What do you get when you combine a meatball sundae, home/school communication, brand management, the long tail, the New York Times best sellers list, Google, homework, outsourcing, and the definitions of literacy? Let’s put them in the Education Innovation blender and find out.
by puppethead
In his book Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin describes 14 Trends of New Marketing. I put these trends under the lens of education and call them the New Reality.
Trend 1: Direct Communication and Commerce Between Producers and Consumers
Consumers
demand speed. Businesses need to respond quickly to consumer demands or
the consumer will go elsewhere. Consumers can now connect directly to
the top of an organization. They expect a response. Technology is
changing the way organizations and customers interact.
Our students and parents live in a world with the ability to communicate with an organization and expect a quick response. Is the use of technology in your school changing the way you interact with students and parents? Are you responding to the needs of your students and parents and communicating that response effectively? If students and parents can communicate directly with the school, how important is the response you give back? How quick do you respond? Do you view it as a burden or an opportunity to spread your educational vision and message?
Trend 2: Amplification Of The Voice Of The Consumer and Independent Authorities.
Every interaction with a consumer is an interaction with a critic (or potential critic).
Everybody,
student, parent, community member has a voice that can be amplified
through technology. What are they going to say about your school? What
are they going to say about your educational brand? (You do have a
brand, whether you like it or not.)
The web remembers forever. A poorly written email can be posted in minutes to the web. Blogs allow students, parents, and community members to be instant publishers. YouTube allows them to become movie producers. What are they publishing or producing about you? You may have a point of view on an issue, but who is better able to get their message out, you or the student run blog posting pictures, YouTube videos, and podcasts? Your school's reputation is always on the line and on-line. What is being said about you?
Trend 3: Need For An Authentic Story As The Number Of Sources Increases
Stories
spread, not facts. So what stories are being told about your school and
your teachers? A story is a symbol of who you are. Do you know your
symbol? Do you care? Why would anyone want to go to your school? What
makes your teachers so great?
Technology is allowing students and parents to share their stories about you. Are you sharing your own stories? Do you have an educational brand that you trying to spread? What kind of message is your school trying to spread? There is a story about your school, the question is, is it your story or somebody else's version?
Trend 4: Extremely Short Attention Spans Due To Clutter
There
is a multitude of choices and a deluge of interruptions for students
and parents. Commercials went from a minute to thirty seconds to, in
some cases, three seconds. A bestseller was on the New York bestsellers
list for 22 weeks, now it’s on the list for two. Books are shorter. Not
enough time to read the book, listen to the audio version in the car.
YouTube has over 7 million videos. Most are only watched for less than
10 seconds. If it’s not good we move on.
That is the world you student is living in. If they don’t like it, they switch it, drop it, or change it. They don’t have to wait for something better. They are in control.
What about in the classroom? How much time do you get to grab their attention, make it meaningful, and engage them before they drop you? They may be forced to sit there, but they aren’t forced to learn. The world is catering to their desire to move on. Your teaching can’t afford to be good enough. It must be great or it won’t cut through all the clutter of the world they are living in. You can’t count on their attention and engagement. You have to compete for it and win it.
Trend 5: The Long Tail
People
want choice. Students and parents want choice. Education does not have
to provide that choice. (For now) students have to go to school. They
have to go to school in your district. They may be allowed to move
within your district, but for the most part, they are assigned to you.
You didn’t have to earn them, they were just sent to you. But you can’t
rely on that forever.
Your students and parents live in a world where they can find nearly any book they want at Amazon. More of them are watching YouTube videos than the top ten television shows. Online they can find a hundred times more inventory than a retail store. You can find nearly anything on Google. The digital world means products are easy to store and easy to customize to the individual need.
So, if they can find nearly anything they want or need online and have it customized to their needs, what makes you think they need your school? They can find the learning they want online, learn what they want, when they want, where they want, and at the pace they want. So why should they want you? What is it about your educational brand or story that makes them want to choose you?
Trend 6: Outsourcing
You
assign
the project or the paper and then your student goes home and out
sources the work online to some student in India or Sri Lanka. Why not?
A report you want, a report you shall get. It is a small cost for your students and
parents to connect with people in any part of the world to share
skills, abilities, and resources. Homework for sale via the Internet is
a reality. There is no sense trying to stop it, it’s already out
there. The question is how can you adjust your assignments to make them
meaningful and engaging so the student won’t outsource the work.
Disruptive Technology is going to allow for all sorts of changes like
this.
It’s not just assignments. When I can hire online tutors, watch educational videos, or get language lessons through my web cam, outsourcing teaching is here too. What are you doing about that reality? Maybe you are just going to rely on the old model of, “You have to go here. You live here.” That may work for you, but that is not the world your students are growing up in.That reality will change.
Trend 7: Google And The Dicing Of Everything
Having
the teacher in your classroom is no longer a reason to believe that the classroom is
where the teaching and learning is going to happen. Students are a few
clicks away from being connected to people all around the world who are
willing to teach and tutor.
Google has allowed us to find any piece of information or facts we would ever want to know. In fact, in the new reality, it is not the piece of information or fact; it’s how to find it. Students don’t want to memorize names, dates, formulas, etc., that they can just look up in Google. Why? Why memorize what is right at my fingertips? They key is learning how to find the facts or information. Google has changed literacy? It not longer memorizing the “what”, but knowing where and how to find the “what.”
We will look at Trends 8-14 tomorrow.
Catalytic Questions:
How might your view of parent/student communication change if you knew it was being used to judge your school or yourself?
In what ways are you using technology to communicate with students and parents to spread your educational vision and brand?
Is it effective? What might you change, add, or subtract from what you are currently doing?
Do you know what is being said about you and your school online?
Do you have an educational brand and are you managing it effectively?
In what ways are you or might you leverage technology to communicate your educational brand and your school’s story?
What is your school’s story?
How might your teaching change if you understood that you must compete and win your students’ attention?
What might this look like in the classroom?
Are you relying on the current lack of choice parents and students have, or are you thinking and preparing yourself for the power of choice they will soon demand?
If students and parents could choose, why would they choose you?
How might your thinking on assignments change based on the knowledge that students can outsource the work?
What might you do differently?
In what ways might the definition of knowledge and literacy change based on what Google has provided to every student?
Recommended Reading:
Why My Gym Is The Future of Education
The Questions We Choose To Ask and Answer: The Open Model of Education
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