Digital Discourse / Ed Tech Industry Summit

SIIA Announces Finalists for 2011 CODiE Awards in Education Technology

April 11, 2011 By

SIIA announces the finalists for the 26th annual CODiE Awards. A full list of finalists can be viewed at http://www.siia.net/codies/2011/finalists.asp.

Of 425 total nominations, 113 products from 80 companies were selected as finalists. Nominated
products underwent an extensive review by judges via live demonstration, trial product access, and
analysis of product documentation. With 14 nominations moving to the second round, Pearson garnered
the most finalist slots for one company in all CODiE Awards categories this year.

Of particular note, several categories experienced dramatic increases in participation during the entry
period, reflecting trends seen in the education technology market. They include:

Best Virtual School Solution for Students – nominations up almost 270 percent
Best Corporate Learning Solution – nominations up 100 percent
Best Postsecondary Instructional Solution – nominations up about 90 percent
Best Reading/English Instructional Solution – nominations up about 70 percent
Best Education Community Solution – nominations up about 60 percent

Karen Billings, Vice President of the SIIA Education Division, commended the companies that qualified as
finalists: “The CODiEs reflect excellence and innovation in the education technology industry. We are
pleased and proud to have so many companies participating this year and to have so many moving on to
the member voting phase.” Billings continued, saying, “We have a diverse range of companies
represented, which reflects the overall health of the industry.”

Winners will be announced Monday, May 23rd at the CODiE Awards Reception and Dinner as part of the 2011 Ed Tech Industry Summit.

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Filed Under: CODiEs, Ed Tech Industry Summit, Education, Education Events, Finalists, Mobile: Education

Guest post: The invisible tech industry of Seattle

February 18, 2011 By

By Frank Catalano

Having spent a February week at a major technology industry trade show, I was delighted to see key Seattle-area companies well-represented on the Austin exhibit floor.

The 450 exhibitors included DreamBox, co-founded by a Microsoft veteran and now backed by Reed Hastings of Netflix; GlobalScholar, run by a former Amazon.com and Drugstore.com executive and recently purchased by Scantron; McGraw-Hill’s Center for Digital Innovation with its Planet Turtle virtual world; Qwizdom, one of the top players in hand-held devices showing its new QTopia digital environment; and several others.

If you live in Seattle you may never have heard of these local firms. Perhaps that’s because the conference was the Texas Computer Education Association 2011 conference, and the companies are among the many Seattle-area firms in education technology.

In a city where the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation makes headlines every time it talks about education reform or with the grants it issues in that arena, local companies actually providing the cutting-edge tools and digital technologies are virtually invisible. Not just to the general public, but to the tech community here as well.

As someone who has straddled both consumer and education technology markets over the past decade, I’ve been puzzled by this lack of awareness. It’s not just the companies who were at the Austin conference that have low local visibility, but other established Seattle area K-12 firms like Giant Campus and Apex Learning (both forces in online learning), Headsprout (K-5 reading instruction), and more. My conference litany didn’t mention every Seattle exhibitor. Even Microsoft had a small booth, focused on cloud computing and teacher professional development, though I’ve heard the bulk of its business lies in other markets.

Why does the ed tech industry have this unexpectedly low profile on the home turf of the Gates Foundation? [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Ed Tech Industry Summit, Education

Why sponsor an SIIA ed-tech conference?

February 13, 2011 By

Take it from our sponsors! Check out the videos below to hear from sponsors of our recent Ed Tech Business Forum.

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Filed Under: Ed Tech Industry Summit, Education

Can it be the Ed Tech Industry Summit Already?

January 27, 2011 By

It seems we just finished hosting the recent Ed Tech Business Forum on November 29-30 in New York City (www.edtechbusinessforum.net) and we are already in the midst of planning the next Ed Tech Industry Summit in San Francisco. (www.edtechindustrysummit.net) Since I have been asked frequently about the differences in the two conferences, this seems like a good time to explain them.

Differences. The key difference is that the Ed Tech Business Forum is focused on the business and finance side of the ed tech industry, with the attendees typically being C-level executives focused on growing company revenues and profits, along with strategic investors and venture capitalists interested in growing their portfolios.

The Ed Tech Industry Summit focuses on ALL sides of an ed tech business: sales & marketing, business & finance, and technical & development. Therefore the attendees come from senior and exec staff looking at enhancing their product lines, fine-tuning their sales and marketing efforts, and growing their entire company.

Another key distinction is that the Ed Tech Industry Summit includes the annual CODIE Awards Program and Dinner. (www.siia.net/codies/2011/) We announce winners among the finalist products in the 25 Education Categories. New this year we will award the winners of the six education super categories. We will present the third Ed Tech Impact award to an individual with a high level of accomplishments and contributions to the education technology industry.

Similarities. Both conferences have a full K-20 focus so there are sessions and keynotes that address elementary, secondary and postsecondary markets. Both conferences host the Innovation Incubator Program and the infamous One-to-One Business Connections Program.

Both conferences are open to senior management teams from within the ed tech industry whether the company is an SIIA member or not. We do, however, give significant discounts on the registration fees to our members. At both conferences, you will meet education software companies, platform technology firms, solution providers and distributors, publishers, those in the financial community.

Bottom line. SIIA would, of course, like your company to attend both conferences. But whether you select just one or both, I can guarantee you will be glad you participated and will see the ROI of attending.

Karen Billings, VP Education, SIIA

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Filed Under: Ed Tech Industry Summit, Education Events

Dont get caught up in the shiny stuff

May 10, 2010 By

Taking full advantage of all of SIIA’s offerings, including those in other SIIA divisions, is a great way to maximize your membership benefits. The Content Division recently held a Brown Bag Lunch event, “Beyond eBooks: eReaders and Information Content Opportunities.” And although the session was not geared towards the education market, there was education industry representation (Kaplan) and discussion on topics that were industry-agnostic.

The link to view the recorded session is now live: http://bit.ly/SIIA_Beyond_eBooks

A main theme was a caution about being too focused on shiny new devices. Focus on your customers. All content providers want to deliver content how and where customers want it. But be careful about generalizations, even within the same market. Folks at Wolters Kluwer STM businesses, for example, discovered that Doctors access content VERY differently than Nurses do. (Doctors = mobile / Nurses = Desktop). Kaplan discovered that students actually like PAPER. Unlike the web where students are a click away from a “garden of temptations,” paper is free of distractions. Spending some time delving deeply into your customer’s habits and needs (Kaplan has several pilots going at once) will prevent development dollars from going into the wrong functionality.

Another recommendation was to be “nimble”. Easier said than done in a world of competing and complex approaches to content delivery. Though bets were on Open Source winning the battle, single standard has a lot to offer. For Educational Publishers, converting legacy content isn’t easy, or cheap. Especially if the same content has to be converted multiple times for different formats. (Hence the allure of standards!). But standards issues aside, certain educational content, unlike text-only content, has elements, like complex graphics or tables, that are not well suited for eReaders or Mobile devices. And educational concepts can’t always be disaggregated into neat $9.99 chunks of information. Developing new content that fully leverages interactive capabilities – let’s not even get into geospatial – has a host of training issues for those well-respected authors.. That stuff can’t just be slapped on at the end of a development process.

All that being said, the world is marching forward. FT and Foursquare announced a deal that will be interesting to watch. HTML5 is replacing flash. Zinio, an eBook and digital magazine platform, was ranked as a number 4 App. But with all the shiny new things swirling around, keep focused on your customer. Good advice for any industry.

The Content Division holds periodic Brown Bag Lunch sessions that are run from 11:30am – 1:30pm Eastern and can be attended virtually or in-person at the McGraw-Hill offices in New York City. A current list of upcoming events http://bit.ly/SIIA_Events for all SIIA Divisions is always available.

Written by Paula Maylahn for SIIA.

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Filed Under: Brown Bag Lunch Series, Ed Tech Industry Summit, Education, Postsecondary

Education and Industry Groups Advocate for Technology in ESEA

March 31, 2010 By

Following the introduction of the Obama Administration’s ESEA Blueprint for Reform and with healthcare reform signed into law, the U.S. Congress  has once again turned to reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).  Among the many programmatic and regulatory issues needing to be addressed is the role of technology.  The Obama/Duncan plan is short on details, but raises concerns by ending the Enhancing Education through Technology (EETT) program without an alternative targeted program.

A coalition of 50 education and high-tech organizations supports the Administration’s proposal for infusing technology throughout the ESEA programs, but as part of a two-tiered approach that also includes the Achievement Through Technology and Innovation (ATTAIN) Act.  The coalition – including Apple, ASCD, Intel, NSBA and NCTM – affirmed: “Many of today’s educational goals and requirements – including both the central tenets of ESEA as well as those set forth in the Obama Administration ESEA Reauthorization Blueprint for Reform – can be most effectively achieved by modernizing our educational practices and system through technology.”

SIIA also recently submitted recommendations to Congress on ESEA addressing several areas: Systemic Transformation from Mass Production to Mass Customization;  Modernize Education Practice Through Technology; Innovation, Public-Private Partnership and Appropriate Federal R&D Role; School Improvement and Low-Performing Students; Teacher Effectiveness and Connectedness; Assessment, Data & Accountability; and High-Tech Workforce Readiness.

SIIA called for ESEA to “drive transformational innovation that reengineers education delivery models [and] Incentivize the shift from a seat-time, assembly-line education model to a more flexible, student-centered outcomes-based model built around individual learning needs and pace, and anytime-anywhere learning [i.e., personalization].”

ESEA was last reauthorized in 2002 through the No Child Left Behind Act.  Congress made a similar attempt in 2007, but policies and politics prevented the House and Senate Committee Chairs from ever formally introducing a bill.  While there appears to be much agreement in principle, including on fixes to the current accountability system, many hurdles exist, and many insiders are suggesting Congress will run out of time in this election year before completing work to update Title I and most other major federal K-12 programs.

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Filed Under: Ed Tech Industry Summit, Education, Education Policy, Policy Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

U.S. Education Secretary Duncan: “technology enables us to respond as never before”

March 24, 2010 By

Amid the flurry of recent federal policy activity around education and the role of technology, SIIA’s successful 2010 Ed Tech Government Forum seems a distant memory.  A record 100 SIIA members participated in two full days of discussion with national education leaders on topics critical to the education sector. 

2010 Conference Photo Album & Session Summaries 

Among the highlights were U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s first speech focused on technology. 

The Secretary challenged SIIA member publishers and developers of technology-based educational interventions:  “As providers of educational products and services, you have a huge impact on—and share a huge stake in—the success of America’s students. So, I ask you to join the great endeavor to not just reform education but to transform it. I challenge you to put your talent and ingenuity to work to equip 21st century students with 21st century skills.”

And the Secretary laid out the opportunity:  “As research gives us new insights into how today’s students learn, and technology enables us to respond as never before, you can help lead the way in providing a model for 21st century learning.”

The Secretary spoke at a joint forum before members of SIIA and the Association of American Publishers (AAP).  SIIA and AAP issued a joint statement to “support the voluntary Common Core State Standards Initiative for education and its implementation through our members’ development of instructional, curricular, professional development, assessment and other resources, both digital and print, that align to the standards and are necessary for the teaching and learning of those Standards.”            

The Forum also featured visits to 200 Congressional offices to advocate for federal school technology with partners CoSN, ISTE and SETDA representing state and local educators and administrators. 

SIIA members can review summaries of all the conference sessions, including on Race to the Top and i3, Title I and School Improvement, the Obama College Initiatives, ESEA reauthorization, Common Core implementation, and Government OER Initiatives.

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Filed Under: Ed Tech Industry Summit, Education, Education Policy, Policy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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