She Snoops for Scoops: The Personal Side of the EdNET Community
She Snoops for Scoops: The Personal Side of the EdNET Community
Vicki Smith Bigham — Friday, December 09, 2011
Hey, hey, it's the weekend—woo hoo! I love this holiday season and have been having to work much too hard, so it is time for some fun and enjoying some holiday spirit. I hope that is in your plans as well. But before you say good-bye to this week, I have some really great scoops for you so take a moment to check them out....it's all about special recognitions and the coolest gift ever for you dog lovers. Read on, why don't you?
Honoring 40 years of service....
ETA/Cuisenaire, the nation's leading provider of hands-on supplemental products for math, science, and literacy education, has announced the retirement of Dennis K. Goldman as the company's chief executive officer. He will step down December 31, following 40 years of distinguished service. Jude Rake, who assumed duties as president of the company in July of this year, will succeed Dennis as CEO, and Dennis will continue with the company as a senior consultant.
Dennis was an elementary school teacher in the Chicago Public School system from 1968 to 1972 and first joined ETA/Cuisenaire, then known as Educational Teaching Aids (ETA), as a part-time writer of teachers' guides and catalogs. He holds a business and marketing degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and completed coursework to become a school administrator before joining ETA/Cuisenaire full-time in 1972. Under his leadership, ETA/Cuisenaire transitioned from a provider of Montessori-based educational products to a major supplier of math and early childhood educational resources. Throughout the years, the company has received worldwide recognition for its exclusive hands-on, research-based products and programs that fully engage students in learning and elevate student achievement.
Dennis oversaw the expansion of the company into the science curriculum market in 1994, and that same year, ETA/Cuisenaire established its successful Key National Accounts division that provides customized kits to leading educational publishers. Dennis holds a patent on the Reading Rods® teaching method, a system that combines phonics learning with hands-on manipulatives, overseeing the company's entry into the reading market in 1999. He also spearheaded construction of the corporate headquarters in 2000. That same year, the company acquired its long-time competitor, The Cuisenaire Company of America, officially becoming ETA/Cuisenaire and adding Cuisenaire® Rods, an internationally recognized math manipulative, to its product line. Dennis has also been instrumental in the development of VersaTiles®, the company's most successful product line, and ManipuLite®, a math manipulative developed exclusively for a world leader in math textbook publishing. What an amazing career and set of accomplishments. Join me in congratulating Dennis on his 40 years of service and wishing him all the best on his much deserved retirement at dgoldman@etacuisenaire.com.
Kudos to others in the limelight!
EdTech Digest recognizes people in and around education for outstanding contributions in transforming education through technology to enrich the lives of learners everywhere. Winners in the recently announced Ed Tech Leadership category include:
Founder/CEO
- Mark Atkinson, Founder and Chief Strategist, Teachscape
- Bill Goodwyn, CEO, Discovery Education
- Jeff Solomon, Founder and Chief Evangelist, Leads360
- Emerging Leader: Nic Borg, CEO/Co-Founder, Edmodo
School Leader
- Mary Kraus, District Program Manager for Technology Services - Lemon Grove (CA) School District
- Winston Brooks, Superintendent - Albuquerque (NM) Public Schools
Visionary
- Educator: Kevin Carney, Director of Beyond Textbooks, Vail (AZ) Unified School District
- Berj Akian, Founder, Classlink
- Charlotte Danielson, Founder, The Danielson Group
- Jim Marshall, President of North American Markets, Promethean
U.S. Leader on the National Stage: Maryann Marrapodi, Chief Learning Officer, Teachscape
Leader Making a Difference Across International Boundaries: Dale Andrews, Teacher/Author, Digital Overdrive
PR Firm/Publicist: Charlene Blohm and Team, C. Blohm & Associates
Leaders & Innovators
Leadership award: Andrew Vreeke, CEO, SureScore
Edtech innovator: Jonathan Stowe, COO, Teachscape
Please go online to also view the finalists in the Ed Tech Leadership category and all of the finalists and winners in the other two categories: Cool Tool Awards and Trendsetter Awards.
Teacher Created Materials, a leading educational publisher, has been selected as a 2011 Family Owned Business Award winner by the Orange County Business Journal. The award is presented annually in association with California State University Fullerton's Family Business Council to recognize outstanding family firms based in Orange County. What a wonderful honor! Rachelle Cracchiolo, Founder and CEO of Teacher Created Materials, and her daughters, Corinne Burton and Deanne Mendoza, are President and Executive Vice President respectively. Both daughters are intimately involved in the day-to-day operations, including product development, domestic and international sales, and marketing. And in some difficult economic times for the education industry as a whole, Teacher Created Materials is not only meeting but exceeding its sales goals and continuing to create award-winning products. In its 35-year history, Teacher Created Materials has been recognized with over 40 industry awards. Among them are three prestigious Golden Lamp Awards and 20 Distinguished Achievement Awards from the Association of Educational Publishers, as judged by educational leaders from around the country. And in 2010, Rachelle was inducted into the Educational Publishing Hall of Fame.
The company's community involvement is extensive and includes endowing a scholarship through the School of Education at California State University Fullerton to recognize achievement in the development of educational curriculum. In 2012, TCM will participate in the OneOC program, which connects local corporations seeking opportunities to volunteer with needy projects in the community. And TCM has made numerous donations to assist with school systems struggling with disaster relief nationwide.
Now in its 12th year, the OCBJ Family Owned Business Award is open to family firms based in Orange County, California. This year's competition saw 66 nominees in five categories. Each nominee and winner is judged by multiple criteria, including overall business success, multi-generational employees and managers, innovative business practices, and contributions to the Orange County business community. These are talented women; they are a wonderful family; and they have accomplished so much that has positively impacted children, schools, communities and our industry as a whole. Join me in sending congratulations on TCM's latest recognition to Rachelle (rachelle@teachercreatedmaterials.com) and Corinne (cburton@tcmpub.com) and their dedicated team!
And Trilby Berger, MetaMetrics®' Vice President, Strategic Partnerships, has been honored with a "Women Extraordinaire" award from Business Leader magazine. The annual award acknowledges the top women business leaders of the South who have demonstrated significant professional achievement and community involvement. As many of you know, Trilby leads MetaMetrics' sales and partnership initiatives. Her efforts have helped increase exposure for the organization's Lexile® and Quantile® measures in both the domestic and international education markets. Trilby is a member of the Software and Information Industry Association's Global Strategies Committee and the DOLS, a prestigious women's networking group in the education technology sector. She also supports the Restore Haiti project, specifically on helping to provide children with educational opportunities. Trilby was one of the Triangle business and civic leaders honored at the Women Extraordinaire awards luncheon in Raleigh, N.C. She and the other award winners will be profiled in the January edition of Business Leader, but you can send her your own congratulations now at tberger@lexile.com.
And now, holiday shopping for your favorite canines....
I was thrilled this week to connect with Betty Paxton and her colleagues Ralph Heigl and Jim McNeely, Jr. at ScratchCat, LLC, who have been proud members of the ed tech community from its earliest days. We have not yet met but realized our paths have indirectly crossed in the past. Many of you long-timers recall their first company, Optical Data Corporation, which developed Windows on Science, the first technology program in the nation to be approved for state adoption using textbook dollars. That was in my own great state of Texas, of course, and the year was 1991. Little did they know that in those days, I had already launched my consulting business and did a ton of training on Windows in Science in Texas classrooms under the direction of Ron Reed, who was then Vice President, State Adoptions, and who I have recently reconnected with in his new role running the exciting SXSWedu conference—but that is for another column!
Betty, Ralph and Jim had a good long run with Optical Data—they followed up Windows on Science with Windows on Math, The Living Textbook and KinderVentures, all laserdisc-based curriculum products for the K-12 market. By the time they merged with SRA/McGraw-Hill in 1998, more than 30,000 schools nationwide had embraced laserdisc technology, and edtech products of all varieties had come of age. In 2001, they launched their current company, ScratchCat, and began developing Fresh Science, featuring all-new, video-based content for whole-group instruction. For the past 10 years, they've continued to build national units for Fresh Science while also developing custom Fresh Science content for Fairfax County Public Schools (VA), among other districts, and offering a full suite of editorial and design services to other publishers.
Betty said you'd think all that would keep them entertained, and it does. Nonetheless, she added there's nothing quite like a new creative challenge. So, with Fresh Science firmly established and with additional units comfortably in the development pipeline, they've made a quick and fun detour to pursue something completely new, which leads leads me to the real scoop and the canine shopping idea....
Their latest product isn't designed for ScratchCat's original hard-to-reach audience (kids in the classroom), but instead it's intended to engage and intrigue an equally challenging and somewhat surprising group. The product is FleaTV, a DVD for dogs and the perfect gift for your pampered pups! Betty assures me this is not just any DVD for dogs—in her words, FleaTV is the cutest, hippest, most interactive DVD ever. She said that it turns out that in making FleaTV, they were able to apply many of the same techniques perfected over the last 30 years for making video content memorable. Some things never change—good content still is king, even if your audience is four-legged and furry. One of the more novel things about FleaTV is that it was shot almost entirely by dogs outfitted with special cameras. The resulting perspective, along with other features, presents a true dog's-eye-view of the world. So, while FleaTV is not a cure for cancer or a path to world peace, it is a lot of fun! Please check it out! The website itself is fun and very interesting! I have already ordered several DVDs for the dear dogs on my Christmas list, and you will want to do the same, I know. C'mon dog lovers—you know who you are! Linda Winter, Pat Walkington, Marilyn Schutz and others—pull out your credit cards and get online. And those nice folks at ScratchCat told me I could use a free shipping code and also share it with all of you—when you order your FleaTV DVDs, make sure you get the free shipping offer by using the very special code: SNOOPS. And if you want to let Betty and her team know you love their newest product, you can drop her a note at betty@scratchcat.com.
And with that, it is off to the weekend—a little more shopping, a lot more festivities with family and friends and a sleepover for our youngest granddaughter. Now there's a special gift for George and me! Go make some memories of your own this weekend, and I'll see you back here next Friday! Till then....Vicki, the Snoop
