Hello,
My elevator pitch and venture pitch are below:
Prezi Elevator Pitch (If the audio does not play for you, make sure you click on the older Prezi player on the Prezi page)
Self-Reflection:
I have taught languages for the past four years now and I have spent hours upon hours looking for suitable current events news articles and customized hundreds of activities to suit my students. I have spent so much time that I have been searching desperately online for something that could replace the huge amount of manual work that I had been doing. As I began this course, my experiences as a languages teachers immediately came to me and I felt that if I could create a business, one which would help second language teachers to incorporate current events into their teaching in an easy and appropriate way.
I truly feel that ESL Teacher’s Aid brings original value to ESL teachers. It leverages the power of tablet technology along with fresh news content and activities generated on a daily basis to provide ESL teachers with a powerful new tool to add to their classrooms. Ultimately the buying decisions are made at the department, school, and board level and that is what I was hoping to target.
Obviously, schools and districts that have high ESL populations would benefit the most from ESL Teacher’s Aid. I feel like the market for ESL Teacher’s Aid is enormous given the growing number of immigrants coming to North America. Globally, I see places in Asia where learning English is a big business as another massive market which ESL Teacher’s Aid could add tremendous value. Overall, I am hoping that these decision makers would see the big picture and invest in ESL Teacher’s Aid as something that would benefit their department, their school, and their district.
In reflecting on the venture pitch and elevator pitch I have created, I feel I have developed some additional business and persuasive skills that will be valuable to me as a teacher. Often times as teachers, we are required to seek additional funding for our classrooms and schools, and that usually requires us to create a “pitch” in front of a Parent’s Advisory Committee or some other board-level committee. I feel that this course overall has taught me how to be persuasive and help market myself better to the decision makers who will be deciding on whether funding is approved or not. This assignment in particular, has allowed me to break a “pitch” down into its fundamental components, and how to make it as persuasive as possible. The elevator pitch I created in Prezi also allowed me to explore the different ways to use rich media to enhance a pitch’s effectiveness. Overall, this has been a very valuable experience and definitely a course that I would recommend to anyone in the MET Program.