In part two of our interview with Knewton’s Chief Operating Officer, David Liu, we tackle the potentially thorny issue of sharing of data between publishers, and find out more about Knewton’s ambition to become a must-have for every ELT publisher.
We believe there are a lot of folks already at a disadvantage in ELT if they’re not joining this platform
Knewton is one of the highest profile EdTech companies in the world and the biggest name in adaptive learning – and they’re moving into ELT in a big way. In part one of our in-depth interview with the team from Knewton, we find out what their adaptive learning technology can do and why they believe big data in education will facilitate better learning and student empowerment.
At eltjam, we’ve mentioned EdTech accelerators a few times recently. But what exactly are they, and how do they work? If you’ve got a great EdTech business idea, how could an accelerator help? Stephen Parkes of Go Enrol is immersed in the EdTech startup scene and has first-hand experience of working with accelerators. In this guest post, he gives us an overview.
One of the big buzzwords in ELT publishing at the moment is iterative publishing – the idea, borrowed from the software and startup world, that products should be in a constant state of evolution and improvement in response to changing market conditions, requirements from big customers or new technologies. The whole concept of ‘editions’ is apparently past its sell-by date in the internet age – too redolent of the dusty old print era.
It’s crunch time for ELT publishers. There are a few more years left for the traditional ELT publishing business to stagger on, possibly even quite profitably for some. But we all know it’s on the way out, as evidenced by the attempts – with varying degrees of conviction – of the existing players to turn their businesses into ones capable of surviving and thriving in a world populated by rapidly changing student expectations and super-ambitious and rapacious EdTech start-ups who will very happily destroy the cosy world of ELT.
It’s very commonly said by ELT people that online learning can never fully replace learning in the classroom because of the need for social contact and face-to-face interaction as an essential part of the learning process – and there’s a ‘social gap’ if you’re learning in the virtual world. The same argument is made in … Read more
Is the linear ELT course on the way out? There’s a growing trend towards the provision of modular mix and match content, or even completely ‘atomised’ content. There are four key things driving this trend: The need to make content development faster and more efficient The potential for huge improvements in production efficiency The rise … Read more
A recent scary-sounding post on FutureBook (Will you be in the nine percent of publishers that survive?) about recent research into disruptive innovation got me thinking about what it might mean for ELT publishing. A few weeks ago I posted a primer on disruptive innovation in which I made the case for EdTech as a disruptive force in ELT. I thought it might be interesting now to delve into this a bit more and explore what it is that a disruptive ELT publisher might do, and how to avoid being among the ranks of the disrupted.
Learning management systems were supposed to have died out by now, weren’t they? Swept away by a wave of 21st century platforms, mobile apps and MOOCs. In fact, in ELT, it feels like they’re only just getting going. Let’s have a look at the LMS market in general and see what the main ELT publishers … Read more
ebooks are fast becoming something that ELT publishers simply have to be able to deliver in a world that’s lurching towards the paperless classroom. However, moving from print to ebooks is much easier said than done, especially if you’re adapting an existing (and possibly old) print book, and there a number of hurdles which might not be immediately obvious. Here’s my starter for 10. Each of these is a whole topic in itself, and I’ve raised more questions than answers, so let’s consider this just a starting point!
Flipped learning – or the flipped classroom – is one of the hot topics in education at the moment. It’s a core part of the ‘EdTech agenda’ and often espoused as one of the things that will fix a broken education system. So, what exactly is the flipped classroom and what could it mean for … Read more
Hear that distant rumbling sound? That’s the sound of every ELT publisher rushing to create ebook versions of their coursebooks because we’re moving into the age of the paperless classroom. As one of my American colleagues so wonderfully puts it, “The toothpaste is out of the tube” – there’s no going back now. But most e-textbooks are too print-faithful to be really useful. We need to take things further, and this post ends with some of the key questions that we need to look at if we’re going to use the paperless classroom as an opportunity to improve what a coursebook is, rather than just re-create what we’ve already had for 30 years.
In the first post in this series, Nick set out a challenge to see if – and how – it might be possible to radically speed up the process of ELT course creation. The simple fact is that established ELT content providers don’t have much of a choice – radical change is needed because the … Read more
Re-run of a post from a few weeks ago, worth a read now that iOS7 is out in the wild. In a recent post, I predicted that tablets are inexorably going to take over our classrooms, at the expense of printed books (despite what Nick says!). However, there’s a big problem – implementing a one … Read more
Now that web 2.0 is passé, and we’ve all got used to the concept of crowd-sourcing and the ‘wisdom of the crowd’, one of the hot crowd-related trends of the last couple of years has been crowdfunding. You may have heard tales of people raising huge sums of money in weeks on sites like Kickstarter. So, could crowdfunding have an impact on ELT? Well, why not.
What will it mean when every English learner has a touchscreen internet-connected computer with them at all times? Previously, we looked at online learning and alternative credentialing platforms – now let’s look at what a mobile world and the paperless classroom might mean for ELT.
LMS provider Instructure has raised $30m in venture capital funding to further develop the commercial potential of its Canvas LMS. Canvas was not long ago seen as a cuddly upstart competitor to the behemoth that is Blackboard, in a David vs Goliath type scenario. This new round of funding takes total investment in the company … Read more
To some extent, the whole concept of EdTech is based on the possibilities for disruption engendered by online and mobile tech. The belief is that the “education space” (ugh) is ripe for disruption, and the “factory model” of education we currently impose on our youth is rightly about to be swept away by an EdTech revolution. But what does EdTech disruption mean for ELT?
Teacher / teacher trainer: University of Westminster. Writer: National Geographic Learning. 60s music nut. Arsenal fan. Father of two!
Teach, train, write coursebooks, give teacher development sessions, blog and so on. Also getting involved with apps and YouTube lessons.
It beats having a real job, doesn’t it! I do it all for the only reason anyone should ever do anything – because I love it!
Details continue to emerge about Pearson’s massive restructure and what it might mean for ELT. The consistent theme is a relentless focus on digital at the expense of all else. Basically, Pearson believe they know where the education market is going and are willing to bet everything on it, even though their current customers aren’t really there yet. But then, according to what follows, maybe that’s not a concern.
If you’ve missed the hype so far, the world’s biggest education publisher is spending £150m on a total restructure which involves an immediate move to digital learning, a focus on emerging markets, and a transformation from publisher to education services provider.
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