Skoolbo is currently the biggest and newest (so new it is not even online till June 24!) online educational game to date. For students ages 4-10, Skoolbo is designed to strengthen core skills in math and literacy. Skoolbo’s mission is to help students master the fundamental skills needed in numeracy and literacy, and as such, […]
Continue reading Skoolbo’s founder & CEO – Shane Hill Posted in: Week 04: Entrepreneur Bootcamp
Tony Bott is a teacher, founded, co-owner, and advertising executive of Teachers.Net, an online support organization for teachers. Teachers.Net provides a one-stop shop for all of teachers’ needs including information, resources and networking. Founded back in 1996, Teachers Net was the idea of Tony Bott who envisioned a site that would emancipate teachers from […]
Continue reading Teachers.Net…One Teacher’s Dream! Posted in: Week 04: Entrepreneur Bootcamp
Great post! I am pretty amazed how Bob Reap taught himself to program. I agree, sometimes it is about the quality of the features not the quantity like you said they could have just hosted links but I guess they wanted to have all the ownership in their site?
Karon
Hi Karon,
Thanks, I agree that quality is more important than quantity, especially when you want to keep visitors coming back to your site. With Web 2.0, collaboration software has reached a new pinnacle of affordances that is a crime not to leverage. For our 522 Visual-Intensive Project we are going to leverage the affordance of social mind mapping to show just how far these V-I collaborative tools have come and what kind of learning they afford including synchronous online collaboration. Its a shame to try to make websites into closed systems like many LMS sites….take this class for instance.
Cheers, Steve
HI Steve,
I am interested that you don’t see a place for closed systems. I think it depends on what one is trying to achieve in learning. But love to hear oyur thoughts.
Denise
Hey Steve,
A very comprehensive post. I must say that I have adapted a lesson plan or two from teachers.net (I love the free stuff), but never really thought about its origins. I agree with you that the site is much too busy and may need some restructuring rather than simply taking an adhoc approach to updating.
Hi Gillian,
Its interesting to hear that you have used Teachers.Net in the past. I was amazed at the number of lessons but worried that some teachers may find it difficult to find relevant resources to an area of interest considering the clunky search engine. As part of my final project, I am proposing a site that is similar but leverages web 2.0 affordances and targets a more locallized community such as BC teachers. Considering the pain points of this venture, I think there may be a market need for a better type of collaborative website that provides additional opportunities for engagement.
Cheers, Steve
Steve,
Sounds like a great idea for a final project idea and sounds like you are well equipped to accomplish it. Janet’s idea below for provincially specific curriculum spaces would be a really good organizational method for the site.
gillian
Hi. I think a version of this site for localized communities is a great idea. If one could click on BC or Alberta (or whatever area) it would make it easier to collaborate with teachers in your area and to share resources specific to local curriculum/ideas. Plus it would make managing resources easier as each area would have a great deal in common.
Janet
Thanks Janet, you highlight some important advantages. It’s great to have such valuable input! I am hoping to set up a power point presentation for my colleagues in the next month to get more input…a form of research development. I will also share my link here in case anyone else is interested in adding some opinions or concerns for the venture. With a computer programmer for a brother and a research & development/marketer for my best friend, I think I may stand a chance to create this site in the near future.
I hope that this venture idea will be able to showcase the many affordances that a more open site could offer.
Cheers, Steve
I have also used Teachers.Net for the odd science and math lesson plan or worksheet for junior high school students. I found it easy to navigate and find what I was looking for. The front page has been updated since I used it last and I agree that it looks very busy but that is how many of these sites can afford to run, through advertising, especially targeted advertising.
Dennis
Hi Steve,
Thanks for sharing this. It’s a wonderful website. I like their “sample problems”, so easy to understand and to use. I’m also curious of your Web2.0 version in the near future. Please remember to share us when you start it. If you can somehow increase the utilization of graphics and reduce texts as possible, maybe my daughter could use it despite of language difference ? !
Ping
And Happy Victoria Day for those celebrating! I enjoyed your critical commentary on the reports, predictions and analyses about the future of global learning technologies marketplaces. What I hoped everyone could take away from this effort is that the horizon is maddeningly rich and vibrant, and that nobody “owns” it. Whether brave individuals or high-priced […]
Continue reading Welcome to W3: Analyst’s Bootcamp Posted in: Week 03: Analyst Bootcamp
Happy Victoria Day to you too David.
I like your comment when you mention that we should never feel that we could never win just because we’re not part of some exclusive club who knows what is going to happen next. It means that we all have the same fighting chance to create a venture that could possibly be successful in the world of cyberspace:)
Cheers,
Donna
Thanks Donna –
Going further, one idea that always inspires me about the creative industries (everything digital) is that Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, etc, have no intrinsic advantage over me or anyone else who has an original, burning idea. Sure, there are a few people like Steve Jobs who are an amazing creative force, but humanity is like that and there’s always room for more.
Indeed, once you have a large company like a Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc, every new idea is hobbled by the constraints of your existing enterprise, so you can never be as nimble or daring as a new enterprise. That’s why most ‘innovation’ today is accomplished by large companies consuming small ones for their ideas.
You’ll see this week when reviewing Elevator Pitches that the proponents aren’t business geniuses of any kind – they’re just ordinary people, like us, who have become passionate about some idea that could potentially change the world.
Bravo to the brave, I say!
David
This is slightly off topic but to feed to David’s comment about how the creative industries have no intrinsic advantage over anyone who has original and burning ideas… I came across this today as I was browsing for some resources for a part of the project I am working on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cJCYM624YJU#!
Enjoy,
Sherman
Sherman, thank you for the nice youtube. ORIGINAL and burning ideas can’t be stopped once they are born.
Hussain
Hello David, in 2.7 Deconstructing a Pitch, you referred to an article ( as a further reading)”How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea” by Elsbach K. The article is really interesting. But don’t you feel that the writer is inclined towards creating impressions more than anything else. The impressionistic approach in business is risky. And it makes the line of demarcation between real and unreal very thin.
I also have one more question, Do you think setting up rules in pitching one’s ideas is a good thing to do in a fast changing world?Do you think these rules should change from time to time?
Hussain
Thanks for these thoughts, Hussain –
On your first question, everyone’s immediate reactions are usually significantly decisive, so cultivating a positive first impression is clearly valuable. However, if there’s no substance behind a positive first impression that’s deadly. I guess the key for me is that if you’ve got a good idea, you’ve got to find a way to hold peoples’ attention until they understand and appreciate it. If people don’t respond to you well they will stop listening very quickly, before they have a chance to ‘get it’. So cultivating a good impression is simply a way of extending their attention span, and therefore increasing your chances of success.
And with respect to pitch rules, no way. Your only objective is to convey a powerful idea in a positive way, so breaking conventional rules of communication is often the best way to succeed with that.
David
David
Thank you for the informative reply. I still have a question about the same concept we are talking about. what if someone has a great idea but he or she is hopeless in presenting it. And this can happen not only in business but in teaching as well. For example sometimes you see a teacher who has a great lesson plan and great material but they are unable to convey it effectively. Probably in business it is different because the project holder will suffer if he can’t sell his product but when it comes to education , I think , the students will suffer instead. Back to my question, so what is your recommendation here for those who have great ideas with a kind of inability in presenting them they way they should be? It is sad to see sometimes vibrant projects killed by their creators for not presenting them the way the market asks for.
Thank you
Hussain
I think the answer is very simple in both business and teaching – if you’re not good at presentation, find someone else who is.
In business, so long as the CEO quietly exudes integrity and intelligence they can delegate the presentation of their ideas to someone with sales or marketing or business development talents. However, the CEO still needs to drive the vision, and communicate it effectively to their presentation proxy, so if they aren’t dynamic onstage they need to do everything they can to develop those skills.
The same is true for teaching, I suspect, in that there are lots of guide-on-the-side methodologies that can reduce the requirement for sage-on-the-stage excellence, but won’t make it disappear.
In short, I feel leadership is about effective, commanding presence more than appealing performance, but both entail significant, credible visibility.
David
David
Thank you!
Have a great day
Hussain
Before you publish your posting, please make sure that you select a category (eg. Introductions) as well as assign some meaningful tags (keywords).
jtpatry 11:13 am on June 3, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Great find Kim! There is always room for educational gaming in schools, especially as a way to support the learning at home. I know many students in my school have been introduced to http://ca.ixl.com/ and use it at home as a way to hone their skills (some teachers use it solely in the classroom, as a means of explaining concepts which isn’t the greatest). I look forward to the 24th to see what unfolds!
Cheers,
Jon