The State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) has honored Academic Business Advisors, LLC (ABA) by naming them a First Channel Partner. Only organizations that have worked closely with SETDA and are proven leaders in improving education through technology receive this prestigious designation. Farimah Schuerman, ABA Founder & Managing Partner, attended the recent SETDA Leadership Conference where she met with other partners and shared insights on future technology trends in education. “We welcome Academic Business Advisors as one of our first Channel Partners! ABA will be one of a handful of education technology leaders in this role, and they have been instrumental in guiding us in this new venture,” said, Jennifer Fritschi, Director of Strategic Partnerships, SETDA. “By formalizing our relationship with ABA, we intend to recognize and reward their efforts, as well as to help them become more familiar with SETDA members and priorities and hence become better champions of partnership with SETDA.” In addition to ABA, C. Blohm Associates and ARC Capital Development were also named as SETDA Channel Partners. SETDA Channel Partners serve as intermediaries that connect companies/organizations to SETDA who then become event sponsors or annual private sector partners. The formation of Channel Partners advances SETDA’s commitment to leverage public-private partnerships in support of SETDA's state-led school reform and improvement goals.  â€œWe’re thrilled to have earned this significant recognition from SETDA,” said Mitch Weisburgh, Founder & Managing Partner at ABA. “SETDA is at the forefront of statewide edtech policies across the country. They have helped many of our clients introduce effective and innovative products and services that have had a tremendous impact on student learning.” ABA has partnered with more than 50 small, medium and large education technology companies in the past ten years to help them grow and navigate the education landscape. ABA’s strengths lie in their understanding of this marketplace, their strong relationships with leaders in education technology and with their astute business development knowledge. Schuerman added, “SETDA has helped our clients; such as Atomic Learning, School Improvement Network, Symbaloo, and Copia, establish state relationships that have helped them become successful and valued education enterprises.” Related Articles 2013 SETDA Leadership Summit to Feature State and Federal Educational Technology Leaders, Teacher and Student Voices SEDTA Education Leadership Meeting Maine DOE's Jeff Mao receives award for technology...

Each year, Jeff Silber of BMO Capital Markets hosts their Back to School education investment conference. There are a lot of challenges in education, from new regulations, roadblocks to federal funding, a sea change in technology, and changing buying patterns. This year, ABA was pleased to be included into the program’s K12 segment, with Farimah moderating a panel on the role of the teacher in the education economy. Read more below. Also, for anyone going to Ednet next week in Denver, let us know if you want to meet. We are proud to be a sponsor of the conference. Legislative and Regulatory Update Nina Rees, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools Look for continued cutbacks in federal education money, with nothing much on the horizon except a continuation of sequestration cutbacks. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) governs federal funding and regulations for K12 schools, and is supposed to be reauthorized every 5 years. The most recent reauthorization was the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.While nearly everyone in Washington sees major flaws in the 2001 act, there will be no ESEA reauthorization or K12 legislation in the foreseeable future. This means that there is more action taking place at the state level, and that private foundations are having a big influence on state departments of education by lobbying and funding pet projects. Funding penalties to all states and nearly all districts for not meeting the NCLB prescriptions (legislated in 2001 and never adjusted) has given the Department of Education the opportunity to negotiate policy changes with states in return for “forgiving” non-compliance. These negotiations generally cover a two-year period, result in policies that vary state by state, and have to be renegotiated every two years. There is some pressure to change the definition of failing schools. Currently schools fail when their students to not pass grade-level tests. An alternative is that a school would fail if its students progressed at less than one year’s worth knowledge gain. If a student starts out as two years behind, there is little in the short term the school can do to bring that student up to grade level, and so the school and teacher would be labeled as failures. The change would be to recognize that perhaps the school could at least help that student from falling further behind, or start to catch up, and that that would be progress. So far, there is no change to the original definition being posited by the Department of Education, and there is little hope of any progress with the definition being changed through ESEA reauthorization in the near future, but it’s...

It’s not about the Tablet Or the app, or the device, or the learning platform. In past years, the message at ISTE seemed to be, “Look at this latest product which is going to dramatically improve education.” While there was still a lot of that this year, there seemed to be a growing consensus that introducing the latest technology is not going to solve any major education problems, unless it was part of a well thought out plan that included change management. The key is increasing student learning without adding to costs. Technology is a tool, but everyone seems to be arriving at the conclusion that it is part of the solution, not the entire solution. Doing projects is not the same as project based learning Ginger Lewman drove this home in her session on technology and projects to drive student learning. Projects that are done to show what students have learned are not the same as project based learning that inspires students to learn. There are some incredibly engaging projects that students can do, and a good project hits a whole range of standards. For example, students can do onsite research (like taking water samples) enter their data on a spreadsheet, and then map the results using Google Fusion tables to create interactive maps. Then, using the maps, students can pose and answer meaningful questions like: Which locations had the saltiest water? Which locations had the most nitrogen in the water? Which locations had unsafe water? A project like this can hit standards in science, math, social studies, reading, research, and writing. For an example of an interactive map that hits close to home, look at a map of states by average starting teacher salary: http://bit.ly/14Kn4Du. This opens as data; click on the "Map of Geometry" tab to view as a map. Jam'n in Blogger Cafe (Photo credit: Karin Beil) Where would you rather teach, Idaho or Wyoming?  The Common Core standards start a dialog, they are not the curriculum There is a huge difference between “aligned to the common core” and “designed for the common core,” and that applies to training teachers as well as offering products and services. The common core is meant to inspire creativity and deep thinking, which takes a lot more effort than marking a checklist for content covered. If you are thinking of creating curriculum or lessons for the common core, Jared Wastler suggested starting with four questions for each standard: What does the standard ask for? What evidence proves mastery? How do we get there? What more do we need to know in order to facilitate this? There is a lot of money being pumped...

The archive of Farimah’s and Sue Hanson’s (of PR with Panache) webinar sponsored by Agile Minds on March 14 is now available. Sue started with the point that lead generation is much more difficult when there is no brand awareness, and brand awareness starts with your story. If you want to build a successful business, you have to have a story; one that makes the audience feel something. A story doesn’t try to get your audience to buy, it gets them to buy in. A story helps build brand awareness, or in other words it achieves buy in, if the audience feels it is relevant (it’s about a problem that they feel they need to solve) and if they can relate or identify with the people who are solving the problem using your solution. The place to start building your story is to talk to your customers and find out what caused them to seek you out, and what results they are receiving. Farimah explained that a recognized brand makes lead generation much more effective because it creates an element of trust, it keeps your company on top of mind when they have a problem you can solve, it creates leads by itself, and it makes other lead generation activities (such as email, cold calling, and conferences) more successful. Without brand recognition, and without an investment in brand recognition, all other lead gen activities are more difficult. When it comes to the specific lead gen activities themselves, Farimah said that targeting is critical. Who owns the problem that you solve? Who has to fix it, and who pays the consequences if it is not fixed? Who makes the decision on what to buy to solve the problem? Who influences the decision? Who can be an impediment to the buying decision? Know your audience, and target your activities, messaging, and lists to reach that audience. Many of Academic Business Advisor’s clients use conferences as both lead gen and branding activities. Put yourself in the shoes of conference attendees. If they glance at your booth as they walk by, is it obvious what you do and what problem you solve? Too many booths show happy or struggling kids or teachers, but fail to communicate what the companies do. All successful lead gen activities make a compelling offer. Often good information (such as a webinar or free ebook on a relevant topic) is more valuable to potential prospects than an offer of some limited time free use of your product or service. Farimah and Sue stressed that whatever activity you perform, your followup activities should be pre-planned. If you offer a webinar...

This post is was written by Cathy Toohey of The Toohey Group who had some reflections on the 2013 Florida Education Technology Conference or FETC. Cathy is an independent educational marketing consultant. For the past 25 years Cathy has worked on a wide-range of products and programs from early childhood to professional development. FETC was very well attended and enthusiasm was extremely high. As a marketing consultant my overall take-away word from the exhibit hall was MANAGEMENT. FETC (Photo credit: GreenNetizen) Everything seemed to focus on the process or the device for management. There were exhibits for managing the data, the cloud, the content, the teachers, the kids, the community, the standards and the devices. Sometimes it is helpful to see the exhibits through the eyes of a “mystery shopper” and here are some tips from those marketing eyes. Don't just swipe my badge Ask how I like the show, the weather, anything to seem somewhat engaged with the customer and your product Remember the person in the exhibit area (unless another vendor) is a customer in some shape or fashion A simple or silly give away still works if no other reason than to help with #2 Using a personal device in the booth is not a welcoming message Engaging demos do gather a crowd If you are a no-show, ask a friend to take the booth name and # down from the curtain Too many matching T-shirts in a booth draw attention to the fact there are more reps than customers in the booth Not everyone is focused on the (fill-in-the-blank) so find out what I need before you start your pitch Make sure your reason for being at the show is purposeful and that your message is clear, Facebook likeable, and each of your reps knows the focus Related articles Best Websites from FETC 2013 Attending the Florida Educational Technology Conference and Measuring One Rural District's Growth in Using Technology FETC 2013 et...

Eight thousand people showed up for the Texas Computer Education Association Fusion 2013 Conference in Austin this last week. I’m the last one here, because good old American Airlines canceled my original flight for Friday and then my newly booked flight for Saturday.  But this gives me a good chance to compose a recap. First of all, the fun stuff. Alan Stern and I found a great wine bar, Cru, on 2nd Street. If you’re in Austin, they have very economical flights of wine tastings, and great appetizers to go with them. We then headed over to Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar on 6th Street for a great show. And tonight, I’m going to Antone’s on 5th Street for a Carnaval of Brazilian music. Getting back to Education, Charles Blaschke, of Education Turnkey Systems, probably knows more about education funding than any person in the US. At the SIIA member breakfast, he noted that districts have slammed on the brakes for all purchases, and that there is $2 billion of uncommitted Title I funds, because of fear of sequestration. Districts can allocate up to 25% of their Title I funds for the following year, and since they have no confidence that there will be federal funding next year that is comparable to what they have this year, they are holding on to as much as they can. This has made for a terrible November through February time period for education publishers, a spending desert that will continue at least until districts get a better sense of what they will receive next year. Even then, if federal education levels are cut (a good possibility), the education technology publishing community can expect a terrible next 12 months. But you couldn’t tell that by the looking at the number and size of the booths on the exhibition floor. There seemed to be a lot of relatively new companies with a lot of money to spend on conference booths. Educator traffic in the exhibition hall seemed to be down. Many vendors reported a fairly healthy number of visitors on Wednesday, but significant dips on Thursday and virtually no visitors on Friday. Still, with TCEA as the de facto winter education technology conference of the winter, it’s an essential place for education publishers to be seen. Peter Sheahan of Change Labs in Australia was the opening keynote speaker at the conference. He related the changes in the US Education sector to other sectors that have experience seismic changes. One key underlying factor is that in none of these transformations were people before the change able to predict or explain what would happen during the change....