Live Blogging LAUNCH Education & Kids - Day Two
[ Kicking off day two is Global Imagination -- check out that awesome Magic Planet globe. ]
Thirty-one amazing education/kid startups launched or launched new products on stage at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View June 12 & 13, 2012. Check here for all the action on Day Two and go here for Day One.
Event details at launchedu.co.
Spreadsheet of all presenting companies here and our photos here.
6:09pm: WINNERS
Diamond in the rough award (Gigi award, first given at LAUNCH '12): ManyLabs
Best International: Tipitap
Best Design: Timbuktu Labs
Best Technology: LearnStreet
Best Presentation: JoyTunes
Audience favorite: Nearpod
Best Overall 1.0: Penyo Pal
Best Overall 2.0: Launchpad Toys
BREAK
5:58pm: What did people like?
Answer: Jason's questions
Answer: Focus led to better caliber of companies.
Answer: Good job of judges realizing people in early stage and give encouragement and good feedback. [ Jason explains our judge selection -- have to be vetted, not just anyone. ]
Answer: Great to have students and teachers in the audience to keep the companies honest.
Answer: Making focused event like LAUNCH Festival, adding more VCs and angels, partnerships with CIOs of districts.
Answer: Get more teachers for real. Teacher judging for real. Not this time of year. When you put sessions together, by what they are about.
Jason: wants more teachers next year for sure [yes, we did reach out to Teach For America ].
4:58pm: Session 6 discussion with judges
Jon: Favorite was InstaEDU, hits home where I am. The market for disrupting the traditional lecture, we're putting learning in hands, instant access.
Jason: If home-schooling, you could give them $500 a week [for this.]
Jon: Voxy right behind it.
Sundeep: InstaEDU Uber of education, second was Voxy as well.
Drew: Things ManyLabs doing very interesting. Voxy looks hot.
Wesley: InstaEDU first choice and then tie between Voxy and BloomBoard.
Liz: InstaEDU. Upon reflection, interested to see distinguish themselves.
4:54pm: Q&A Welcome to College
Liz: How long would user be on the site?
Justin: Process starts in sophomore year. Junior and senior year most important. Two-year window for engaged audience.
Wesley: What are you trying to solve?
Justin: Niche product focused on visit solely. No one focuses on the most important piece, the visit.
Jason: Feels like this is built for colleges and not students.
Wesley: For colleges useless unless students want to use it. Helping them manage factors. If student is core customer, how to build something that fundamental helps them.
Drew: All that data is grate, but trying to provide that nuance of why chose, way more valuable.
Wesley: Thing that helped me was people going through same process. But Princeton Review Board is really your competitor Having community is huge driver.
Jon: We look at college products all the time.
Jason: How do they pay?
Justin: SaaS.
Jason: Has that informed your product packaging, given extra marketing to those schools?
Justin: Yes.
4:52pm: Decision time - but now other universities need to know why they didn't get chosen. Those schools have dashboard to track how students are rating them. Get real-time data they can download in Excel, compare themselves to other institutions.
4:50pm: Pre-visit: Reads comments from users and school's responses. Sees comments about food in the area, starts checking out pizza places around campus, finds place to stay. Rates his experience once he goes there. Did the rating on mobile app, such as impression of the campus tour, facilities, academics. 
4:48pm: Welcome to Welcome to College. Justin introduces student who needs to decide where to go to college. Going to campus big part of decision. Student dashboard, sees upcoming visit to University, news feed of what others saying about other schools. His top schools are on the left.
4:41pm: Q&A LearningJar
Sundeep: don't you need paid subscription for Lynda?
Ritu: You do.
Liz: Directory of other content?
Ritu: We direct them. get badge, automatically comes into LearningJar.
Liz: Is it that hard to find content?
Ritu: Right now if you look at content, 10 companies provide tutorials on designing logos. Hard to fund best resource, that;s what doing in LearningJar.
Wesley: where is business here?
Ritu: The job market. Now that have data on informal skills take back to corps.
Wesley: Talked to recruiters, corps about this?
Ritu: Talked to Google HR among others, told us looking at other resources to find best candidates.
Wesley: Are candidates ones Google would hire?
Ritu: Most candidates are the self-motivated learners. They are the type of people Google hires. Just launched closed beta, 2k on site, not yet circled back with Google and showed them who's on there.
Drew: Seems to me value for companies is some kind of checks and balances.
Jason: How do you know they did it?
Ritu: Why we have portfolio view and challenge view.
Jason: What hearing, opportunity to take more time to prove you have skills. I might pay you to certify that I am good.
Ritu: looking into best credentialing.
Wesley: Focus in markets where hiring tough.
Jason: Have oDesk functionality? Walk through what they are doing and why?
Ritu: We are in talks with oDesk.
Sundeep: I would want a way to verify. We do coding tasks and look through portfolio.
Jon: Wrestle with how you show mastery. Might ask to replicate it.
Jason: But filtering process.
4:40pm: LESSONS: 1) people want skills, not courses. Also talked to partners and they said people come to their sources and don't finish courses. 2) Bieber has self-taught skills, kids learning from outside sources, need a place to prove it.
4:39pm: Market for this - 12.8m reskilling. Have great partners - Adobe, O'reilly, Lynda, Hubspot.
4:37pm: Puts the logo he designed on LearningJar, whole community can see it. Ask community, not feel alone while learning. See skills in progress. See he has market research background. Matt shares outside LearninJar -- see it on LinkedIn. Matt gets job of dreams.
4:35pm: Welcome LearningJar. Ritu introduces Matt who needs to reskill and get tech job. LearningJar - find subject matter experts, prove he is learning them and share with potential employers. Today, launching new design. Anyone can learn to design logo for free on LearningJar, partnership with Lynda.com. Assume Matt has watched video. Curric takes 3 hours, takes on challenge fro Lynda to prove he has learned.
4:29pm: Q&A BloomBoard
Drew: Teachers have lots of things to work on.
Jason BB: High quality programs, the more you can chunk out goals, that's the best way to retain them.
Drew: You record all data so you can replicate for another teacher, okay.
Wesley: Glad you're addressing. Simplicity matters. I see a lot of work on state-mandated checklists. Unclear how you would do that. How would simplify?
Jason C: And why does it feel complex?
Jason BloomBoard: Managing for complexity and breaking down prof in way that is skills based.
Wesley: For state or for teachers? Need to choose.
Jon: I love BloomBoard, incredibly simple to use. What you solved is that prof development done at district level, they don;t choose what they get. Rarely what you need. Who pays for it?
Jason BB: Request to give credits to each account, $100 so they purchase own thing and charge back to school.
Jason: each video $100?
Jason BB: Individual or packaged. Thousands of contractors.
Jason: Cost to put teachers through this?
Jason BB: $1000 per teacher per year. Wow, didn't know that.
Sundeep: Thinking about 15Five from other conference, their model is simple, might want to look at it. Notion of teacher has no time. SHould be 5 minutes.
4:28pm: LESSONS. 1) Compliance rules. Ed system, K12 hard. We give away the tools for free to districts and states so they can do fed mandated. Signed contract with state of Colorado a few weeks ago. We have distribution to every teacher in CO. 2) FOllow the money. We know districts have professional development budget.
4:24pm: Signs into system. First thing is personal learning plan. Add a goal, areas for growth and strengths. We give away federally mandated teacher observation tools. Now has uality convo with her principal. She can see recs from providers -- videos, docs, book chapters that support her on this journey. She thinks video will help. Plugged her into marketplace, recs are like Amazon, will include ratings and reviews soon. She adds video to her goal, goes back to goal page -- has playlist item. Video has close-captioned time stamping. She highlights great moments.
4:23pm: Welcome BloomBoard. Jason says professional development broken. His best teacher struggled early on, had to peak in other classrooms to learn. Nothing has changed. Launching marketplace: find resources from different providers.
4:18pm: Q&A Voxy.
Liz: You guys seem very far along and raised a bunhc of funding.
Paul: $8M.
Liz: I really like the mobile in the moment learning, super compelling, since language need to learn in context.
Paul: Yes, experiential.
Wesley: Hyper-competitive. I get pitched a lot. Walk through top competitors.
Paul: A lot o competition, A billion learning, consumer market is $80B. We think highly diff base don mobile first model. Rosetta Stone has respectable. OpenEnglish having success in LatAm, traditional LMS, course-ebased lesson. Mindsnacks takes totally diff approach - optimize how learn vocal sets than how communicate.
Wesley: Challenge is customer acquisition. What do you need to do to win market?
Paul: All growth organic until unit economic model is 3 or 4 over CPA.
Wesley: Paying now?
Paul: Testing pricing a lot. $9.99 a month, strong retention.
Sundeep: Great product.
Paul: License lyrics for sure, but if they bought song we don't have to. We had to get global license to get all lyrics. Didn't know anything until a few months ago.
4:17pm: LESSONS. Leverage direct to consumer market and mobile to scale in developing countries. Put money into CPC get us to #1 rated education app around the world, provided growth at low cost. Lesson 2: Learners want ROI on what they are investing. Spent a lot of time on efficacy of product in term gives them ROI.
4:16pm: Skype tutoring -- premium offering. Speak with live English speaker for 10 to 30 minutes from her phone.
4:15pm: Launching music feature - learn from music inside her phone. Powerful for learning second language. Very cathy. Dense in English idiom, things can;t learn in book. Encourages speaking.
4:14pm: Gabriela loves topic news from Bloomberg. Nadal winning French Open or Zynga stock being down, learn vocab, idiom, reading comprehension, pronunciation in context. Save her pronunciation. Everything scored so see over time her progression and strengths/weaknesses.
4:12pm. Welcome Voxy. Paul introduces Gabriela, who's studying English and an ad exec who needs to pitch Nike in English. Voxy only one that works to help her learn English. Seamlessly integrates into her world, all mobile. Uses fresh content, personalized. Unique among 1.5m users.
4:04pm: Q&A ManyLabs
Peter: Focused on the software, look at data and share data and have general purpose tools can adapt to own lesson plans and provide lesson material.
Liz: onus on teacher?
Peter: We have these lessons so far and tools so you have prepackaged. Can make own.
Wesley: What is business?
Peter: Freemium set up. Tools are free. The content setting up marketplace. The curriculum is valuable part. Lessons tailored to state standard would pay for.
Wesley: pay how much?
Peter: A few dollars for a lesson.
Jason: seems underpriced.
Peter: Idea this is one activity, you might use 50.
Jon: How am I hooking up my classroom with those sensors?
Peter: We sell kits of sensors and idea is that it's open standard we're using so they can be affordable. Looking at cheapest we can find, using old phones.
Jason: Sensors cost how much?
Peter: $2 to $200.
Jason: What is most and on budget?
Peter: Full environmental for water is $600.
Jason: you say like it's a lot of money.
Drew: Packaging going to be key for you guys.
Peter: First time talking publicly. Want to find teachers.
Jason: Already on Kickstarter?
Peter: One possible venue to make real.
Drew: Ramifications for science all over the world. Kids all over water testers..
Peter: Initially, state scientists skeptical but once they saw they could get meaningful data, they loved it.
Jason: Seems to me pro version is 1k out there going into wikipedia repository for discussion or early-warning system. Huge parading shift.
Peter: Haven't gathered own data, preparing everyone to be better members of data-driven society.
Liz: Remind me of project called Backyard Brain. Class of hands-on teams that could take on the world?
Peter: Make magazine and those working on making and hacking into classrooms. It needs to be packaged up. Teachers don't have time. Spend time on hacking, too tired to do science.
Jon: Triggered some interesting thinking. A lot of ways to do science lab, hardest part is around the world, pretty powerful.
4:03pm: LESSONS. Friendly devices. Students built initial devices that looked like bombs. Good ed experience but not what trying to teach. Devices need to be friendly, so community is comfortable, teachers comfortable -- they want something easy, no soldering and electronics.
2) Standards for science are changing -- emphasize hands-on learning. Time is right for this approach.
4:01pm: Student is doing college-level science in middle school because engaging. Also learns pitfalls -- conflicting measurements, privacy, data ethics. Teachers want to teach this material. School in Minnesota takes water into lab, they should take lab to the water.
3:58pm: Welcome ManyLabs. Peter shows New Jesey community that wants to understand pollution. Need to measure it. Old smartphones cheap, sensor price coming down, put them together. He has water samples from 3 different places in the area.
Pretend Elliot is middle-school student testing water samples. Records temperature, oxygen level. Now loads up data in browser. Higher salinity in ocean water, makes sense. What is the relationship to weather? Loads in time series, does scatter plot, histogram. Now looks at map view, samples from around the Bay Area. Sees how relates in space and time, discusses with students at other schools. Math and science are social activities.
3:51pm: Q&A InstaEDU
Sundeep: cost?
Alison:
First 10 minutes free, 50 cents after that
Q: How long average session:
Alison: Right now 20 minutes, as short as 3 min and as long as 1.5 hours.
Liz: How make sure reliable?
Alison: application process, history, all have to be students at top 25 universities. Student rates tutor. Public beta launch two weeks ago. Feature will get smarter.
Liz: Kicked out?
Alison: No issues to date.
Jason: Harvard?
ALison: Top 25 plus Oxford and Cambridge. Plenty of smart tutors at other colleges, eventually add those
Sundeep: what kind of dollars they make?
Alison: $20 an hour.
Jason: Is that too cheap?
Alison: On-campus job is $10 or $11 hour. Easy time recruiting.
Jon: What kind of content uploaded?
Alison: That was a jpg or png. Upload docs, images, you can draw shapes and lines. We're still working out kinks, eventually anything working on.
Wesley: Targeting?
Alison: Serving academic and high school market. Eventually reaching out to mom community. Find exciting -- boom in self-directed learning. Can't raise hand in lecture, go to office hours if taking MIT class with 50k people.
Jon: Found market for school-based classroom?
Alison: Have had a few ask us, talking with charter school. After school too many kids asking questions, might use to lighten teacher load, exposes kids to Yale and Columbia students.
Drew: Able to record?
Alison: No, but on our radar.
Drew: Could charge for too.
Jason: But if you know how to use quicktime, you could do screen record.
Jason: How long in market?
Alison: Public beta two weeks, private alpha for 3 months before that.
Jason: Facebook ads?
Alison: Not super-effective for us.
Jason: Google search.
Alison: Yes, SEO. Tens of thousands searches for algebra help, physics help.
Q from audience, teacher Jack Wes: Have walled garden of tutoring in school and make it fundraiser?
Alison: Something we could look at.
3:50pm: LESSONS. 1) Start small. Had in-home tutoring company, paid developer $600 for first site and hired 14 students from Stanford. Learned where needs were in the market. Gave us money to build team before raising. 2) Quality in online education making a comeback. Possible to have high-quality and lower the cost.
3:48pm: We're not going to subject Anne to big screen. Do want you to see new workgroup. Connect over video chat with tutor, uploads homework assignment. They can look at it and draw on it together. Six months ago, student would have gone to bed, now going to learn how to solve the problem. Probably should have planned ahead, but not all students do that. Working on features for more proactive students.
3:46pm: Welcome InstaEDU. Alison introduces us to student who needs geometry help late at night. Connects him with tutors at top universities. He says what he needs, gets connected with tutor who is online and available at that moment -- within a minute. Tutor is math major at Harvard.
BREAK
3:16pm: Session 5 discussion with judges
Liz: For me what was stood out was testimonials. Meant a lot to me that Jon said we use Gradecam and love it. Same thing, testimonial for TestMax. testmax #1 and Gradecam 2.
Wesley: All great companies. What is huge market? Gradecam outside teachers. I really do like Motion Math.
Drew: Motion Math, esp if designing games around features Apple releasing. Gradecam really impressive.
Sundeep: TestMax my first and seems it's done well. And Gradecam as well, like doing something with iPad.
Jon: Motion Math really interesting. My daughter plays with iPad constantly. Want her to be doing this. TestMax most interesting for me, could see being disruptive in different way.
Sundeep: Motion Math guys advice -- push one button and change all colors [ Jacob says win a level to do that. ]
3:13pm: Q&A Motion Math
Sundeep: how do you decide which games, differentiate?
Jacob: all our games featured by Apple. Blog recommend quality ones. We put time in art and design to make them stand out.
Sundeep: opp beyond that to create marketplace?
JAcob: Yes, lots out there trying to be Pandora.
Wesley: Problem with app differentiation.
Jacob: Education games different from other games. WE've seen more steady sales.
Drew: Doing anything, any paltform plays to bridge app to app?
Jacob: We found by focusing on number sense, our games reach from 4 yo to middle schoolers. We are able to have apps grow w/kid over time. Plans to integrate and show learning path.
Liz: Why are you better?
Jacob: Showing conceptual knowledge, not just digital flashcards.
Liz: iPad out for not long -- is everyone going to have one of these?
Jacob: Revolutionary for young kids. I don;t know if iPad but think tablet and touchscren for younger kids here to stay. Opps to redesign learning.
3:11pm: Lesson: Clarify your learning goal. Announcing: Reached 1m downloads of all games, this summer new game for kids 2 to 6. Prequel to fish game. Show for first time -- Hungry Guppy. For 2-year-olds, using dots not numbers. Fish wants to eat 2 dots. Misconception need to know numbers to understand addition, not true.
3:06pm: Welcome Motion Math. Jacob asks: Raise hand if kids play video games and then if you want kids to do well in math. We make math more engaging and more fun. Shows Hungry Fish. Touch screen allows new interactions. Fish only eats 12s -- 9 and 3 bubbles together and then fish will eat the 12.
Wings - tilt-based game. Tilt back and forth, fly to what is more. Interaction with accelerometer. We want to make it more visual, interactive -- grid that shows what 10x7 means. Also "5 groups of 3" versus 21 - which is more?
Motion Math Zoom - find where a number belongs on the number line. He drops the 20 between 19 and 21, frog ribbits. Larger numbers then you count by dogs, rhinos and dinosaurs (thousands).
3pm: Q&A Educreations
Jason: Post to youtube?
Wade: Not yet
Liz: Nothing looked like Khan two years ago. What is so great about that medium?
Wade: end of day about communication. Something about own teacher, another teacher can't compete with.
Jason: She's referring to doing voice over content lessons.
Wade: Personalized learning the goal. this is one way to get there. Adaptive has promise, looking at that as well.
Wesley: Seen 3 or 4 people creating iPad video lessons. Nice thing about Khan, great analytics. Can see where students struggling. Do you have any of those features?
Wade: That's all in our plans, for now focused on content creation.
Wesley: Point that is super competitive. How will your product stand out?
Wade: Ours is the top-ranked, other part is providing best community.
Jason: Why host lessons yourself? Might have 170k on YouTube. Google ranks based on whether own proerpty or not, that;s a joke.
Wade: We're looking at that.
Wade: We have custom search. 30 kids watching YT, bog down T1, a lot more kids can watch video same time on ours.
Audience Q: student creation coming?
Wade: We figures students would use but no idea the extent. Scrambling a bit to support that use case. Excited about stuff students making.
Drew: How are you paying bills?
Wade: Our model predicated on footprint and building large audience. Options down the road come into play -- tutoring, data, premium.
Drew: Downloads?
Wade: hundreds of thousands.
Jon: Track who is watching?
Wade: If user authenticates when logging in. Right now tool for single teacher, next step is directory. Big plans there.
2:58pm: Students outside Chris's classroom have discovered his videos, teaching beyond his class. LESSONS: 1) platform matters. Cool product for interactive whiteboard didn't work, but on iPad made incredible difference. Users finding their whiteboard because of the app. 2) students love video lessons. Watch own teacher, rewind and watch is very comforting. Lots of data to support this.
2:55pm: Welcome Educreations. Wade introduces Chris, real teacher. Using Educreations, he records short video tutorials where students can replay as needed. Bring in image of atom into his whiteboard. Uses drawing tools to mark it up. Uses text tool to label things. when he adds text, the recording automatically stops, no post-production. Presses save, goes through and chooses who can see it, and assigns it category/subject. Students notified by email.
2:49pm: Q&A TestMax
Jason: Seems like you priced at point where Barbri customer, might as well have that as backup.
Mehran: We don't recommend students use two courses. Brabri overwhelms students. Phrasing things even differently.
SUndeep: think what thing doing is right. Challenge you - some way around offering $300 to Apple?
Mehran: Now as growing, moving to Barbri model -- sign up outside store and give app for free.
Jason: Sundeep, do you think ever going to change that [30% share]?
Sundeep: Looks like trying to get hands in more stuff. Tax they are going to put on everyone. Apple announced they have 545M credit cards on file. Challenge is if move off that model won't get as many [conversions].
Drew: Think web component that synch back to mobile…
Mehran: Absolutely. Loaded on Udemy. So many online test prep companies already, new medium of mobile chance to diff ourselves.
Sundeep: how students finding out?
Mehran: WOM key right now.
Sundeep: Apple has enterprise app store. You could partner with law firms and law firms deposit money in that program. The firm could offer as part of service.
Mehran: Absolutely, first had to establish credibility.
Liz: Do you change course form year to year? Stealing it?
Mehran: Yes, updating all the time. We don't worry about that right now.
Jason: Mentioned 40% better efficacy, how do you know that, prove in replicable way?
Mehran: Backed our way into stats -- Barbri prepared almost 100% and 50% pass rate, we have 70% pass rate.
2:46pm: LESSONS. Provide real value. Mission not to create cheaper but better bar experience. Unlimited phone and email support. Their success our success. Word of mouth invaluable in education space. 2) You can compete with anyone. Everyone thought other test prep for bar exam untouchable. Only 3 weeks after launched, they expanded offering and 10 months after that, parent company put it up for sale.
2:45pm: Just released LSAT prep app. Like BarMax, content from Harvard Law alumni. Partnered with Microsoft for SATMax, giving away free in WIndows 8 store this summer.
2:42pm: Welcome TestMax. Mehran introduces Jacob who just finished law school. But only 5/10 pass bar. BarMax product - iPad app that is $1k, 1/4 of traditional prep. Their pass rate is 7/10.
2:37pm: Q&A Testive
Q: What about essay?
Miro: Product just focuses on part that is ⅚ of grade.
Q: Where does content come from?
Miro: We licensed it.
Wesley: Your competition online?
Miro: Developed market people pay for already. Bigger competition from books, already low cost and declining cost of private tutors.
Jason: Why price going down for tutors?
Miro: Stanley Kaplan got kids to tell him questions. Now [testing boards] license content.
Liz: Making money now?
Miro: Yes, white-label products. Kaplan has as white-label.
Liz: How you got that deal?
Miro: we provided product for them that let them assess quickly [paraphrase].
Miro asks Kaizen - five minutes at bus stop, Angry Birds or test prep? She says Angry Birds. Capturing snackable times tough.
Jon: how quickly adapts?
Miro: 5 questions at end of ability level per section. I can predict your SAT Math score in 15 questions.
Drew: How did you decide on lockout?
Miro: Over 10k hours on classroom assistance. Change came when they decided to do each day. We are spending momentum on getting them to come back, that;s what we;ve seen increase scores.
Wesley: Who is this not for?
Miro: Segment of people with money will opt for high-end tutors. And then there's group of people who don't take SAT, not good for them.
Wesley: Who do you disrupt?
Miro: We expect some people trading up from books.
Wesley: how do you get them?
Miro: Through core influencers in college process. Team Life, reach out to guidance counselors.
2:35pm: Lesson: Scores suck. We turned scoring into mastery, kids see progress but not scored.. Teachers not good proxies for students. We took out the instructions, teachers want it but kids don't use it.
2:34pm: Now she connects with Facebook. After commitment, kick you out. Kaizen, kicking you out. We use energy and momentum and channel it into good skills like making a habit out of studying. The students who do better put a little bit of time every day. Why we call product SAT Habit.
2:31pm: Welcome Testive. Tests make students feel like crap. Miro invites girl up to do math on stage. Kaizen is 9th grade and taken SATs. She did well. Unlike regular prep, Testive starts with set of easy commitments. Start with 3 questions a day. He helps her out and gives her answer. One thing Testive does, hit button and magic happens. Next question chosen adaptively. Right at the edge of your difficulty level. Gets answer wrong, "learning drawer" pops out -- 3-min video explains how to get right. She says 3 minutes not too bad.
2:25pm: Q&A Gradecam
Wesley: How much charging for it?
Rich: [need to fill in prices ]
Wesley: pricing too low?
Rich: consideration. Want to get in hands of every teacher.
Liz: Half a million users -- teachers?
Rich: Students. 10k on Gradecam Insight.
Liz: Name corresponds to what you do, other things hope to do?
Rich: Don't want to move to handwriting recognition just yet. A lot of other things this works for. Eliminates data entry for rubrics where teacher bubbling in score.
Jon Deane, CTO for a school district: Avid Gradecam lover. One of reasons we switched our SIS was because Gradecam on it.
Sundeep: What is difference in pricing between Scan-tron and this?
RIch: Teacher rold me spent $10k on Scan-tron forms and next year $2k on Gradecam plus time saving.
Drew: Error rate?
Rich: Extremely low, pops up if not sure - wha do you think>
Wesley: If every school using, how much making?
Rich: Could be $50m a year in that range. Our assessment product does less than what partners do. When license they [package it.]
Jason: For VCs, that's nice but I think they'd want to hear the billion-dollar vision.
Rich: We build out Insight to do more. Assessment realm, compete with big companies out there, our solution could do things.
Jason: Make questions?
Rich: Analytics administrators looking for to make decisions.
2:24pm: Lesson 2: Opportunities driven by market pressure, not classroom needs. Because this eliminate hardware, means loss of revenue for company selling hardware. Once someone did it, another had to in order to remain competitve. Took awhile to break that barrier. [mentions iPad app coming]
2:22pm: Lesson: Teacher and administrators have different needs. Very teacher-focused product, administrators hold purse strings, needed features for them to purchase it for the teachers. Inexpensive compared to Scan-tron. Another feature - can scan benchmark exams, as teacher scans classroom, administrator can see how classes are doing. This teacher needs to talk to that teacher.
2:21pm: Works with any gradebook app. I'm using LearnBoost, scores transfer instantly from Gradecam to LearnBoost. Launched in Feb 2012, about 10k using it. We license our tech - MasteryConnect, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.2:18pm: Welcome Gradecam. Rich -- this is my mother, a teacher overwhelmed with papers to grade. Print out forms before class, asks during class, what is a narrative quiz. Kid answers, she assumed they knew and went on. End of lesson, she wrote multiple choice questions on board, created a new assignment. Gradecam read all scores into gradebook. Students brought up to computer and as quickly as in front of camera, each assignment scored. End of that quiz, she analyzed items. Only 33% understood narrative poem. You have 3-day period to reteach info, otherwise moment has passed.
2:18pm: Welcome Gradecam. Rich -- this is my mother, a teacher overwhelmed with papers to grade. Print out forms before class, asks during class, what is a narrative quiz. Kid answers, she assumed they knew and went on. End of lesson, she wrote multiple choice questions on board, created a new assignment. Gradecam read all scores into gradebook. Students brought up to computer and as quickly as in front of camera, each assignment scored. End of that quiz, she analyzed items. Only 33% understood narrative poem. You have 3-day period to reteach info, otherwise moment has passed.
2:17pm: Jason intros afternoon judges: Liz Gannes of All Things D, Drew Olanoff of The Next Web, Wesley Chan of Google Ventures, Sundeep Madra of Xtreme Labs and Jon Deane of Summit Public Schools.
2:08pm: Jason - questions from teachers or kids for Nolan
Q: How do you ID which kid should go to college?
Nolan: not for me to decide. What would be a cool thing to do. Earn $80k working for DreamWorks or finish high school? Kind of questions kids should be able to ask. Germany graduates 20% of kids we do but they have cool apprentice program. Here you have to outsoruce complex machinery -- those are good mannual skills that create a lot of training and the nation needs them. Someone learning paleontology to become cab driver.
Q: How do you keep interest in game? I just click button and don't learn.
Nolan: Won't be able to do that with ours. Trust me, all done by wizard behind the curtain, never let you see the wizard but it works really well. Wikipedia to check something, BrainRush when you want to learn.
Q: Mario, founder of startup - think it's great. One thing wondering, came from Marshall Tuck's talk. tools serve everybody, particularly the kids most at risk. How do you make your tool accessible to those with visual impairment, etc?
Nolan: Autism, ADHD, love our shit -- oops. I trained my children to appreciate profanity. Turns out we are good at one-sigma kids, also good at two and three sigma kids with learning disabilities. When it comes to things like physical handicaps, we think we can adapt to it. [turned off typing for kindergarten kids]
Q: Elisa, founder of BE: have you considered doing pay-for-value for students so they can tackle college loan debt?
Nolan: Yeah, I like the idea for some kids to be able to reward them. Whether for kill or new pair of Nike's or iPad or trip to Chuck E. Cheese -- going to be doing a lot of testing on that. We can do all kinds of stuff. What time of day was it? Do you learn faster in the morning, if you ahd high-protein breakfast? We think we can answer more than all research before. Then we can tune you and you'll be learning and happy.
Q: Ritu, LearningJar founder: Resonate with all your messages. Badges concept -- you said people moving from credentials to merit. Certifications to badges -- thought about that?
Nolan: A lot of times badges and recognition are doing the wrong things. Motivating the motivated and demotivating the unmotivated. Our system, we believe in stealtjh scholarship, compete against yourself and not others. To extent that badges your private domain and we will be doing a bunch of that (histograms), not going to be able to brag about. Let everyone be their personal best, that's the final analysis of what we want to do. maximize capability of individual. Want them to be really good at something they are passionate about.
2:07pm: Jason: Thoughts on paying students for completing material? Something President Nolan would do?
Nolan: I like God better. [Jason says God King.}
Nolan: What I really believe: all kids are different. If giving dollar for homework to kid from Beverly Hills, not very effective. Credits to new pair of Nikes to son of single mother in Compton, get whole different thing. Give a lot of tickets to kids when eating pizza, they love the hell out of it.
2:05pm: Jason: Even if just got that much done, leave more time for teachers.
Nolan: Bingo.
Jason: Only pay when kids has learned.
Nolan: Believe trends happening that are inescapable. Don't pay for trying or anything else. If vendor not willing to pay for results, won't get business. Remodel thinking about efficacy. Don't care how pretty. If not effective, you will fail. Cna't fool all people all the time. Have to find reality -- not learning enough for money spent.
2:03pm: Jason -- this is great for memorization. Criticism, how do you teach something complex?
Nolan: much like software, we can building block to pretty high level things that you think are rote memory.
Jason: example.
Nolan: Take too long to explain, don't want to go there. First step, get the teacher out of the way for all the stuff she hates or he hates. teachers using our vocab tool, they love it. Speak sanish from time kids jump into class. Talk about syntax and grammar, and that is good enough. Think about biology. That is all spaced repetition. Have design for set engines, sequence engines, these are getting close to higher cognitive engines. Boolean engines -- fancy world for learning rules that help cognition. Then you can operate those on data sets.
2:02pm: Near zero cost, anytime and anywhere. High velocity learning. Think about that -- 20 times faster. That is big change. Fast is fun -- this isn't drudgery anymore. I believe whole population of world can be accessing this over time with remarkable results. I believe the world immediately jumps 5% in GDP [if better educated]. The golden age of capability around the corner and we are going to create it.
2:00pm: Nolan: This is worldwide. We have worldwide repository if knowledge -- what you know, how you know it, when you know it. Have brain map. The big dream: everybody learning all the time, spaced repetition. Pretty remarkable, you might actually be better human being.
1:59pm: Tom: spaced repetition. The students can do reviews when tool tells them to do it. If that, then building long-term memory.You can do a lot fewer reviews to build permanent understanding of that information. Four lessons as examples -- same game engine with different content. Teachers to add own content to our engine, new game. Democratizing [ Nolan says Wikiepdia]. Allowing teachers to customize lesson assigned to classes and monitor how doing.
1:57pm: Tom, CEO of BrainRush: takes 10-15 minutes to master, games across different platforms. Game for learning names of countries in South America. First roll over names of countries, click and hear. Just click play don't need instructions, immediately required to guess. Not much time to respond. Every now and then guess right. Quickly learning the names. As you get better, the game will get harder. Within a few minutes, you will know location and name of every country in South America. Second stage - type the name of the country. 15-20 minutes, average student will know name, location & spelling of every country. We know not just what students did but what they know.
1:56pm: BrainRush platform - had kids learn Spanish vocab 10 times faster than peers. Now a little bit of demo. It's about spaced repetition. Anyone know where Suriname is? You will.
1:55pm: We change learning process. We turn it all into play, and play is more effective because totally reactive. Net result, highly effective. We are teaching 50k kids, learning 3-5 times faster and faster everyday. Funny thing, faster you teach kids, the more fun they think it is even though games look like crap. Would recommend you all look at TED talk -- if in state of flow, learn faster, happiest you'll ever be. Tailoring difficulty and ease and putting it right in the middle so you barely get to next level in game.
1:53pm: Zynga - it's free and you get to build a barn, but you have to buy a cow. Wikipedia is free, costs zero to create content. Pent-up demand for supplemental education -- estimate the number at $600 billion.
1:52pm: Change at the right speed. If you resist change too much, always have overshoot. Education market - 5% of GDP in world focused on education. No matter how poor the country, over 1 trillion in US alone. Current system massively inefficient, getting so little for that 1 trillion. Help is on the way, you guys are doing it. The perfect storm -- networks being available and cheap, hardware is there, cloud is there.
1:51pm: Time in 2018: more on projects and screen time, less on homework. Hours per day - lecture decrease, screen time increases.
1:50pm: Exercise. Problems of ADHD and depression could be removed with aggressive exercise. If exercise at beginning of day aggressively for 20 minutes beginning od day, everything you learn stored in hardware.
1:48pm: Teachers will become massively more efficient. Zero time for discipline, paperwork and grading. Right now spend 20-30% of their time on discipline. If you are screw up and want to be funny, be disruptive. I am a prime example -- never mind, not going there. Ask yourself this: if student can shop for a teacher, what do they shop for if teacher isn't grading them? They will be seeking the best explainer they can. Teachers will advise projects, that is really good stuff. Projects build brain and rewarding, create passion. ANd that's really what we want. If kids maintain passion they have first time they came to school -- we train passion out of them. Socractic discussion in small groups. By having kids doing screen time, we can afford it.
1:47pm: Here's one that will piss you off. School Budgets 2018 - zero dollars for textbooks, learning software. Pay for results - schools willing to do this. Understand diff between teaching and learning, if not focused on results, you are toast. All extra money for textbooks will go to hardware and don't forget hardware maintenance. Iphone and iPad screens break.
1:45pm: Brain science rules. By 2018, all high school students will have work skills. High school kid can get hired by Pixar with skills. English class doesn't have science fiction, preparing us for 18th-century England. Continuous learning will be required and available for life. All students will learn at their own pace. All software will do it. Creativity will flourish.
1:44pm: A massive amount of individualized instruction. Learning is best when the student is active, but kids told to sit still and be quiet. The thalmus sits on brain stem and governs every activity you do. When thalmus engaged, you learn faster and remember it longer. Lecture, even reading, watching movie, watching a video, all passive. Khan might be a great lecture but it's not active unless you call pushing the pause button active.
1:44pm: Other big change: subjective versus objective. Computer can make this more efficient. We are approaching singularity and the perfect storm. this education landscape will explode in next 5 years in surprising ways. 
1:41pm: Premise is wrong: everyone should NOT go to college. Some shouldn't, but a lot of people shouldn't. Drop-outs because kids have self-diagnosed, this is a waste of my time -- I'm not going to college, this is preparing me for college. Until we answer this, not going to have answer -- everyone should get the job skill that society calues, that they want as, cheaply as possible and be a life-long learner. Hiring shift: credentials to experience to merit. At Atari, we hired for enthusiasts. The 2600 designed by high-school dropout. He trained himself, very creative, wonderful guy.
1:39pm: Seen this before? All homes are a good investment, no moral hazard decisions. Also, college degrees always make you more, easy to get student loans. Allowed higher-ed industry to exploit kids who haven't developed reasoning to make decisions about their lives. Results? Indentured servitude. In 2008, before recession, only 40&% college grads engaged in occupation that used degree, drops to 17% if you take out engineering and teaching. They have 80% chance of wasting the student loans they put in.
1:38pm: Nolan - my goal is to push boundary, challenge assumptions, have you scratch your head a little bit. All students are different. Brain science knows we are all different. What do we do about it? Attention span of a typical kid [shows graph]. Twenty minutes in, down to 25% engagement, teachers wasting their time, kids wasting their time. Teaching in a box not the way to do it. We want to change the paradigm.
1:37pm: Jason intros Nolan Bushnell
12:38pm: Judge discussion Session 4
Betsy: Nearpod has enormous potential in schools. ANd I loved Fingerprint Play. I have to go with Nearpod because focused on schools.
Thomas: Two stood out for me was SMALLab because of increase in learning. Fingerprint Play because has
figured out. +Fingerprint way more on my list.
David: Duckie Deck, Fingerprint Play. Give it to FIngerprint, but Nearpod -- heart is near and dear to classroom.
Joe: First pick Nearpod. Seen people try to do it, they nailed it. I really like the life skills from Duckie Deck. If they switch to iPad for US clear [winner].
Aydin: Nearpod favorite, Fngerprint close second. Nearpod had much broader potential. Others greta presentation but maybe too narrowly defined markets.
12:31pm: Q&A Orca Health
Betsy: Design great, why dental stuff?
Jake: Dental most chronic disease among kids. This is the 11th app we've done, wanted to do something different. So many team members at Orca have kids.
Betsy: More background?
Jake: Patient education for adults. One was best medical app in the App Store in 2011. We have talented animators, saw real need with dental especially among children.
Jason calls up Maxim: do you guys have all different, not just teeth, but bones and different parts of body?
Jake: we do. Heart app waiting to be released.
Jason: Been to dentist? Cavities? [yes, no cavities.] He can't remember going.
Jason: No cavity yet?
Maxim: No.
Betsy: Kids are fascinated with structures and bones, not to be afraid. Befuddled beautiful but wonder if going right direction.
Thomas: I really don't get it. CDC should sponsor you to do it. Can't see how it would be a business.
Jake: Lead-gen for dentist is the business.
Thomas: Much easier way to do that.
Jake: Not working yet. How does anyone know where to et a good dentist? Word of mouth maybe. If we can do fact0funding about dentist ourselves, which we intend to do…
Thomas: Good at building beautiful apps. Don't try to be lead gen when you good at apps.
Jason: Parents will pay for this --
Thomas: Yeah, people oay for that, part of education.
12:30pm: LESSON: 1) Design matters. Needed to be at level of Pixar, you can see that. 2) Also have to address preventative, not just chronic, in health care.
12:27pm: Inside Kids Dental - Tommy sees how dentist will fill cavity. Dentist has same app and shows him the process too. Experience not pain-free but much more positive for Tommy and dentist. Tommy opens learn section on way home - practice brushing. No one told him how much time, wouldn't accomplish anything. Shows it takes work. App celebrates success. Learns how to floss. App celebrates again. Mom found the dentist though find a dentist feature of app.
12:26pm: Welcome Orca Health. Jake - how many have taken kid to dentist or remember going as child? You can empathize with Tommy. Toothache for two weeks. Hasn't told her because last experience was painful.
12:22pm: Q&A Fingerprint Play
Betsy: Paraphrase - how do you make money?
Nancy: Share revenue with developers, moving to subscription model. Referrals -- not intention now but never say never.
Thomas: Talk more about numbers. Downloads, how you get there, unit economics.
Nancy: Roughly 350k downloads, 250k individual families.
Thomas: How is family number smaller?
Nancy: Multiple games, some don't actually become users. Combo of traditional marketing and social. Zero to 12k Facebook likes in a month. Tremendous convo just with moms. Going after that connected mom, really about Mom as gatekeeper. She is on FB. Pinterest, super easy to get to as marketer. Did customer-acquisition, down to 60 cents. Once customer into platform, converted to 1.5 apps. Moving through the funnel. Like Nickelodeon, don't want to change the channel.
Aydin: Hard to argue with hard data. Like that you have download and usage figures. Like that you know user really well. Like parent integration, that parents can record own greeting. Slight detail: mom's message in male voice.
Nancy: Ordinarily mom records herself.
David: Rocking on all levels, think awesome.
Joe: Parent feedback, could be improved, seemed cluttered.
12:20pm: LESSONS. 1) Make it easy for 3rd parties to integrate, for example can put own FB messages into platform. 2) Must drive parent registration. 3) Downloads not enough - keep them engaged.
12:18pm: 14 apps in there, next one is Big Kid Life Firefighter. Saves animals, answers questions to progress to next level. Fingerprint logging play data. This app played over 25 times by average child. Has over 2m play
sessions, 250k families played since launched in December.
12:16pm: Whole Wide World game: chooses Australia. Learning adventure - riding on kangaroo across Outback. Egypt: hunt for letters to spell desert or pyramid. Ivy earns badges as she goes through, postcard when done that she sends to Mom to tell her what she learned. Susie can see what Ivy was playing. Communicate with her via Facebook where she can bring. Email, insightful messages. Third is the Parent Center, lives in every app. Real-time news feed of everything child playing, detailed product rec to decide what to play next. Send "proud of you" message to Ivy.
12:15pm: Welcome Fingerprint Play, educational platform for kids and grown-ups. This is a real-life character. Susie has 6-year-old daughter Ivy. Scared of App Store, decided to download Fingerprint Play. Registers, records surprise message for Ivy. Play Center -- where Ivy manages apps from 1st and 3rd parties.
12:08pm: Q&A Duckie Deck
Aydin: I have three-year-old. Maybe get negative comment for saying this. Tech is great, why don't you apply for corporate learning? I feel negatively because it would take away from one-on-one time with my kids. I should be able to do that without having computer as substitute. In my opinion, great tech, great platform, despite success in Poland, not sure 1-5 year olds best market for this.
Rafal: Lots of parents need inspiration. Nobody teaches us how to be parent. You've got so many ideas, that's great. We're inspiring them to get out of the computer.
David: Thought phenomenal application, simple, analytics are great. Looks like it's designed for co-computing. In this space, early learning, tons on spelling and math, life skills is underfulfilled.
Betsy: Liked emphasis on collection of skills. Presentation thought: wish you had started with Poland experience and how that informed development.
Thomas: I like this a lot, issues around whether you should do or not. Looking for companies that do that, for the past 4 years. Funded a few, didn't end up working in quite that area. Inspiring that you have success in Poland doing this. A lot of promise. Today when look at App Store, preschool dominates, they end up playing Angry Birds. Well done.
Dave: Between the platforms, the computer interface versus Mom's iPhone, favorite gadget of Maxim earlier. How do you see distribution?
Rafal: Small design for computer, on phone mostly for keeping children occupied.
Jason: How far are we from having iPads in every household? A year or two.
Thomas: Think a few years from now, 7 year old won't be on laptop.
Rafal: Is HTML 5.
Thomas: Revise slightly -- mine was based on iPad, not on computer setting.
Joe: My kids look at my computer for work and iPad, used Airplay, strictly iPad [with them].
12:05pm: LESSONS. He had the same problem as John, four years created educational games to help parents talk to kids, inspire them. Company was Ciufcia, nearly 50% of families in Poland playing it. 1) Inspiration comes from parents -- situations to explain -- but we test on kids. Is it engaging for them? 2) No branded characters, they become heroes to children. Our games, parent is the hero for children. Over 10% of audience in Poland are grandparents, easy for them to use.
12:04pm: Duckie Deck collects data about play and puts in dashboard. Social/emotional, analytical, practical, creative areas. When he plays fewer analytical games, he balances the activities so that analytical games appear at the top. Next time he plays by himself, more likely he will choose those games.
12:03pm: Brushing teeth game. Hippo in trouble. Junior starts cleaning the Hippo's teeth, Hippo smiles. Junior happy to brush his own teeth. Junior can also play by himself. Other topics. Recycling, nature, emotion.
12:02pm: Sharing game: how many children on the picture. How many pieces of chocolate, how going to split it? Gives one piece to girl, she smiles. John now knows how to explain sharing. In real life, Junior shares his cupcake with kids, John is proud.
12:01pm: Welcome Duckie Deck! Rafal introduces John who wants to spend his little time with kids doing quality things, he needs help and inspiration. Duckie Deck, play learn and smile with his son Junior. Can play over 100 games that explain to Junior many important things like sharing.
11:54am: Q&A Nearpod
Betsy: I love this technology, but lost the connection. We started hanging out and doing nothing over here. We didn't get to take quiz. [yes, he gets alert when someone drops out.] Tech really has to work, lose us and we disrupt the class. Talk about how robust, what happens when someone drops off.
Felipe: Yes, I knew some dropped off.
Jason: Could have said, hey I see you're going.
Felipe: Yes, but had to hurry up. The network lost.
Betsy: Network problem not Nearpod problem.
David: When tech gets in way, teachers walk away.
Jason: But he did say he noticed it. But you really like this. Would Kno buy this? Is this on your roadmap?
David: Classroom management systems meaningful. Competing with those doing full-on classroom amangement. You are also content provider.
Felipe: We are platform agnostic:
David: You need to look at all classroom management tools K12 think they need.
Felipe: We're hearing from them everyday,
David: Build better one and Intel would buy you.
Joe: I would have requisition waiting for this.
Felipe: Freemium model. He would get admin features (for paying). It's per teacher, $5 per teacher per month.
Jason: Wow, really powerful.
Aydin: Really love that you led with product, got us involved. Like that you're not trying to disrupt, you know iPad is popular in classroom.
Jason: Teacher feedback?
Q: Differentiation -- does kid who finished quickly sit and wait?
Felipe: We tell teachers to do longer quizzes. Today capability to push differentiated content not ray but in pipeline. GOing to have it pretty soon.
Q: I teach as adjunct professor. Can you develop for community college?
Felipe: We see for K12 and higher ed. In-classroom and distance learning. We don't have preference.
Dave: I scored it the highest, led with product as Aydin said. MBA classes, had light on how people voting, now here with much better tech. Getting kids involved.
11:53am: LESSONS. Teachers are not ready to flip the classroom, lectures not going away. Second, iPads are penetrating schools now -- we thought early and we're not.
11:53am: Nearpod has store where Joe in future can share presentations and buy from publishers and other teachers.
11:49am: Audience can follow along in student app. Joe uses Nearpod content tool - creates quizzes, activities. First thing he did: how to solve for X in simple equation. Fun part - when he engages classroom. Respond to this question. Everyone is participating and Joe knows whether students understand what he is teaching. Joe asks students to solve the equation by drawing it and sending it back. Joe explains right process
11:46am: Welcome Nearpod! Felipe says Nearpod is platform to create interactive lessons and share in synchronized way. Felipe introduces Joe - math teacher in South Florida, teaching over 35 years, keen to create own content for students. Joe's class received 30 iPads, intrigued but anxious to use it. Seen cool math apps, but those are not in line with his lesson plan or allow him to push content, doesn't know what students are doing. Joe downloads teacher app for free.
11:35am: Q&A SMALLab Learning
Betsy: Liked a lot of what I saw here, links to neuro-cognitive research -- how people learn, what do we know about learning process in genuine deep research sense and apply that to curriculum, design of materials. Question is pragmatic: how much does this cost, elements you need to have? Looks like need Kinect and space. How dramatically teachers need to rethink curriculum.
David: We have two products, Smallab and Flow. Going after install base of whiteboards already installed, bundle, $495 total and subscription for software is $495. For year one selling whole thing for $495, next year $495, want to take away cost of hardware. Just a USB connection to projector.
Thomas: Per classroom, per school?
David: For single classroom, would discount for school. Really doing the software.
Aydin: how much content?
David: 20 pieces. Partner with teaches, SDK, working with existing content. Have program professional develoment by design, partner our designers with their teachers, $3k.
Aydin: See as enterprise sales. What is your average sale of signing up school? A lot of effort to get set up.
David: Set up not too difficult. Professional development more involved.
Aydin: How long does it take, whole thing? From zero to running.
David: When make sale, we go 6 weeks out.
Thomas: How can you make money with this involvement?
David: Real cost is software.
David: But it's professional development.
David: For SMALLab setup. If we do specific workshop, we charge for that.
Joe: I think this particular type would be hard to buy in. Hard to et two days professional development for tech.
Jason: When you make lesson that costs $3k, how long will it take to consume? Half-day or week lesson?
David: We view as master scenarios. Throughout the year, revisit when you [do different topics.] Middle schools, 25 scenarios. Could use for a few days, meant as supplement.
Thomas: Why did Gates fund you, what was the pitch?
David: Our focus is embodied cognition, we know from research how apply so we improve learning. Believe we are at front, practical concerns.
Betsy: For profit or non profit?
David: For profit, research published.
Thomas: WHy make business for now? Why not take $1m from grant and give it to a lot of people, put it in living rooms, PE classes?
David: Part of our model is that. Certainly in initial phase, at same time want to demonstrate that it;s sustainable so when market arrives we are ready to meet it.
Jason: Didn't understand that graph - what was the actual improvement?
David: We had two groups, did regular chemistry lab, took pre and post test. Then did same type experiment with SMALLab. COmpared and where we saw that the gain. It was 20% gain, paper-pencil.
Thomas: Make that your first slide.
Jason: Hammer that home -- that is a major wow. Maybe the cost isn't big deal if you're getting that increase. Replicated?
David: Yes.
Thomas: You're underselling this. I don't care about $495, want kids to learn. Don't get down to biz model, no one who wants to fund you cares how much you make this year.
David: That is argument we make to grant-funding agencies.
Jason: Change how you look at this as investor Dave?
Dave: Important to drive that point at beginning. Resident teacher Joe on complexities of educating teachers on something so new.
11:34am: Students learn 30% more in embodied learning, students more engaged and more engaged with each other. Teachers thrive in this environment. LESSON: Difficult to create meaningful embodied-learning content. Second, co-designing with educators imperative. Understanding classroom management, concerns they have.
11:31am: David in front of Kinect, as he moves arm around, it tracks him in lesson on lifting/gears. He needs to use physical motion to "lift" the heavy objects (rotating his arm). Concept is conceptually driven. Kinesthetic action, conceptual understanding. Cindy's school also installed SMALLab, transformed her science class [ shows video of kids moving around an entire room to learn about chemistry. ] Math class, move things around to learn about fractions. This is embodied learning - Cindy thriving now.
11:30am: Welcome SMALLab Learning. David introduces Cindy, a bright student struggling in school. She loves Wii but bored in classroom -- which hasn't changed in over 100 years. We envision something that looks different. Physically active, moving as they learn. Over break, her school installed our Flow product.11:28am: Jason: What do people think of pace? Couple feel it's too long. Nobody thinks it's too short. We try to keep it tight. [ Jason explains how many applied, our process, some dropped out because they didn't do in-person rehearsal. ]
10:58am: Judge discussion Session 4
Betsy: A lot I liked about a lot of the products. Global Imagination, power is neat, cost is huge. Papercake, question I have is how distinguish. StudyEgg great if get teachers on board. Eduvant powerful. I have to go with Eduvant, if they can crack that big.
Thomas: Personal preference, liked Global Imagination but reality won't happen for a long time. Way more realistic (lower cost). Eduvant - if they do it right, if educators agree, could be game-changer. Would pick Global Imagination because I can touch it.
Dave: My vote is Global Imagination though Freestyle doesn't fund hardware. As we look at diff ways to display info - 3d - you will be able to get prices down, projector prices coming down. UGC component that is within a spherical nature that could be shared, interesting play there. I would go with this (Tipitap), play for platform with being able to take marriage between hardware and content. Outfit 7, Talking Tom, done 100m downloads. Kids will play with these products.
David: Going with Eduvant, biggest question is scalability. Other one is Papercake, scratched surface of potential they have there, a lot more than they can do with integration.
Jason: If put college saving as goal, would never go to college.
Joe: Number 2 is StudyEgg, could see textbook companies saying powered by StudyEgg. textbook assessments are horrible. Really liked Eduvant, getting into school districts at $10 to $20k would be good, but software for budget is horrible. If got in door, could expand the market.
10:54am: Q&A Tipitap
Dave: What is more of the platform play? Competitive with Talking Tom, how you go to larger.
Rodrigo: No limit to what we could bring. Beary is a platform of activities, teaching and encouraging, add as see fit.
Martin: Approached for branded characters.
Betsy: How long does it take to roll out another character?
Rodrigo: Takes a long time. veteran script writers write. Month to write, month to cast. Three months.
Jason: Not very long actually.
Rodrigo: Have to retrofit for new characters, takes more time.
Thomas: Intrigued but torn. Unfortunate reality they have too many iPhones to play with. Think it's interesting, like distribution model. Maybe you make $5 on it, interesting business is app business. I don't want to hear that it's difficult, want to hear you can do it better than anybody else.
Rodrigo: Thinking about for a long time, right on the money. Product will continue to grow as we add in-app purchases. Adding numbers and colors.
David: Nice to use computational power of iPhone, they have become new babysitter. Creating device protection, very nice. A lot of it is around going to use and upsell.
Joe: Chore system that's how you get subscription.
Jason: This plus Papercake.
10:52am: LESSONS. Appcessories like Beary help solve two of most complex problems of App Store - how to generate revenue and discover apps. Beary costs $20, way up from $0.99 app store economy. Sits in window display of real stores. Second, creating appcessories hard. Partnering with other companies helps create better product and get to market faster, improve distribution.
10:50am: Martin: built for young children, can do as a I did, driving it for them or have toddler do it on their own. We think one of smartest toys out there. He knows 150 phrases. Also learning new tricks all the time -- new games, songs, stories via in-app purchases. In fall, will start speaking Spanish and French. Introduces friend: Puppy Love. Same activities but in puppy girl character. Can get Beary at Apple Stores, in fall at Wal-Mart across the US.
10:46am: Martin puts Beary under the elmo. Beary starts talking, counts to 3. Turns him into rattle and shakes him. Plays peek-a-boo. Also teaches letters - A is for apple (pop the letters). Sings for kids (Ring around the Rosy). Tells stories - Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Kids can feed Beary. and he jokes, "I'm so funny!" after saying the banana he ate has "real appeal." He knows it's breakfast time. Martin puts Beary down for a nap; he snores.
10:45am: Welcome Tipitap. Martin says kids love teddy bears and iPhones too. What if we could combine the magic of teddy bear with iPhone? Would be Beary Happy. Designed from ground up for toddlers and children.
10:38am: Q&A Eduvant
Joe: So much data out there, no time to process it. What you showed easy to use, won't take much professional development.
David: How deal with variety of data you have to pull in?
Ben: Integration is big cost driver for these types of solutions. Traditional approach very expensive, high failure rate. Built light-weight platform, pull data without having to build specific adapters.
David: What is cost to do integration?
Ben: Depends on size, $15k to $20k for school district. [14k school districts in US]
Thomas: Still not a big business.
Ben: Make money on marketplace, license model.
Thomas: What part would you cut into of SF shcool budget?
Ben: Tiny compared to what they spend on other systems. IT tends to be 5%.
Thomas: So SF, what do they spend on software today?
Ben: Millions of dollars. SIS, $1m the first year, annual maintenance fees of several hundred thousands.
Ben: SF has own system developed a decade ago.
Betsy: You would go into school system, they say we have these systems. You implement for that individual school?
Ben: If district has capacity, give them way to do own integration at no cost.
Betsy: Scalable? You know how tricky every school environment is.
Ben: District better economies of scale. Believe can do it magnitude of order less expensive than what out there.
Jason: I didn't see social features, internal commenting system or forwarding system. Ping 8 teachers, let's discuss this student. Appealing or shy away from?
Joe: If budget application then would get greater penetration than $15 to $20k. Then you can can add on other modules.
Jason: You see that as main pain point.
Thomas: Is Judy real?
Ben: No, a fictional protrayal of people..
Thomas: Would have helped to say if real or fictional.
Dave: Can be used by teachers?
Ben: Designed for principals, not directly relevant to teachers but student-level data not a challenge to build solution [for teachers].
Jason: Joe - culturally accepted to share this with whole school or do they prefer to keep in silos?
Joe: Would be really hard to do. Per grade level but not to whole school. Awesome to do that but old politics. Competitive when it should be collaborative.
Jason: Teachers with thoughts on this?
Q from Pamela Ellis: any way to integrate walk-through info in this dashboard?
Ben: Yes, something we hear a lot.
10:36am: LESSONS. 1) Time is the major constraint for decision-makers. Principals have 2 minutes a day to use data. 2) Educators have limited training on data use - only 1 in 50 teacher prep programs cover data use. 3) Partnership with educators is critical. My understanding of realities is nothing comapred to decades of experience of administrators we work with. We have partnership with SF Unified, have unprecedented access to data.
10:35am: Principal wants to be great, excited to see that a teacher has drastically reduced disciplinary action, asks him how he does it, has other teachers observe him. Judy feels empowered.
10:32am: Welcome Eduvant! Ben worked for San Francisco Unified. Worked with Judy, high school principal who wants to make decisions based on data not on hearsay. Eduvant brings data from different systems, brings to single screen. First thing she sees is no substitute for teacher who is out, asks someone to fill in. More strategic: chronic truancy. Clicks on bar on right side, sees faces of who has been absent for 11 or more days. Finally third column: daily insights is Facebook-like newsfeed powered by robust analytical engine, constantly generating stories about what is going on as data becomes available. Like research assistant.
10:22am: Q&A StudyEgg
Joe: Really good, going into key of flipped classrooms. Homework is watching videos, classroom is collaborating. All these great Khan Academy videos, what are you going to do with them.
Jason: Phase one was video, phase two building around.
David: Love what you guys have done. Friction we see is creator/consumer problem. Majority are consumers. You have teacher as center. Could be friciton.
Josh: If just consuming, you can choose existing lesson.
Jason: you mean questions layered on top of videos. Are teachers going to have time and skills to build questions on top of video?
Josh: They can assign and not create. Familiar with Teachers Pay Teachers? Lesson plans and materials online that are free and sold. Model we are shooting for.
Josh: That's our revenue model, teachers pay teachers.
Dave: Will kids go home and watch videos? Concerned they hear same thing at home as in class.
Josh: Familiar with flipping class?
Dave: Not familiar.
Josh: Super early, not clear if doing at school or home. Teacher's discretion.
Josh: Everyone doing same lesson every day in class, can do extra lesson. Still important that in it together.
Jason: Agree that as teacher, I don't have to experience at same pace as the slowest student?
Joe: I don;t know the answer to that. With NCLB puts weight to just excel, holding back the students that get it really quickly. I would love to see if you excel to go forward, don't know answer.
David: Seen those models in K12 and post-secondary, in K12 turning those advanced students into teachers, incredible way to get deep learning, confidence.
Betsy: Coupe questions, looks promising, neat. Liked lesson about being explicit with teachers. One, if I want to put own lesson in there, on average, how long take me to collect elements to do full lesson?
Josh: People using are classroom flippers, already have video, already have quiz, just need to line up times.
Jason: 10 Qs, 10-minute video? Ballpark okay.
Josh: Maybe 20 minutes.
Betsy: Saw tools yesterday that aimed to pull data together so one dashboard. How much effort putting into developing own dashboard versus willing to collaborate with others who want to suck in data and present in own format?
Josh: Huge, with Edmodo and plan to support other LMSs as well. [ no API yet]
Thomas: I like flipped classroom, funded companies doing similar -- Academize. You are ahead of curve, hopefully will happen sometime in future. Investors, employees, maybe you might not have longevity to get there. Ed in 5-10 year increments, tech in 5-10 months. You will hear from investors, what can accomplish in 2 years? Other part: I liked everything I saw but didn't see true value add. Khan Academy might have gadget to do same thing.
Josh: Khan not integrated experience, interaction separate part of site.
Jason: But when Khan does add it in?
Thomas: Every teacher aware and likes it, they can do a lot of stuff [because of grants]. Want to see them succeed. Lasting value to make it a business for people to pay for.
10:21am: LESSONS. Manage teachers' expectations. Learned this the hard way. We can't make their lives more difficult, managing expectations around bugs, feature roadmap. Second, keep it simple. When intro new workflow, find resistance, when simplify, welcomed with open arms. We remove things, remove noise so they can learn more easily.10:19am: Science homework, kid browses subjects, finds one similar to what learning in biology. 8-minute video with interactive questions along the way. Animation along the bottom to communicate progress and mastery -- leaves and eggs turning into bird. Teacher chooses animation.
10:17am: Welcome StudyEgg. Josh introduces kid who struggles with algebra. Teacher is also frustrated because kid doesn't pay attention in class. How he does his homework has changed -- opens StudyEgg. Hits play on short video. What he hears: concepts explained by his teacher. But what's different: part way into video, teacher added question. Quizzes to see if he understands. Resumes video. Kid thinks he knows answer to next question, misses it, has to go back. Teacher sees dashboard of how class doing, strengths and weaknesses. Looks at that particular kid, sees he did pretty well.
10:10am: Q&A Papercake
Jason asks Maxim to answer questions since he has allowance of $3 a week.
Jason: might want to try?
Maxim (age 8): yes
What did you like
Maxim: Don't know just like it.
Have chores?
Maxim: No [ to get the allowance].
David: what age group?
Steve: 7-14, sweet spot is 7 to 12. Make money in affiliate model.
Jason: in-app purhcases?
Steve: perhaps
Joe: Think great for fundraising, key in on that market.
Steve: Idea started with that. Not just aware of money but give back to community. Clearly on our roadmap. Linking to charities.
Joe: If you want to play sport, costs money, another key area.
Jason: Hit up Grandma for money for hockey equipment.
Jason: Fundable company yet, Thomas and Dave?
Thomas: I like the product, how are you going to get distribution?
Brett: We have identified alrge partners to partner with. Involves real banks and real money, identify regional banks and get launch parnters. Steve: looked at children's mags.
Thomas: What age do parents open bank accont for children?
Brett: all age groups, from mother's expecting. As you start [for 6yo], they could have nest egg, something to grow into. 6 to 8 seems to be sweet spot.
Betsy: Social elements to help with viral or is age group limiting factor?
Steve: We do offer option for parents to link their social networks and share with other parents; parents are competitive.
Thomas: Would like at alternative revenue models, subscription. Get whole family involved. On dsitribution model, can't be very viral becasue of children. Distribution aprtners really do matter,a cquisition costs matter. Haven't figured out a lot of things because stealth. Comes down to details whether it will work or not.
Jason: Bounty for opening account?
Steve: yes, banks do offer that. ING has standing program of $20 a pop, pretty good.
Jason: Triple that if exclusive.
Steve: That's where we're going.
Betsy: A couple of companies in same quadrant. Think distribution challening, looks neat, smart guys.
10:08am: LESSONS: 1) Kids process info differently than adults. We think it's by experience, see consequences of decision before they act. 2) They know whether they love or hate something immediately.
10:07am: Son does chores, gets $25 in real time once parent approves transfer. Now he sees how much money he has, adds Atari his cart. Sees immediately he can't afford other things he wants. Triggers that conversation: if I spend money now, how will it affect in the future? Interface shows him the answer. Parent gets notification, approves purchase. Changes convo from "Mommy/Daddy buy me" to "can you and should you?" And didn't use word responsible or cash flow.
10:03am: Welcome Papercake, Steve and Brett. College kids have huge debt and need help managing money. People don't learn to manage money until older. Need to get in front of this trend, why we created Papercake. Introduces parents who need to train their kids. Papercake -- manage own money from own bank account to get real-world experience.
9:51am: Q&A GlobalImagination
Betsy: Always cautious about numbers in attentiveness, but display really beautiful. Harry Potter element to classroom. How much of curric you building and how much sharing from those already using?
Mike: Ministry of China has 50 lesson plans shared throughout the country. Bulk of lesson plans from informal ed customers like museums. They build branded lesson plans available to everyone else.
Betsy: If I'm a teacher and excited about it, can I port stuff from that website on here?
Mike: We use internet standard for image range. Download and will run on Magic Planet. Library we have is really big.
Jason: If I had video on YouTube, can I project it?
Mike: Media mashup tool we have can put it on part of screen.
Thomas: What's inside?
Mike: Projector that shoots light horizontally, fancy-ass lens is 180 degree. Unique because can focus at enge of its focal circle.
Thomas: Cost $2500?
Mike: This costs about $11k, raising money to drive the price down to $2500. I have $5m in orders in hand for $5k system that I need to finance.
Thomas: Really quick thoughts. I have 6 year old, just bought him a globe, cost $100. At $11k a different story [thought it was $2500]. This excites me [ could see kids getting excited about science from it.] Get price down and see wider adoption.
Mike: Used more broadly than science.
David: Going to come down to cost. If you look globally, MOEs, looking to put in smart boards as standard. So you have additional video element there. How does it play with video smartboard?
Mike: They sold $1.3b last year, $300m in US. Next year 1 in 6 classrooms to have. It's complementary. Whiteboards great market for us, sold through resellers. This sold to same customers and same price, very attractive. Channel we plan to use in US
Thomas: Number sold?
Mike: 1,500, something like that. Delivered is closer to 400.
Thomas: How did you get to price?
Mike: Originally sold big ones to musuems, planetariums. Beginning it was $50k. Had to get price down to where shcools could start using. Next jump is $6k.
Jason: Thought about bringing in on weekly basis? For $1k one week a year and rotated it, might be enough to jumpstart curriculum. Would that work?
Mike: Typically gets into schools now via museums, they bring curric into school. Competing with free.
Thomas: Thinks Jason's onto something.
betsy: on maintenance, how fragile and whether expensive replacement cost?
Mike: System we sell is LED hybrid, no bulbs to change. The lower cost system, $2500 will probably have lightbulbs.
Joe: Honestly, biggest goal is get as much tech into students hands. Troubling in multiple aspects. Schools mount projectors on ceiling. They don't have enough money. Disagree on interactive whiteboards, streaming and iPads going to replace them.
Mike: Agrees market has peaked. Was mostly talking about it from POV of channels. $2500, one in every school, is $4B market worldwide.
Joe: Hard to fund field trips, if add to package -- zoo brought to school. That could be something.
Jason: wonders if this was cost of substitute times 3...
Joe: Have grade-level planning day, bring in this, then not wasting it.
9:50am: LESSONS: 1) Teach imagination as a skill. China no longer teaching rote learning. 2) Replace existing lessons with Magic Planet rather than trying to create content from scratch. Coming
9:49am: Liu Qiang in China ran a study of how effective Magic Planet was in Chinese classrooms. Found that overall comprehension went up 16%, engagement up 17%. China has 300 installed and 1k on order. When price down to $2,500 each (from $10k now), there will be one in every classroom in China.
9:46am: Global Imagination has lots of footage from museums and government agencies like NASA.
9:44am: Mike shows Shannon's project for the Magic Planet - global warming and animals. Audience hears and sees Shannon's presentation on sea turtles: audio over images, these linked to particular places on the globe. She put presentation together herself.
9:39am: Welcome Global Imagination! Mike introduces the Magic Planet globe. First lesson Mike gives - 2004 tsunami. Shows short film on the globe. NOAA image shows intensity of waves (red the strongest). Why Santa Cruz hit so hard -- there's a line of red directly there. Pretend ocean is a bath tub, "drain it" and you see a funnel on the ocean floor, that's why wave got there so fast.
9:36am: Judge introductions: Betsy Corcoran of EdSurge, Thomas Korte of AngelPad, Dave Samuel of Freestyle Capital, David Straus of Kno.
9:35am: Jason asks an educator to join the judging panel -- Joe Ayala from Madera Unified School District.
9:32: Jason welcomes everyone, thanks Microsoft.