Learning Innovation

Have you noticed that books are looking more and more like apps? Do you find yourself buying books from the Kindle Single store? Browsing the nonfiction selections at nowandthenreader.com? Checking out the original stories at atavist.net? Getting excited about the newest release from the TED Books?

How will edtech change the NCAA basketball tournament, March Madness, in 2013?

Remember when we all thought that the Internet would cause the car dealership to disappear? We'd all buy our cars online. We'd tell our grandchildren about the days when buying a car meant going to a "car dealership" and spending time with a "car salesperson". Life would be so sweet when car buying became a virtual, friction free experience.

Pop quiz. In what year did newspaper revenues peak? Way back before the Internet? Wrong. The answer is in the year 2000. The fall of newspaper revenue, driven by the steep decline in advertising dollars, has been as dramatic as it was unexpected. The newspaper business (as measured in everything from newsroom staff to profitability to newspapers ceasing publication) is not in good shape - or at least is a pale shadow to what it once was.

Our ed tech community should offer our full support to both Chuck Severance and Blackboard on his ascension to Blackboard's Sakai Strategist. In his role at Blackboard, Chuck will maintain his faculty appointment at the University of Michigan as a Clinical Associate Professor of Information in the School of Information. Blackboard will support his consulting, research, and summer salary - but my understanding of the relationship is that Chuck will retain a high degree of autonomy and discretion.

I predict that within one year that Blackboard will not be called Blackboard any longer. My money on this re-branding will be something that invokes another company that made the transition from products to services, IBM. Maybe something like EAS (Educational Academic Services), or BES (Blackboard Educational Services) - something like that.

What do you think of Blackboard's big announcement that they are buying Moodlerooms and Netspot, and bringing Chuck Severance and the leadership of these companies to a new Open Source Services business?

Is a College Education Still Worth the Price? costs $2.99. I'm not quite sure if a college education is worth the price (something on my mind as I'll be paying two sets of tuition in 2017), but I am sure that the Schwartz's book is well worth this investment.