John Myers is the President and co-founder of Edsby (edsby.com), a learning management system designed specifically for K-12 school districts. Edsby combines elements of a traditional LMS with features of modern social media tools to provide K-12 schools with a dynamic, user-friendly platform for communication, assessment, and curriculum development. The design of Edsby allows schools or school boards to customize the look and feel of the software to meet the needs of the individual institution. Because Edsby communicates with most Student Information Systems (SIS), data is constantly up-to-date with official records and can be used to produce report cards and official transcripts. From personal experience, my school moved to Edsby 3 years ago and it has been one of the most important changes we have made as an institution to help our students achieve the 21st century learning skills identified. During this time I have had the good fortune to meet and work with John Myers and the co-founders of Edsby.
John Myers, along with Steven Ashbury, Jon Ashbury and H.E. Scott Welch founded CoreFour Inc. in July of 2010 with over 100 years of experience collectively in software development and design. All four were employees of Nortel, working together at Nortel Networks, creating together Meridian Mail – an industry leading voice messaging system. In 1989 three of the four CoreFour members left Nortel to found a company called SoftArc and create FirstClass – a messaging and collaboration platform now used by thousands of organizations, many of them in the education sector. This focus on education customers over the last twenty years has given the CoreFour team deep insights into the unique challenges and needs of education organizations. FirstClass’s design was revolutionary at the time, allowing users to store content on a core server that was accessible from anywhere. FirstClass continued to grow under the leadership of all four CoreFour members and in 2002 SoftArc was purchased by Open Text. The founders of CoreFour continued on at Open Text developing innovative social media and mobility products. In early 2010, the CoreFour founders left Open Text and started CoreFour in July 2010.
CoreFour was founded on four key pillars that lead the team in every decision they make. These pillars include: engagement, design, engineering, and value. At CoreFour they strive to engage with customers to understand their needs and concerns; they design elegant and simple solutions to the needs of their customers; they engineer these solutions in to quality products (like Edsby); and they want to do this in a way that provides value to their customers. IN my dealings with the founders of Edsby I have found them to be true to this model. In the past three years I have been invited on numerous occasions to take part in feedback sessions where the needs and concerns of my school have been the topic, Together with designers and programmers we have worked to create simple, yet functional solutions to these concerns to the point where Edsby has become the most important piece of Educational Technology we use. Under the leadership of John Myers, and his co-founders, CoreFour has placed importance on the experience of users. Their focus on K-12, and only K-12, has made Edsby a dynamic product that meets many of the unique needs of primary and secondary education. As trends in education have changed (for example assessment language/strategies) Edsby too has evolved to meet the needs of students and teachers. Jus this year, Edsby released a rubric feature that allows user the ability to create and assess with a digital rubric. Where this differs from some other software solutions is that Edsby accommodates the achievement chart categories that are at the heart of assessment in Ontario.
While Edsby is a great platform and solution for the K-12 school system, I believe it is the leadership of John Myers and the design work of Steven and Jon Ashbury, and H.E. Scott Welch that sets CoreFour apart from other technology companies. The founders have created a very personal experience at CoreFour, where customers feel like they have input into the design of the product they have purchased. When I contact John to ask him for some information for this assignment he was extremely accommodating and overjoyed that I wanted to spread the word about Edsby, a product that all the members of CoreFour truly believe will improve the quality of education.
The co-founders of CoreFour – Jon Ashbury, John Myers, Steven Ashbury and H.E. Scott Wells (taken from corefour.com)
