Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace - S14

MARKET SEGMENTS
Digital-Content Providers
Expanding Their Reach
As schools move to integrate more multimedia material into classrooms,
digital-content companies are riding a wave of rising revenues
BY BENJAMIN HEROLD
D
igital instructional
content remains the
largest slice of the
growing educational
technology market
pie, with an estimated
$3.3 billion in
annual sales in the
United States, even
amid a challenging
economic climate for K-12 districts.
"At times when things are difficult, the focus
turns back to the classroom," said John Richards,
the president of Newton, Mass.-based
Consulting Services for Education. "It's not a
time when you want to invest in infrastructure
completely or go back and fix your finance programs.
It's really a time when you've got to pay
attention to the fundamentals and see what
you can do that will help teachers."
Mr. Richards is one of the authors of "2013
U.S. Education Technology Market: PreK-12,"
an annual overview of how districts are spending
on nonhardware technology commissioned
by the Washington-based Software & Information
Industry Association. The most recent
study covers the 2011-12 school year, when
districts across the country were still suffering
heavily from a weak national economy, the
drying up of federal stimulus funds, and cuts to
other pots of federal money previously used to
support school technology purchases.
Overall, the study found, digital content represents
about 42 percent of the nonhardware
ed-tech market, up from 36 percent in 2010-11.
English/language arts remains far and away
the largest category, although the biggest yearover-year
gains have been in science and "other"
content, such as fine arts, business, or health.
On the district side of the equation, experts
say, the push for digital content is being driven
by the need for instructional materials aligned
to the new Common Core State Standards and
related assessments; changes in state policy
and legislation that are encouraging -and in
some cases mandating-a move away from
traditional print textbooks; and the growing
prevalence of digital devices in classrooms as
the result of 1-to-1 computing and "bring your
own device" programs.
Among vendors, meanwhile, the demand for
digital content is causing "industrywide friction,"
said Geoff Fletcher, the deputy executive
director of the nonprofit State Educational
Technology Directors Association, based in
S14 | NAVIGATING THE ED-TECH MARKETPLACE
EDUCATION WEEK * June 11, 2014
Glen Burnie, Md.
"There's a push for more flexibility in content,
but that's conflicting with the [traditional publishing]
business model that's been out there
for 50 years," Mr. Fletcher said. "I think it's a
tremendous opportunity for school districts to
begin to think differently about how they get
and use content."
Supporting Existing Curricula
The experience of Glen Rose Intermediate
School in Texas' 1,650-student Glen Rose Independent
School District sheds some light on the
changing dynamics of the K-12 digital content
market.
To provide more "21st-century learning"
opportunities for students, Principal Laurin
Mapes initiated a push during the 2012-13
school year to begin using Time to Know, a new
"complete digital teaching platform" from publishing
giant McGraw-Hill Education, based in
New York City. The product comes with new
mathematics and English/language arts content
in grades 4 and 5, but does not entirely
replace either the print textbooks or digital
instructional materials already in use at Glen
Rose.
Instead, Time to Know provides a variety of
lessons, readings, and content tailored to a wide
range of student skill levels, all integrated into
a software system that allows teachers to issue
differentiated lessons and assignments, but still
work with their whole classroom on the same
general type of content.
"What we've purchased is not completely new
software or curriculum, but something that
supports our existing curriculum," Ms. Mapes
said. "If a teacher is working on fractions, that's
what everyone is doing, but you can have some
students above, below, and on grade level" at
the same time.
Scott Drossos, the senior vice president for
digital partnerships for McGraw-Hill Education,
said Time to Know-with its emphasis on
accessibility via mobile devices, personalized instruction
to students, and real-time feedback to
teachers-"really represents the future for us."
"We're really focused on wanting to help
school systems make the transition to digital
successfully," Mr. Drossos said. "You don't get a
book with Time to Know-you're working in a
100 percent digital realm."
Other large digital content vendors are taking
similar approaches. In March, New York
> www.edweek.org/go/edtechmarket
IN MILLIONS
(estimated)
1,400
1,200
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
$1,290
$744
$425
ENGLISH/
LANGUAGE
ARTS
MATH
SCIENCE
SOURCE: Software & Information Industry Association
http://www.edweek.org/go/edtechmarket

Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace

Contents
Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace - SCover1
Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace - SCover2
Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace - S1
Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace - S2
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Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace - S14
Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace - S15
Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace - S16
Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace - S17
Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace - S18
Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace - S19
Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace - S20
Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace - S21
Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace - S22
Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace - S23
Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace - S24
Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace - SCover3
Education Week - Navigating the Ed-Tech Marketplace - SCover4
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