From the Editor
Content at ISTE
Anne Wujcik — Friday, July 08, 2011
One more week of truncated headlines as I wrap up the news that came out of ISTE. Unofficial numbers put ISTE 2011 attendance at roughly 13,000 educators. That’s about the same number of people who attended in 2010, which is pretty good in light of schools’ continued budget problems and the number of pink slips handed out as schools closed for summer break. Just a few products and projects I want to comment on. CoSN released the Horizon Report: 2011 K-12 Edition Toolkit, designed to help K-12 educators consider whether the emerging technologies identified in the Horizon Report might have the potential to address the various instructional challenges that schools face. This year’s Toolkit includes a series of seven videos produced by JDL Horizons, LLC which feature education thought leaders discussing the six emerging technologies. CoSN Executive Director Keith Kruger explains, “We included videos as part of the Toolkit this year, because we think that the voices and views of education thought leaders will help to advance the conversation on the role that emerging technologies can play in re-imagining teaching and learning.” The Toolkit also includes a PowerPoint presentation overview of the Report, a discussion facilitator's guide and discussion activities. The Toolkit and Report are supported by a grant from HP’s Office of Global Social Innovation.
I commented last week on some of the more “techie” aspects of the show. It’s harder to talk about content offerings. Many content solutions have evolved into complex systems that integrate a number of functions that in earlier incarnations were stand-alone products. Even a 20-minute demo skims the surface and I always walk away knowing that I missed a lot. You only really understand products like these if you can observe them being used in a school setting. I’ll mention just a few products I noticed either because they looked like fun, they mesh with what I see as a market trend or they were being demoed as I walked by and caught my eye. I know I missed a lot of other great products and I apologize in advance.
In terms of market trends, Learning.com launched Learning.com Marketplace, an online marketplace designed to help teachers find, buy and use the best digital teaching resources available. The idea is to create a one-stop shop, one place where educators can find, organize, assign, and track students’ use of digital content that is aligned to state standards. Teachers can organize and use the digital resources they already have access to, as well as find free and fee-based digital resources provided by a growing number of digital publishers. Learning.com has launched marketplaces in two statewide initiatives. The Florida Virtual Curriculum Marketplace (FVCM), with the Florida Department of Education and the Digital Resource Exchange and Marketplace (DREAM), with eNetColorado, a statewide partnership whose supporting organizations include the Colorado Department of Education, the Colorado Educators Association and TIE Colorado.
PBS announced PBS LearningMedia. The free service, created by PBS and WGBH, and their producing partners WNET and KET, along with 31 other PBS member stations, offers access to the public broadcasting media library as well as content contributed from other publicly funded organizations, including the National Archives, the Library of Congress and NPR, as well as content funded by NASA, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the US Department of Education. Content is aligned to the Common Core State Standards and available to all preK-16 classrooms. Currently, PBS LearningMedia is co-branding with 34 local PBS stations, but by the fall it will also be available as a custom solution, developed and distributed in partnership with state education departments or local school districts. This raises that persistent issue of public funding being used to develop products that compete with the for-profit sector, which seems to be increasingly part of the K-12 market picture.
States are looking for ways to provide digital resources to teachers in some type of organized, searcable repository, as noted in a recent Education Week article. The pressure to gather recourses will grow apace as districts begin to make the transition to the Common Core State Standards. This will be an interesting one to watch. Learning.com knows what it's doing in this area (as do others) but there's a strong tendency on the part of states and districts to build their own. Learning.com worked with both Florida and Colorado to do just that -- a state-labeled project - but was able to bring its tools and experience to the table to build a robust offering, based on the philosophy of pulling everything into one easily accessible place. Just what the PBS customized solution will look like remains to be seen. It sounds like they plan to be easily integrated into existing district sysems. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
BrainPOP was demoing GameUp, a free resource that showcases top online educational game titles with support materials that help tie them to the curriculum and make it easier for teachers to integrate them into the classroom. In addition to BrainPOP developed games, GameUp includes titles from organizations such as iCivics, Filament Games, Nobelprize.org®, PlayPower Foundation, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' (NCTM) Calculation Nation®, and the Space Science Institute's SciGames, among others.
CompassLearning introduced a new middle school science offering that uses a game-like architecture. Students are enlisted to restore scientific knowledge to the Mindkeepers realm in four state standard-aligned courses: Nature of Science, Physical Science, Earth and Space Science, and Life Science. The goal is to both engage students while presenting an academically rigorous treatment of critical science skills. They’ve also added hundreds of math and English language arts Common Core standards-aligned activities and quizzes, along with historically-current new content in high school social studies, including formative assessment of each individual social studies activity. I was impressed by the revision of the dashboard-style user interface for Odyssey 2011. It appears to be very easy to use, with intuitive drag-and-drop functionality that allows teachers to drill down to detailed information about individual students.
McGraw-Hill School was showing CINCH™ Learning, a cloud-based curriculum for K-12 math and 7-12 science. The company says that CINCH is the first program of its kind that students can access on any tablet, computer or mobile device. The program is fully customizable from the district down to the teacher level, and is available via subscription. CINCH Learning, which includes online assessments, is correlated to individual state standards as well as the Common Core State Standards. Cinch is purely digital; there is no equivalent print or hybrid product.
Sokikom released what it says is the first web-based massively multiplayer online math social learning game, designed for students in grades 1-6. An entire classroom can play the game together at any time, providing a great incentive to practice math, complete with individual avatar and other common gaming features. After taking a placement test, students are placed in a gaming level according to their abilities and quickly begin playing engaging games and solving real-life math problems. Students can play individually or with a group. During individual game-play, users go through a personalized math program that adapts to their abilities. During team-based multiplayer games, students play together in real-time and help each other complete math tasks. As they master levels, challenges and multiplayer games, they earn Soki-Coins, which they can use to purchase items online to dress their avatar.
Another pattern we've seen growing over the months was also evident at ISTE, that of partnerships and alliances. Schools are looking for more complete solutions, so publishers are seeking out partners who help them expand their product offerings or enhance the user experience. I won't name them all; you can review the past two weeks headlines for a quick update by clicking on any of the content category tabs and seeing what we've reported. Be sure to include the Business tab in your browsing, since some alliances got categorized there. Happy browsing.
