Technology is now strategic to education. The movement of education from print to the web is happening…The products that we saw at TCEA were the best that we have ever seen in one set of panels and signify the beginning of the new era of web-delivered education.
We did focus groups for 20 firms at TCEA and . the following are the major trends we saw…
1. Schools are increasingly outsourcing work that is not core to their educational mission.
2. Content is being delivered virtually
3. A plethora of new and varied Learning Management Systems continue to hit the market
4. Assessments are moving to the next generation. They are less judgmental and more supportive to providing teachers and recommending content to students.
NOTE Web based P.D is growing but I am going to skip it, as we did not see anything new in the two products we looked at.
Below are comments and examples of the specific trends..
1. Outsourcing
These are products or services that streamline district performance and outsource non-educational work. They temd to lower cost for the district
• Facts Management. With the tightening of budgets, schools are collecting fees for activities. Schools do not do this very well and it takes lots of personnel time.
Facts Management owns the fees management business for private schools and wants to move into public schools. They can streamline the collection of everything from football, to band to after school care. This should increase revenue and cut down on administrative costs. LOOKING FOR PANELS…to modify their product for public schools
• Truancy has become a major issue for schools as drop outs increase and the money goes with them. There is an opportunity for technology based firms to assist schools with truancy issues.
End of Truancy is a mobile phone device that tracks truant students’ movement combined with mentoring by disabled veterans who talk with the students regularly, providing anonymous intimacy and support.. The combination of a tracking device and mentoring is impressive and a product that will be effective in the age of GPSs and social networking. EOT will not completely do away with truant officers but is very promising and should keep some kids in school and provide districts with revenue.
I think we will see more specialized products and services, that will take advantage of new technologies to assist schools
• N- Compass- GIS web based tools and service for planning and decision support. This is a system that starts with household demographics and layers on levels of data. It is fabulous for transportation, school boundaries , closings, and growth, marketing, and other decisions. Our panelists thought this was a disruptive tool which will improve decision-making, make the planning process more efficient and enables scenarios for schools in the future…. This is a real winner.
NCompass illustrates that a firm with specialized technology and skills can be of great value in areas where schools do not perform services efficiently or effectively.
II Virtual Delivery of Content.
Increasingly interactive web based products, are taking the place of textbooks. This transformation is occurring due to a combination of issues including changes in state text book adoption laws and the relative savings for e-materials., Within the next 2 years the old text book business model will likely be replaced by repositories of interactive learning objects linked to standards that will be in Schools will pay for using the objects and develop their curriculum around it. We are still not seeing allot of simulation and gaming but expect that to increase as virtual devices come on line.. The traditional text book companies have not quite figured out the business model yet, and innovation is coming predominantly from new digital companies.
At the panels we saw 2 new products in the virtual curriculum category that were outstanding
• Capstone Digital Learning – is a library of virtual books delivered on line, the student takes a lexile placement test and then chooses books of his interest …e.g. cowboys, dolls, Australia…. and receives the books. To read. There is a social networking component where they can discuss the books on line with their teacher. The books come in different forms, comic books, and regular books and with sound…this is the first of the truly individualized products that we have seen….
• MIL, Middlebury Interactive Learning—Virtual On Line Foreign Language Immersion Instruction
Middlebury Interactive is a joint venture between Middlebury College and K12.com. The product integrates the Middlebury immersion process with K12’s on line delivery. The quality of the language instruction and learning is very impressive. The value proposition is that foreign language courses are expensive to deliver because classes are small and it is hard to staff with quality people. MIL comes in 3 flavors—full on line instruction with an on line teachers, supplementary materials for the existing classroom and a hybrid model…. THE QUALITY OF THE VIRTUAL LEARNING IS SUPERB. MIL will release French and Spanish 1 next September and gradually provide courses in 10 languages
III LMSs Learning Management Systems – This is still the year of the LMSs —This time next year half of them will be gone.
LMSs are central to the delivery of on line materials and they often connect, content, assessment, and data analytics. The new LMSs are getting better and better, The BLEgroup has done panels on 10 LMSs in the last 2 years. We see movement toward systems that are much more user friendly, utilize social networking, and provide portals for the major stakeholders; parents, students and teachers.
The big problem is how to define what an LMS is…as there are three types of LMSs that are morphing into each other.
o Content Management Systems, the original Less like black board that deliver content over a platform
o The Instructional process systems like Global Scholar or Schoolnet have a process flow of standards, lesson plans, formative assessment, data analysis and then start all over again
o The web sites like Edline or School wires that started as school web sites and are now moving into content delivery and data analysis.
Follett Software’s , Cognite is very impressive and improving. It is very easy to use for 3 kinds of stakeholders, parents, teachers, and students. It is more like the original LMSs, but has very large amounts of standards, based content and good collaboration. Unfortunately it is not well known as people think of Follett as a library group and at the moment schools need to have Follett’s library management system to use it. Cognite is much simpler and light-years ahead of BB but it needs to address sales and the new types of interactive content. On the content delivery side…. this is the best product we have seen for delivering content and it is well priced…
Schoology is Facebook for schools. It is developing new functionality to deliver customized content. and to date has spread virally. It is one of my picks for disrupting the market and being around next year… A major appeal is that Schoolboy is a freemium product, does not cost much to install and has the potential of doing neutral targeted delivery of content, as opposed to the LMSs of the large publishers which are biased to their content
Skoodat —is more platform than LMS …It is a cloud-based platform that you can put your entire web based applications on and they will interact with each other. The take of the panel was that this will most likely start as a B2b platform that will allow schools to easily download management, assessment and content applications and link it to your legacy systems. this is the beginning of the next generation of cloud based products. It is an early product that is ahead of the market and needs to be flushed out
IV Assessment, The Next Generation
Until now, assessment was either end of year NCLB test or formative assessments that showed the progress being made toward mastery of the standards and end of the year tests. Assessment has been judgmental of both teachers and students. There is a shift occurring in the formative assessment world. The assessments are providing much more support to teachers in helping kids learns and they are becoming linked with delivery of individualized content. The movement of assessment toward supporting teachers and helping students and teachers to collaborate in the mastery of conent is well underway.
We conducted panels for two interesting assessment products in the panels at TCEA.
Wireless Generation has a new product that shows a teacher exactly where each student and the whole class is on the mastery of standards by use of red, yellow and green life and delivers content to help teach that content…. The U.I is in the form of a honeycomb and easy to use. The provision of content to teach the student what they need to learn next is impressive.
Avant Assessment- Avant is traditionally an assessment for foreign language competency. They are developing a new platform for students and teachers to collaborate so that students can master a standard. The assessment tools allow for a variety of ways to show knowledge beyond filling in the blank or extended response…The product is early stage but very collaborative and impressive
The BLEGroup
The BLEgroup is a group of 100 leading ed tech practitioners, composed of a mix of superintendents, CIOs, instructional technology specialists, CIOs and heads of instructions from a wide variety of state departments, large districts, intermediate units, virtual schools, and large and leading edge technology districts. The BLEgroup is unique in that it provides services to both schools and the industry.
The BLEgroup believes that two factors determine the effectiveness of educational outcomes and management of schools:
• The Quality of products
• The ability of school systems to implement products.
At ISTE and TCEA the BLEgroup provides 25 focus groups each where ed tech and publishing firms come to have the tires kicked on their products and to get input on messaging, marketing and implementation from a school perspective. As we are commenting on new products and services, The Instructional leader panels allow us to take the temperature and see trends in the market. The comments below reflect our take on the current status and trends in the ed tech market.
I look forward to your comments
Eliot Levinson
CEO, the BLEgroup
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