School Officials Playing Catchup with Technology

The Project Tomorrow report, Speak Up 2011Personalizing the Classroom Experience suggests educators and librarians have taken noticed that students accept the do-it-yourself approach to education that has been made possible through new technologies.

The report, a survey of representing students, parents, teachers, librarians, and administrators from more than 5,800 public and private K-12 schools, shows that educators utilizing social networking sites for professional use has risen from 22% in 2008 to 45% in 2011, Additionally, more than a third of teachers responding are now using online professional learning communities (PLC), compared to one in five just four years ago.

The study suggests a shift in thinking about students bringing devices into the classroom is possible as more educators become familiar with using the technology. The study found that those educators see the gadgets as a way to “increase student engagement (83%), access online textbooks (73%), and extend learning beyond the end of the school day (63%).” The report also found that 27% of administrators surveyed feel that allowing students to bring their own mobile devices into the classroom could be a technology solution to budget issues.

At the same time, the report also states that harnessing the potential of technology in the classroom continues to be a challenge because of all the new tools and services that are available. All the choices make it difficult to choose the best product or app, or to even evaluate which tools work best.

Friending the new first-year students

College stores once had near exclusive reach to incoming first-year students.   Today that is not so much the case, with social media and the reach of mobile devices.   Fast Company had an interesting article this week about the importance of building a relationship with these new students, and some suggestions on how to (and how not to) do it.  As technology changes the medium of our core product as well as the transaction mechanism over the next decade the focus now is on market share. 

The Class of 2015, the article notes, are:

hyper-connected, tech savvy thinkers with a budget and their own personal brand to uphold. [...]  Their outlook on life has been dramatically altered by world events and social media. Technology has enabled their own personal brand-building, beginning from the time they were old enough to click a mouse. And when they say something, it’s not a handful of the select few who hear them, it’s hundreds upon hundreds of “friends” with open ears and fingers just itching to text or tweet.

Coupled with this observation, the article provides five pieces of advice for understanding the needs of the new first-year students who will make up the Class of 2015.

1. HELP THEM EXPRESS THEIR PERSONAL BRAND -- and they will embrace yours.


2. INTEGRATE ORGANICALLY INTO THEIR WORLD -- and go to where the customer is (i.e., online)


3. GET IN GOOD WITH THEIR FRIENDS -- and understand social networking


4. BECOME AN ON-DEMAND BRAND -- aggregate the services they need and make it easy


5. GET TO KNOW THEM AND DON’T ASSUME -- values change, and trust is more important than ever

Each of the above suggestions in the article is coupled with an example of a "company that is getting it right."  The message here to stores is that if you are not yet thinking about social media, it is just another way in which you are losing out on market share and the relationship which was traditionally the retailer's strength.

 

Now more than ever it is time to skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.

 

The Facebook Mall & Retail Trends

Working through my email archives this week and I came across this message from Karen Hernandez at Normandale Community College Bookstore. She wrote:

I thought this was an interesting article about shopping and setting up a store on facebook. Might be something that stores should think about doing soon while it is still free. If you read the entire article in “All Things Digital” it appears to be something that would be attractive to students when they find out about it.

This piece relates to another story from All Things Digital that has been sitting in my archives for a while. That story was on retail technology trends in 2010 that will change the way consumers shop: mobile, social, and local. Here is an excerpt:

Mobile: There’s definitely an app for that. As smartphones go mainstream, savvy shoppers use apps to price-check and read reviews of products in the store.
Result: Retailers watch in horror as shoppers leave their stores empty-handed and drive across town to another store or go online to order a different or cheaper product.

Social: Friends and social circles influence purchase decisions through the rise of Facebook and Twitter. Users check in on apps, such as Foursquare and shopkick, for discounts and incentives.
Result: Retailers who don’t bone up on their social media skills may miss out on generating conversations across the Web that result in online sales or traffic to their stores.

Local: Advertising begins shifting to Groupon and LivingSocial, as group discounting and daily deals gain popularity.
Result: At least initially, these deals have been successful at locking in sales for local stores and restaurants looking for a bump in visitors.

The story goes on to discuss what various retailers are doing in each of these areas with ideas for driving traffic or changing business practices. The world of retail is changing--time for folks to get on board.

Readum links Google Books and Facebook

"Why should we divide our friends and fellow readers up by the devices they use?” the BookGlutton.com founder asked in this article in Publishers Weekly. The Readum platform builds a connection betweeen Google Books and Facebook. Readum allows readers to make comments on specific paragraphs in their Google Books. Those comments are then posted to Facebook groups or their Facebook wall. The app also creates an individual page for the comments and pulls any book listed into their Facebook profile.

While not yet as far along as other social media experiments for books environments (like Copia) the tool has the same idea at its base -- enabling communities of conversation around digital books. One aspect of the Readum approach that I like is that they are actively working to demonstrate the "proof of concept" by utilizing existing social networks rather than trying to build their own. That enables a more coherent strategy and focused development around competencies. It will be interesting to watch where this project goes.

A short video on Readum appears below:

Readum from Travis Alber on Vimeo.