EduBeacons

REVIEW: Hi Sheila, what an interesting concept! I believe the strength of both your pitches comes from the high quality presentation, stimulating visuals, and confident narration. The concept itself is very interesting, and appears to have strong merit for the educational setting. As an EVA however, I did find the two pitches somewhat repetitive, and would have appreciated greater distinction in both the content and the visuals. I believe your experience both as an educator and your background with Apple support your position and the authenticity of the need you present. Your elevator pitch was a little long, though I can appreciate how difficult it is to condense that much information into less than a minute. Overall, as an EVA I would require more information before investing. In particular, I wonder about compatibility with hardware, maintenance, additional costs, etc.

Review - I thought your idea is something that could be a success. I can see teachers and students really taking to this idea. It is a very mobile idea that can allow for students to learn through exploration. As an EVA I would invest in this idea because AR and mobility will be the next big thing in education. Your idea should be successful in bringing students to exploration.

Hi Sheila, I really enjoyed your presentation and was very interested in your idea. As someone who is looking at using this technology for BCIT and a pilot project on campus, I found your idea and service to be very valuable and will fill a niche that is necessary and needed as schools and agencies are looking for ways to use and adapt this technology for education. I found several universities that are using beacons to navigate students around campus and the value unique to beacons over QR tags was the ability to interact with the student and collect information about student movement and engagement. Thank you for adding the list of companies that assist in the creation of apps!

Hi Sheila! I must say that was infinitely impressed by your pitches. They were both very concise and utilized helpful graphics. Your concept certainly has potential to make learning more experiential and interactive. However, your presentation did raise a couple thoughts in my mind. Besides the companies you mentioned, I think QR codes offer competition to your concept and they extend more readily to the real world. I don't think I know anyone who has connected their device to a similar beacon type device to receive information, but QR codes have become ubiquitous in society and are easy to generate and manage. As for the implementation and test of your EduBeacon concept, I totally agree testing it in a school board would be a good move. Although, the TDSB would not be my first choice. I would more likely approach more well funded or technology minded boards/schools like the YRDSB or an independent like CIS Ontario.

Review: I enjoyed learning about EduBeacon and I believe the prospect of using beacons for education has value. I believe your use of graphics complemented your videos well. I believe your plan of using test schools to introduce schools to your venture to be a good idea. As an EVA, I was unsure about the purpose of introducing estimote beacons in your elevator pitch and whether it means you are also in the market for producing the hardware for the beacons as well. Without being sure about whether you are planning to be involved in developing hardware, it is difficult to decide whether or not to invest in your company because the production of hardware is a very heavy task and require a very large capital to start up. On the other hand, if you were to focus purely on software, how would you partner up with another company to produce hardware compatible to EduBeacon? I believe the pitch needed to be more clear as to what the company's focus is. It would also be useful to see or talk about several school topics where you think your technology could be used.

The first thing I immediately thought about when watching your (beautiful, by the way!) elevator pitch video was: PokemonGo. Seeing how widely and wildly PokemonGo has swept the world with interest in proximity-based app, I can see the real utility in EduBeacons, whereas I might not have had the imagination to understand a few weeks ago! I noticed that much of your pitch appeared to focus on primary learners, but I think there might be greater utility in post-secondary markets. There aren't limits on smartphone use in post-secondary institutions, meaning more opportunity for both learner and instructor interaction with beacons, furthermore, there is likely more flexibility to 'experiment' and evaluate the use of this type of initiative in situ at a university. I might hold off in investing in this venture, as I'm not sure it's differentiated from basic beacons. If beacons exist out-of-the-box, what makes EduBeacons unique? It seems they are all code-less tools that can be bought off the shelf and simply implemented in this setting.

REVIEW: As an EVA I would recommend investing in this for as the market for Augmented Reality just got a huge push from Pokemon Go and easy-to-use, effective means of pushing that location-specific content (and more) to devices will be welcome and in demand. (I am reposting here after finding the instructions under W13 Launch. For more the rest of the review, see the original post below)

This is an interesting idea that I can see using in a classroom. With the success of such apps like Pokemon Go, I can see students enjoying the idea of locating and accessing information. I agree with your idea of creating tester groups amongst teachers allowing early adopters the benefit of trying a new product while gaining valuable feedback. Also your background with apple lends credibility to this idea as you can bring knowledge from both sides of the table. The only issue I have comes from what new learning this is bringing to a classroom I cant accessing through a website. I understand the beacons use during field trips and out of class experiences however In a classroom if a student has a device could they not simply look up a coding website? If I were investing I would likely hold off until you came back after testing in the schools. Cheers, Ben King

The visuals in your elevator pitch are fantastic. Your elevator pitch runs a bit long though and your venture pitch is too similar to the elevator pitch for my pitch (I felt myself losing interest watching them back to back). I feel that you are a credible founder and CEO for this company due to your background with Apple and that you have a solid market plan. I love that you have already merged with a software developer! Integration of this app would work with greater internet connectivity in schools. You make excellent point about student interactivity and professional development for teachers.

Your plan looks really solid. I like that you have the roll out and the full financial ask in the venture pitch. After watching a bit of shark tank, I'd probably want >20% for $470,000 but since I'll never have that much cash, we'll never know. I don't believe that school school policies with phone use are an impediment as your product would work with tablets and other devices if smartphone use is limited by different jurisdictions. Also since BYOD policies are becoming more and more common, this is a good time for your product to hist the market. Good Luck!