Giving education a digital makeover

>> There's all these different entrenched systems in one big entrenched area that's gonna get disrupted in a major way I believe is the publishing education publishing industry. What are your thoughts there and where are the opportunities going to be created?

>> The you know I really see it as 2 different market places first there's K-12 and then there's higher education. I think it might be easier to change the entrenched publishing at the k-12 level. Educators are ready for it, students are ready for it. At the higher education level you've got to get faculty ready for it and while the consumers and the students are ready for it and certainly the academic budgets are ready for it lets say it's still a matter I'm sort of an insider on higher education if your in the panel its still a matter of getting the faculty ready for it to get them to release their commitment to some of the faculty commitment to paper.

>> One thing I'd push on you on that is I think that it feels a lot like that for you cause you're at a 4-year college.

>> Yeah.

>> But I think at the community colleges it's a very different story.

>> I would agree with you on that. I would agree with you. The 4 year colleges and I don't want to say that's it's all faculty at the 4 year college I've got a good solid group of faculty that are willing to be leaders and work exclusively with digital content and publish it in digital format but I still have a large chunk of faculty and Syracuse is no different than any other university that are still too wedded to paper so

>> Remember those RCN ads of break the monopoly when they had Lennon and they were smashing Lennon on the bus when RCM was around. I sort of think of the publishing industry like you know have you ever been through a curriculum adoption meeting. Laughter It's like soviet's planning. It's the most wired, topped down monopoly, it's irate in this day and age with all the choice that the internet affords us that 5 little old ladies get together in Sacramento and decide what the largest market for materials will be in reading regard I mean it's jut crazy and cannot be sustained.

>> So I think that all these trends are right. I think though that this sounds a lot like the conversations we have when the internet really started to move and we said wow all those inaudiblebusinesses were gonna be gone and all the wonderful things that were gonna happen and I think the reality is we're gonna see a dramatic shift in the sector. The publishers recognize what's coming. The reality is that their value of being able to hold onto content and being able to only able to deliver content to people who are publishing in books, that value proposition is gone. I mean it'll be around for a little while longer but it's basically gonna be gone and so they have recognized it and in fact they have to deliver solutions that especially in this world of available data, the focus on effectiveness they have to actually be able to demonstrate that they can actually move student achievement. Now the benefit that they have is they've got incredible penetration. They have the resources to invest in RND. They can acquire anything that looks promising. They are going to be able to reposition themselves I think but I think the opportunity is that just like Amazon emerged there will be number of folks who recognize where the cracks are in the sector, they will move much more quickly and nimbly than the publishers do and there'll be some real opportunities for folks to transform the webspace works.

>> And we're starting to see that. I mean if you look at the test prep space everyone knows about Grocket and newt and the course and all the rest of that so you have large venture capital dollars and I talked to the publishers I'm like you guys need to watch out. You've got large venture capital dollars going to things like test prep you've got venture capital dollars attacking the publishing industry with flat world knowledge. So you're starting to see a tremendous amount of movement and people understand hey these business models can actually look like business models that were more familiar with here in Silicon Valley because you know the Emperor has no clothes you know.

>> Let me just say 2 more things to the change and they're in process they're gonna change the way the market works. Everyone knows it but the other thing that's coming with the stimulus is basically ubiquitous broadband so the major broadband push is gonna be focused on providing access to hospitals, schools and community centers. What that means is that there'll be deep penetration in communities that have never really before had access to broadband. The focus on connectivity to home is a major theme throughout the administration whether your at the FCC or you're here and in fact your gonna see more and more cites moving towards executive orders that will require even in public housing the access to the broadband. The white space ability the white space now for the wireless connectivity is gonna drop the cost to a place and the effectiveness of wide area networks to a place where even the rural areas are going to be able to provide access.

==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====