The Education Insider Podcast with PRP Group
Jacob Hanson and Chris Piehler, PRP Group
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The podcast for education innovators. Join Jacob Hanson and Chris Piehler for conversations with PreK—12 school and district leaders about ed-tech, curricula, and the big decisions they make every day. PRP Group (formerly PR with Panache!) is a premier public relations, marketing intelligence and strategic communications firm serving the preK-12 and higher education markets for over 20 years.
Available episodes
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Sep 18, 2023
Education Insider Podcast Shorts E4: Chuck Amos and Jacob Hanson on lessons from the EdExec Summit
On this Education Insider Podcast Short, Jacob interviews Chuck Amos, CEO of The Amos Group, about his panels at the Tech & Learning EdExec Summit, which focused on funding and government affairs. The Amos Group is the parent company of SchoolBondFinder & SchoolNetwork.
SchoolBondFinder is the first comprehensive online database tracking K12 funding projects in the U.S., and SchoolNetwork is a networking platform for K12 District Administrators to view and share funding project documents, review solution providers, and advertise RFPs nationwide.
Show Links
The Amos Group: https://theamosgroup.us/
The Ed Exec Summit: https://www.techlearningevents.com/edexecsummit/home
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Sep 15, 2023
Education Insider Podcast Short: The top takeaway from Tech & Learning’s EdExec Summit
After a lively couple of days of sessions and networking, PRP’s Kristen Plemon recorded her thoughts live from #TLTechLive! Whether or not you were with us at Chateau Elan, you'll want to check out her 90-second rundown of her most important takeaway from the EdExec Summit!
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Sep 1, 2023
Advice from the educator who’s seen everything: get ready for ‘post-back-to-school’
“I've been fortunate enough to speak at conferences around the world, and one of the things that I come away with is educators around the world are all trying to solve the same problems,” says Dr. Charles Khoury, who recently retired after a 49-year career in which he served as classroom teacher, assistant principal, high school principal, assistant superintendent, and superintendent.
On this episode of The Education Insider Podcast with PRP Group, Dr. Khoury shares insights and anecdotes about being on the receiving end of education vendor’s sales pitches, and delves into the importance of the “post-back-to-school” period to educators and education vendors.
About the Guest
Dr. Charles V. Khoury is the former district superintendent of Ulster BOCES. In addition to his role as chief executive officer, he was the New York State Education Commissioner’s representative in the field, the major liaison between local districts and the state education department, as well as the spokesperson for regional education issues. He can be reached at khourych@gmail.com or via LinkedIn.
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Aug 30, 2023
Education Insider Podcast Shorts E2: Tips for the Tech & Learning EdExec Summit
Are you ready for the Tech & Learning EdExec Summit? I'm super excited to come and see all of you!
FYI that there is a ride sharing opportunity from the airport. Reach out to me or Christine Weiser to learn more. It's a bit of a jump from the airport to this wonderful venue, so I encourage you to reach out: info@christineweiser.com. So drop her line and she will get you hooked up with Joyce Whitby who is helping to coordinate this.
Where we want to be spending some time today is looking at the agenda and scrolling through here to make sure that you all know where to go and where to look. You can access this information once you've logged in as well. I'm gonna be spending some time this week getting myself scheduled into some sessions. There's some really good ones and some fantastic speakers.
You can see the venue map and kind of check out where you'd like to meet locations, those kinds of things as you're looking to reach out for meetings. I just want to caution you that you actually have to put in a meeting time and date as well as a location like they mentioned up there.
But knowing this is a holiday weekend coming up and we're gonna be there Wednesday, I strongly encourage you all to get moving on, taking a look at some of these things, starting to look through the directory and reach out to folks.
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Aug 24, 2023
The Education Insider Podcast Shorts, Episode 1: Intro to the Shorts! (Bonus content: a look at Back-to-School vs. Post-Back-to-School)
Welcome to the first episode of The Education Insider Podcast Shorts from PRP Group. Our podcast shorts are a new series of 2-minute videos with timely info about what's happening in education, best practices for understanding your customers, and answers to listener questions about our episodes.
In this episode, PRP Group co-founder and CEO Jacob Hanson introduces our podcast shorts and gives a sneak peek into what you’ll get out of them. Spoiler alert: He talks about what you should really be doing during this back-to-school period and the importance of the post-back-to-school period for education vendors.
Episode Links
* Tech and Learning Ed Exec Summit
* Anonymous Edvisors
* PRP
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Jun 29, 2023
HubSpot, Marketing, and Building Relationships in the Education Market
If you've worked with PRP before, you might know Benjamin Bachman. Benjamin is the former Director of Marketing at PRP and is now the founder and CEO of Identify.Solutions, where he helps companies bring ideas to life with no-code platforms like Airtable, SmartSuite, Zapier, etc. In addition to his expertise in creating user-friendly webapps, advanced prototypes, and more, Benjamin is a wizard with one of our favorite digital platforms for education organizations — HubSpot!
Benjamin agreed to come on the show to share tips on why HubSpot is one of the leading platforms education companies use to build their website, relationships, and more. In this episode, he shares thoughts on AI, A/B testing, and how to use tools like HubSpot to reach edtech buyers with the right message.
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May 22, 2023
The EdNet VIBE is Back! T&L's EdExec Summit with Dr. Kecia Ray
Our good friends at Tech and Learning have revived EdNet, and so we are here to talk about their EdExec Summit with Dr. Kecia Ray.
* EdExec Summit
* Agenda
* Early bird deadline: May 31
PRP is delighted to sponsor Tech & Learning's EdExec Summit, the new event for K12 executives that focuses solely on the business of education. The conference takes place at the Chateau Elan Resort in Atlanta on September 6-8. EARLY BIRD DEADLINE: May 31. To find out more visit https://www.techlearningevents.com/edexecsummit/home?ref=sPRP
About Dr. Ray
After publishing an assessment to measure technology literacy in 1999, Dr. Ray conducted research in the US, Canada, and South Africa on the use of technology in the K-12 classroom.
Dr. Ray's career includes designing technology within the Frist Center for the Visual Arts and directing technology research through Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Science Outreach programs. As a district administrator for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, she led the award-winning design, implementation, and evaluation of instructional technology programs, including instructional design for online and blended learning environments, redesigning physical learning environments, redefining school libraries, and establishing the first virtual high school to award the diploma in the state of TN. She was invited to develop graduate courses for the University of Maryland on teaching and leading K12 virtual schools and a course focused on evaluating technology for K12 learners for Johns Hopkins University. She is published in the areas of online learning and education transformation in K12 and higher education. She contributes regularly to Fast Company and Tech&Learning.
She is a five-time recipient of the President's Volunteer Service Award and has earned the ISTE Lifetime Achievement’Making IT Happen' Award. Dr. Ray was named '20 to Watch' by the National School Board Association, Woman of the Year by the National Association of Professional Women, one of the top 10 EdTech Leaders by Tech and Learning magazine, and most recently named a Top 100 EdTech Influencer by EdTech Digest. She leads K20Connect, a network of female thought leaders in education, along with other passion projects supporting K20 education around the world!
Meet Dr. Ray >
About the Summit
The EdExec Summit is a new event from Tech & Learning that brings together senior executives from companies serving the K-12 industry for a 3-day networking conference dedicated to the business of education. Whether you’re a publisher, software developer, hardware manufacturer, investor, industry analyst, or provider of any service to schools, the EdExec Summit’s robust agenda and networking opportunities are designed to help your company succeed in the education market.
The EdExec Summit provides business leaders with the perfect combination of insightful sessions and plenty of networking opportunities. The robust agenda is divided into four tracks to serve education companies at all stages.
In addition to offering business executives the opportunity to learn from top experts in the education industry, the EdExec Summit includes plenty of networking opportunities to help you develop new business relationships and find strategic partners.
Learn more or RSVP here >
About PRP Group
PRP Group, formerly PR with Panache! is an award-winning education PR and Marketing Intelligence firm serving the preK—12 and higher ed community.
Learn more >
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Apr 11, 2023
How edtech companies can help universities navigate "the new possible"
Rhea Kelly, the editor-in-chief of Campus Technology, talks with Chris Piehler about how the pandemic accelerated technology spending in higher ed, what tech issues universities are grappling with (Chat GPT, anyone?) and how edtech companies can connect with the real decision-makers at universities.
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Apr 10, 2023
Title: Putting the ‘Fun’ in ‘Funding’ with Dr. Paula Love
In this freewheeling chat with PRP’s Chris Piehler, Dr. Paula Love (aka The Funding Doctor) surveys the current K-12 funding landscape. She shares her insights on the changing roles of key decision-makers and offers practical advice about how edtech companies can help connect their customers with the enormous pool of funds that are available right now.
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Feb 15, 2023
Why External Validation Makes it Easier to Sell Your EdTech Products
Chris Piehler and Jason Innes, Director of Curriculum, Training, and Product Management at KinderLab Robotics, talk about validating education technolgoy products for the ed-tech market.
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Dec 20, 2022
One Real Person: Building Relationships in the Education Market
Gerard Dawson was still teaching when he noticed that writing about teaching made him not just a better writer, but a better teacher as well. His writing helped him form relationships. He eventually left teaching to write and consult full-time.
On this episode of The Education Insider Podcast, Jacob and Gerard talk about why and how to build relationships in the education market.
Learn more about Gerard at:
https://gerarddawson.com/
Learn more about Jacob at www.prp.group
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Oct 26, 2022
How (and Why) Your Company Should Hire Former Educators
PRP editorial director Chris Piehler interviews Lisette Gushiniere, PRP’s newest strategist and a former educator, about her career path and the benefits education and edtech vendors get from hiring people with classroom experience.
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Aug 26, 2022
Educators want to hear from you. 5 Tips for Cold Emailing Superintendents.
Our editorial director Chris Piehler recently had the opportunity to sit down with Carmello the Science Fellow, founder and operator of three early education schools in New York, for a chat about how he finds new EdTech products and how he prefers to be approached by vendors.
Here are a few tips to help you be sure you’re putting your best foot forward when talking to potential clients in the early education arena.
Educators Aren’t Complacent
Carmello said that as an educator—and particularly as the head of three preschools—he can’t afford to become complacent about the materials he offers his students.
“You always want to be as innovative as you can be as a pedagog and as an educator,” Carmello said. “And you always wanna meet best practices and try to give your kids the best experiences. So I am always a nerd at heart and I'm always researching things. While my wife might be on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook, what am I doing? I'm Googling new coding sets for t…
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Aug 22, 2022
Consulting for Educators | Staying Right with Your District While "Edugigging"
Read more at: https://www.prp.group/blog/7-tips-for-staying-right-with-your-district-while-edugigging
During a recent episode of The Education Insider podcast, I chatted with education lawyer Steve Wellvang. He’s the former president and CEO of ECMC Holdings Corp., an education-focused private equity investment company, and the former general counsel of ECMC Group, Inc., a higher-education services company, so he’s quite qualified to talk about the legal considerations, risks, and opportunities related to consulting, influencing, and other forms of “edugigging” income. Here’s what he had to say.
Learn your district’s policies.
If you’re thinking of moonlighting, the first step is to familiarize yourself with your district’s policies, which can often be found online. If you find that outside employment is barred for district employees in your position, that may be the end of it for you. But even if there is no specific policy against it, you’re not in the clear yet.…
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Aug 16, 2022
What Is the Difference Between Marketing and PR and how can they work together?
As a public relations company, we at PRP are often asked what the difference is between PR and marketing. While the former is about creating and maintaining your organization’s good reputation and the latter is about selling products and services to people, there’s still a fair amount of overlap and no bright dividing line.
To help understand the overlap and shed a little light on the differences between the two, I invited two members of the PRP leadership team, Kristen Plemon and Chris Piehler, to join me for the latest episode of the Education Insider podcast.
What is PR?
“I think there are just some misconceptions by business leaders and organizational leaders on what PR really is because historically we haven't done a good job of defining it to others outside of our industry,” Plemon said. “Or people only really see a portion of it because they see interviews on TV or they see quotes in a newspaper article.”
Plemon said that while the words and messaging you put out…
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Aug 8, 2022
Howdy Partner: Engaging with Superintendents
https://www.prp.group/blog/howdy-partner-engaging-with-superintendents
Matt Kinnamen is the president and co-founder of New Era Superintents, an organization dedicated to helping superintendents put the focus back on student success at a time when there’s a lot of distractions and political division. He’s an expert in the field. Before founding New Era, he was VP for events at Thoughtexchange, and group publisher at District Administration magazine, where he was part of the team that created and ran DALI, the District Administration Leadership Institute.
Quintin Shepherd, New Era chairman, is superintendent of the Victoria Independent School District in Victoria, Texas, and a nationally-recognized voice on transformational and collaborative leadership. Also, he recently published The Secret to Transformational Leadership.
I sat down recently to chat with Matt and Quintin to find out how vendors can better support superintendents and achieve district-level adoption.
Know the Hows…
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Jul 1, 2022
To Catch up to Grade-Level Work, Don’t Remediate, Accelerate
There’s no doubt that student learning has suffered over the past two years. As we look forward to a new academic year, the question is, what can edtech companies do to help educators accelerate learning for their students?
Avoid Resources for Remediation
Rather than offering students remediation, we need to accelerate learning, which is really the opposite of remediation.
When a student is behind, our typical approach to address it has been to meet them where they are and work with them to progress from there. That’s remediation. It’s fine for helping students make progress, but new research suggests it’s less helpful in trying to bring them back up to current grade-level work. The reason is somewhat obvious: If we spend two months intervening with a student in this way—two months focusing on material from a previous grade—they are going to be two months further behind this year’s material at the end of that period and you’re looking at two more months of remediatio…
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Jun 15, 2022
Opportunity in Crisis: Making the Most of Blended Learning After the Pandemic
The intersection between academics and economics has always existed. The pandemic and its consequences, like the great resignation and teacher shortage, brought home how tight that connection is. Our guest on the latest episode of The Education Insider, Michael Spencer, lives at that intersection. He’s the CEO and founder of Global Expansion Strategies, a company that guides education vendors looking to enter international markets.
Spencer said that the renewed spotlight on the relationship between education and business is not an anomoly. It’s a trend we can expect to see continuing for a few reasons:
More edtech startups will go international because of the economic benefits.
Blended and hybrid learning will continue to be a primary learning model across the globe.
Blended and hybrid learning that includes individualized learning plans for students and that is highly managed by companies will become more widespread, again because of the economic benefits; and
More brick-and-mor…
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Jun 14, 2022
How Edtech Companies Can Collaborate to Accelerate Learning
Editorial Director Chris Piehler talks with Renaissance VP and Cheif Academic Officer Gene Kerns about how everyone associated with education can find the skills that students are having the most trouble with and help them learn efficiently.
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May 24, 2022
Doing the Heart Work: DEI for EdTech Solutions Providers
Ali Alowonle is an award-winning educator with some ideas for companies that want to capture the hearts of students and teachers through DEI. Her recommendation? Research the schools you're products are in — and the schools that you’re trying to reach. Get out there, talk to the families. What are their experiences? What are their stories? What are their needs? Talk to the teachers in the building. Talk to the administration. Talk to the custodians. Those are the people who impact the students who use your tools on a daily basis. You can make them your number one DEI resource.
Read the full story here: https://www.prp.group/blog/how-edtech-providers-can-support-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-efforts
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May 23, 2022
Ready for M&A? Ask the tough questions now!
Jacob interviews two of the most talented advisors working in the education market. Taylor Smith and Morgan Battle, Managing Directors at Tucker Capital, talk about the evolution of M&A in the edtech market over the past couple of years, and why it may not be too early to start having some of the right conversations.
https://www.prp.group/blog/is-your-company-ready-for-ma-ask-the-tough-questions-now
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May 10, 2022
How edtech can help address the student mental health crisis
Ann Brown, the CEO of the Cook Center for Human Connection, discusses the mission of My Life Is Worth Living, an animated series dedicated to student mental health. In conversation with PRP's editorial director Chris Piehler, she also explains how edtech companies and leaders can help alleviate the national emergency of students mental health.
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May 3, 2022
OH CRAP! What do we do now?" Why every education company needs a crisis plan
PRP’s very own Kristen Plemon, one of the education market’s leading crisis-management experts, shares tips for companies serving the education market
Learn more about crisis planning at https://www.prp.group/crisis-planning-and-management
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Apr 29, 2022
Connecting with the (increasingly competitive) education media
Hechinger Report writer and editor Jackie Mader gives expert advice on what education topics are grabbing media attention right now, why the best article ideas lead with data, and why it pays to read reporter's bios before you pitch.
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Mar 1, 2022
Getting into the room for ESSER Spending
In a recent conversation with consultant and educator Carl Hooker, the EdTech influencer had a recommendation. Focus on relationships with schools and districts — not sales.
That’s always sage advice, but how can you apply it in this specific moment? How can you start building new relationships that lead to happy and committed customers? Hooker said the answer begins with three steps.
Read more at https://www.prp.group/blog/how-to-get-into-the-room-for-esser-spending
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Feb 14, 2022
When free is everywhere, where’s the value?
“Free Trial!” “Request a Demo!” “3 Free Seats with our Starter Kit!”
Have you heard that before? Have you said that before? If you’re an educator, or you sell to educators, those phrases are everywhere. Some kind of free introduction was a baseline expectation in the edtech market even before the pandemic.
Learn more: https://www.prp.group/blog/when-free-is-everywhere-wheres-the-value
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Feb 10, 2022
School Staffing Shortages vs. Teacher Retention and Innovation
Teacher retention is, of course, a perennial challenge for many districts. The pandemic, lockdowns, and the "Great Resignation" have turned it into one that will define the next few school years. Coupled with record low numbers of new teachers entering the field and seasoned teachers retiring, the teacher shortage may be the greatest challenge facing education (and education companies) post-pandemic.
Administrators are searching for solutions. They're trying strategies that most districts haven't seen before. The many companies that serve schools will need to pay attention.
Learn more: https://www.prp.group/blog/teacher-swaps-combined-classes-and-staffing-resignations-have-changed-the-edtech-marketplace
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