lanehardy

I think your testimonial regarding your own experiences was a great introduction to your venture pitch. With your personal experiences, I can take your word on whether or not this service is needed. At first, I thought that any smartphone could take on the job of calendar and accessibility functions, but your inclusion of campus personalization is the key to your service. My only concern is that an institution could create this app... but just for their own university campus, however, you do mention that higher ed institutions might not consider this service a priority due to time and money. Good job!

@rrto Exactly!

Maureen, Caleb, thanks for the kind feedback! Tina, you raise a point that I did not anticipate - I did not think that whole schools would purchase this, but I was targeting individual teachers that would want to purchase the service. I initially thought $10 would be reasonable, but changed it to $5 to guarantee more business. I also do not intend for this service to be another teach out of the book reader. @rrto, I came up with the idea, as I'm teaching a science unit, and my FASD boy is operating at a grade 1 level, my LD student is at a grade 2 level, etc. It's been hard finding materials that they can use for our PBL units on human body, extreme environments so that they are learning the same CONTENT (wish this had italics), but at their level of reading comprehension.

I had to dig into your venture site a bit to find out why I would want to invest in Kurzweil over GAFE's tools, especially Read and Write. I think that it is important to mention why your are creating this iOS app - the fact that Read and Write will only work for Android. I haven't seen Kurzweil in action for the last 5 years, and I wonder if it is becoming a relic of the past with free or nearly free dictation tools and auto-readers coming on the market. However, I can hear your passion to help children read and I will trust your judgment that Kurzweil is still relevant in the classroom.

Wow, I had no idea about the amount of paperwork nurses have to do! I like the idea that it can all be centralized on mobile devices. However, I am one of those people who will say "what if it fails" and you lose everything? Is everything backed up? As a small critique, GoAnimate might not be the best tool to use for elevator pitches - especially the computer-generated voice. I would like to hear you and your enthusiasm for your product.

From the elevator pitch, I thought this was more flashy lesson plans for teachers, however, after investigating your venture site and seeing your screenshots (good add by the way), it appears that this is for students. I do agree that something more interactive for students is needed - I created a pitch along those same lines.

I agree whole-heartedly with your first couple of statements... Is the intent to have professors sign up for their own professional development or would universities require their faculty to participate?

Just based on the elevator pitch, I am unclear as to why we need our students communicating with others over the Internet. I struggle to teach my students to communicate with the ones sitting beside them! I'm sure you have a great venture lined up, but I was not able to get a clear sense as to where this is going from this pitch.

I appreciate that you are trying to find a product that would mesh well with BC's new curriculum - I would, as many of my apprehensive colleagues, would value new ways to teach it. However, I think that if that is the focus, you are not addressing the needs of the rest of the country/continent. I doubt that you would, but there is some focus on BC, so perhaps the elevator pitch could be a bit more general. I like the idea that your service provides VR curricular resources, and I agree that the education market lacks VR resources, but I'm not sure if any educator needs it... yet. That's not to say that you cannot get a start on creating resources and be the first company ready-to-go. I think VR is at least five years off, so perhaps change the focus to continual development so you are market ready immediately if these devices proliferate.

I think the idea for this venture is quite sound, but I would be a little worried about the cost to the consumer. What is the price point? First, they would have to acquire a device to access your VR learning tool, but I can probably imagine that your service would cost a lot just from the hardware/software needed to run it! I like the idea of how VR can connect with LMSs, but I would like to know how that can be accomplished - I can think of some pretty far out ones! I appreciate the homage to the holodeck too!