Category Archives: EdTech

How To Get Your #EdTech Business Off The Ground And Keep It There

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I’ve worked in education technology (#EdTech) for many years now and over the last 7 years I’ve co-founded and run a successful company (Airhead Education) delivering a web desktop to schools (Airhead). We won a Bett award for ‘Innovation in ICT’ in 2015 and achieved it without investment from any external source. We’re debt-free and we’ve made a profit in every year of operation. No, we’re not Google yet but we’re making our mark in the education sector and we continue to listen and grow. It’s certainly not been easy, but it has been a lot of fun and as we start 2017, I’ve been reflecting on a few of my lessons learned.

I’ve seen technology products and services designed for education come and go (and usually turn up again, reinvented). Often I’ve seen the merit in the idea but the execution has been poor. Occasionally, both the idea and the execution have appeared to be flawed. The thing is, I don’t have an issue with either scenario. Ideas don’t just spring into life fully formed; they need to be shaped in the fire of trial, error and reflection. And of course the same applies to the execution of ideas in the form of products and services. The process of releasing, reviewing and revising is a basic principle underpinning continuous improvement. And I’m not even perturbed if individuals without education experience try their hand at EdTech. Sometimes the education crowd can’t see the wood for the trees. But there’s one thing you must do: survive long enough to learn the lessons you need to learn in order to build a successful business.

So if you’re going to invest your time, energy and creativity in developing technology for the education sector, you should be sensitive to the characteristics of the technology and education markets and what they mean for your business. For me, there are three particular EdTech business challenges:

    1. Rapid lifecycles – The pace of change in technology is rapid and and the lifecycle of most technologies is therefore short. Whether it’s software, hardware or the services that support them, rapid evolution of technology means a requirement to make changes just to stay functional and relevant, let alone to evolve with your customers’ needs. Developing, delivering, maintaining and scaling products and services is a costly endeavour which requires unerring financial and technological vigilance.
    2. Tight budgets – The majority of educational establishments are under constant budgetary pressure and, rightly, there is a tension between competing requirements for investment. Educational establishments should not be taking excessive risks with the deployment of technology because they simply cannot afford to squander their budget. The consequence of this is an ever higher bar for the effectiveness of education technology vershe price paid.
    3. Risk Aversion – Education establishments are intrinsically risk averse for a variety of reasons. Limited budget is one of those reasons but so too is the price of failure beyond just money. Organisational failure in an educational establishment ultimately hits the learner and so an ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ culture often emerges to protect the learner from excessive educational experimentation, including with technology.

So let’s be clear about what this means for the prospective EdTech entrepreneur:

  1. Deep pockets – You’re going to need deep pockets in order to get your business off the ground and keep it running when technology is changing apace. You will need to factor in the cost of ongoing technological development because without it, you run the risk of becoming irrelevant just as you’re gaining traction in your market.
  2. Realistic assumptions – Take a long hard look at your business plan in terms of market size, adoption rate and price point. Make sure that enough customers will actually pay the price you need them to pay in order to survive. Be pessimistic and enjoy a nice surprise. There’s no point in creating something that users love but which they don’t value enough to buy.
  3. Solid evidence – Test your product or service in MVP form (Minimum Viable Product) from the beginning and never stop soliciting opinions and analytics about its performance in order to create an evidence base for the efficacy of your creation. Whilst you may think you know how to solve a relevant problem, ultimately your customers need to agree with you and be prepared to recommend you.

Yes, I’ve learned a lot of lessons in the course of co-founding Airhead Education and no doubt there are many more to come. The truth is that I love what I’m doing and so it’s easy to get up in the morning and consistently spend time working out how to make Airhead better. As long as I can say that, I have the most important ingredient for success. Good luck in 2017!

You and You and You are the Weakest Links (in the information security chain)

Over the last twenty years or so as an Educational Technologist, I’ve visited literally thousands of schools. When I first started, my point of contact was the ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Network Manager. Nowadays, it’s almost always a member of senior leadership. I don’t flatter myself that I’m more important than I used to be. It’s simply that technology in most schools is now integrated in teaching, learning and operations from top to bottom. It’s strategically important.

Of course, with strategic importance comes a sharpened focus, not only on the benefits of technology, but on the issues and threats it introduces. Barely a week goes by without a story about the effects of screen time on children or the destruction wreaked by the latest malware. Where once upon a time, I could guarantee I’d find an administrator password on a sticky note in the office, initiatives such as Safeguarding and Prevent have ramped up the focus on safety and security in schools.

And yes, senior leaders are nervous. Apart from an unwelcome appearance in the media, if a school’s Safeguarding or Prevent arrangements do not meet requirements, then Ofsted is likely to place them in special measures.

As if that wasn’t enough, against a background of growing threat, hardening sanctions and shrinking budgets, the replacement of the Data Protection Act (DPA) with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is going to hit (mostly unwary) schools hard on the 25th May 2018. As of April 2017, only 43% of organisations were actively preparing for GDPR.

Whilst it’s true that the GDPR will bring more clarity and rigour to the discipline of information security, schools may well have more of a mountain to climb than most because they are Data Controllers with sensitive personal data on minors. It’s not clear from the legislation whether the appointment of a Data Protection Officer (DPO) will be mandatory for schools, but it would certainly seem to be sensible advice.

However, the main purpose of this post is not to bemoan the plight of schools but rather to point out an emergent weakness in this layered process of security hardening. It’s mandatory for schools to designate a member of senior management as a Safeguarding Lead. It’s also mandatory to appoint a Prevent Lead. With the advent of the GDPR, it seems there will be a DPO as well. To perform these roles effectively will require:

  • An understanding of the relevant regulatory environment
  • Experience of practical application in a school
  • A grasp of the technology landscape across the school and its supply chain

In the good old days (ahem), when I used to roll up to meet the Network Manager, usually I wouldn’t need to speak to anyone else. They were the Kings and Queens of their IT domains. Perhaps they lacked a strategic perspective on occasion, but at least there was one person who understood every piece of technology in the organisation and the implications of every change that was made.

I’m certainly not advocating a return to the past, but, going forwards, I think the increasing regulatory load is already leading to fragmentation in the security chain. In a world where one IoT device can become a gateway for a serious network incursion, it’s easy for knowledge to exist in silos which lead to Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous unknown unknowns.

My conclusion is that people are usually the weakest link in the security chain and, in this case, the weakness is exacerbated by an approach to safety and security in schools that is evolving in silos. I would simply advocate that domain experts with overlapping interests come together on a regular basis to educate each other and review their mutual challenges. Every school – every organisation – should have a Safety & Security Working Group that aligns and coordinates the work of all stakeholders.