Living in China for the past five years has given me opportunities to travel through remote places in China and other Asian countries. As an educator I wish all the children could get equal opportunity to receive proper education. However due to the financial, geographical locations, physical issues and many external and internal reasons, there are many children can’t receive proper education.
Thanks to the adoption of digital technologies into the education field, teachers have created many impressive learning experiences to the learners through distance education. Covid-19 pandemic also has forced many schools to change their traditional teaching style into the online teaching. For the past decade, there are more and more online learning platforms have been created however they are all fee-based. I wish there would be a platform that can offer free learning to underprivileged learners who can’t afford the tuition, also a platform that teachers could offer their tutoring service directly to the students. Taking the opportunity of doing this assignment, I put my thought into the following venture pitch. I am looking forward to hearing from your any thoughts and feedback. https://p2pnow.weebly.com/
Feedback: The P2P Learning Plaltform elevator pitch did a good job in highlighting the hardship and unique situations many learners are across the planet. I like its use of narration, text and visual elements, but found it lacking music. Also I would have liked to have heard a bit more about how P2P Learning is positioned to help those learners. Even if it was a brief overview.
Hello Julio,
Thank you for your suggestion regarding the music. I will find a proper music to match with the content in my elevator pitch. My plan is to create an open source learning platform with free lessons, volunteer tutors, psychological health support specialists to the children who need help academically or emotionally. It is a non-profit platform but in order to maintain the website, the platform also offers the tutoring service that teachers could offer their services with fee and students could pay directly to the teachers to save additional cost being charged by the agencies.
Hi Feng,
Similar to Julio, I enjoy your elevator pitch as you clearly pointed out the the challenges some learners are experiencing. Something I’m curious about and perhaps it’s the naive side of me is for students who already live in remote or hard to get to areas, would they be able to have access to stable internet connection and electronic devices to receive education provided on the P2P Learning Platform? I think you mentioned that some countries offer free portal for online learning so in some ways, that answered part of the question.
Everyone should have access to quality education so I think the concept you have is a great one!
REVIEW: Rachel beat me to my big question— how will learners in remote areas access P2P? This has been a struggle where I teach in semi-rural British Columbia… I live next to the highway, and still have slow internet. Drive a few minutes down the road and my students are are using satellite… which struggles with the resources inherent to online teaching (webpages, videos, podcasts, etc.) I love your idea of getting better and more personalized education out there to those who need it, but I wonder how much-added infrastructure will need to go with it.
FEEDBACK: Your elevator pitch made it very easy to empathize with the children seeking education in remote areas, and the (sometimes literal) hurdles they must cross. However, I found the discordance between the text and what you said disorienting. I found your venture pitch comprehensive and clear! Thank you for sharing, Feng!
Hello Laura and Rachel,
Your concern about internet connection accessibility was also my concern. In my personal experience, I found in China and many easy Asian countries internet infrastructure is developed enough that even in remote areas cell data signals are still available which gave me the idea of creating a learning platform in the first place. Smartphones have become so affordable and many second hands computers, laptops could be reused in remote areas. In China one smartphone could cost as low as CAN$40. With the digital learning development, I could see there would be more and more learning applications being created and available in the market. I would love to test out the learning platform in China first as since this year 5G network has gradually taken over the 4G become the standard domestically and has improved the internet speed significantly.
There is a group of children in China called: “left-behind children”. This is a group of children whose parents left home in order to find work in the urban areas and leave their children with extended family members for a long period of time. According to the UNICEF 2018, there are around 69 million children left behind by their parents. The physical and emotional and education development of this group of children have brought attention to the society. A free, open source learning platform could offer the educational support to this group of children, in additional could create a category to organize a group of volunteers for emotional support to these children.
These are my ideal thoughts but I understand there would be many challenges to implement these ideas.
Review:
Great elevator pitch; from the beginning it got my attention and by the end I was wanting to help. I just wish that more information about the solution was presented in the elevator pitch, but you did a great job of getting me excited, intrigued, and wanting to help!
I like your detailed marketing plan and think incorporating the 2 types of learning platforms, widens your market. My biggest concern, however, is also the connectivity issue as well, especially to the remote/ rural areas. If I can get the assurance that it wouldn’t be an issue, I would invest 🙂
Great venture Feng!
Dear Tamara,
Thank you for your kind feedback. You are right without stable, reliable internet connection, my venture pitch won’t work smoothly. I would like to start to develop mobile application first as I found the data delivery through phones usually is more reliable than through computers.
Hello Feng,
Thank you for coming up with an idea based on empathy, social justice, and hope. I am moved by how you have come up with a venture that hopes to create equal opportunities for children. My major critique has mostly to do with how students from impoverished backgrounds or war torn countries will access internet and the devices to access internet. If your platform is designed for desktops (as opposed to an app on a mobile phone), this will not solve the problem you hope to address as instead of commuting to schools, students will need to commute to computer technology hubs which may be non-existent or privately controlled. I suggest you make it very clear in your elevator pitch and your venture pitch that your platform is designed for mobile learning.
Thank you again for thinking of such a thoughtful venture and I suggest that you work alongside governments in a few targeted countries to gain a better understanding of which communities would be ready to benefit from this venture (e.g. a community with economic and education needs but also that has no connectivity issues).
Tara
Hello Tara,
Thank you for your suggestions and I agree with you that I should address clearly about my learning platform is designed for mobile learning. Being able to offer a reliable online platform is my idea thought, but as connectivity issue is not something could resolve easily, for the moment, mobile learning would be more manageable to implement. I really appreciated your input and help me have a better idea regarding to implement my idea.
All the best!