derek wong

Hi Tanya, This is a great venture pitch assignment. It included thoughtful design from start to finish and was cleanly presented. As Robert said earlier, I agree that it doesn't necessarily get investors "interested." Education for public sector employees is always seems to be marketed as "non-profit," yet it requires a ton of funding and support financially. As a K-12 teacher, I have seen many teachers attempting to receive professional development training but have fallen short due to "investors" (ministry) seeing the financial benefit to promoting these workshops. This may hold the same and translate to struggles for the police sector as well. I was curious if your venture seeks to replace current training situations or is it a supplement? In my opinion, a full or near-full replacement would be potentially hazardous as real life scenarios using paint balls and other alternate methods provides the police members with some resemblance of "reality" whereas VR may remove the immediate fear and/or danger from the participants. Derek

Hi Brian, I love the direction you took this A3 - Venture Pitch. I've been an avid gamer since I was a kid, and have had my own STEAM account since I was about 10. It is inspirational to see a venture that modifies an existing product into an educational tool. As a K-12 teacher, I have found that games could be an easy way to create relationships and make meaningful connections with students. Therefore, I am fully in support of your venture in STEAM Education. Your video was clearly scripted, well thought out for investors and creatively put together. If I had to offer up a piece of advise for improvement, I'd suggest breaking down your content into simpler terms so you have the time to speak slower, but still provide the same point across or add visuals to support the commentary. As someone who is familiar with STEAM, games, educational resources as a K-12 teacher, I still had to re-watch parts of your video to fully understand the "selling features" you were portraying. For example, from 2:45 - 4:15 you have an image of a computer screen that has 2-3 words appear every 30-40 seconds while you are speaking fairly fast. I would have benefited more from additional visuals to connect the sale to the content. Otherwise, I really appreciated your elevator and venture pitch. Great idea with a realistic potential in the applicable world. Good detail with logistics when presenting your selling points and easy format for the general audience. As an "investor," my favourite part of your video was the Competition section. The dollar value in conjunction with the lack of existing competition sold your product. Thank you for your work, Derek

Hi Marshall and Ebru, Great site you have put together about 3D printing. The information was presented in an easily accessible and readable format. I have had a lot of experience working with 3D printers in and outside of the classroom and can definitely say I support the full use of 3D printing technology in almost any application of learning. The part I enjoyed about your website is the fact that you present positives and negatives of the technology, but were able to present it in a format where the negatives did not take away the shining points of the positive nature of the technology. In my opinion, what 3D printers boil down to in terms of being negative introductions to the classroom is startup costs. I'd also like to mention that a potential "pitfall" (if you can even call it that) to 3D printers in classrooms, especially in K-12 is inexperience. 3D printing and modelling is a whole new language, especially for individuals who have little to no experience in computer software, or technical aptitude. I've heard from many teachers in my school district and neighboring districts that their biggest push back against the technology is their fear to dive straight into the deep end and begin to learn a whole new subject. Contributing factors include age, subject area, comfort with technology and more but there are teachers that are unwilling or uncomfortable with putting the work in to learn all the ins and outs of the tech before applying it to their classroom and students. In my opinion, it takes the right mentor and possibly a tech liaison in the district to smooth out these fears, but to start up using 3D printing technology is not as daunting as one may think. Students these days, especially, are really keen to learn and have subtly become masters of Google. Otherwise, great website and guiding activities. The content demonstrates a wide variety of applications of 3D printing and provides enough insight into how to get started and why you would like to get started. Thanks! Derek

Hi Cassy, I currently work in the Richmond School District (SD38) as a Tech Ed teacher and have had my fair experience with 3D printers. Generally, if the printer is stored in a relatively open environment (classroom desk) etc. the off-gassing isn't a problem. A popular filament to be printing with is PLA plastic which is bio-degradable and derives from corn and is generally considered "safe."

Great OER presentation JoAnna and Shannon. It had a wide variety of presentation methods and it was great you kept to the theme with Micro Learning activities while presenting Micro Learning. I've had a great experience with a lot of the resources you've provided, such as Canva, Camtasia and Weebly. Although I'm a young teacher, it seems to me that attention span of students seem to be shortened and Micro Learning is a great tool to use as a strategy to combat the challenge. The only thing I would suggest is a change in format for submitting our group collaboration as the comments section isn't incredibly intuitive for sharing files or formats. Otherwise the Weebly was clean and well-formatted. Generally, when I open a website with a lot of content and I see a lot of visuals and buttons etc. it can be overwhelming. Therefore, I appreciate the buttons on the bottom right being a continuation of the website and it made it easy to navigate from start to finish.

Hi Aaron, I have made a few attempts at using SiMBi OER website and visually everything looks great and the project is well completed. However, I had a lot of trouble accessing a lot of the website. I'm unsure if it is my computer, or the link between the two but I was unable to read a book for example to a school. I have read through the website and you have compiled a lot of data and summarized it to a high standard. I appreciate the effort you've spent on the site and I will attempt to go through the site once more when I return to work on a different computer. My apologies for the technological difficulties as I am sure many others were able to access the content you have created. Derek

The following comment is what I wrote the GBL Team’s “Feedback” Padlet: Thank you for being the first group to go and present your venture topic. I thoroughly enjoyed the information you provided. There was a great variety in text information, videos, interactive games and the ability to provide feedback. The venture was organized and structured well within this weebly website and I appreciate the effort it took to create this in such a short time. There was also a great variety in market topics, actual games, proof, support and resources which worked well as a whole. While I provided many opposing views and/or disagreed with some of the content, I enjoyed the ability to present my opinion in relation to the provided content. Personally, I would provide a little more clarification on certain subjects. For example, under the "market opportunity" where we had to choose between 1 of the 4 options for purchasing GBL, it left a lot up to imagination or required a background in a relative study. As a current teacher who purchases a lot of software for the classroom, I found myself reading and re-reading a few aspects of the data that was presented. For the games section, I was wondering how many of those games are currently used and how effective they actually are. I provided feedback and my classmates did as well on their first play of the games, but I would like to see anecdotal reports of real students playing the games as well. Overall, amazing project and I enjoyed my time combing through your website. I hope my group and others can maintain the standard and the high bar you two have set for us.

Tyler has credentials as a student, educator and business person that would lead him to be a successful entrepreneur. He has a high level of applied education from Harvard and work experience from his digital marketing campaigns. Tyler, who started Clever, has been relatively successful in his creation early on. He has found a niche in the school system which requires supports and it currently seems like he is shining there. I believe what sets Tyler apart from other Educational entrepreneurs is that his focus is on something that many other companies are missing. His companies goal is in personalized education and resource material tailored to specific individuals. Most other companies have focused on larger pictures where they generalize education and place supports for average student learners while neglecting those who require additional support. I believe Tyler is successful in his venture, and his biggest limitation is the resource consumption required to run his company. He is limited to the United States at the moment and it doesn’t seem like his company will reach the International market any time soon. However, with time, Clever is a great resource for all educators out there.

As a Technology Education teacher, I fully support Massimo and his venture in Arduino. The open source software is accessible to any educator and its easy to pick up, but difficult to master. Arduino provides students with an opportunity to create through digital means and develop hand skills. The art of breadboarding, coding, design cycle thinking, and other additional topics can all be attributed to the company product. Arduino is relateable to other real life applications such as Raspberry Pi programming and other computer related peripherals. Arduino seems to be growing every year, and their products are coming out strong in numbers. As a student, I was first introduced to Arduino 3 years ago, and the models and products have expanded 10 fold since. The product is available globally at an affordable cost.

Guido Kovalskys is a strong candidate for a successful entrepreneur in the education sector. His background in education and his MBA have served him well over the years in his startup. Nearpod has successfully raised $9.2 million dollars to support educators around the world and it is evident his company has had a positive impact as a whole. The limitations to Guido's venture is his reach. While he has a strong base network and has a relatively successful company, it seems Nearpod and similar ventures have plateaued while other companies such as Khan Academy or Edutopia have excelled. While I believe Guido and his partners have strong potential to become a few of the largest providers in the education world in terms of entrepreneurship, I believe at this point, there are others to look up to which can back their success with additional stories.