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Imagine K12

ycombinator.com

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Re: Imagine K12

#61

Post by MrTurner »

SHORT COMMENT: Hey hackernews, I'm a teacher/hustler looking for a technical co-founder. Let's build something together. Apply for this program. And worst case scenario, we don't get in but we have a kick@ss product we can sell to school systems.

EXPANDED COMMENT:I'm a long time reader of hackernews and I have never left a comment. But this was the push over the edge.

I am a math teacher in an urban school. Before that I ran a (very non-tech) business, and before that I was a business analyst (read documentation nerd) for the mobile technology division in a very large bank.

I have been telling everyone that will listen that we can save public education and make a bunch of money through innovation. All of our technology, frankly, sucks when compared to similar wares that are sold directly to consumers.

I am bursting with ideas and some I have already tested. But I can no longer work in a vacuum.

So like dating ads of yesterday here is my pitch-

Me: Undaunted math teacher in an urban school with 2 years of experience. Using data driven instruction my students achieved the highest passing rate in my school system. While I can't hack (YET!) I can sell water to a whale and snow to an Eskimo. More importantly I can take complex systems and teach them to almost anyone. I have rewritten documentation for our 3 most popular programs in my systems and I hold monthly workshops for other teachers where I teach them how to use the technology in their classroom. Plus I understand teachers and I have experience in market research. And did I mention, I am a fearless hustler?

You: A) Want to change the face of education. B) Build stuff.

So let's do like voltron. Team up. Build something amazing. And if ImagineK12 doesn't want us, lets keep moving forward and kick down our own doors.

Mr. Turner

P.S. You can reach me at BRODERICK dot TURNER at GMAIL dot COM

P.P.S. Last year my school system's revenue was 662 Million Dollars. The money is there.

P.P.P.S. A list of companies whose lunch we could eat with a good enough product and A WHOLE LOT OF HUSTLE=

CARNEGIE LEARNING

PROMETHEAN

INFINITE CAMPUS

QWIZDOM

Re: Imagine K12

#63

Post by BenSS »

mkramlich wrote: post #43
mkramlich wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> -Layer upon layer of bureaucracy (states, counties, districts, individual school administrators) damage. route around it > -Teachers that are reluctant to adopt new technology damage. route around it > -Students that are difficult to motivate damage. route around it i am serious

harsh. i thought i was giving wise advice.

Bit harsh, but 'route around it' isn't too helpful. How?

Re: Imagine K12

#64

Post by Symmetry »

ern wrote: post #60
chrismanfrank wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company is tackling the tutoring component. We think with free content like the KhanAcademy, the only thing missing is personalized help when you get stuck. We're launching a summer program where K-12 students can work with tutors from Stanford via Skype. The tutor will be like a coach, though, most of the instruction will be from Khan Academy videos. What do you think? We're at IgnitionTutoring.com

Have you had to work around Khan Academy's CC noncommercial license?

Khan Academy would presumably we willing to permit this for a relatively small amount of money.

Re: Imagine K12

#65

Post by Symmetry »

gte910h wrote: post #19
maxharris wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have an absolute right to something that requires someone else to provide a service for you (remember that rights are inalienable, so you have them no matter how much money you have .) Such an obligation would essentially make the provider a slave to some extent (this effect can be very small for a given person, but the principle is the same: if you have to do something you don't need or want to do otherwis…

>You can't have an absolute right to something that requires someone else to provide a service for you Like a lawyer? Pretty sure I have a right to one of them when charged with a crime. I understand to go with the clean logic of Ayn Rand's definitely of rights and everything, but that doesn't mean it fits all situations of the word right. Positive rights have some traction and serve a useful purpose too, even though…

But notice, the lawyer in question is hoping to make money off of representing you. As far as I can tell its always far better if the government collects taxes fairly from the entire population and pays some people to solve a problem, than either waiting passively for people of pure heart to fix the problem or arbitrarily forcing some particular group to solve it.

Re: Imagine K12

#66

Post by oscilloscope »

scottshapiro wrote: post #50

This is fantastic. But we also need a breakthrough in K-12 tech adoption. n=1: my girlfriend is a math teacher at a better district in California. The only technology they provide her is a desktop with Windows 98. So she uses her own mac to admin a tumblog filled with photos of assignments and answers to problems she uploads from her iphone. She uploads PDF's to google docs and 'shares with everyone'. She links to Kh…

Many friendly Linux User Group members volunteer to install and administer Ubuntu at public schools in the Bay Area. Ubuntu's a decent experience even with 256MB of ram, so schools can even reuse those 8-12 year old computers.

Free software's great for all kinds of technical, practical and cultural reasons. It's existed my whole life, but I didn't really feel its presence until using Debian in a research lab 4 years ago.

We don't all need to be RMS, but it's a worthy thing to think about for anyone who makes a living off free software.

Re: Imagine K12

#68

Post by krakensden »

maxharris wrote: post #55
krakensden wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either that, or it would become more like the private airplane market- totally inaccessible.

Legal representation can't be totally inaccessible unless the justice system removes the right to trials altogether. Representing yourself in court is possible, at least to some extent,^ and it doesn't require hardware like flying does. (Incidentally, this is also why it's a good thing to have libraries in prisons - the innocent can use them to learn more and help exonerate themselves.) ^I know that it's a very poor…

It's an interesting topic though :).

I concede the point that it can't be totally inaccessible, but the it seems like farmers with hunting rifles going after professional soldiers. Sure, sometimes it works out or you get lucky, but that's not the norm.

Although come to think of it, the public defender situation isn't much better, is it.

Re: Imagine K12

#69

Post by ericdobbs »

Computing should be enabling us to start teaching physics and calculus and linear algebra (among other advanced subjects) in elmentary school. When I suggest such things to educators they look at me like I'm insane. But the future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed.

In 1967 Seymore Papert was introducing elementary aged kids to LOGO. The turtle graphics in logo are differential geometry -- very advanced mathematics made completely accessible to young children. Papert's work in LOGO inspired Alan Kay and his colleagues to invent most of what we recognize in a modern computer: mice, GUIs, object-oriented programming. Kay's recent work to make computing accessable to children includes fifth-graders recreating Galileo's experiments and then building computer models of gravity to compare with their experimental data, then going on to apply their gravitational models to a simple computer game. That's physics -- newtonian mechanics to be specific -- made accessible to grade schoolers.

Here's his TED talk from 2007. Skip ahead to 9 minutes 30 seconds and watch the next 9 minutes of juicy educational ideas: http://www.ted.com/talks/alan_kay_shares_a_powerful_idea_abo...

Think about it. Fourty four years after Papert gave elementary kids a tool to understand and experiment with differential geometry, we still don't see even LOGO among educational standards, or any programming tools. The culture of education has not recognized what a huge leap turtle graphics are for teaching mathematics. In the late 1970s Apple II computers poured into many schools and LOGO became widely available in education. But those thirty plus years ago a bunch of adults saw some pretty pictures, shrugged, and ignored it as child's play instead of recognizing it for the little revolution it really could be.

Moreover, Alan Kay and company have been actively pursuing educational technology for four decades and still no traction for computing in education. Four decades by the people who brought you OOP.

Education is a big mountain to move. I'd very much love to be proved wrong, though.

Re: Imagine K12

#70

Post by jtheory »

timsally wrote: post #58
patio11 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

School districts have the sales cycles of Fortune 500 megacorps, the technical savvy of convents, and the budgets of hair salons.

As a general rule this is true. However in my experience there is a segment of this market in the US that is extremely lucrative; essentially the top X% of public high schools. These schools are private for all intents and purposes, as most of their budget comes from property taxes. These schools have massive budgets that approach $100 million, extraordinarily qualified and perceptive teachers, and a community that i…

I've been running a project targeted primarily at schools for about 8 years now (emusictheory.com), and I know this market exists (I attended a rich public school, actually), but I also have no idea how to target them without cutting out many of the public school teachers that have been my supporters over the years.

Can anyone point me to good writeups of how to build pricing to target the big players while still letting in the little guys? My pricing is currently too low (I know, I know), and I have some teachers who tell me to charge whatever, it's no problem, and others who it takes them 4 months to manage to push through a purchase order for $150 (and the school takes months to pay the invoice....).

I've been thinking about making an "enterprise"-level subscription that includes setting up the school's own mini-site on a subdomain, but I'm not sure what else I can offer to make the pricing jump seem non-ridiculous.

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