The SIIA Ed Tech Industry Summit is THE leading conference for the K-12 and postsecondary education technology marketplace.

Please join us at the 2011 Ed Tech Industry Summit conference, taking place May 22-24 in San Francisco.

2010 Conference Highlights:

Look Who Attended: You'll find an impressiver roster of more than 300 ed tech executives.
Innovation Incubator Finalists Announced: Check out the innovative ed tech products / services selected to participate in this year's Summit!
CODiE Award Winners Announced: Find out which companies were selected as having the year's best ed tech products and services!

Industry Summit News

Navigating Next

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 20:34

What IS coming next�in the teaching and learning process and in the post-PC world? �And how do we in the industry not just prepare for it – but help build the infrastructure, products and services to support the changes that schools want or need?

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

CODiE Awards Judges: A Conversation with the Coordinator

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 19:59

Nominations have closed for the 2013 CODiE Awards, and I am definitely excited about the variety and caliber of products in this year’s program. I know our judges are looking forward to reviewing the products as well. Our first round review is the core of the CODiE Awards. It is also the portion of the program that gives me the most interaction with the judges and nominees. I am constantly in contact with both groups, ensuring that everyone has a great experience.

What is the first round review?

For the first round review, two judges review each product in each category. For example, products nominated in two categories will be assigned four judges. During this first round, judges participate in product demonstration s given by the nominees. Two options are available for the products demonstrations:

– Live product demonstration: Nominations walk through their product webinar-style with the judges participating as they do the walk-through

– Recorded product demonstration: Nominees may already have a video product demo that can be sent to the judges to watch.

We recommend that the nominees keep the demos to under an hour. If it is a live demo, remember to leave time for Q&A with the judges.

The first round review also includes product access. It’s beneficial for the judges to get a feel for the product on their own, as a supplement to the guided demo. Product access can happen in several forms, including temporary online login information or by sending the physical product to the judge.

I also suggest sending as much additional information as you would like to the judges. This can be additional links to PDF’s, videos, news releases, etc.

Who are the judges?

We take great care in selecting the industry experts who volunteer as judges. Each division reviews every judge application to determine if he/she is qualified. We want to ensure there are no conflicts of interest.

For our software and content categories, the judges consist of industry executives and analysts, members of the media, bloggers, investors, and even some customers.
For our education categories, we use educators and administrators as our judges. They are the users of these products and can best determine what products may work the best in their classrooms.

Judging is a great experience because it gives the customers a chance to review the products and provide feedback that the companies can use to make improvements.

How can you help?

We are still looking for judges in several of our categories in Content, Software, and Education. If you are interested in judging or can recommend a colleague please complete our brief judge application.

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

The Evolving Ed Tech CODiE Awards

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 12:30

Karen Billings, VP of the Education Division, joined SIIA 10 years ago, and has been involved with the CODiE Awards ever since. She even remembers the very first Education category – the Best Learning Product in 1986. Since then, the number of Education categories has grown at a steady pace, reflecting the advances in the ed tech industry. Karen shares her thoughts on this constantly evolving industry and what’s new in this year’s education CODiE Awards.

Tell us a little about the history of Education categories in the CODiE Awards.

The first year of the CODiE Awards, the one education winner was Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, for the Best Learning Product. It was such a popular product, and I remember later on there were spin-off products, and even one called Where in North Dakota is Carmen Sandiego! It’s interesting because even today, Carmen Sandiego is still a product at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Even after a series of acquisitions and mergers, the company is marketing and selling an updated version of this product, decades later. The point is that a good education product with a good instructional design that changes with the hardware capabilities is going to have longevity and certainly, branding. It’s very possible that the teachers who are buying Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego today could have used the product when they were young. The CODiE Awards are in its 28th year and it’s amazing to think about how the very first education CODiE Award winner is not only in the market, but has her own Facebook page.

Why do educators and administrators judge all of the education categories in the first round of judging?

The Education Division wanted to have educators and administrators review the products in the first round because they are the real experts. They know what other products are out there, and they have probably used a number of different products in their category, so they have the expertise. They are the best judge of what is going to work in the classroom, and that is a big part of what we mean when we say a product is the best.

The Education Division is able to leverage its relationships with the professional associations and online education communities such as edWeb to reach the teachers. We partner with them because they can directly reach out to their members. For example, SIIA cosponsors a games channel on edWeb, so we can reach teachers who are active in the games-for-learning community. That community helps us find those educators who would be the best at judging the games category.

Why do you like having three top awards, for Best PK-12, Best Postsecondary, and Best Overall?

First of all, I think it’s very special to have some very high-level categories where companies don’t nominate but they are recognized. It’s a very special recognition. It’s a way to pull out the best of the best. In some sense we are following other awards programs. In the Oscars, they have lots of awards, but the most exciting one is Best Picture of the Year. We know that the winners have appreciated that award.

Why do so many education companies love to nominate for the CODiE Awards?

The number of products that are out there in the market have grown substantially for over 25 years. It’s followed the growth of technology, as schools have started to move from the use of print materials and transitioned to the use of digital. Twenty-five years ago, using Carmen Sandiego was a very unique and probably isolated event by a few special teachers who were excited about using that Apple II in the classroom. As access to hardware increased, the software market evolved, and professional development supported technology integration, educators and administrators started to see the benefits of using technology. They saw student engagement, and positive results. The market grew, and as the market grew, the CODiE Award nominations grew, the interest grew, and school budgets grew. It has been a consistent, steady growth for 25 years.

Many of the products that were submitted in the first 10 years for the CODiE Awards had been developed by teachers. Teachers themselves then ended up forming companies. Jan Davidson was a Language Arts English teacher. She wrote a program called Reading Blaster for kids to use in her classrooms on an Apple II. She started sharing it with other teachers, and her husband, Bob Davidson, decided that there might be a business in selling that program to other teachers. They formed a company called Davidson & Associates, which was an early member of the then SPA (Software Publishers Association.) I like knowing that some of the educators reviewing this year’s products may be designing a product that could be a CODiE Awards winner in a few years. It could be the next Carmen Sandiego or Oregon Trail!

Which category are you most excited about this year?

I’m always anxious to see who is nominating in brand new categories. This year, our new category is Best Personalized Learning Solution, which evolved from work we have been doing in the Education Division for the last several years. It started with a working group on personalized learning after our Education Board undertook this as a key initiative. Personalized learning is a new market. Legacy companies can incorporate those attributes as they modify their products, and so can the startups who are designing new products. The thing I look forward to most is seeing nominations come in from companies I don’t know yet. There are so many new companies each year, and some are so new I haven’t even heard from them. When I see their nominations come in, I go to their website and find out about them, and it makes me excited about the direction that education technology is taking.

How can small companies compete in the CODiE Awards?

I think that the small companies with brand new products are viewed very positively by judges. The judges like seeing something new. It’s great to see the start-ups getting the same amount of visibility as larger companies when the finalists are announced. And when the SIIA member companies vote in the second round of judging, every company gets the same number of votes in each category, no matter what size they are. When all of the winners are listed on the press release, some will be large companies, some will be small companies. Some will be companies educators will recognize, and some will be totally unknown. Hopefully when people see a winner they’ve never heard of, they will go to their website and check them out.

What makes the education CODiE Awards banquet so special?

We have so much fun at our awards banquet! It’s a very special event for our companies. They enjoy it. It’s another thing to look forward to at the Ed Tech Industry Summit. We held the gala for the 2012 CODiE Awards on the second evening of the conference and will continue the tradition in 2013.

It’s funny, before I worked at SIIA, I worked at various member companies for 15 years. I came to many of the conferences and even spoke at them, but I never attended a CODiE Awards event! I’m not sure why. The first CODiE Awards gala I ever went to was the first year I started working for SIIA in 2002-in fact it was my second day on the job! I discovered how much fun it was, and how special it is. I really have had fun every year since.