Reflection
This venture concept comes from personal experience and a deep rooted belief that learning materials should be polished. There is a toxic attitude towards resource development, that we can use anything we find and that how it looks won't affect learning. I am a strong believer that how information looks affects how information is received by the brain. In our profession, teacher-student relationships and classroom strategies are placed on a pedestal. There is a notion that "anyone can teach the content". We see this disrespect when some teachers work hard at creating professional resources while others "borrow" this work without acknowledgement. While we do work in a technology and experience driven time, let's not forget the most basic reason for our existence in a classroom. It is to teach. There is no question that the handouts we give to students affect their learning.
Strengths
I decided to go full speed ahead with a video pitch, modeled after ones seen on Kickstarter. It was so fun to direct, shoot, and edit videos; I learned a lot about media and video editing software. I think I probably used less than 1% of what Davinci Resolve had to offer, but I am pleased with how the video turned out. Having to create it made me think of what messages are truly important to convey to investors, especially with the hard cap 1 min limit.
The product concept is appealing. I joined my current school two years ago, and since then, my whole department is using documents that I've created, for entire courses. Students always take the time to tell me how easy it is to learn in my class because of how organized and accessible practice problems are. I learned to never underestimate a student's ability to reflect as one time, a shy 8th grader came up to me to thank me for organizing the parts of a cell in a table. There is definitely a desire for high quality work packages. I have seen it from students, parents, colleagues, and when I tutor.
Incorporating augmentation was my take on keeping up with technology. I have witnessed attention spans and patience with learning decrease, even in myself. Everything just needs to be instantly accessible to be worth anyone's time. The worst thing about doing practice problems is having to hunt down the key, whether it's located somewhere online, or the teacher has posted a document somewhere, or it's in the back of a book, buried in a very poorly formatted section. Though it takes 5 seconds to look one answer up, it adds up! Augmenting would provide a fix for this, especially if the app on the smartphone were to be made seamless and fast. I can imagine gliding my phone across a blank page, but on the phone, answers appear. In the near future, smart glasses and contact lenses will begin to appear and I can imagine augmentation to work seamless with that. Augmentating just the answer key would stop the product short. Another task that slows learning is the search for extra help when needed. I think students would find it useful if when they needed help, the best resource pops up.
Weaknesses
The product idea is not totally solidified in this pitch, and that is probably because it is not entirely clear in my mind either. There is so much that I want to do with it that I presented a lot of possibilities. When seeking investors, I would look for ones with experience in product design and market research. From A1, I learned that even the most successful CEO's like Zach Sims started by not knowing very much. What made him successful is that he sought professionals to increase his knowledge base. I hope with the right people at this venture's helm, the scope and brand of this venture will emerge.
It was extremely difficult to show how the product works without actually having the product. Since I cannot code at all, I could not create a prototype to show how augmented solutions and videos would look like. I had to resort to tricks of the camera and pretend footage to get the idea across. Hopefully, people are envisioning this augmentation like how cat ears appear on Instagram filters or pokemon in Pokemon Go.
There is a lack of research papers or articles to back up many of the claims in this pitch, and that is because most claims are made from my personal observations throughout my teaching career so far. Yes, I can find articles on how most students hate textbooks, but that is about it. I cannot say that the attitudes towards existing textbooks and workbooks are the same in every school, but the demand is certainly very real at the three schools that I have worked at. Though research studies are inconclusive about the effectiveness of homework, due to vastly different opinions on what homework actually is, political agendas, and the parent vs. teacher power struggle, most people would agree with the adage that practice makes perfect. Is this enough to convince investors of the need for this venture? I am not sure, making "The Need" section a weak spot in my venture pitch.
The type of venture this is, for-profit, non-profit, social, is also not set in stone. I am unsure if for-profit is the direction to go. Perhaps it is a good starting point. The technology for augmented realities is already well developed so there won't be a lot of costs associated with research and development. Most of the development centers around content creation, and once that is done, where does the venture go? Do we compete with the existing textbook giants? Can this venture idea obtain big profits, or is this more of a social enterprise? This lack of clarity is another weakness in this pitch.
This assignment has me asking more questions than providing answers to potential investors. I have learned a lot and certainly appreciate all the lessons that have come. Creating the ultimate workbook is definitely within reach and might be a side project for me in the future. I do not need funding for this first step, so we will see where this goes!
Strengths
I decided to go full speed ahead with a video pitch, modeled after ones seen on Kickstarter. It was so fun to direct, shoot, and edit videos; I learned a lot about media and video editing software. I think I probably used less than 1% of what Davinci Resolve had to offer, but I am pleased with how the video turned out. Having to create it made me think of what messages are truly important to convey to investors, especially with the hard cap 1 min limit.
The product concept is appealing. I joined my current school two years ago, and since then, my whole department is using documents that I've created, for entire courses. Students always take the time to tell me how easy it is to learn in my class because of how organized and accessible practice problems are. I learned to never underestimate a student's ability to reflect as one time, a shy 8th grader came up to me to thank me for organizing the parts of a cell in a table. There is definitely a desire for high quality work packages. I have seen it from students, parents, colleagues, and when I tutor.
Incorporating augmentation was my take on keeping up with technology. I have witnessed attention spans and patience with learning decrease, even in myself. Everything just needs to be instantly accessible to be worth anyone's time. The worst thing about doing practice problems is having to hunt down the key, whether it's located somewhere online, or the teacher has posted a document somewhere, or it's in the back of a book, buried in a very poorly formatted section. Though it takes 5 seconds to look one answer up, it adds up! Augmenting would provide a fix for this, especially if the app on the smartphone were to be made seamless and fast. I can imagine gliding my phone across a blank page, but on the phone, answers appear. In the near future, smart glasses and contact lenses will begin to appear and I can imagine augmentation to work seamless with that. Augmentating just the answer key would stop the product short. Another task that slows learning is the search for extra help when needed. I think students would find it useful if when they needed help, the best resource pops up.
Weaknesses
The product idea is not totally solidified in this pitch, and that is probably because it is not entirely clear in my mind either. There is so much that I want to do with it that I presented a lot of possibilities. When seeking investors, I would look for ones with experience in product design and market research. From A1, I learned that even the most successful CEO's like Zach Sims started by not knowing very much. What made him successful is that he sought professionals to increase his knowledge base. I hope with the right people at this venture's helm, the scope and brand of this venture will emerge.
It was extremely difficult to show how the product works without actually having the product. Since I cannot code at all, I could not create a prototype to show how augmented solutions and videos would look like. I had to resort to tricks of the camera and pretend footage to get the idea across. Hopefully, people are envisioning this augmentation like how cat ears appear on Instagram filters or pokemon in Pokemon Go.
There is a lack of research papers or articles to back up many of the claims in this pitch, and that is because most claims are made from my personal observations throughout my teaching career so far. Yes, I can find articles on how most students hate textbooks, but that is about it. I cannot say that the attitudes towards existing textbooks and workbooks are the same in every school, but the demand is certainly very real at the three schools that I have worked at. Though research studies are inconclusive about the effectiveness of homework, due to vastly different opinions on what homework actually is, political agendas, and the parent vs. teacher power struggle, most people would agree with the adage that practice makes perfect. Is this enough to convince investors of the need for this venture? I am not sure, making "The Need" section a weak spot in my venture pitch.
The type of venture this is, for-profit, non-profit, social, is also not set in stone. I am unsure if for-profit is the direction to go. Perhaps it is a good starting point. The technology for augmented realities is already well developed so there won't be a lot of costs associated with research and development. Most of the development centers around content creation, and once that is done, where does the venture go? Do we compete with the existing textbook giants? Can this venture idea obtain big profits, or is this more of a social enterprise? This lack of clarity is another weakness in this pitch.
This assignment has me asking more questions than providing answers to potential investors. I have learned a lot and certainly appreciate all the lessons that have come. Creating the ultimate workbook is definitely within reach and might be a side project for me in the future. I do not need funding for this first step, so we will see where this goes!