Attended a very interesting and engaging event over the weekend: 

ETIS, the symposium of the educational technology industry, here in San Francisco. It is one of my favorite events, because it provides amble opportunity to mix and connect with the greatest minds in educational technology.

Carrying home a stack of cards from new won friends and enjoyed reconnect with old ones. 

Also carrying home: Two thought reverberating in my mind.

For one, it was exciting to see the call for personalization gain momentum. This is something that's at the very core of LearnThat.org, and it feels great to meet allies and people who share our passion for anytime/anywhere learning. 

The voices are getting louder, the crisis more dire. 

When will the avalanche take off?

Secondly, I engaged in many conversations around professional development and user adoption, partially triggered by being nominated as an innovator company for our Pay-Per-Result personalized payment concept we introduced on our site. We developed this concept in response to administrators asking for guarantees that our technology works, so we designed a concept that provides 100% guaranteed return on investment, supported by 24/7 customer service/chat. You literally only pay for gained, measured learning results, so in essence: We assume responsibility that it works, because the data of our users shows that it does.

Some impressions of the problem:

***Programs that were sold to millions of users, yet their analytics show less than 100,000 unique monthly visitors. This seems common in many products. Looks good---strong sales to administrators---low adoption by teachers---does not trickle down to the student.

***Many programs that are lauded as successes, and gaining lots of investor dollars, but that don't have user traction. Install the Alexa toolbar, it will give you insights into this.

***Colleagues stating that 20% first year adoption of their amazing solutions is common in public schools (Quote: "It's different in private schools, because there is more control that teachers have to do what the administrators decide.")

***Our own experience with public school adoptions, taking unreasonable support effort and forever to implement -- and we tested our software with focus groups of elementary students, so it's not our user interface.

We have thousands of licenses in our system, paid for years ago, and never claimed because the teachers never came on board.

Everyone is citing "professional development" as the problem (in any other industry, you would call this training, but it has been pointed out to me that teachers take affront with that term).

"We need professional development and more mentoring" is the common chorus.

Honestly, I don't think teachers need any more "professional development" or "training." 

How many hours/weeks/months of professional development should it take to teach the teachers?

The majority of teachers I met so far are capable, smart professionals, passionate about education. They could figure this out in 5 minutes and implement new technology like they do their online banking, facebook social lives and other areas of technology.

What teachers need is an open, honest discussion, respect, and participation in designing 21st century education. They don't need "training" and "mentoring". They need to take ownership of this movement, because they will benefit the most.

If chronic problems don't go away, it's nearly always because too much attention is given to the symptoms, not the underlying causes.

Teachers need assurance that the changes that happen so rapidly (and commonly top-->down) are designed to improve their job, not eliminate it. 

Currently, public school teachers are disrespected and underpaid, left insecure and vulnerable, criticized by society for evils they did not create. Understandable that under these conditions your tolerance for change is low. Teachers need to know that when all is said and done, they will still be the center piece of education, and society has to make a clear decision and commitment to our teachers.

Personalized education has the power to transform the teaching profession and teachers will be 1,000 times happier and more effective because of it.

Professional development should not focus on the use of products. Every elementary student could explain it to the teacher, if training was really needed. The time should be spent to envision the future of personalized learning and to prepare teachers for the transition from the traditional classroom to being a mentor of a student on a personalized learning path. 

It's a dream come true for the teaching profession. Once teachers understand how wonderful teaching in such an environment is, we will have teachers spearheading the movement.

Teachers who are just doing "a job" might find the transition too troublesome. Resisting change is not tolerated in other areas of society; it should not be permitted in schools. Find another job or retire. Excuse me, but this is about our children and the future of our society.

Personalized education allows teachers to really spend time and get to know each student, accelerate their progress appropriately, nurture their talents, and provide learning platforms to bring students together in ways that are creative, relaxed, effective, and rewarding for both teachers and students. 

My daughter was fortunate to enjoy such an environment and it's very powerful.

I hope that time spent on professional development and training will be replaced by more and more teachers and students investing their time, power, and voice to facilitate this change and claim and define their role in this process.