Forum COMMENTARY

SIIA Announces Innovation Incubator Award Winners

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 20:04

SIIA’s Education Division showcased some of the leading growth companies in the education technology market and recognized the best among them as part of the Innovation Incubator program at the 12th annual Ed Tech Business Forum, held Nov. 26 and 27 at the McGraw Hill Conference Center in New York.

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.

Big Data and Educational Technology

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 14:50

Guest post by Owen Lawlor, Hadoop/MPP Data Science, Social and Strategic Technology Advisor, Victory Productions.

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!

Seismic Shifts in Education: How and Why

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 23:24

Guest Post By Susan Littlewood, Director of Marketing & Sales, Victory Productions

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.