SIIA Seeks Education Technology Innovators

Innovation Incubator logoSIIA’s Education Division is now accepting applicants for its Innovation Incubator program. Selected developers of promising technologies in the K-12 and postsecondary markets will be invited to participate in the program during this year’s SIIA Education Business Forum, December 10-11, at McGraw-Hill Conference Center in New York. The deadline to apply is                                                 October 4.

The SIIA Innovation Incubator program identifies and supports entrepreneurs in the development and launch of innovative learning technologies. The program began in 2006, and has helped dozens of companies enrich education through the use of software, digital content, and related technologies. The Innovation Incubator program employs a peer-review process to identify the most promising digital education products. Successful industry leaders and peers also provide one-on-one mentorship to support the growth and success of identified innovators.

All education technology companies are encouraged to apply – from start-ups to established innovators. A panel of SIIA member judges, consisting of prominent education technology industry professionals, will review and score each innovation, and collective scores will determine finalists and an alternate. Finalists will be asked to give webinar presentations to educators and administrators nationwide for the Educators’ Choice Award. Finalists will also present their products live for Education Business Forum attendees. One winner will be honored with the Educators’ Choice Award based on educator scores. An additional winner and one runner-up will be chosen for the “Most Innovative” and “Most Likely to Succeed” categories based on the scores submitted by Forum attendees.

For more information about the Innovation Incubator program, or to apply, go to siia.net/ebf/2013/incubator.asp or contact me at Lportorreal@siia.net.


Liderby Portorreal is Program Manager for the SIIA Education Division. Follow the SIIA Education Team on Twitter at @SIIAEducation and LinkedIn.

Pending Senate Immigration Bill Advances High Tech Workforce Policies

The information technology industry, as well as the nation’s students and workforce, received an important policy boost this week when the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee passed an amendment to the pending immigration reform bill investing in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education. The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) views this support as a core element of the multi-pronged workforce policy solution needed to ensure the United States maintains its global economic competitiveness.

While information technologies continue to be the stalwart of the United States economy, our high tech companies have struggled to find an adequately skilled workforce and our students have struggled to obtain the necessary education and training.

As the U.S. Congress and President Obama advance immigration reform, as well as additional education and training programs, SIIA urges inclusion of the following policies: 

  • Investment in STEM education, including as provided by adoption of the Hatch amendment to the immigration bill this week, which will dedicate an estimated $100 million to U.S. Department of Education programs to help states boost STEM teaching and instruction (in addition to other STEM education funds directed to the National Science Foundation); 
  • Enhancement of the H-1B program to ensure that American companies can fill skilled jobs through foreign talent if a qualified American citizen is not available, including an increase in the arbitrary and insufficient caps as well as improvements to the process;
  • Increasing the number of EB green cards for the best and brightest workers regardless of their country of origin, and easing the pathway for foreign students graduating from American institutions of higher education with STEM degrees to remain in and work in the United States immediately post-graduation; and
  • Leveraging technology to redesign our secondary and postsecondary education system to increase learning opportunity and efficiency, moving from a system based on fixed time, place and pace of learning to one more customized around student’s individual needs and interest, including through investment in educational technology and digital learning.

Only with this multi-faceted policy agenda can the United States both address its current, short-term workforce needs while also growing the future pipeline needed to meet high tech workforce needs over the long-term.


Mark SchneidermanMark Schneiderman is Senior Director of Education Policy at SIIA.

SIIA’s Perspective on Open Educational Resources

Last month, SIIA released a Guide to Open Educational Resources (OER) to help inform the field about the benefits, challenges and total costs that must be considered around the funding, development and adoption of educational resources, including OER. Included in the Guide was an SIIA editorial sharing our perspective and public policy recommendations.  

SIIA views open educational resources (OER) as one of many appropriate models for the development and distribution of content needed to meet the needs of students and educators. SIIA expects that future educational needs will be addressed by a mix of instructional materials, including OER, and that there is a critical, though perhaps evolving role for commercial partners and proprietary models. 

SIIA recognizes that interest in OER among government agencies and education decision makers, as well as many non-profit entities and foundations, appears driven largely by the goals of reducing costs, improving access, providing quality, and supporting educator/student customization of their content.  SIIA urges the community of OER investors (e.g., legislators and education officials) and users to consider the following:

  • Even in an age of common learning standards, the need to personalize learning will continue to require a robust choice of curricular resources – proprietary and OER – and related technology tools and services. Investments by government authorities or other organizations based on the assumption they can simply ‘build it once’ could inappropriately limit options. No single resource or set of resources will be sufficient to meet the wide range of educational needs.
  • The principles of academic freedom and personalization of learning require that government agencies and educational institutions continue to support educational choice. They should not in the future limit the use of funds to only the development/adoption of OER, but instead should continue ensuring grant and other funding for acquisition/implementation of any and all resources that meet the particular educational need, whether OER or proprietary.
  • To meet diverse and evolving educational needs, the nation’s education sector demands an environment that encourages R&D investment – public and private, for-profit and non-profit – to ensure ever more innovative and effective resources. Education leaders should strive for a sector that encourages investment and competition, provides resource choice, and rewards innovation.
  • Educational resources, including OER, require not only the initial investment, but as importantly must budget for the total, long-term cost of development and use. These ongoing and recurring costs include user training/support, as well as content hosting and maintenance, content updates, and technology updates that, according to some SIIA members, can often require as much as an additional 20% annual cost. 
  • When making cost-benefit calculations and comparisons, it is important to consider these total initial and ongoing costs of development and adoption. Comparisons require both short-term and long-term factors, as well as recognition of both individual use and systemic impact.
  • Institutional, local, or state adoptions of content should use the same review standards, criteria, and process when the content is of the same or similar type – e.g., core, supplemental, etc. – no matter whether OER, commercial or other license.
  • To the degree that public funds are invested in the development of (open) educational resources, they are best targeted to address gaps where quality resources are not currently available to meet educational needs. In addition, such public investments should consider the benefits of public-private partnerships or related models that ensure an ongoing user commitment and a recurring revenue stream needed to update, support, and sustain the resource over time.
  • To the degree that government funds are invested in the development of OER, those resources should be available through a CC BY license allowing third parties to revise, reuse, remix and redistribute the resource, including commercially. An NC license – prohibiting others from using the work for commercial purposes – would be counter to the public policy goal of leveraging public funds to have the widest impact on innovation, cost-savings, access, and diversity of resources.

SIIA looks forward to working further with all stakeholders to consider the opportunities and challenges of OER and other ways to ensure the availability of ever more choice of innovative and effective resources to meet evolving educational needs. SIIA’s Ed Tech Industry Summit next week in San Francisco will inlcude a panel discussion about OER impact and opportunities for SIIA members that will include the SIIA Guide co-authors and Creative Commons CEO Cathy Casserly.


Mark SchneidermanMark Schneiderman is Senior Director of Education Policy at SIIA.

SIIA Testimony to NY Education Reform Commission Calls for School System Redesign to Personalize Learning through Technology

I had the opportunity yesterday to provide invited testimony to the “New NY Education Reform Commission” appointed by NY Governor Andrew Cuomo to study and make recommendations for the reform and improvement of the state’s education system. My submitted written testimony describes a comprehensive vision for redesigning education to pesonalize learning through technology, and then makes dozens of reccommendations around each of the Commission’s seven objectives.

My October 16 oral testimony is provided below and video archived (at 02:02:40):

On behalf of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) and our 500 high-tech companies, thank you for inviting me today. I am Mark Schneiderman, SIIA’s senior director of education policy.

SIIA agrees with the Commission that, “Future generations of students cannot compete unless we dramatically reform our education system.”

Our industrial-age education practices are largely unchanged over a century or more:
- Too many students are disengaged, not due to lack of technology, but from undifferentiated resources, rote one-to-many instruction, and lack of attention to 21st century skills.
- Time and place are constants, but learning is variable.

Instead, our education system must be fundamentally reengineered from a mass production, teaching model to a student-centered, personalized learning model to address the dramatic change in student daily lives, diversity and expectations.

The mandate is not for marginal change, but for: redesign to free learning from the physical limitations of time, place and paper; and instead customize instructional resources, strategies, and schedules to dynamically address each student’s unique abilities, interests and needs.

The redesign of education can take place without technology and digital learning, but not at scale.  Technology is a teaching force multiplier and a learning accelerator.

This doesn’t mean computers replace teachers, or that all learning takes place online.

It does mean that we use the technology:
1. to collect and analyze extensive student learning data to a degree not otherwise possible;
2. to provide a differentiation of interactive, multimedia teaching and learning resources and student creativity and collaboration tools not possible from one teacher, book or classroom; and
3. to free teacher time from rote and administrative activities to redirect to more value-added instruction.

The result is a more effective teacher, a more highly engaged and better performing learner, and a more productive system.

SIIA’s 2012 Vision K-20 Survey of 1,600 educators found that interest in digital learning is high at about 75%, but only about 25% rate actual technology access and use as high by their peers and institutions.

Here are 10 SIIA recommendations to the Commission and state:

1. Eliminate the Carnegie unit (credit for seat time) as the measure of learning and replace it with a competency-based model that provides credit, progression and graduation based upon demonstrated mastery and performance.

2. Eliminate fixed, agrarian-age definitions of the hours of the school day and the days of the school year and instead provide flexibility for 24/7/365 learning as needed for student mastery.

3. Ensure all teachers have access to a minimum slate of digital tools and supports provided to other professionals, including instructional technology coaches and virtual peer learning networks.

4. Ensure all educators have the skills needed to personalize learning and leverage technology, including by updating the curriculum of teachers colleges as well as teacher licensure and certification requirements.

5. Encourage and support a shift from print-only curriculum to instead provide students with anytime, everywhere access to interactive digital content and online learning.

6. Create a statewide online learning authority for approval and oversight of virtual learning providers to New York students and schools, and loosen arbitrary limits.

7. Invest to ensure equity of technology and digital learning access to change the education cost-curve and provide opportunity to learn, while providing increased local flexibility in the use of state grant funds to meet unique local needs.

8. Set minimum expectations for school/teacher electronic communication with parents and families and support home access to student performance data, assignments and curriculum.

9. Support more flexible higher education policies that end seat-time requirements, allow students to demonstrate prior learning and complete course modules that fit their learning gaps, and receive student aid for study toward skills certifications valued in the job market.

10. Finally, recognize the role of the private sector, which invests hundreds of millions of dollars each year to develop and deliver educational technologies and digital learning. Support public-private research partnerships, and reform the RFP process to enable the private sector to share their expertise, vision and innovative business models.

Our nation’s continued success will require that our educational system adopt modern methods and means to remain not effective and relevant in the 21st century.

On behalf of SIIA and our member high-tech companies, I look forward to working with the Commission to further identify and advance a reform plan for New York education.


Mark SchneidermanMark Schneiderman is Senior Director of Education Policy at SIIA.

Nominations Now Open for the 28th Annual SIIA CODiE Awards

Nominations are now open for the 2013 SIIA CODiE Awards. This year’s CODiE Awards feature 27 new and updated categories, reflecting the dramatic changes in technology and business models impacting the software and information industries.

The CODiE Awards have been the premier award for the software and information industries for 28 years. The awards program has three tracks organized by industry focus: Content, Software and Education.

Highlights of this year’s program:

Content: The Content CODiE Awards showcase the information industry’s finest products, technology and services created by, or for, media, publishers and information services providers.

* Fourteen new and updated categories reflect new technology and business models in the content industry including: Best Crowd Sourced Solution, Best Editorial Outsourcing Solution, Best Semantic Technology Solution and Best Social Media Platform
* The Content CODiE Awards will be presented Jan. 31, 2013 during the Content Division’s annual conference for information industry leaders, the Information Industry Summit

Education: The Education CODiE Awards showcase applications, products and services from developers of educational software, digital content, online learning services, and related technologies across the K-20 sector.

* The new Best Personalized Learning Solution category highlights the major educational shift toward individual, tailored learning plans for students. Three new top-level categories will reward the best of the best of PK-12, postsecondary, and overall education nominees.
* Education winners will be announced in San Francisco on May 6, 2013 during the Ed Tech Industry Summit.

Business: The Software CODiE Awards showcase applications, products and services that are developed by independent software vendors (ISVs) for use in business, government, academic, or other organizational settings.

* Twelve new and updated categories reflect the continued growth and evolution of cloud computing, mobile, big data, and video. Highlights include: Best Cloud Platform as a Service Solution, Best Big Data Solution, Best Mobile Device Application for Consumers, Best Mobile Device Application for Enterprise, and Best Video Tool.
* Software winners will be announced in San Francisco on May 9, 2013 during the software industry’s premier ISV conference, All About the Cloud.

Learn more about the nomination process.


Wendy Tanner Wendy Tanner is CODiE Awards Coordinator. Follow the CODiE Awards on Twitter @CODiEAwards

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

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.

See also:
CyGaMEs Selene: A Lunar Construction GaME
Muzzy Lane’s ClearLab Project


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.

 

Dont get caught up in the shiny stuff

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.