[liberationtech] Fwd: Startup in Education-based Apps

[Yishay Mor]

Somehow, I find it awkward to read an email about an iPad centric education
initiative on the liberationtech list.
I admit, I own an iPad and find it useful. But it is far from liberating
for either the user (who is limited to using the technology the way Apple
thinks is best for her) or the workers manufacturing the device. And in
fact, you could simply develop in HTML5 and remain device-agnostic.

As for the initiative itself, I find it laudable but naive. But that's a
discussion which probably does not interest everyone on this list.

Yishay
___________________________
   http://www.yishaymor.org




On 24 February 2012 07:53, Sam King <samking at cs.stanford.edu> wrote:

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Dawson Zhou <zhoud at stanford.edu>
> Date: Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 2:01 PM
> Subject: Startup in Education-based Apps
> To: sl-jobs at cs.stanford.edu
>
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> A friend of a friend is looking for some help with his startup in
> educational tech. You can contact him at Lundeen_Kylan at gsb.stanford.eduif interested!
>
> Dawson
>
> *ed infinitum (don't worry, we're working on a better name!)*
>
> Educational Technology Software with two parts that are looped together:
>
> Our business intends to take advantage of two important trends. First, we
> believe Apple is going to succeed at getting iPads into schools over the
> next 3-5 years. Second, all U.S. curriculum is being nationalized in 2014,
> which which means no more unique state-to-state testing. This allows every
> school in the U.S. to become a potential customer rather than requiring
> unique software specific to each state's current requirements.
>
> *Part I*
> *1)* *Crowd-sourced teacher curriculum on an intuitive and standardized
> web platform*. This would be a place where any teacher could go to build
> and download the best curriculum available. The site allows for teachers to
> create curriculum (drag-and-drop onto a timeline) that runs on an iPad. The
> curriculum on the site is rated objectively by how much it actually
> improves student performance, via a mastery quiz at the end of each lesson
> after it is taught in the classroom. Currently, teachers are responsible
> for creating and grading all of their own curriculum, quizes, tests, etc...
> (180 lessons per subject per year)!
>
> *Part II*
> 2) *Real-time data on student performance.* Students interact with the
> teacher via an iPad, which provides real-time data on how the students are
> doing, and identifies which students are particularly
> struggling/accelerating. The curriculum is adaptive, so when a student
> accels, problems move from easier concepts like basic memorization to more
> difficult tasks like problem analysis. Likewise, when a student begins to
> struggle, the problems are broken down into their most basic parts, helping
> the teacher to identify where the student is getting stuck. The software
> can also help match students who are accelerating with students who are
> struggling for peer-to-peer tutoring. At the end of each lesson, a mastery
> quiz sends the performance data back to the system, which then ranks the
> lesson based on the percentage of mastery. As a result, teachers know
> exactly how their students are doing, and the best lessons rise to the top
> of the crowd-sourcing site. The software allows for auto-grading of
> homework and automatically uploads scores to an online portal where parents
> can view their students performance. No more teachers staying up all night
> to grade assignments or surprised moms and dads at parent-teacher
> conferences!
>
> *Eventually, our goal is to attract the best talent to education. As
> curriculum crowd-sourcing gains momentum, teachers can be compensated each
> time their lesson is downloaded. How can we recruit top talent to educating
> kids K-12?...Compensate amazing teachers accordingly!
>
> If you, or anyone you know is interested in joining an ed tech start-up
> with two awesome cofounders (shameless plug), we would love to connect and
> discuss the details! Even pointing us in the right direction would be super
> helpful. Thanks!
>
> I look forward to hearing from you,
> Kylan
>
> Promo Video:
> https://www.box.com/s/h5rkfbpj3rzsnift500o
> *Download, unzip, then click on "player.html"
>
> _______________________________________________
> all-cs106-staff mailing list
> all-cs106-staff at lists.stanford.edu
> https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/all-cs106-staff
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> liberationtech mailing list
> liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu
>
> Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to:
>
> https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
>
> If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click
> above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily
> digest?"
>
> You will need the user name and password you receive from the list
> moderator in monthly reminders.
>
> Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator.
>
> Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/attachments/20120226/f0513f1b/attachment.html>