Forum COMMENTARY 
SIIA Education Division Calls for Participants in 2012 Vision K-20 Survey
Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:14
The fifth annual Vision K-20 Survey is open today! The survey, sponsored by the SIIA Education Division, gives educators, administrators, and faculty members from K-12 and postsecondary educational institutions the opportunity to evaluate their current technology use. This year, a new addition to the survey asks respondents to identify what they judge to be the “ideal” scenario for technology use.
Focusing on goals outlined in our K-20 Vision roadmap—21st Century tools, accessibility, differentiated learning, assessment tools, and enterprise support—schools, districts, two-year colleges, four-year colleges, and universities will be able to use the Vision’s benchmarks to document their progress. Survey takers can return to the survey periodically to evaluate their progress toward the Vision for K-20 education.
Our member organizations worked together to develop the Vision K-20 initiative as a guide for educational institutions to implement technology district-wide and campus-wide. This survey aims to collect additional data that will broadly assist educators in taking this important project to the next level of knowledge and success.
We’ve developed a vision for K-20 education to ensure all students have access to a learning environment that prepares them to compete globally and lead the world in innovation. This year, in addition to reporting progress over the last 5 years, for the first time we will add the dimension of what educators across the country think of as the ‘ideal’ scenario.
The survey closes May 24, 2012. Initial aggregated results will be released at ISTE 2012 in San Diego, with a final report available late summer 2012.
We value the support of our partners and their commitment to improving students’ preparedness for an innovative and global economy. Partners committed to supporting the Vision K-20 initiative and survey include: 1105 Media, the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), edWeb.net, and eSchool Media. The project’s lead partner was MMS Education. MMS Education provides market research, marketing, sales, and technology solutions for a wide range of education technology companies.
Karen Billings is Vice President for the Education Division at SIIA.
The New Normal for Ed Tech
Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:41
The term ‘new normal’ is increasingly used in discussions and publications about the economy, technology, and business. But what exactly does it mean, especially for education technology providers? Leading up to the Ed Tech Business Forum, we’ll be looking at the drivers of the ‘new normal’ in this blog. Here’s the first post in our new series, “The New Normal”:
Education Economic Climate
It’s not going to get better. The budgets at education institutions have been slashed over the past few years and they’re preparing for even more dramatic cuts in 2012. NEA chief economist, Dr. Richard Sims, gave a very sobering presentation at the SIIA Ed Tech Business Forum in 2009: What Does a Post-Stimulus World Look Like? His presentation was the most requested in the history of this conference.
Dr. Sims predicted there would be bleak years ahead even with Stimulus funds that were going into education institutions at the time. And he was right. Now in 2011, with the ongoing economic uncertainty, we don’t know how long it will take for the education market to recover. And when it does, what will normal look like?
We know it won’t be like the years of growth we saw in the 90s. In fact, education funding will really never return to its long-term growth trend. And, even more sobering, this lower investment in human capital will lower future earnings, productivity, and competitiveness in the US – all forcing more permanent effects on the economy.
Technology Solutions
Even though education institution budgets have been dramatically cut, technology companies continue building smaller, faster, less expensive devices for the consumer, business, and education markets. So, the new normal in technology solutions will be personal, digital, Internet-connected, and wireless. These solutions will require faster and faster bandwidth, support more social media use – and will probably grow our concerns about personal privacy.
In the new normal, technology providers will continue to build innovative products and services for education institutions – but will increasingly incorporate cloud services, utilize more power mobile devices, and integrate open education resources. Given the decreased size of education budgets, the technology solutions will have to prove they lower the cost of instructional and administrative services within institutions.
Business Practices
The new normal for education technology businesses will be lowering their costs, both in the building of and supporting of products and services. Businesses will need to better understand why K-20 decision makers buy their products and how they are used – or not. They will be getting even closer to their customers. The new normal in business practices will likely include developing new licensing models for Cloud-based products and services, increasing their sales channels for mobile products and services, and adjusting their business models to compete with free education resources.
K-20 institutions are not the only customers being asked to ‘do more with less’ but due to resource-constrained state and local governments, they may be in that position longer than other customers. Ed Tech companies will need to show decision-makers the value on their investments made in their products and services for some time to come.
