March 2012 Archives

Blackboard Inc., the largest in a crowded field of learning management system (LMS) providers, is getting larger. The Washington, D.C.-based company announced today that it has acquired Moodlerooms, of Baltimore, and NetSpot, of Australia, two LMS providers whose products are built off of the Moodle platform. Terms were not disclosed.

This is strange news— Blackboard's academic platforms CEO Ray Henderson admitted as much in a lengthy blog post—because Moodle is both open source and free for users, while Blackboard is a paid, proprietary product. Moodle, based in Perth, Australia, is a popular, though higher-maintenance alternative to Blackboard because of its cost and because it can be used to build more robust software.

Moodlerooms and Netspot are examples of that robust software. They are paid services, but use the open-source Moodle platform to provide a wider range of learning management tools for users, so district and school-based IT departments don't have to do it themselves. Basically, through this purchase, Blackboard will be offering products built off its competitor. The company can now offer an LMS for customers who aren't interested in using Blackboard's LMS.

Blackboard—which was purchased last year by privately-held Providence Equity Partners for $1.6 billion—is also announcing a deeper foray into the open education resources (OER) movement, by establishing its Education Open Source Services group, which will offer essentially the same services as Moodlerooms and NetSpot.

The announcement was initially met with skepticism by the ed-tech community on social media. George Siemens, who blogs at elearnspace.org and works at Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca University, in Canada, suggests the move shows Blackboard's lack of confidence in the future success of its own product.

"Why, if you've spent years promoting your platform as the best one for complex implementations, do you suddenly start hosting an open source alternative?" he wrote.

As we've reported in the past, Blackboard's products are comprehensive, but they aren't cheap, running upwards of $75,000, according to this 2008 Education Week story. If Siemens is right, this may be Blackboard's attempt to corner a thriftier market without lowering the prices of its flagship products.

Ed-tech blogger Audrey Watters isn't sure Blackboard is embracing the open source movement, but instead stymieing it under the guise of support.

Blackboard seemed to anticipate this reaction. Products like Moodlerooms and NetSpot are official Moodle Partners, which contribute services or money, or both, to Moodle. That arrangement will continue, according to Blackboard's announcement. Blackboard, Moodlerooms, and NetSpot executives also met with Moodle CEO Martin Dougiamas in Australia to discuss the move. He even contributed a quote to the press release that, it's worth noting, isn't as ecstatic as most press release quotes.

"The decision of Moodlerooms and NetSpot to work under Blackboard may sound very strange at first to anyone in this industry," said Dougiamas, "but it's my understanding that these three companies have some good plans and synergies."

Henderson and Blackboard CEO Michael Chasen also wrote a letter explaining the move to the open education content community. In his blog post, Henderson acknowledged the potential criticism, but didn't address it head-on. He said the move allows Blackboard, which also offers collaborative learning and analytics tools, to become an even-more comprehensive "education solutions provider."

"Our announcements today are motivated by a belief that we can contribute positively to these projects in the eyes of the community, while still building viable businesses around them," Henderson wrote.

How large that business grows, and how Blackboard's new and old customers are affected by that growth, will have big implications on the open education movement.

Posted by Jason Tomassini at 8:44 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Remember those Scholastic Book Clubs from school, when you could use the money you saved up to buy your favorite books from a catalog?

Well, according to a Connecticut judge, the teachers who hand out the catalogs, help students make purchasing decisions and collect the orders are actually salespeople, even though they don't receive any money. And if those teachers are salespeople, that means Scholastic Book Clubs Inc., based in Jefferson City, Mo. and with no physical presence in Connecticut, has to pay the state $3.2 million in sales tax, according to the ruling.

Here's Connecticut Supreme Court Judge Peter Zarella's explanation, via the Hartford Courant:

"... some 14,000 Connecticut classroom teachers acted as the company's representatives soliciting, processing and delivering books sales to students. While not compensated for their services, teachers received book catalogs from the company...collected orders and payment from students...received shipment and distributed books to the students."

It's an interesting argument and one Scholastic, which hasn't commented on the ruling publicly, appealed when it was originally made by the state's Department of Revenue Services.

Posted by Jason Tomassini at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Teach For America started as a way to get some of the smartest college graduates to teach students in some of the neediest schools. Whether you believe in the TFA methodology or not, it's persuaded people to work in less-lucrative jobs because they think it's the right thing to do.

The TFA model is now being applied to computer programming, through Code for America, a fellowship program that places some of the brightest young computer scientists into local government positions. The goal, like TFA, is for the participants to help solve some of the inefficiencies of local government as their civic duty.

"We're not going to fix government unless we also fix citizenship," said Jennifer Pahlka, the founder and executive director of Code for America, which began its second fellowship year in January.

On Tuesday, Pahlka delivered the final keynote speech at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, which this blog has been covering the past week. Pahlka admitted that at a conference known best for the hype bestowed upon the hottest new technology, trying to fix, say, the government procurement process isn't that sexy.

But, she notes, $140 billion is spent on government technology per year. So there's money to be made selling to government, but there's also money to be saved. That was quickly evident last year, as the 20 fellows working for cities like Philadelphia, Boston, and Seattle identified some of the major civic problems (a few of them education-related) and began developing web applications for them.

Boston Public Schools used to publish and distribute to parents a 28-page brochure outlining the city's school-choice regulations. In two and a half months, the Code for America fellows there developed Discover BPS, a database and mapping tool for parents to browse the schools their children are eligible to attend. Pahlka was told the project would have taken two years and cost $2 million if commissioned through the government's traditional procurement process.

Other education-related applications include a mobile application in Boston that tracks school buses and ClassTalk, a classroom communication tool for teachers and students. Education departments suffering under heavy bureaucracy and costly technology contracts take note. (And through new innovation officers and innovation offices, many education departments are taking note.)

But it's not that easy. This is a bureaucracy, after all. The initial Code for America program was planned for Washington as well, but the fellows were asked to leave after Mayor Vincent C. Gray took office, Pahlka said. Plus, governments are notorious for being slow to release data, a necessity for any programmer, she said.

And there's also the retention concern that follows Teach for America. For instance, the project lead for ClassTalk, Scott Silverman, now works for Airbnb, the online tool that facilitates temporary home rentals. Ultimately, he could learn different things by working at a Silicon Valley company than in a government job, where he would be the resident programming expert, he explained to me in an email exchange.

"I wanted more insight into the way small, product-driven tech companies operate," he wrote. "With the current state of technology in U.S. cities, I wouldn't have been able to gain this type of experience there. When and if I decide to work in government, I'd like to offer expertise through first-hand experience."

Pahlka said her goal is for this program to spark a general sense of citizenship among Americans. She announced the Code for America Brigade, a program she likens to volunteer firefighting that allows programmers and developers to dedicate time to solving civic problems.

Posted by Jason Tomassini at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Over the course of the South by Southwest Interactive Conference (SXSW), and the education conference that preceded it (you can find the rest of our SXSW coverage here), in Austin, Texas, educational gaming is emerging as the most-discussed innovation in education. Whether using games to help students learn, or using game-design curriculum to teach science, technology, engineering, and math, educators seemed to have reached a consensus that games are an effective way to engage students in a topic they aren't immediately interested in.

But I've been disappointed to see few of those discussions expand beyond, "Games are a good tool for learning" to "Here's how games can be best used in classroom."

Thankfully, one panel on Tuesday featured a strong roster of representatives from the most popular game design programs in K-12 education and one of the most popular online game companies in the world. The general consensus is that game design is an effective way to teach computer programming, engineering logic, and even design to students who are more interested in creating the next Grand Theft Auto than the next Newton's Law.

But here are some suggestions from the panelists on how to create a game-design program that actually works and how to test its results.

• First, start your game-design programs earlier. Way earlier. If students are first being introduced to game design in high school, you missed the best time to reach them. The panel included representatives from Agent Sheets, Advanced Micro Devices' Changing the Game, and the all-girl Girlstart, three of the biggest game-design program providers in the country. All offer services to students in middle school or younger. Tamara Hudgins, the executive director of Girlstart, suggested game-design programs for students as young as six.
• "Games usually are approached from a consumer model. We have to teach kids to think of it as the service to others. It's not just for you," said David Gerding, an associate professor in media at Columbia College in Chicago. By asking, "How can I help you?" Gerding says, students will approach games from a problem-solving standpoint, not just entertainment.
• Game design doesn't even have to be a lesson in technology. Virginia McArthur, an executive producer at Zynga, the online gaming empire responsible for Farmville and Words With Friends (don't act like you've never heard of them), said all of their games start with extensive paper modeling, before any technology or software is used. "We don't go to the computer until we decide it's fun," she said.
• And no matter how complex modern video games seem, all of them start with very simple concepts. The framework for Rock, Paper, Scissors, McArthur says, can be the foundation for a game. It's important for students to first come up with a "core concept, and then build off of it," she said.
• Get data and get results. To win over reluctant administrators, it's important to track demographic and future progress data on students. Girlstart, for instance, is used by 14,500 girls in Texas. Two-thirds are minorities and 70 percent are considered "at-risk," McArthur said. Despite offering a drag-and-drop software that doesn't require programming, Agent Sheets has caused an increase in high school computer science enrollment in its customer districts, said Alexander Reppening, its founder.

Stuff to think about before you send your kid to therapy for wanting to make the next Grand Theft Auto.

Posted by Jason Tomassini at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

"What's left for the humans?"

That's the question Stephen Wolfram, the renowned British computer scientist, asked toward the end of his presentation at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, on Sunday.

He had just shown an audience the various ways his computation systems work, most notably and recently the Wolfram|Alpha answer engine, which turns simple language into complex data and visualization. For instance, if you type "washing machines" into Wolfram|Alpha, you don't get the top websites for buying washing machines, or even a Wikipedia page. Wolfram's algorithm spits out a breakdown of cost by brand, product listings, and graphs of price distribution.

Source: Wolfram|Alpha

For Wolfram, the short answer to the question above, as it relates to education, seems to be: More. By doing the basic understanding, data-gathering, and fact-finding for students, computation frees teachers to work with them on problem-solving and deeper understanding.

"You don't need professors to tell you generic facts; you can automatically get these things," Wolfram told his SXSW audience. "You need humans for the human stuff that can't be computed."

(Worth noting: This is the same guy who published an article on Wired.com last week of his "life analytics," such as a graph of every keystroke he has taken on his computer since 2002.)

Wolfram is primarily known for the Mathematica programming language and software, used religiously by computer scientists and college students, and for creating the framework for Siri, Apple's voice-recognition software. But he's turned an eye toward K-12 education in recent years, trying to create a learning environment that bridges data with human experience.

Through a publishing imprint, Touch Press, Wolfram offers interactive e-texbooks on tablets. In January, Wolfram launched the Wolfram Education Portal, a website of math course materials, interactive textbooks, and widgets. An interactive algebra textbook aligned to the Common Core State Standards is offered for free through the CK-12 platform, an online repository of open math and science textbooks (co-founded by Neeru Khosla, whom I interviewed earlier in the week).

Wolfram's algebra lesson bypasses some of the steps students typically take to get to an answer, in favor of having them go further once they get there. As he noted at SXSW, his systems can "solve homework problems cold"; I got the sense that Wolfram's idea of "homework" would fall somewhere short of changing civilization overnight.

It's an controversial approach that focuses less on what students know and more on how they process information and how they can get the information they want.

"Most of education today is based on the idea of the industrial age, not the emerging computation age," Wolfram said in his presentation. "It's sending people in the production line to learn different things."

This is a debate about more than just technology; it's about what should be important skills for a modern student to have. Does the student need to be an expert in computing the slope of a line in order to be an expert in graphing?

There are exceptions to Wolfram's concept of deeper understanding, though, most notably in the humanities and liberal arts. As he demonstrated Sunday, when you type in the name of a Shakespeare play, you get a breakdown of the most-used words. How that can lead to greater understanding of the text is unclear.

It will be interesting to see how Wolfram|Alpha and the education portal, which is in beta, are going to evolve. Wolfram gave the crowd a preview of how his answer engine will incorporate the social Web, producing visuals about your Facebook friends' hometowns, for instance. He also hinted at creating a product around "computational news" that will tell you what's happening in the world based on your personal data.

Posted by Jason Tomassini at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Cyberbullying's recent emergence in the public conversation has given way to deeper discussions about how youths interact with the Internet and each other. But according to Danah Boyd, a leading researcher on youths and social media, it's also brought many misconceptions about what the real risks to teens are online. The Internet doesn't increase bullying, Boyd says, but attitudes toward it increase the fear and misunderstanding about what teens are exposed to.

"The Internet has made bullying much more visible to adults, but they don't recognize the things outside their purview, the things not in front of them," Boyd said Saturday at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference, the massive gathering of innovative thinkers and technology enthusiasts going on in Austin, Texas, this week (I covered the SXSWedu conference earlier in the week).

Boyd is a senior researcher at Microsoft Research and holds a variety of positions in academia. Her SXSW talk, "The Power of Fear in Networked Publics," posited that the Internet is amplifying and confusing a "culture of fear" capitalized upon by marketers, politicians, and the media.

First, data show that students are still bullied the most in school, and the Internet hasn't increased bullying, Boyd said. But parents can't see what happens at school the way they can see what happens online. Because it's more visible to them, parents teach their kids to fear online culture as a way to control them, the same way media and marketers do, Boyd said.

Though not a subject of Boyd's talk, this control dynamic seems to be a greater concern on the school district level. This week, on behalf of a 12-year-old Minnesota girl, the American Civil Liberties Union and the girl's mother sued the Minnewaska Area Schools, alleging it disciplined the student after searching through her online messages.

And because it's proved effective, teens are using the same fear-mongering tactics to get ahead in the race for attention, another byproduct of the Internet era, Boyd argued. That's what causes most cruelty among teens, Boyd said (not the "strangers on the Internet" parents warn about).

"Fear begets more attention. Attention begets more fear," she said.

So what's the solution? Keeping with the theme of the conference, Boyd suggested designers and technologists need to take responsibility for creating the systems where fear-mongering and attention-getting rule and get to better know their users. Boyd has told Education Week Teacher (through the Teacher Leaders Network) in the past that a network like Facebook rewards participation so much that it limits expression and controls interactions among its teen users.

But she also said we shouldn't blame the Internet on all of youths' ills.

We're keeping an eye out for Boyd's next research piece on this subject, "The Social Lives of Networked Teens," which will be published by Yale University Press.

Posted by Jason Tomassini at 1:08 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A big theme at the SXSWedu conference that ended yesterday in Austin, Texas, was open content. How can schools, students, and teachers save money on textbooks and course materials through free, standards-based content offered online?

The content can be customized, personalized and shared, all while meeting state and national standards. Last week, the Washington State Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill promoting the use of open education resources (OER) that meet state and Common Core standards in classrooms.

One of the largest providers of open content is CK-12, a nonprofit organization and website that offers whole textbooks for free. It is co-founded by the entrepreneur Murugan Palaniappan and Neeru Khosla, the wife of venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. CK-12 runs entirely on donations, with the Khoslas own foundation providing a large amount of support.

To create the textbooks and content, CK-12 contracts with experienced teachers who have curriculum experience. Because the content is open-source, users can mix and match to create their own textbooks and lessons. In keeping with the Khoslas interests, the textbooks are all in science and math. They are for grades 6-12 at the moment, with K-5 on the way.

The initial textbooks are mostly static on the page, but last month CK-12 launched the beta version of its 2.0 model, which will offer interactive content with a concept-based approach. So instead of reading an Algebra textbook front to back&mash;or ignoring chapters altogether—students and teachers can get lessons on specific areas (a little bit like the Khan Academy approach.)

In the last two years, there have been 8 million downloads from CK-12, Neeru Khosla said. CK-12 only measures downloads now, but the 2.0 model will collect even more usage data, Khosla said.

I sat down with Neeru Khosla at the SXSWedu conference to discuss CK-12's role in the open content movement and how it might affect the textbook industry.

Education Week: How does your content meet the state and nationwide standards?
Neeru Khosla: California did an open digital content initiative, and we submitted to that. And all of our content was 100 percent aligned as far as that goes. We are aligned with Common Core as well. Because it's digital, we can fix that quickly. You shouldn't have to wait six or seven years for aligned content or core content. It's too rigid for me.

EW: Do you consider yourself more a content provider or a platform?
NK: We are both because a platform without the content is meaningless. That's one decision I made very early and stuck by it. You have to have the content if you are going to have the platform. I think most places are being either one, and they find the platform is useless unless they have content. There aren't many people that started with that in mind. That's where we made a very different statement.

EW: What do you think of the platform debate? The Apple deal [with publishers to provide some e-textbooks exclusively on its devices] has gotten attention for being a one-platform deal. Is it wrong or a just a reality?
NK: It's a free market, so you are going to have choices and the whole idea is about choices. So what happens with a project like us, we not only start with the platform but we also ask what is it that people need and we keep adding to that. We aren't trying to be the center of the universe, whereas places like Apple say, "We need to be the center of the universe."

EW: Publishers typically go to the districts and sell them textbooks, and they build relationships with them. How do you get your products into the classroom?
NK: The relationship between the Pearsons and classrooms and districts will work to a certain extent. Definitely, they have the advantage. They have been around for decades vs. us for just five years. But that's not to say that it can't be overcome. We are going to overcome all that. Washington, Utah—they've shown that, and Arizona is coming up. These states are thinking differently.

EW: Is it actually something that you work with elected officials on?
NK: We are an example of what could happen, and it's up to those guys to react. We are not in a position to lobby because we are a small case. Some of this will happen because of people recognizing. Washington saw what happened—here's a resource they can rely on, and they start thinking from the top down. The bottom-up is: you have teachers who are starting to use this, and they bring it up to district leaders and say, "Oh, why don't we make this available?" At the same time, our 2.0, with concept-based learning, students are going to go and say, "I use this at home, so why aren't we using this." All these forces will hopefully come together.

EW: Are there assessment and data-collection elements to this?
NK: We have a back-end we've created to capture interactions. Initially, we collect what that student is doing. And how they are doing it, whether it's right or wrong, gives way for formative assessment. How their learning is changing over time, and what kind of content, and what kind of tools they are exposing themselves to, and how it's helping them to learn—that's the formative assessment we are going toward.

Posted by Jason Tomassini at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

There were some rumblings around the SXSWedu conference in Austin, Texas, a brand synonymous with everything hip and cutting-edge, that the conference's keynote speakers were a bit too establishment. Marjorie Scardino, Pearson's CEO gave Wednesday's keynote as Occupy Austin protestors gathered outside. Today, the top U.S. education official, Arne Duncan, spoke to the crowd and took questions. (Earlier in the day, Occupy Austin interrupted his speech at Austin Community College.)

The teacher-heavy audience gave Duncan a standing ovation after impassioned promises to fight Washington politicians for more affordable higher education, better teacher compensation, and an education framework that drives global competitiveness (hint: get rid of No Child Left Behind, don't be afraid of other countries).

I won't rehash much of the speech but wanted to point to an interesting thread that stood out, around technology (a focus of his speech and of the conference), the public nature of education and the SXSWedu program.

Duncan started by praising the size ($650 billion) of K-12 the education industry as well as its decentralized nature. Localities that have been past Education Week subjects, like Mooresville, N.C.; Joplin, Missouri; Idaho; and Utah were praised for positive results with one-to-one iPad programs, open education and laptops.

He then cautioned districts to not let bureaucracy get in the way of those aforementioned technology programs, while moments later calling on the crowd to "deprivatize public education."

This could be viewed as a mixed message: don't let government bureaucracy get in the way of quality education, but don't let the private sector take over either. But it's more an indication that the ever-changing technology landscape in education, with its myriad players, enterprises and products, is complicated. It's not clear whether the public or private sector has too much control or what the right amount of control actually is.

Because of its focus on technology, SXSWedu fully addressed the amount of control that teachers or technology should have in the classroom. Attendees agreed that technology belongs in the classroom alongside teachers. As did Duncan.

"There's this silly debate over whether we need computers or teachers. We need both," he said. "We have too many either/or debates in education."

But there were far fewer answers, and far fewer questions, at SXSWedu about the balance of private and public interests in education. Zero panels addressed virtual schools or for-profit education and few addressed charters, all subjects that relate to technology, innovation and the role of the teacher. Given the vibrancy of most discussions here, it is a complicated subject I hoped would be tackled.

Posted by Jason Tomassini at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Updated with info on contest prize.
Like many educational technology conferences, SXSWedu, in Austin, Texas, holds a pitch contest for startup companies looking to make a name. LAUNCHedu pitted six companies in higher education and six companies in K-12 education, which were admitted to the contest through a screening process, then pitched their companies in front of judges and conference-goers.

In the K-12 contest, BloomBoard, a digital professional-development tool, took home the top prize, a "modest cash stipend" and consulting from the LAUNCHedu advisory board, which includes some big name education investors. Here are the three K-12 finalists.

• BloomBoard - This Palo Alto, Calif.-based company is a digital teacher-evaluation and professional-development tool. BloomBoard relies heavily on classroom data to help teachers determine what to teach, how to teach it, and whether it worked. The company offers free and paid products to districts and is working with Oakland, Calif., public schools and Rocketship Education charter schools.
• LearnBoost - Another Bay Area company, this one is a classroom-management tool for teachers, parents, and students (though time constraints limited the presentation to the teacher tool). It's comprehensive, allowing teachers to manage attendance, seating charts, calendars, and a gradebook through one dashboard. LearnBoost employs a "freemium" model, in which some products are initially offered for free and advanced features come at a cost. Rafael Corrales, LearnBoost's CEO and a Harvard Business School graduate, said the company is currently pushing its products toward teachers and individual schools, with hopes of opening the pipeline to districts.
• Success Highways - Founded by a former juvenile prosecutor, this company offers curriculum assessment and support for at-risk and disengaged students. Organizations can purchase Success Highways' 108-question assessment tool, with the resulting data used to diagnose student-engagement problems. Success Highways also sells a curriculum and professional-development tools to address those issues. It is the rare print startup at SXSWedu (that means it uses paper, yes, paper), but funding from the U.S. Department of Education will help it offer online products, said founder Steven Weigler.

These companies represent some of the overarching themes I'm hearing at SXSWedu: data, classroom management, and, ultimately, cost savings. If the product can make a teacher's or administrator's job easier and collect reams of valuable performance and behavioral data at the same time, it streamlines typically costly processes like teacher evaluation, professional development, or student intervention. Selling to consumers is a whole other story, though, and the three companies faced questions from judges about how to scale.

All three companies were curious selections for the LAUNCHedu competition, not because they weren't promising companies, but because the "launch" portion of the contest seems misleading. All three offered a fairly complete suite of products and had already established an early customer base. I was told these kind of startups were closer to the initial series A round of funding than launch phase (though I was told the higher education content winner, LearningJar, was in earlier stages). BloomBoard, for instance, is backed by a well-known education venture capital firm, Learn Capital, and is in its second iteration as a company. (Learn Capital is also the competition's sponsor.)

There's certainly no shortage of education startups that deserve the recognition, but it would be interesting to see a more nascent idea be formed and shaped at the conference and then watch it grow from there.

(You can read more about the K-12 education startup world in this story by my colleague Nirvi Shah, part of our "Accelerating Innovation" special report.)

Posted by Jason Tomassini at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A big theme at this year's SXSWedu conference in Austin, Texas, is the open education movement. There are several panels on open textbooks, teachers as curators of open education content, and collaborative course material networks.

My colleague Ian Quillen wrote about this on Tuesday, from the Consortium of School Networking conference in Washington.

There are a lot of benefits to this movement, cost savings and nimble adoption chief among them. (Here is a breakdown of the costs.) Just last week, the Washington State Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill promoting the use of open education resources (OER) that meet state and Common Core standards in classrooms.

But as teachers begin to use more open online coursework, they also need to learn copyright and fair-use laws. Most teachers don't know just how much they can use, said Georgia Harper, the Scholarly Communications Adviser for the University of Texas at Austin Libraries. Use of any content is subject to its individual terms of use. But if it used in a "transformative" way and the original source is clearly attributed, content can be used for projects like online textbooks and course materials.

For instance, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech is one of the more closely guarded pieces of media commonly used in education. But, as Harper told me after her presentation, educators can use a clip of the entire speech in a lesson on rhetoric or the "top 100" speeches. And no matter what the terms of use, it's always legal to link to education materials.

Harper advocates using the wide range of OER resources online, which are optimal "if you don't have time, money and don't want risk," she said during the presentation.

Harper's co-presenter, Kathy DuBois, of the Institute for Public School Initiatives (IPSI), provided a good case study of maneuvering copyright material. DuBois worked on OnTrack, an online repository of more than 600 classes focused on college readiness for high school students, funded by the Texas Education Agency.

With a small team of writers and technologists, much of the course materials had to come from the web. The team started by using an advanced Google search, which allows users to pinpoint what kind of material they want and to filter the results based on usage rights. The team also used media searches in the OER Commons and Creative Commons, an online organization dedicated to an open internet copyright landscape.

After filtering out sites with advertisements inappropriate for students, DuBois team checked for terms of use. Often, to use the materials, IPSI had to file permission requests with the content owner. That's not as big a deal as it sounds, DuBois said. Once you file the request, you are free to use the content. In many cases, IPSI didn't hear back from the owners, and most were amenable to allowing permission.

Non-profit education uses are rarely going to be challenged, but it's still important to keeping detailed documentation of the materials requested, DuBois said.

Some audience members questioned if this method was practical for for-profit education providers who have legal teams tasked with avoiding lawsuits. But Harper suggested the for-profit sector is overreacting—follow the laws and you'll find them generous, she said.

"It's not true that there's no fair use for for-profit users," she said.

The open resources movement is valuable because of its low cost, easy access, and efficiency. But the presenters noted a big barrier to maximizing the free materials out there: teachers' lack of knowledge of what they can and can't use.

Embrace your inner DJs, teachers.

Photo: Creative Commons logo used under Creative Commons license, from Flickr user MikeBlogs

Posted by Jason Tomassini at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

If you remember, Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt partnered with Apple in January to provide e-textbooks for the new iBooks 2 application on the iPad. On Tuesday, Mike Evans, a senior vice president at Pearson, gave attendees at the South by Southwest education conference (SXSWedu) in Austin, Texas, a closer look of how the textbooks actually work.

The audience seemed to leave with more questions than answers about the e-textbooks, seen as a leading example of education innovation by members of the media, bloggers and, oh yeah, the U.S. Secretary of Education.

Pearson offers four different e-textbooks exclusive to the iBooks, with more expected down the road. (iBooks is the revamped bookstore application offered by Apple, similar to its App Store.) They are interactive, with 3-D graphics, digital notetaking capabilities, and animation-based assessment (some of which must be completed offline).

But despite the hype around its Apple e-textbooks, Evans noted that Pearson offers 300 other digital titles for other platforms. Some of the mainstream media treated the Apple announcement as the first interactive digital textbook ever, but these have been around for awhile, in different iterations.

And as some audience members pointed out Tuesday, Pearson's e-textbooks look a lot like print textbooks, only fancier and with moving parts.

"The content dissemination is pretty much the same," one man in the audience commented. "The only advantage I can see is the navigation."

"It's a fair question and one that's regularly asked," Evans responded.

This seems to be a critical point. The aforementioned U.S. Secretary announced plans to have digital textbooks in every classroom. But it must be questioned whether those digital textbooks actually transform learning for the better, or if they are simply digital re-creations of print textbooks—a mere form of spinal relief.

That's likely where the pricing becomes key. If it's cheaper to purchase e-textbooks, it becomes somewhat of a moot point if the experience is the same. But if it's not, districts will question whether the e-textbooks are as innovative as they should be for the price.

Evans explained that each e-textbook is offered on iBooks for $14.99. When the district purchases the books, each student is given an individual license for it. That textbook, and all of the updates, belong to that student for life (so when you need that Geometry textbook 20 years later...). Evans told me after the session that Pearson and Apple often co-sell to districts—promoting iPads for the classrooms and the e-textbooks that live on them—but they haven't joined forces to bundle products yet.

The break-even point is about six years, Evans said. That's roughly the lifespan of a print textbook, which is much more expensive but can't be updated.

There's been some dispute to these numbers. Lee Wilson, a veteran of the education industry, blogged exhaustively that Apple e-textbooks actually cost six-to-seven times more than print textbooks. Using estimated data from his own experience and from technology directors, he determined Apple textbooks cost $71.55 per student, per class, as opposed to $14.26 for print textbooks. He factored purchase of the devices into cost. (I urge you to read his post, and his follow-up, and judge the numbers yourself.)

He also hinted at more dynamic versions of the textbooks, that integrate with other Pearson classroom technology, like its assessment tools and social learning products.

"We see this as a step in the journey," Evans said. "It's not mission accomplished."

Either way, if the price tag for iPads and e-textbooks ends up being too costly and districts aren't seeing much of a different from their print past, meeting Arne Duncan's digital textbook goals may be tough.

Photo: Pearson's "Geometry Common Core" e-textbook for the iPad. (Jason Tomassini/Education Week)

Posted by Jason Tomassini at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The annual South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, owns the rare and noble distinction of being both the coolest and nerdiest media conference of the year. Thousands upon thousands (nearly 20,000 attended just the interactive conference last year) of tech geeks, top researchers, entrepreneurs, rock stars, and celebrities descend upon Austin for two weeks of panels, parties, shows, networking and tacos. Some of the biggest technology companies, like Twitter and Foursquare, for instance, owe much of their success to early SXSW buzz.

For the second year, SXSW is holding an education conference, SXSWedu, in the days (March 5-8) preceding the conferences for interactive media, film, and music. Technology-friendly education conferences are nothing new, but that perhaps the largest media conference of the year is focusing on education signals the industry is in an ever-changing state.

SXSWedu attendance is expected to increase dramatically this year, behind a big-name lineup of speakers and panels. This year's keynote speakers are U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino, and former Star Trek star and current Reading Rainbow Executive Producer LeVar Burton. A roster of leaders in charter schools, educational gaming, classroom technology, and research fill out dozens of panels scheduled throughout the conference.

I recently touched down in Austin, where I'll be covering SXSWedu and the SXSW Interactive conferences for the next 10 days or so. In this space, I'll be posting dispatches, interviews, and some of the sights and sounds of the conference. If you're at the conference, come up and say hi (I'm the guy in the upper right corner of this blog) and if you're not, let me know what you'd like to hear about. You can also follow our Marketplace K-12 Twitter account for continuous updates.

Here's a sampling of some notable events on the SXSWedu schedule this year:

• iBook - Going Mobile in the High School Classroom - March 6, 10:15 a.m.

  In this session, Pearson, fresh off its 2011, digital-revenue-friendly financial report, will be unveiling its new Pearson iBooks. These are the latest iteration of the e-textbooks we already got a peek at when Apple announced its new textbook software for the iPad. Apple, you may remember, partnered with Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to provide digital, interactive textbooks. (Related panels: Integrating OER Into a Strong Instructional Model; eTextbooks are HOT! But *Still* Don't Matter)

• Education in a World of Social and Technological Change - March 6, 10:15 a.m.

  Unfortunately, attendees will have to choose between getting a sneak peak of Pearson's new e-textbooks, or a sneak peak of new research on technology and behavior in minority and low-income schools, from S. Craig Watkins, a professor at the University of Texas. As companies and districts tout their shiny classroom technology and programs, this session will provide an important opportunity to think about what students are actually accessing that technology. (Related panel: Diversifying the Pipeline: STEM+Arts and Urban Culture)

• Launch EDU K-12 Education Lightning Round - March 7, 10:15 a.m.

  As education technology startups proliferate, conferences like SXSW often double as pitch contests, where the latest companies can show a large audience what they have to offer. The LAUNCHedu contest pits six pre-screened startups against each other and in front of a panel of judges, who will determine who is the winner of an unspecified "prize package." You can check out the startups that won the chance to present here.

• Learning Powered By Technology: Investments, Incentives, and the View from the Nation's Capital - March 7, 11:30 a.m.

  Two officials from the U.S. Department of Education, including Director of the Office of Educational Technology, Karen Cator, will lead this panel on how policy is affecting innovation in education. It would be nice if there were a panel member who could offset what is sure to be a promotion of School Improvement Grants, Race to the Top, and other innovation-friendly federal programs, but that's what Q&A sessions (and journalists) are for.

• Does Assessment Have to Be a Four Letter Word? - March 7, 2 p.m.

  Geoff Fletcher, deputy executive director of the State Educational Technology Directors Association, will examine how technology and the phasing out of No Child Left Behind is changing assessment. Expecting Common Core and online assessments to be addressed. (Related panel: The Truth About Effective Assessment; Redefining "Data Driven")

Photo: Downtown Austin from the hotel room of yours truly. (Jason Tomassini/Education Week)

Posted by Jason Tomassini at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Looks like the world of for-profit schools is battling some more negative press. As The Philadelphia Inquirer reports, federal authorities served search warrants Wednesday on Chaka Fattah Jr. and David T. Shulick, two men with connections to Delaware Valley High School, an alternative school operator that receives millions of dollars from the Philadelphia School District. Fattah Jr. is the son of U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, a veteran Pennsylvania Congressman and senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

Delaware Valley High School, a Philadelphia-area private school company aimed at troubled and disadvantaged students, is being paid more than $4 million from the Philadelphia school district this fiscal year and enrolls 500 students. Shulick is the president of the company; Fattah Jr.'s company, 259 Strategies LLC, is a subcontractor paid $450,000 by Delaware Valley High School.

As recently as last month, Fattah Jr. lobbied local officials for Delaware Valley High School contracts, identifying himself as its director of business development, the Inquirer reported. Authorities have been investigating his business operations for about a year, the Inquirer reported. Fattah Jr.'s lawyer told the Inquirer he is cooperating with the investigation.

The Inquirer and Politico report that in 2009, the elder Fattah lobbied Congress' Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for $375,000 to pay for green vehicles at the school. The congressman, who represents parts of the Philadelphia area, has supported Shulick's schools in the past. Shulick has contributed money to the congressman and other state officials.

The congressman told Politico his son had nothing to do with the request. The congressman's spokesman told the Inquirer he is not a subject of the investigation.

It's still unclear what is the criminal basis for the investigation. Shulick told the Inquirer that the investigation has nothing to do with his school and that Fattah Jr. is "being victimized" because of his relationship to his father.

Fattah Jr.'s business practices have been the subject of federal inquiries before, the Inquirer reported. Fattah Jr.'s firm received $90,000 from a personal injury lawyer later convicted of fraud, Politico reported.

We'll see how the investigation wraps up, but it brings forth some of the common criticisms of for-profit school operators: that they garner political favor through big lobbying efforts and that their labyrinthine corporate structure makes it unclear where public school dollars end up. That's not inherently illegal, of course, but if any charges are filed, those criticisms would be bolstered at a time when many states are considering legislation related to for-profit school operators.

Posted by Jason Tomassini at 2:56 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend