B2E News Alert – Education Business Intelligence

Hi everyone and happy Friday. We are closing out August, so I guess summer is officially over. I honestly do not know where it has gone! But the news continues so sit back and get your week’s dose of my scoops….

Joyce Whitby, recently with Headsprout, has joined Taylor Associates. She will be leading the sales and marketing team of the company, which produces Reading Plus - a computer based solution which provides students in Grades 1-Adult with structure sustained silent reading to improve fluency and reading comprehension. She reports it was hard to leave the Headsprout team and that she so believes in their mission, but this offered a new opportunity she wanted to take. She is excited about her new position and says the folks at Taylor Associates are absolutely wonderful - great science, research, and product development, and it is a great place for her to apply best practices in ed tech sales and marketing that she have learned from what she calls the “best of the best” over the years. Send your congratulations to Joyce on her new role at joyce@readingplus.com.

Shakespeare Squared has been in the news! The company has been proud to receive two workplace awards this summer. In June they were named one of the Best Places to Work in Illinois. This award is given to 30 companies statewide and is co-sponsored by The Business Ledger, the Illinois Chapter of the Society of Human Resource Managers, and The Illinois State Chamber of Commerce. Then in August, the company was selected as a winner of the 2008 Alfred P. Sloan Award for Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility. This prestigious award recognizes employers that are successfully using workplace flexibility to meet both employer and employee goals. 

In addition to these wonderful recognitions, President and CEO Kim Kleeman was featured in the June issue of Entrepreneur magazine in Mark Henricks' article, "Thrilled and Fulfilled: Meaningful Work Keeps Employees Happy and Your Bottom Line Healthy." Check it out at www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2008/june/193718.html. And in July, Kim was interviewed by Utah-based Babies and Moms Radio. A four-woman panel interviewed Kim about starting and owning a business and being a mother. Listen to the 20-minute podcast at www.babiesandmomsradio.com/blog/. 

 

And finally, Shakespeare Squared will be featured on the local Fox News channels "sometime in October" as part of a segment on companies that allow employees to bring their children to the workplace. Check their website at www.shakespearesquared.com/news for updates on an exact air date to see Shakespeare Squared's kids in action! Drop a note of congratulations to Kim and her team at KKleeman@shakespearesquared.com.

Dave Moursund updated me this week that his writing efforts are continuing to be productive. His most recent writing project, Improving Math Education, can be accessed at iae-pedia.org/Improving_Math_Education. This document is specifically aimed at preservice and inservice teacher at the K-12 levels and to their teachers. It includes an emphasis on appropriate uses of computer technology. It contains suggestions of things that each individual teacher can be doing that will help improve our math education system. It includes a focus on teachers developing and making use of a "signature" area of expertise, something that is personal to their own interests and style of teaching. 

Somewhat over a year ago Dave began to push on the idea of preservice and inservice math teachers and their teachers developing and maintaining their own personal math digital filing cabinets. He has been working on his own, and you can view it at iae-pedia.org/Math_Education_Digital_Filing_Cabinet. More generally, his entire Information Age Education Wiki can be considered as a digital filing cabinet. It is designed to make it easy for people to contribute and to share. 

Also check out his latest free books – the first is brand new, while the second is an update of a book he did two years ago.

• Becoming Responsible for Your Education. Information Age Education. Access at i-a-e.org/ebooks/doc_download/39-becoming-more-responsbile-for-your-education.html. This book is specifically written for people in their early teens. Among other things, it is a type of book that parents and their children might want to each read and then to talk about.

•      Introduction to Using Games in Education: A Guide for Teachers and Parents. Access at i-a-e.org/ebooks/doc_download/19-introduction-to-using-games-in-education-a-guide-for-teachers-and-parents.html

Say hello to Dave, inquire about his work and commend him on his continued and meaningful work in our field at moursund@uoregon.edu.

I know a number of you were in Denver this week for the Democratic National Convention. I had a call-in report about the energy, the sessions and the parties from Kathy Hurley, Pearson, and Carol Waugh, Xcellent Marketing. I know others there include Keith Krueger, CoSN; Karen Henke, Nimble Press; Sheryl Abshire, a delegate from Louisiana and District Administrative Coordinator of Technology, Calcasieu Parish (LA) Public Schools; and Rita Ferrandino, Partner at Arc Capital Development and a delegate from Florida, where she chairs the Sarasota Democratic Committee. Rita blogged throughout the week and was one of three delegates profiled during the convention by Video Journalist, Michele Monteleone, of the New York Times – check it out at thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com. Metro State College of Denver partnered with Rita (with support from SMARTHINKING, Blackboard, StraighterLine and Arc) to provide a free online course that included interactive discussion boards, video interviews, articles and documents regarding key issues. Course content was updated to include interviews with delegates and superdelegates as well as additional discussion topics. Rita hosted the interviews. It looked like a memorable week from my TV viewing! Who is headed to the Republican National Convention? Drop me a note at bighamv@aol.com to let the Snoop know!

Jean Lownik (lownik@lcs-impact.com) and Scott Knickelbine (scottk@lcs-impact.com), Lownik Communication Services, have had a busy month. They just saw daughter Alison off for her junior year at the University of Hawaii where she's majoring in Mandarin. Son Ben leaves for his senior semester abroad on Saturday and is heading to India where the bulk of his stay will be in Dharmasala where the Dhali Llama is in exile. He'll also spend time in either Tibet or Bhutan depending upon conditions -- and Jean adds she does not mean the weather. Ben is majoring in political economics. Jean hosted a bridal shower last weekend for twenty-five and later that same day, they hosted the neighborhood party for fifty. My goodness! And they are keeping up with their clients too – I am impressed. Drop them a note to tell them you are too!

I am so sorry to bring you news that the father of Scott Traylor, Chief KID at 360KID, passed away this week. Scott, who is certainly successful and very talented, shared that his father was the reason he started his own business, saying that all through his childhood, his father shared with Scott, his brother and sister the importance of starting their own businesses and being their own boss. I know you join me in keeping Scott and his family in our thoughts and prayers during this difficult time. You can send your own message to Scott at scott@360KID.com.

Since I promised to update you each week on who is coming to EdNET, 9/14-16 in Boston, let me fill you in on the search I did this week on the password-protected directory of registered attendees. This week I searched for those who indicated they want to meet CONTENT OWNERS/PROVIDERS at EdNET - here is what I found:

Check out the complete list of organizations planning to attend at www.qeddata.com/Conference/EdNet/YrCurrent/WhoShouldAttend.aspx. I so hope to see you there!

I hope you are looking forward to a great weekend as summer ends. George and I have been so busy, we have not even managed a real time-off vacation this summer, but we have given ourselves permission to take some day trips periodically during the week—just because we can! So today we are off on one of our “let’s play hooky” days. All that work will be there, I know! We will likely labor some over the U.S. holiday Labor Day weekend but also look forward to having all of our family over to our home for a cookout. As we all enjoy time with family and friends this weekend, let’s also salute the most productive workers in the world, the American workforce! While we often share with one another tales of our working too hard, I do know and respect that the American workforce drives an economic engine that is the envy of the world. We have much to be thankful for! Enjoy your long weekend and have fun, friends…Vicki, the Snoop 

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