We know there is an increased focus on choice and accountability within both K-12 and postsecondary institutions.  This focus drove many of the sessions and conversations at the recent SIIA Ed Tech Business Forum: Doing Business During Seismic Shifts. Speakers and attendees discussed the changes happening in today’s schools, the factors driving these changes, and how they expect even more change in the near future.

The ed tech companies who develop digital products and services for the K-12 and/or postsecondary sectors see many opportunities—and of course challenges—in the coming year and beyond. Just what are those opportunities and challenges – and how well will we address them?  While the program isn’t fully developed, here are some topics that we plan to address:

Support for:

• personalized learning, via adaptive curricula and authentic assessment, and from micro-courses to “flipped” classrooms
• the increased emphasis on educator and institutional accountability, from the institutions who want to evaluate teachers, their resources, or programs.
• data-driven decision-making, especially those institutions who are using learning analytics to facilitate intervention, predict future performance, and improve instructional approaches
• online and blended learning, especially the new modes for delivering instruction

 Learning more about and working with:

• government entities and education foundations developing free open education resources and management systems
• the many organizations developing  technical standards for product development
• new social learning models which are effecting our traditional distribution channels

To remain successful, education technology companies look ahead and navigate the “next’ that will affect their segment of the marketplace. Since education shifts do not happen overnight, the companies have time to change business models or product development strategies where needed.

We will look at these new business models and development strategies at the Ed Tech Industry Summit on May 5-7 will focus on the opportunities and challenges of ‘Navigating Next’, as well as leverage the fact that we’re in San Francisco. Of course, we also celebrate the work of our Innovation participants, CODiE finalists, and those selected to receive the Ed Tech Impact Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Steering Committee is set to start planning the program and there’s room for a few more ‘worker bees’ who can help SIIA recommend topics, speakers, sponsors, and Innovators,  then help extend the invitations, review the applications, and help us promote the conference. It takes a great deal of work to plan and run this conference and while SIIA has great staff to much of the heavy lifting, we rely on our members to provide the thought leadership, and help guide the content, program, and promotion.

To help companies be successful at “Navigating Next” and adapt to the seismic shifts in education, we will make it a priority at the Ed Tech Industry Summit to help attendees understand where the customers are today and where they’ll be in the future.

Join us in San Francisco on May 5-7!

Karen Billings is Vice President for the Education Division at SIIA. Follow the SIIA Education Team on Twitter at @SIIAEducation

This year’s report shows a strong response from content companies but also from companies offering testing and assessment and professional development products and services.

Data in the report was collected directly from service providers, publishers, and developers to show a supply-side view of the market not available through traditional customer data collection techniques. This report is important in showing a comprehensive view of the PreK-12 market with real data.

Consulting Services for Education Inc. (CS4Ed) used the results of the survey and publically available data to determine the size and scope of the market. The revenues and products were divided into four major market segments: content; instructional support; platforms and administrative tools; and a special segment that includes advanced placement, special education, and English language learner materials. Using these resources, the team was able to create a cohesive view of the education technology market and the trends in it over the past year.

The CS4Ed team of John Richards and Leslie Stebbins authored the report, which was made possible by the input of 105 contributing companies.

For more information visit the SIIA Market Survey Report page.

Lindsay Harman is Market and Policy Analyst for the SIIA Education Division.

The educational publishing industry’s highest individual honor, the AEP Hall of Fame recognizes those who have dedicated their careers to the advancement of educational resources and the industry that develops and supports them.

Karen talks about her philosophy on educational technology and sound educational principles. To her, it is only the teacher who can intervene and guide students, even as educational technology continues to evolve and grow as an industry. She also discusses how new technologies like tablets and mobile technology is changing the educational technology game.

Karen says:

“Technology has come a long way since I started using it… There are a lot more choices out there…kids can do things online, they can do a lot they couldn’t do five or ten years ago. There is certainly an opportunity for students to do more types of learning on the computer. But I firmly believe it is only the teacher who can really help guide instruction, intervene, and find the materials that the kids should be using…For as much as computers can learn about you, they can’t see you face-to-face.”

Karen, called the “queen of educational technology” here, spent her first four years of elementary school in a one room schoolhouse in Iowa.

Other guests include Margery Mayer and Dick Casabonne.

For more information about the AEP Hall of Fame, visit the AEP website.

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.

The educational publishing industry’s highest individual honor, the AEP Hall of Fame recognizes those who have dedicated their careers to the advancement of educational resources and the industry that develops and supports them.

Billings has nearly tripled the number of educational company members at SIIA in past 10 years. She founded the Innovation Incubator program and the One-to-One Business Profiles program, and has doubled attendance at signature education technology events. She has grown the CODiEs program from seven educational technology awards to 21 in 2012.

Billings drives strategic direction, programs, and initiatives for the 180 education-focused members focused on providing technology products and services to the K-12 and postsecondary markets. In the past ten years at SIIA, she has supported education members with programs that provide thought leadership, industry advocacy, business development, and critical market information to better serve the evolving needs of the educational technology industry and its marketplace.

Billings has 45 years of experience with education technology, including 12 years in K-12 and postsecondary classrooms. She taught mathematics and computer classes in public and private schools in rural, suburban, and urban areas in Iowa, Alabama, Oregon, and New York. Her graduate teaching experiences, including both face-to face and online courses, were at Columbia University Teachers College, UC Berkeley, and Pepperdine University.

She then went on to hold positions in management, product development, marketing, and sales within the publishing and technology industries. Prior to joining SIIA, Billings held executive-level positions at bigchalk Inc and MediaSeek Technologies. Earlier in her career, she held positions at Microsoft Corporation, Claris Corporation (now FileMaker), Logo Computer Systems, Inc., and Houghton-Mifflin Company (now Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

Billings has authored four books and numerous articles for education journals, has been active in many education technology associations, and is a frequent speaker at education conferences. In 1986, she was given a lifetime membership to the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).

She received her Doctorate in Communications, Computing and Technology at Columbia University Teachers College, where she specialized in the uses and evaluation of technology in education. Billings received her Master’s Degree from the University of Oregon, and her Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Northern Iowa.

For more information about the AEP Hall of Fame, visit the AEP website.

The award winners are:

• Clever received top-votes as Most Innovative and Most Likely to Succeed
• Mathalicious received first runner-up for Most Innovative and Most Likely to Succeed
• Classroom, Inc. has the distinction of receiving the first-ever Educator’s Choice Award

More than 75 applicants were assessed for the Innovation Incubator program on a broad range of criteria, including the education focus, end-user impact, market need for the innovation, representation of K-12/postsecondary market levels, and the level of originality and innovation. Twelve participants and one alternate were selected for the program, and six were elected as finalists in the program.

Other finalists include:

• C8Kids
• iPrompts
• LearnSprout
• mSchool

SIIA’s Innovation Incubator program identifies and supports entrepreneurs in their development and distribution of innovative learning technologies. The program began in 2006 and has provided incubation for dozens of successful products and companies in their efforts to improve education through the use of software, digital content and related technologies.

When we look back at 2013 and the seismic shifts in education taking place we identify that there will be not one but 3 major trend confluences taking place transforming EdTech: (1) big data (2) the consumerization of IT and (3) the democratization of data.

Seemingly in the past 12 months, you could not visit an airport newsstand, tech news site or blog that has been untouched by the headlines, hype and hyperbole surrounding Big data and its seemingly magical powers to transform all our lives.
Now there is: Big data in Healthcare, big data in Social Systems, big data in Science, big data in Traffic Systems and big data in City Planning Management. In fact, there IS a lot of hype surrounding big data, but is this just where we are the technology adoption cycle or is it really something more?

Gartner Group recently estimated big data spending over the next 5 years to equal nearly a quarter TRILLION dollars. Clearly some very serious commercial and industrial applications are seeing immediate and rewarding returns on investment within big data. Data also is growing exponentially driven by all the new unstructured social, video, logging and sensor data. We now create more data in 2 DAYS than was created from the dawn of civilization up until 2003! Entire industries are now converging with that data like never before and by 2020 most consumers will expect and even demand that big data inform nearly everything they consume and do.

The opportunities to capitalize on this data are also growing. But what about education? Does big data have any application in EdTech? Having personally led and participated in multiple big data projects for close to five years now, ranging from creating solutions like intelligent multi-dimensional search systems, social system analytics, dynamic big data visualization, corporate virtual systems integration and various government programs, the answer resoundingly is “YES”!

The next generation of apps will have big data embedded within them as consumers increasingly expect and demand customization for their specific usage and individualized needs. Think beyond “Siri” here. There not only is a place for big data in education, it may actually be one of the most interesting and socially valuable big data applications of all, and possibly even an essential step to make it feasible to meet the new Common Core requirements.

When we do look back on 2012 and the seismic shifts taking place in EdTech the single most exciting capability in our estimation is that integrating big data analytics and capabilities to create a more efficient, more focused and more meaningful learning space for all education system stakeholders.

On its own, big data is certainly an exciting opportunity to be seized upon. When it is combined with the advent of the consumerization of technology via mobile and tablet computing growth exploding and bringing with it interesting evidentiary improvements in student outcomes through increasingly numerous studies, the opportunities to leverage what that data can do for us expand geometrically. The opportunity to have portable technology that ties in with big data back-ends provides a dramatically synergistic potential combination.

Now with the consolidation of textbooks into iPad iBooks, tablet and portable devices and the commensurate cost savings drivers associated to help push district and state spending downwards, vast new opportunities in this new digital form factor to provide rich media, interactivity and embedded assessment that the digital natives expect. All served up to them in with specificity and relevance. A customized learning experience is now available.

Content can now interact with the learner, providing both a more interesting, meaningful and targeted experience as well as providing useful automated and scaffolded intervention. Sequence and timing data can provide useful logging trails that can provide recommendation engines with the data logs that can be analyzed to provide more targeted and real-time intervention to engage and improve student outcomes.

As good as some of these systems might become, the “final mile” is the critical democratization of that data to the teachers and students themselves. Being able to provide platforms that enable teachers inside the classroom to focus their intervention efforts and to be able to visualize and respond in intuitive, clear and actionable ways where their teaching could be most actionable and effective. To provide important views and response paths to this performance data to teachers on students who may be requiring intervention, in specific areas in real-time, aligned with learning standards can help them dramatically save them time and provide help to those who need it most, at the optimal time they need it. It can help identify when students are bored, and help provide adaptive paths to engage and challenge them. It can potentially identify when a teacher may want to look at how they are teaching and relate that methodology for their given desired outcome, all framed within the new national standards.

Pushing actionable relevant data down to the end users in a form that is understandable, actionable and pedagogically sound when they need it is truly revolutionary. At the end of the day the confluence of the three very powerful technology drivers in our lifetimes that, while on their own are quite impressive, but when converged provide the singular opportunity to dramatically improve learning outcomes in very clear and distinct ways.

We see the potential of these technologies applied to the very real problems of improving STEM learning, learning customization and national competitiveness on the very near term horizon. Being able to use data to predict and improve student outcomes may indeed even be one of the most powerful opportunities for the education system to help regain global competitiveness, drive job growth and help balance the skills deficit.

Feel free to email me with your thoughts!

What is the primary cause of the seismic shifts in education? All indicators point to the increased capabilities and availability of digital technology. Technology is performing the role of the great disruptor. It is an unsettling force in tradition-bound classrooms and schools.

It was only a decade ago that college publishers began using electronic tagging to speed up the production of printer-ready files. They began making their texts available electronically as PDFs and now are offering texts as interactive EPUB3.

Now the trend toward electronic books has reached high school and elementary schools. Heavy backpacks and book bags are being replaced by mobile devices, which are lightweight, increasingly inexpensive, and cool. Digital tablets and phones have entered the classroom opening new avenues for students to interact with the content they are learning and collaborate with fellow students and teachers, inside and outside the classroom.

Technology has enabled Open Source content, which is available to students and teaching professionals at all levels for all study areas from kindergarten through grad-school. Lab and classroom activities, engaging games and simulations, professional development materials, test prep and assessment programs can all be downloaded free from the Web. Khan Academy has burst upon the education landscape offering individualized instruction to students wherever they are in the world. To date, Khan Academy has delivered more than 200 million lessons.

The New York Times’ Sunday, November 11, edition of Education Life published an article, The Year of the MOOC. MOOC translates to Massive Open Online Courses. These take traditional online college courses to a new level. They are free to students and may offer certificates of completion. Information is online for everyone.

Bandwidth controls the availability of online information in schools. E-readers and tablets proliferate propelling the need for expanded access to technology as it is used now and will be used in the future. Paying for necessary upgrades concerns technology directors who are confronted by property tax caps and the difficult economic landscape. Planning for the online administration of the PARCC and Smarter Balanced Assessment tests, which are being written now, has begun. Practice tests may be scheduled in 2014 with the actual tests being given in 2015. http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/10/29/560584inexchangeschoolsbandwidth_ap.html

Technology has made the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) possible. The 45 states that have accepted the CCSS will test students on their knowledge of content and their ability to apply that knowledge through higher-order thinking skills. http://www.corestandards.org/frequently-asked-questions

Assessment tests now include technology enhanced items. These are the preferred performance-based items that require far fewer of the traditional multiple-choice questions. The increased capabilities of scoring and scaling have enabled the assessment industry to become more efficient for teachers and their students.

Technology is changing the way teachers teach and students learn. Flipped classrooms is one change. It refers to an instructional structure that requires students to read or research a topic after school as homework. When in school they work with their teachers to apply what they learned the evening before. The teacher is now available to demonstrate concepts and uncover student misunderstandings until all students have a workable understanding of the content.

Technology has given us collaboration tools that can be used to teach teamwork as a skill. Students work together to solve problems and work on research and other kinds of projects. The mindset driving students to study alone to gain a competitive edge is being replaced by a culture of collaborative problem solving.

Individual instruction on a scale never possible before technology is becoming a reality.
Adaptive learning is made possible by the ability to collect and analyze a student’s work in real-time. In adaptive learning situations, technology takes on the role of the teacher. Lesson Management Systems (LMS) collect data, notify students as soon as an incorrect answer is entered, and sends prompts or remedial instruction. These highly individualized interventions provide instant feedback that students can act on immediately. The teacher’s role is transitioning from sage-on-the-stage to a facilitator.

Advances in Big Data and data visualization systems are now being applied to education. The systems assemble data into visual patterns and reassemble it into other unexpected patterns. The patterns can reveal creative ways to improve educational outcomes of students. Now a student’s cognitive growth can be tracked from birth through graduation and into the workplace. With complete and detailed records, kids will no longer have the ability to reinvent themselves as they progress from elementary, middle, high school, through college and the workplace. Their statistics precede them.

Big Data can also lay bare the effectiveness of teachers, schools, districts, and the educational systems of states. Their performance can be tracked, gauged, and judged. Salaries and ratings can be assigned on the basis of this data.

The power of technology is shaking up the quiet world of academia from kindergarten to university. This world has been traveling the same track since medieval times. Change opens the way to new business opportunities. This change is overdue.

Five takeaways from the webinar:

1. Do not think of China as one homogenous market. The country is geographically diverse, and each region is, in effect, its own market. In addition to geographical segmentation, there are differences between schools and grades, as well as between institutions and informal learning outside of school. Much of the purchasing is done on a local level, and large scale purchases by provinces is not common.




2. English language learning is a huge market in China. There are approximately the same number of English speakers in China as there are in the US.  China and the United States are becoming more intertwined and shared language exchange is key in the view of many Chinese.




3. Among the biggest drivers in the Chinese market are parents. With the one child policy and other cultural norms, it is common that parents will invest their own resources heavily in their child’s education.  These investments include private schooling (in the US and China) as well as heavy investment in after school study tools and programs.




4. Tablets are increasingly popular in China because of their lower price point and enhanced capabilities, but infrastructure is the more challenging part of the equation.  Finding quality content to place on the tablets is increasingly important.




5. In the near future, 70% of the population of China will be urban, causing stress on city schools and infrastructure and forcing options for distance and computer-based learning to become more common.

The SIIA Global Working group produces country specific webinars on a regular basis to expand SIIA members’ knowledge of global trends in education.  Any SIIA member interested in learning more about the China market or any prior spotlight country should visit our webinar archive.

Lindsay Harman is Market and Policy Analyst for the SIIA Education Division.

As board members, these individuals represent more than 190 SIIA Education Division member firms that provide software, digital content and other technologies for educational needs. The new board members will help to develop the Division’s initiatives and determine the projects, activities and events to be undertaken by the board.

Eight executives were elected to serve two-year terms, while five representatives have been appointed to serve one-year terms.

Newly elected board members serving two-year terms:

• Susan Adelmann, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships, Follett School and Library Group
• Katie Blot, President, Education Services, Blackboard Inc.
• Diana Gowen, Alliance Manager, Intel
• Mimi Jett, Vice President, Business Development, Avant Assessment
• Andy Ross, Vice President, FLVS Global Division, Florida Virtual School
• Mitch Weisburgh, Managing Partner, Academic Business Advisors, LLC
• Bruce Wilcox, Vice President of Carolina Science Online, Carolina Biological Supply Co
• Cathy Zier, Vice President of Content, Channel & Alliances, Promethean

Board members appointed to one-year terms:

• Christopher Lohse, Vice President, Strategic Affairs, Pearson
• Andrew Matorin, Director, Corp Strategy and Bus Dev, Scholastic Inc.
• J Rollins, Senior Vice President, Solution Strategy, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Susan Silveira, Senior Manager, Business Development, Qualcomm Wireless Reach
• David Stevenson, Vice President, Government Relations, Wireless Generation

Board members serving one more year of their elected two-year terms:

• Lisa Barnett, Chief Operating Officer, Atomic Learning, Inc.
• John Bower, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, uBoost
• Adam Hall, Independent
• Robert Iskander, Chief Executive Officer & Founder, EduTone
• Vineet Madan, Senior Vice President, New Ventures and Strategic Services, McGraw-Hill Education
• David Samuelson, Chief Marketing Office, Achieve3000
• Jessie Woolley-Wilson, President and Chief Executive Officer, DreamBox Learning, Inc.
• Johann Zimmern, Marketing Manager, WW K12 Education, Adobe Systems

This board represents some of the education technology industry’s leading thinkers, voices, and advocates. SIIA welcomes the new board members, and we value the opportunity to work collectively on advancing the industry’s interests.

Karen Billings is Vice President for the Education Division at SIIA. Follow the SIIA Education Team on Twitter at @SIIAEducation

SIIA’s Innovation Incubator Program identifies and supports entrepreneurs in their development and distribution of innovative learning technologies. The program began in 2006 and has provided incubation for dozens of successful products and companies in their efforts to improve education through the use of software, digital content and related technologies. The program is open to applicants from academic and non-profit institutions, pre-revenue and early-stage companies, as well as established companies with newly developed technologies.

Innovation Incubator Program participants were selected from the applicant pool based on key selection criteria, including:

• The extent to which their innovation represents a “sea change” in thinking
• Potential to positively impact education by way of enhanced student achievement, teacher effectiveness, cost reduction and efficiency
• Education focus and end-user impact/market need for the innovation
• Representation of K-12/postsecondary market levels
• Level of originality and innovation

All Innovation Incubator participants will present during the Business Profiles Presentations on Nov. 26, which is immediately followed by the Innovation Showcase & Networking Reception where they will be available for in-depth discussion. After a first round of voting, supported by Turning Technologies, finalists will present during the morning general session on Nov. 27 to a review panel of representatives from SxSWedu, University of Pennsylvania, GSV Advisors, and NewSchools Venture Fund, and approximately 200 attendees.

Innovation Incubator Program participants are:

C8Kids
C8Kids, based on proprietary IP developed in 15 years of research at Yale, is a cloud-based, web-delivered neuroscience-based cognition improvement program that has the potential to solve some of the most significant problems in education and mental health.

Classroom, Inc.
Classroom, Inc., a nonprofit with 20 years experience closing the achievement gap for students, has developed a new blended-learning product that is a promising, research-based use of technology to help high-need students learn ELA and math Common Core State Standards and 21st century skills.

Clever
Clever provides a modern set of APIs that allow ISVs to for the first time plug directly into a schools existing data infrastructure.

iCAN
iCAN is a web-based, student and teacher tool for learning, engagement, evaluation and measurement of achievements to standards.

iPrompts
iPrompts is a suite of interactive tools for iOS and Android devices, designed to help students with autism understand tasks, remain attentive, learn socially appropriate behaviors, and transition to new activities.

KLEOplatform
Whether it’s a school, teacher, student or PTA raising money for a project, or an individual giving money, or a foundation, corporation, school district, PTA, government agency or nonprofit distributing money, Kleo simplifies all matters relating to managing funds for educational needs.

LearnSprout
The LearnSprout API is a universal data connector that plugs into multiple SISs.

Mathalicious
Mathalicious is rewriting middle- and high-school math around real-world topics that students care about.

mSchool
mSchool provides a combination of distance training, hardware, and software to existing community after school programs allowing them to open a “microSchool,” which replaces core instructional time in a traditional classroom.

Reading Kingdom
Reading Kingdom is a patented, adaptive, common-core aligned English language arts program that teaches children to read and write to the third-grade level.

RecoVend Collaborative Purchasing Platform
RecoVend makes it easy for school administrators to work together to discover, research and buy the products and services they need.

STEMscopes
STEMscopes is a K-12 comprehensive online science curriculum program that provides hands-on inquiry activities, assessments, problem-based-learning, intervention tools, acceleration materials, and teacher support resources.

PlatinuMath (alternate)
This suite of Web-based games strengthens the procedural and conceptual mathematics understanding of pre-service elementary teachers.

SIIA is partnering with Innovation Incubator Program sponsors BLEgroup and Texthelp to host these developers of new technologies at this hallmark conference. For more information about the Ed Tech Business Forum, visit www.siia.net/etbf.