WiLS November 2015 Vendor Partner Interview: Julia Ellingwood, Flocabulary

At WiLS, we want to bring valuable information to our library partners, including information about the missions and big ideas of the vendors and publishers they may already do business with.  Each month, WiLS will interview a partner in order to bridge the gap and open the door to valuable collaborations.  This month, we are delighted to share insights from WiLS’ Gold Vendor Partner Julia Ellingwood, Account Manager with Flocabulary.

These interviews are part of a series of interviews with both WiLS library and vendor partners.  Your feedback is appreciated.  If you have any to offer on this article, or suggestions for upcoming interviews, contact Andrea Coffin at .

Tell us about your company’s background.

Flocabulary started in 2004, based on our cofounders’ idea that teaching with hip-hop would be a fun and effective way to learn new vocabulary words. In the early days, Flocabulary was a series of books and CDs, and with time expanded beyond vocabulary to cover social studies and the news with our current events series, The Week in Rap. In 2011, Flocabulary became a subscription-based online learning program. Since then, Flocabulary has become a robust library of videos, interactive activities and quizzes for grades K-12. Today, Flocabulary offers more than 600 videos with accompanying resources to supplement instruction in math, science, social studies, ELA, vocabulary, current events and life skills, with new videos every week.

Why do you, personally, choose to work with libraries?

Flocabulary loves librarians – we even have a video about it (“Ode to Librarians”)! I personally enjoy working with libraries because they are spaces that celebrate learning and educational media. I also love the opportunity to work with librarians – they take a holistic, interdisciplinary view of the curriculum, and are some of our most passionate Flocabulary users. They’re often excited about incorporating technology into the curriculum and help share our resources with their schools.

What do you like to know about the libraries you work with? What helps you better understand their needs?

I always like to know what kind of skills-based learning initiatives the librarian is working toward. Is there a push for digital citizenship learning? Research skills? Cross-departmental project-learning? I especially love planning for ways to develop strong connections between the library and the classroom through project-based learning.

It’s also valuable for me to know what kinds of technology are available in the library. There are many ways to teach with Flocabulary, with different kinds of learning outcomes. Getting a better understanding of the technology and resources available enables me to plan smart and effective implementations with librarians.

What big ideas are being worked on at your company? What problems are being solved?

We’re always working on big ideas! One of our main areas of focus right now is developing features to allow students to not only consume content, but to create it. We believe that deeper learning happens when students can demonstrate mastery of what they’ve learned as producers. We are currently working on features that will support students in writing their own educational raps, building on the Writing Academic Rhymes lesson resources that we already offer. In the coming months, we’ll continue this focus on finding ways to inspire and enable student makers.

We’re also always working on ways to improve our product and add new, valuable content – and some “big ideas” come directly from the field. We recently added a feature that allows educators and students to adjust the speed on our videos based on requests we received from our users. This was extremely valuable feedback that has helped us increase accessibility. We also draw on educators’ requests and conduct interviews when determining new content to develop for our site. Most recently, we chatted with educators about new topics for STEM and social studies content that will be released in the upcoming year.

How can librarians become partners in product or training development?

Librarians can become partners by working with account managers (like me!) to become familiar with our content, the subjects we support, and the features we offer for both educators and students. They then can serve as a resource at their school to teachers who are looking to bring a supplemental tool like Flocabulary into their classroom. We work with many librarians in this way, who serve as trainers when schools adopt Flocabulary site-wide. We welcome these opportunities to work closely and build relationships with librarians and other school staff.