Digital University: Getting from Product to Production

On April 16th, Getty Images – a platinum sponsor of AEP – convened the first in a series of Getty Digital University events designed to bring AEP members together to explore and discuss the emergence of cutting-edge technology and media.

Jim McVety, Vice President of Business Development for Bill Smith Group, who presented during, “Getting from Product to Production,” and will also be a featured Help Desk expert at the AEP Summit, shares highlights from his session.

During my session, we looked at emerging trends in technology and media and discussed some of the implications that these trends have on how we develop products going forward. We looked at technology trends in general and then went a bit deeper in three areas: Interactive White Boards, Mobile Learning (mobile phones, that is), and Web 2.0 + Social Networking.

Each platform deserves – and has been afforded – deep study and what it means for K-12 education. Furthermore, AEP is becoming THE clearinghouse for access experts, learning from peers, and shaping our perspective. With that in mind, let me post some observations and ask some questions. Download the PPT accompanying this blog post, read the research I’ve cited, and post your brilliant ideas here. That’s the spirit and the value of AEP…

Connected Students Disconnect at School
“It is widely accepted by students that arrival at school means ‘powering down’ for a few hours.”
Project Tomorrow
Speak Up Survey 2008

Observation: Students are hungry for more media, more outlets, but schools are constrained by money, bandwidth, safety concerns, making it difficult for us to drive innovation on a large scale.

Question: What’s our mandate as publishers – to stay apace with kids and their technological appetites, or pace ourselves according to the schools that cut P.O.s – can’t we do both?

Interactive WhiteBoards
Future-Source Consulting Predicts that 1 in 4 classrooms will have an Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) by end of 2010.

Observation: This is a good time to ride the wave, right? But the product development path becomes increasingly complex. Each IWB has a unique set of specs to develop to, not that such challenges have stopped us from getting in lathered about IWBs.

Question: Having a technology offering has become the minimum ante to be in the K-12 game – seems like having an IWB offering will soon be the same…so how do we achieve competitive differentiation?

Mobile Learning (yep- Phones!)
The director of New York City’s newly formed Office of eLearning cited a trend among high schools to store their phones at local coffee bodegas for the school day.

Web 2.0 + Social Networking
“Almost half of all districts have a plan for adopting/promoting tools for TEACHER-GENERATED content.“
IESD Research Report
Safe Schools in a Web 2.0 World Initiative
Nettrekker * Lightspeed Systems Survey April 2009

Observation: The pace of Web 2.0 adoption is accelerating – keeping up will be among a publisher’s greatest challenges. Validity/reliability questions will increase as schools look to measure the impact of web 2.0 tools on learning outcomes.

Question: It seems like a publisher can’t answer no when asked about its Web 2.0 or social networking presence, but what’s the moneymaker for a publisher?

Summary

As our students at Getty’s Digital University discovered, there are more questions than answers about these latest technology trends. The pace of change is so fast and the tools we can use are so cutting edge that it’s virtually impossible to have all the answers. But, as we found out, product planning for today’s market requires planning for tomorrow too. The only question is, will you be ready?

Download the PowerPoint from Jim McVety’s presentation.

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Jim McVety is Vice President, Business Development at Bill Smith Group, a leading product development firm that serves K-12 and higher education publishers with print- and technology-based editorial, design, image, and production. An industry veteran, Jim has produced public and private market research and served publishers for over a decade in marketing, sales, and product development. Learn more about what Jim and his peers and Bill Smith Group do at www.billsmithgroup.com.