frank
It’s been interesting and, i have had my share of technical difficulties. I tried about 20 different permutations of technical fixes while recording this pitch, but couldn’t get it to come out both a compressed and, well not an art piece. If anyone has suggestions on tech support, I can repost if it works. […]
Continue reading Assignment 3: Venture Pitch DolFin Posted in: General, Venture Forum 
Hi Frank,
Interesting shot! I am curious as to where you were in Second Life when you took this picture? As well I am curious, have you ever used Second Life before and what inspired this choice of avatar?
Julie
Hi Julie,
No, yesterday was actually my first time on SL.
I think it’s easy enough to create a loaded performance of yourself in other social media such as FB and Twitter. An Avatar allows us to do more: to experiment and be playful in a broader sense, maybe from a different perspective; which may land us anywhere from the mundane to the incredible.
Perhaps fittingly, one of the recommended stages had been designed with a Scary Halloween-ish theme, with several interesting sets such as the one in this pic. As you can see, I was caught by a human sized spider net, and an unearthly fem spider came down to check me out and determine what to do with me. It was interesting example of the creative potential of OLE, and I thought I should share the class.
MUHAHAHA!!
Thanks AR group for your hard work on this, it was a fun and instructive experience to go through your ‘Just another UBC blog site’ for this assignment. I will focus on Question 1) & 4). AR definitely has potential. Specifically, I think once the bugs are worked out, it could provide great potential as […]
Continue reading Thanks AR group for your hard work on th… Posted in: Week 07: From thisamericanlife.org this week: 474: Back to School SEP 14, 2012 As kids and teachers head back to school, we wanted to turn away from questions about politics and unions and money and all the regular school stuff people argue about, and turn to something more optimistic — an emerging theory about what to teach […]
Continue reading Emerging views on what to teach in school and how to reward teachers Posted in: General
Thanks Frank for this. This American Life always does great work and I’ll be sure to queue this one up on the iPhone for my next drive.
I haven’t heard it yet, but it got me thinking about another This American Life about the Brooklyn Free School where there are no tests, courses, homework and the kids are the key decision makers. This one is pretty good too! 🙂
Act 3: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/424/kid-politics?act=3#play
Hi Jonathan, thanks for the link. Interesting concept – children and youth engagement and empowerment in the truest forms. I run a youth engagement program within a organization whose primary services are for adults. We have a lot of creative tensions. It is so hard for adults to let go of the reign of control. I wonder about the extent that learning technology is incorporated into this program?
~Sophia
It’s been a while since I’ve heard this one about the Brooklyn Free School, but from what I remember it was a lot of student led meetings. Students would call meetings whenever they were upset about something and deal with it as a group.
It worked initially, but towards the middle of the podcast you got a sense that students were being overwhelmed with meetings. Students began to get upset at one another. There was a sense that in some way this worked, but in others — leadership from the top (in the form of a teacher) was needed. There wasn’t quite enough maturity for it to work.
With regards to learning technology, I do remember computers being available. But that there were no electronic days in the school as well to allow for some peace and actual “talking” to occur. 🙂
I’m very skeptical of the approach proposed. I’ve read that for most tasks that require little to no active thinking, you can use rewards to improve performance but once active thinking comes into play, it’s quite difficult to achieve any level of improvement strictly through monetary rewards. Generally speaking, better results are obtained by granting employees certain freedom to innovate to allow them to get incredible ideas out of their heads and onto a sharing medium. By encouraging teachers to work harder to obtain certain results without providing them some ‘cool-down’ time, they are likely to find more of these ‘loss-aversion’ teachers in a burnout state rather quickly.
Thanks Jon, Sophia and Patrick.
Jon, I’ll have to check that one out, I’ll try to plan it for a road trip as well 😉
You are right Sophia, with creative freedom comes innovation, but also, greater room for conflict, perhaps over what should be done and how best to do it. We may have to learn how to help adults feel more comfortable about giving up control; maybe by helping them gain a greater sense of relatedness to their students and the people they work with, so that at core, there is mutual trust among participants that people’s intentions are good.
Patrick, as a trained economist, I am first to confess that economists have an extremely narrow and thereby, limited view for understanding human behaviour. Working harder for better results in the short-term can definitely lead to burnout in the long-term as you have identified. I’m hopeful however that the financial crises is challenging this discipline to take a long, hard, and deep look inwards, and realize the errors of their ways. Also, budding work in neuroscience and behavioural psychology/economics, is not only exceptionally interesting, but also directly challenging many of the conventional wisdoms of economic thinking: “People are rational” etc..
Here’s a sarcastic but somewhat insightful critical look within (5-minutes):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVp8UGjECt4
My current interest is gaining a greater understanding of meta-cognitive skills and how technology might be used as a vehicle for delivering this kind of education. I also believe that better financial capability might be one concrete example of such skills, as consistently good financial decision making is, I would argue, more habitual and behavior than necessarily cognitive.
With your permission, I may continue to post content to this feed on this area as I come across it; though I am open to suggestions on how to better do this for the purposes of sharing and archiving.
Observation on Financial Literacy Shortage:
[–]Betsy514[S] 12 points 3 hours ago
You know – I’ve read about a million studies on this issue and while some indicate that increased tution is a result of increased federal aid – others conclude the opposite. I’m not an economist so I can’t give you any theories or proof either way – but I think the increase in tuition is probably more the result of a combination of factors. I think the increase in student debt is in part the result of the lack of financial literacy/education resources available to families – especially when they are making the college decision in the first place.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/10m8yn/i_work_as_an_advocate_for_people_with_student/
Frank –
Just listened to the podcast and it was again another well put together piece by This American Life. It was neat to hear about the “different smarts”, got me thinking about multiple intelligences. Any different than what they are talking about being “social smarts”? Actually from what I recall, they were having trouble labelling all the different “smarts” without it sounding off.
I also enjoyed the last story piece about intervention pieces that can go in. It’s nice to know that all of these can be helped. What is key is that the individual has to want to do it. It’s really about persevering and motivating through something. It’s effortful as the girl in the last piece spoke about, but she enjoyed it! Thanks for this again!
Pardon the delay. This month looks to be exceptionally busy as I am in transition between cities, with the aim of landing in Vancouver sometime beginning or end of October – I’ve never been. You seem like a brilliant and experienced bunch and I feel privileged and somewhat intimidated to be in this class with […]
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kstackhouse 9:34 am on November 26, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Franc,
I tried to view your video but it looks like the link you sent is for the location within your video. You might have to update the link to show the url for the video outside of your video manager. Also, you can embed the video directly into the blog if you wanted to. Just click on the youtube button and paste the video url into place. Hope this helps.
Ken
lullings 10:46 am on November 26, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hey Frank,
The youtube link doesnt work as it is linking to your videos you uploaded page rather than anyone in particular. This just brings me to my video upload page so cant see yours at all.
The Prezi is giving me an error as well.
You said that you were having trouble with the export. Lash me off an email with details of what program you are coming from, what OS you have, and what you recorded it using and hopefully I can help.
Cheers
Stuart
Ranvir 4:10 pm on November 26, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Frank, the YouTube link does not work..
Kent Jamieson 12:47 pm on November 27, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Not to sound too redundant, but I can’t view your video or prezi either.
frank 9:48 pm on November 27, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Guys, I did a complete re-install; try this now:
http://youtu.be/3rlC9HA1p80
Lisa Nevoral 10:44 pm on November 27, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Frank,
I can see your YouTube video, but not your prezi.
Lisa
jkotler 6:38 am on November 28, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Frank,
While I too was unable to find your prezi, I did watch your elevator pitch on YouTube. From that I think you have a great concept but it was somewhat unclear to me if the key features or purpose is to teach users about finance, create a budget for them or both? As well, I saw there was mention of users interacting with one another and I would have liked to know more about how that would work.
Julie
Kent Jamieson 8:37 am on November 28, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I agree with Julie that your concept seems great, as i think there is a need for this type of learning, but it was a little confusing knowing exactly what ‘Dolfin’ does.
I’m sure your venture pitch will add greater depth, but i’m not sure with the limited information gained from the initial pitch that investors could go any further.
Do you explain where the 500K goes as well? I may be off base, but that number just sounds huge for the application you’ve explained.
Thanks,
Kent
frank 7:48 pm on November 28, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hello,
Thank you for your feedback. The Prezi is embedded in the Youtube video, so I did not post it separately.
DolFin is a LMS/CMS Platform that brings together budgeting tools, financial education content and social applications to make financial learning simple and fun. It can be utilized by teachers and and education providers as an all-in-one reservoir to draw from for tools, content and connectivity, so that they can focus their efforts on facilitating the learning process.
The budget is further laid out in the Venture Pitch; and the $500K covers both the Pilot and Alpha Launch development. Since you have $1 Million to invest on this, Investing in DolFin will allow you to fund something that’ is uniquely different and innovative, while having $500K left to invest in an another venture as well.
Cheers!
rebeccaharrison 9:49 am on November 29, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
The elevator pitch is intriguing, but I don’t think it provides enough information for who would use it and what they would use it for. People are typically private about finances so I’m not sure whether that social media bit would be a good thing (as it would encourage sharing of ideas, etc.), or whether it would just turn people off. Finances are an area that everyone has interest in, but just based on the elevator pitch I would not invest further.
Peggy Lawson 8:48 pm on November 29, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Frank – An interesting venture idea. I think there is a market for people who would enjoy online classes in financial education, based on their needs. For evaluating the brief elevator pitch, I like focusing on these guidelines, realizing that the brief elevator pitch likely won’t touch on all aspects:
* Pain Point: the market gap or problem the venture is addressing;
* Solution: the new product or service that resolves the pain;
* Differentiation: the reason someone will buy or use this new product or service, versus the alternatives;
* Marketing: where and how buyers/users will be reached;
* Championship: the competency of the venture’s leaders and advisors;
* Competition: an overview of competitors and partners;
* The Ask: how much money, etc, is required to take the next step; and
* The Return: how much and how soon will an investor be recompensed
You managed to touch on most of these during the brief pitch which I found impossible to do – well done. However, for me I would have liked to have been drawn into your vision a little more deeply; perhaps spending a bit more time highlighting a few of your more essential or engaging aspects, rather than briefly covering many of them, would have attracted me more towards your venture. With my limited ability to fund ventures, I may have to pass on this particular one. But I wish you success, as I do think there is some potential here.
manny 3:42 pm on November 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Frank,
For some odd reason, when I click on your elevator pitch it goes to my videos in my personal video manager for youtube. The prezi also doesn’t seem to work, I get a message of ….
The presentation you wanted to join either did not exist, or it has already ended.
Please check the URL and come back!
Thank you for your patience,
The Prezi team
frank 4:31 pm on November 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi manny, please see my post: frank 8:48 pm on November 27, 2012
jhodi 4:53 pm on December 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Frank,
I think that you have a very marketable venture here. As a math teacher that teaches finance to high school students, I am always looking for engaging resources such as this that would help students learn in practical situations. I watched your elevator pitch and read what you stated would be in you venture pitch. I would like to invest in this venture, but I would want to know more about it first. I would like to know exactly how it works and what the future plans are for this venture.
Overall, I think that you did a very good job creating your pitch and have caught my attention!
Jhodi