As the Association of companies who provide technology tools and content to education, SIIA members felt a responsibility to promote a “vision” of the best technology uses to help educations and K-20 students achieve an inclusive 21^st century education. The Vision initiative includes a website (www.siia.net/visionK20/), booklet, and an online survey.  The survey helps educators benchmark the use of appropriate tools, providing access, closing the achievement gap, use of assessment tools and enabling the enterprise – through the use of technology.

Of the benchmarking questions, the highest ranking was in access to high-speed broadband (both for instructional, administrative and collaborative learning) and security tools (to protect student data and privacy). The greatest room for improvement still lies in increasing technology-based assessments, access to online courses, and personal ePortfolios for individual students.

In past years, the average increase in overall scores was less than 1 percent year-over-year.  That means educational institutions are making VERY SLOW progress in achieving SIIA Vision K-20 benchmarks. Will it be different this year?

Help us build on this baseline data and find out how much progress is being made. We invite all interested educators to participate in this year’s survey here. Monitor the your progress in using education technology for 2011, to be part of this year’s survey, we need your input by Thursday, June 30!

Like most industries, the education sphere is continuing to experiment with and grow its use of social media. But which tools have proven most effective, and why? In a new survey by the Software & Information Industry Association, together with edWeb.net and MCH Strategic Data, education technology companies were posed the question: how do you use social media?

Social media allows companies to engage in conversations from a many-to-many standpoint – going beyond talking at customers – to including them in a conversation. The report, Social Media Marketing in Education, describes some of the challenges of using social media in this niche market, and highlights some of its benefits beyond lead generation and ROI measurements.

The benefits of social media in the ed-tech sphere include brand awareness, increased customer loyalty, and general market knowledge and insights. As one respondent stated, “it’s like creating a virtual 24/7 conference.”

However, the 182 education industry executives who were surveyed also pointed to the specific challenges they faced when developing social media initiatives. Though 35 percent of respondents stated that their company did, indeed, have a social media plan – the same percent reported that they had no defined strategy. Companies report continued challenges including finding staff to manage it and generating activity and content. Suggested solutions include repurposing existing content and spreading the information workload among insular experts within an organization.

As the trend to utilize social media tools continues to grow, the indirect benefits remain hard to measure, but difficult to ignore. One respondent states, “it’s a community that educates us as a company, turning the market into networks.”

To learn more about the current leveraging of social media networks within the industry, read the full report here.