December 21, 2006 - 0 Comment(s)
I feel very lucky to work with such quality people here at clearTXT. Not only do we have great people working at clearTXT, we’re also fortunate to have incredible advisors. Our advisors provide invaluable insights, guidance, and direction for many different aspects of the company. clearTXT get better all the time because of the collective efforts of all these people.
Recently, we decided to expand our list of advisors and created the clearTXT Product Advisory Board. This board will help guide the development of clearTXT products and services, and offer an in-depth perspective into the evolving needs of the Education community. Board members will share their ideas and experiences with other members and our product development team to ensure that our solutions continue to align with the diverse (and changing) needs of all campus community members.
I would like to take a moment to welcome our first board members, The University of Cincinnati and Seton Hall University. As you can tell from the description above, joining the advisory board is no small deal – by joining, these schools are demonstrating their strong commitments to clearTXT, both today and in the future. We are thrilled to have these schools as our initial members and look forward to working together.
December 11, 2006 - 1 Comment(s)
Just in case you still aren’t convinced that mobile is the here, now, and future, here’s something for you to consider…
During the General Session time at O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Conference Ray Ozzie (the creator of IBM’s Lotus Notes, Chief Technical Officer at Microsoft, and the man who will eventually take over Microsoft) was asked where he thought the greatest opportunities would be following this launch of Vista and looking as far as five years out.
His answer? “I think that we’ll see the best opportunities in the mobile space. All phones will be smart phones. The lines between what was a smart phone and what is a typical phone now are blurring and soon will disappear. There are going to be so many people with these devices that can do so much�?.
Wow. Let’s put this into perspective. You may not like Microsoft products, tactics, or anything else, but you must recognize their influence and talents. They don’t guess or predict the future of technology - they play a significant part in determining the future of technology across the globe. For Ray Ozzie to make such a strong statement, you can bet that Microsoft feels confident in the value of mobility and is investing heavily in its growth.
December 11, 2006 - 0 Comment(s)
Since starting clearTXT a few years ago, I’ve attended quite a few conferences and events. At each conference I spoke with people about a wide range of mobile-related topics, including text messaging, how mobility can be used in the academic setting, and location based services. Early on, my discussions seemed more like sermons – I espoused the values of receiving highly targeted information on your phone that you had requested. Most people listened politely, but didn’t seem to truly “get it�. After all, a few years ago, few people in the US had ever sent or received a text message.
But as the song goes, the times, they are a changing. Over the last few years, the mobile market in the education space evolved quite a bit. Let’s take a look at some of the evolution…
Stage 1: “What is it?�
I introduced clearTXT to the market at the Blackboard Users Conference in 2004, and planned to spend my time telling people how clearTXT uses mobile phones and text messaging to benefit teachers and students. Naivety at it’s finest. Unfortunately, since most people didn’t even know what a text message was – and most insisted their phones weren’t capable of receiving text messages. So, I spent most of my time educating people about the basics of text messaging, and answering the question, “what is it?� As you can imagine, it didn’t seem like the ideal time to be selling a text messaging system to schools.
Stage 2: “I know what it is, but why should I care?�
2005 was a little different. I spent very little time explaining the concept of text messaging. Thanks mainly to American Idol (did I actually just thank American Idol?), most people understand the concept of text messaging. Unfortunately, most people still didn’t see the value for themselves or their schools. Still not a great time to be selling text messaging to the education market, but at least they had moved to the next stage.
Stage 3: “We need to do something, but I don’t know what�
A few weeks ago I was at the Educause 2006 Conference in Dallas, but I might as well have been in another world at another time. Mobility was a hot topic throughout the conference. People were actually talking about mobile phones, text messaging, and the…dare I say it…�need� to connect with students using mobile technologies.
All of this brought back fond memories of my early days at Blackboard (circa 1999), when people acknowledged the growth of the internet, but didn’t yet understand its potential. At that point, the question changed from “should we do something with this internet thing� to “this thing is becoming important, so what should we do with it�.
Now that 90-95% of all college students own mobile phones, and more than 5 billion text messages sent every month in the US alone, it seems like 1998 all over again. And just like 1998 and the internet, there’s no denying that mobile is not only relevant, very important.
Stage 4: “We need it!�
What will the coming months bring? If history continues to repeat itself, mobility is poised to become a core component of education technology. It won’t be a “nice� thing to have…it won’t be a “want�… it won’t just be a differentiator for schools…it will be a “need�.
Schools will need to have a strategy for integrating mobile into the very fabric of the campus community. In the classroom, the library, the gym, the quad….like Blackboard, WebCT, and the Internet, students will expect to receive their class announcements, schedules, grades, and just about every other bit of information on their mobile phones. Students are already mobile. They’re just waiting for schools to get onboard.
