{"id":6819,"date":"2024-02-03T23:03:28","date_gmt":"2024-02-04T06:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/?p=6819"},"modified":"2024-02-03T23:03:30","modified_gmt":"2024-02-04T06:03:30","slug":"founders-parade-josh-smith-of-wordwall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/2024\/02\/03\/founders-parade-josh-smith-of-wordwall\/","title":{"rendered":"Founder’s Parade: Josh Smith of Wordwall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Founder-Leader:<\/strong> Josh Smith <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Venture Name:<\/strong> Wordwall<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Venture Description:<\/strong> Wordwall was created from a need to create interactive games and printed materials for students, with automation from the site doing the rest. The company wanted to move away from a generational use of teachers to stick laminated words on a wall to support literacy exercises. While working as a teacher, the founders, Josh and Ben, created a program where you could simply type a list of words for the same purpose. They added a random picker with a spinning noise like a TV game show. Then, they continued to add more games, and after a while, the Founders decided to turn it into a company. However, for years, the company was limited in how many subscribers it could have due to technical limitations. In 2016, with a change in the company structure to a website-based platform and the new web standards of HTML5, Wordwall drastically increased and, within four years, achieved over 1 million visitors and reached over 100 100,000 paid subscribers within five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Founder-Leader Bio:<\/b> Josh Smith began his career in 2003 in TV as a researcher at Spire TV & Film, as a script editor and researcher with BBC Continuing Drama, and then as a script editor with Kudos TV and Film. He then shifted to Wordwall in 2006, using experience from TV gameshows and the teaching experience of the other founder to create these fun-interactive games through a set of words, where he has continued as a director of Wordwall for 17 years. He also received his education from Jesus College Oxford and Royal Holloway University of London. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personal Reflections:<\/strong> From teaching ESL, Wordwall has come up a lot lately. As I believe in the success of gamified learning, I have used this tool to help with practicing words and phonemes in a motivating and interactive way. I enjoyed learning more about how it was founded. I also learned from it that a founder does not have to be solely in that field to make a successful venture, but they do need to have a passion and perseverance for it and working with this company for 17 years from the challenging beginning years when it was starting out shows a lot of passion and perseverance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/wordwall.net\/about<\/a>
https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/josh-smith-53047218\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Founder-Leader: Josh Smith Venture Name: Wordwall Venture Description: Wordwall was created from a need to create interactive games and printed materials for students, with automation…<\/p>\n

Read moreFounder’s Parade: Josh Smith of Wordwall<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":96608,"featured_media":6820,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-6819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-founders-parade","tag-founders-parade","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/96608"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6819"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6822,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6819\/revisions\/6822"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}