learning environment that prepares all students as global citizens capable of leading the world in innovation. Educators can review the means, take a benchmarking survey, and review examples and evidence.
Personalized Learning: Innovate to Educate: System [Re]Design for Personalized Learning is a roadmap for education leaders to restructure our education system around the unique needs of each student. Developed in collaboration with state (CCSSO) and local (ASCD) education leaders, the report, resource page, and symposium archive provide descriptions, practices, policies and examples for personalizing learning.
Educator Guidance: SIIA’s Software & Technology Guidance for Educators include an implementation toolkit and best practices in use of serious learning games.

For SIIA member and other high-tech companies, we encourage you to support Digital Learning Day:

Sign up and be counted in this effort
Add the DLD button to your website, and promote DLD to your customers and partners
Provide access to your online teaching and learning resources for the day
Showcase success stories of how teachers and students are using technology
Visit the DLD toolkits for more ideas and resources.
Promote SIIA resources for educators, including Vision K20 and Software Implementation Toolkit
Use your imagination and creativity to promote education technology and Digital Learning Day

Thank you to the Alliance and all DLD partners for this important effort and for including SIIA and the high-tech industry. We look forward not only to A successful day on February 1st, but more importantly to THE day soon when all students will have access to the most relevant, engaging and effective learning opportunities that meet their personalized needs anytime and everywhere.

Learn more about Digital Learning Day at http://www.digitallearningday.org.

Mark Schneiderman is Senior Director of Education Policy at SIIA.

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Filed Under: Ed Tech Government Forum, Ed Tech Industry Summit, Education, Education Events, Education Policy, Personalized Learning, Uncategorized Tagged With: digital learning, digital learning day, education technology, Personalized Learning

SIIA Education Division Teams up with London’s BETT Show

January 5, 2012 By Laura Greenback Leave a Comment

SIIA’s Education Division is headed to London to participate in BETT Show, the leading international education technology showcase. This will mark the third straight year of SIIA’s participation in BETT and the second year that SIIA will host an Ed Tech Pavilion for its members.

SIIA’s Ed Tech Pavilion highlights free materials for educators on a variety of topics, including games, personalized learning, copyright, and Vision K‐20. The Pavilion also focuses on products and services offered by member companies, including McGraw‐Hill Education, Waterford Institute, SkillsTutor, Polyvision, The Renaissance Network, RedRock Reports, Pegeen Wright & Associates, and edWeb.net.

In addition, SIIA will host a members‐only breakfast featuring Ray Barker, director of the British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA), who will answer questions about the UK education market.

BETT 2012 will be held January 11‐14 in Olympia, London, attracting more than 600 educational suppliers and around 30,000 visitors. The show has distinguished itself as the world’s leading event for educational technology, where education professionals can evaluate and purchase a comprehensive range of ICT products and services. From pre‐kindergarten to university levels, BETT is an indispensable part of the annual knowledge‐gathering process, coming at a time when educational institutions are planning and budgeting for the new school year.

Laura Greenback is Communications Director at SIIA.

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Filed Under: Education Tagged With: Education, europe, events

The Top 10 SIIA Developments of 2011

January 5, 2012 By Laura Greenback Leave a Comment

SIIA had a groundbreaking 2011. We built influence in Washington, released incisive reports, welcomed new members, and hosted dozens of events around the world. Check out photos from our events and read about our 10 most exciting developments of 2011:

1. Patent reform (finally!) passes – The first comprehensive patent reform in half a century was signed into law Sept. 16. SIIA and its members worked diligently toward this goal for over six years, over the course of three Congresses and two administrations. The bill’s passage represents a significant victory for the software and content industries. It will improve patent quality and reduce–though certainly not eliminate–wasteful litigation over bad patents.

2. Software CEOS predict the future – SIIA took the pulse of chief executive officers to unveil growth and innovation drivers across the software industry. The result was a groundbreaking publication, Vision from the Top, which offers the collective wisdom of 45 SIIA member CEOs. Many of the predictions converged around the future of mobile, cloud and social media.

3. Two markets defined – SIIA’s membership divisions released two market reports in 2011 that shed light on the size and scope of its industries. The Education Division unveiled the 2010 U.S. Educational Technology Industry Market: PreK-12 Report at the Ed Tech Business Forum in November. First in a series, it values the overall market for PreK-12 non-hardware educational technology at $7.5 billion dollars—with content-related products accounting for 42 percent of that revenue. The Software Division released its annual Software Benchmarking Industry Report, which found that small and mid-sized software companies saw significant revenue growth rates of 26-50 percent in 2010.

4. Major cloud policy agenda established – SIIA has long been a supporter of cloud computing as a driver for innovation and economic growth. In 2011, we took major steps to encourage an effective policy environment to help make this a reality. To that end, SIIA published a whitepaper for policymakers to explain how cloud computing works and identify its transformative benefits. The policy team also gave input for the EU Cloud Consultation, promoted federal legislation to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and worked closely with Obama Administration officials to advance their Cloud First Policies.

5. New members welcomed – SIIA welcomed dozens of new members in 2011, bringing its total membership to 512. One key area of growth was the Financial Information Services Division’s launch of a new constituency group for credit rating agencies. The group, formed initially by Moody’s Investors Services, Fitch Ratings, and Standard & Poor’s Rating Services, welcomed participation of other SEC-registered credit rating agencies around the world.

6. Digital education gets a boost – States from West Virginia to Florida led the K-12 education shift from print to digital instructional content, passing new laws long advocated by SIIA, which modernize outdated state textbook adoption programs. Texas SB6 provides full local flexibility to purchase digital content and technology, while Florida HB2120 will require schools to spend more than half of their textbook budget on digital materials by 2015-16.

7. Big rewards for piracy whistleblowers – SIIA paid $35,000 in rewards during the month of December alone to five people who reported cases of corporate end-user software or content piracy. The SIIA Corporate Anti-Piracy program uses verifiable tips to launch piracy investigations of cases of piracy that take place within an organization.

8. The higher ed market, demystified – 10 doctors, 5 college professors, 4 MBAs, 3 attorneys, 2 Harvard physicists: they all came together, along with dozens of others including CTOs, CEOs and VPs to create SIIA’s newest publication, The Experts’ Guide to the Postsecondary Market. The resource offers expert guidance on everything from product development to selling in the postsecondary marketplace. Several authors discussed their key takeaways in a video series.

9. Visionary leaders present – Some of the leading voices in the software and digital content industries spoke at SIIA events in 2011. ProQuest CEO Marty Kahn turned heads with his frank discussion of challenges in the digital content landscape at the Information Industry Summit. Dr. Richard Sims, Chief Economist for the National Education Association, was back by popular demand at the 2011 Ed Tech Business Forum, where he followed up on the bleak economic predictions he made in 2009. Other standout speakers in 2011 were Robert Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy for the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley at the World Financial Information Conference, Jim Whitehurst, President & CEO at RedHat at All About the Cloud, and Chris C. Kemp, CTO for IT at NASA, at Cloud/Gov.

10. Excellence recognized – SIIA recognized achievements in the software and digital content industries through a series of awards programs in 2011. Some highlights:

The 26^th annual CODiE Awards presented 66 awards in digital content, education technology and business software.
The Content Division recognized RapidBuyr as the SIIA Previews Program’s “Most Likely to Succeed” at the 2011 Information Industry Summit.
The Education Division’s Innovation Incubator Award winners for 2011 were Fluidity Software, Footsteps2Brilliance, GiftedSpeech, and Capstone Digital.
On a personal level, FISD presented the Market Data Lifetime Achievement Award to Dr. Joseph Kasputys, founder and former chairman, president and CEO of global information company IHS Global Insight.
The Education Division honored Kathy Hurley, senior vice president of strategic partnerships for Pearson and the Pearson Foundation, with its prestigious Ed Tech Impact Award.

Laura Greenback is Communications Director at SIIA.

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Filed Under: Anti-Piracy, Content, Education, Policy, Policy - Cloud Computing, Software Tagged With: 2011, SIIA

Just Do It (Again): How Virtual and Video Game Labs Give Students the Freedom to Fail

December 9, 2011 By Tracy Carlin Leave a Comment

With all the discussion about job creation and a difficult economy in Washington, it’s hard to see the positive outliers on the edges. STEM positions, as reported by Mel Schiavelli at the US News and World Report, are being created every day for those lucky enough to have the education necessary to take on the task. Unfortunately STEM, short for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, is the greatest weakness of the US education system. Ranking 35th in math literacy and 29th in science (according to the Institute of Education Sciences), we as a nation not only risk not filling our open technical positions but have already begun to struggle against international competition. Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, claims the US’s worrisome STEM rankings are caused by a fear of failure. As he tells the US News and World Report:

“I think we’ve created a society that is so risk-averse that kids are taught—”Whatever you do, don’t fail.” A consequence of being unwilling to fail is that you’ll never try really big, bold things. Once you define success as loss of failure, we’ve lost innovation, we’ve lost our edge.”

Kamen is right, but there’s a difference between being right and being easy to implement. In an underfunded school what little laboratory equipment they have is expensive, delicate, and difficult to replace. Teachers fear losing their resources in the classroom, which prevents students from having complete and open access to hands-on lessons in the sciences. Innovation, while not outright forbidden, can not adequately flourish in this environment.

So what’s the solution? Have you checked in with a computer game lately?

The educational technology sector has seen potential in utilizing video games since their inception; the interest has only grown stronger and broader over time. The Education Game or Simulation category proved to be one of the most popular for entrants at this year’s CODiE Awards. If you look at the list of finalists, the popularity is no wonder. Game developers have created an unprecedented number of educational games for a bevy of diverse audiences, from small children to high schoolers and beyond the traditional K-12 system. For instance, the 2011 CODiE winner Hospitality and Tourism Interactive uses an interactive and online virtual world to encourage college students to explore career paths in the hospitality industry.

While controversy remains on to what extent educational and serious video games can teach children one thing is certain – in a video game you really learn how to fail. James Paul Gee called this the “Psychosocial Moratorium Principle” in his landmark book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Put simply, in a video game your consequences for failing are far lower than in a real world environment; thus the player feels more comfortable with taking risks and innovating in a virtual space. While “death” is a common trope in almost all games, most still save your progress with only some token punishment for whatever error caused your loss of life (such as a loss of experience, lowered health, or the loss of a certain amount of progress). Even the most major losses can be rectified by starting again. Pride is the only loss one might endure in the “real” world. If only students felt the same way when playing with a chemistry set or trying to practically apply Newton’s 3 Laws.

With a virtual lab, students could play with all the different disciplines in the STEM spectrum without fearing reprisal for failure. Meanwhile, parents and teachers would not have to fear injury as a result of a lab experiment. While in a real world classroom students would not be allowed to use a Bunsen burner alone, in a virtual environment the same students could mix any number of chemicals and see the results, both the desired and the undesirable. This idea extends far past traditional K-12 schools. Carnegie Mellon and Stanford are working together on EteRNA, a game environment for simulating and experimenting with RNA molecules. Through this powerful application gamers are not only learning about RNA but helping scientists uncover new breakthroughs in how the tiny cells behave. Innovation might be scary in the real world, but in a virtual environment even the impossible can be tested and played with – and made a form of entertainment as well.

Tracy Carlin is a Communications and Public Policy Intern at SIIA. She is also a first year graduate student at Georgetown University’s Communication, Culture and Technology program where she focuses on intersections in education, video games and gender.

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Filed Under: CODiEs, Education, Postsecondary Tagged With: CODiE Awards, CODiEs, education technology, games for learning

Senate Committee approves reathorization of ESEA

October 25, 2011 By Mark Schneiderman Leave a Comment

Last Thursday, the U.S. Senate HELP (education) Committee approved a bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), updating the current No Child Left Behind Act. The bill has been stalled for years, though minimal bipartisan support allowed it to move forward at this time with expectations for significant amendment if/when it gets to the Senate floor.

Among the approved amendments were two on the technology. The first, supported by a broad coalition, would add the Achievement through Technology and Innovation Act, providing direct support to states and schools around technology acquisition, implementation and professional development. The second, generally supported by SIIA, would create an ARPA-ED research agency within the U.S. Department of Education focused on learning technology R&D advancement. SIIA will advocate for further infusion of digital learning in ESEA moving forward.

Mark Schneiderman is Senior Director, Education Policy at SIIA.