Ryan

Hello Marc, I thought your pitch was media-rich and well refined. You did a lot of research and it is apparent that you have a good working knowledge of the technology and how it can be applied to innovative business opportunities. I didn’t think your pitch was too long and was chunked out nicely so that I could follow along easily and get important information in small understandable bits. I really like the idea of super-imposing old versions of photos and text for city walkers to get an idea of how neighbourhoods transfrom and gentrify. The idea of putting personal stories into the maps is awesome, I’m sure there could even be a way to upvote and promote “important people or places” and have a social aspect where you could connect to others who have been in the same place and have told stories. I think there is a lot of potential in AR and it will quickly become commonplace in different historic areas of urban centres. I would most definately back a venture like this.

Hello Melissa, Your idea is very well thought out and it looks like others have already supported you based on your preliminary presentations and efforts. I hope that this course has helped you to refine your pitch and idea so that even more people get excited and invest in this very important work you and your students are doing. From a business point of view, I can’t help but think about how this project and Marc Tavares’s NeighbourhoodAR idea could support each other. I wonder if there is a way to take what your students are doing and turn it into something that other students could do in other regions of the country so that they could share stories and connect with each other in an innovative way? Let me know when you launch and I would love to support the project both financially and through social media. It is apparent that you believe in and are passionate about the cause and that quality is hard to ignore when investing in a venture.

Hello Lee, I enjoyed your media-rich presentation and can tell that you own a pretty decent microphone. The sound makes a difference! Melissa did a good job describing the merits of your presentation and I agree that your research and analysis of the market is top-notch. I get the sense that you are an expert in this area and as a result, I would feel comfortable investing in you. My only feedback would be that there is not really any focus on the technology that you would use that would give your company a competitive edge or separate it from other consultants that would offer a similar service. When I watched and listened to your pitch I thought of another company that offers a similar service to schools called http://consiliencelearning.org/. Their niche is learning analytics and they spend some time explaining how they compile data from many different sources to compare against your school. I think it is a great business idea that could be launched immediately, but it relies a lot on your expertise and other recognition of that expertise. As a result, the business could easily be replicated by someone with similar expertise.

Thanks Sarah, Funny enough, I was just reading a journal article by Thomas Tobin on Universal Design for Learning and he states in it that higher ed students are increasingly using their mobile devices as their primary device for interacting with content and that in order to ensure engagement and easy access we should be designing with that in mind. I wish I had read the article a week earlier and then I might have checked out the site on my phone. I must admit, I don't think I gave mobile access much thought. My default was that others would look at it on their regular computer screens. Thanks for your suggestion and I am glad you enjoyed the experience regardless of your mobile viewing issues. Tobin, T. J. (2014). Increase online student retention with universal design for learning. The Quarterly Review of Distance Education 15(3), 13-24. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=99851957&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Hey Scott, I'm interested to learn more about your troubles with ManageBac and what you are looking for in an LMS. We actually just adopted ManageBac but have not shut off our current LMS (Powerschool Learning - formerly - Haiku Learning). Hit me up on twitter @TechnoRy_EDTech. Ryan

Hello Syndey, Thanks for posting this pitch, I found myself very sceptical from the outset while watching this pitch. On the second time around, I was convinced that as an investor, I would not invest in this company. Sheran said it himself, LMS systems are horrendous to work with and most employees are not engaged. He boasts that he can improve engagement by 400% and I could help but think 400% of what? The features he highlighted as ones that set his system above the rest are found in many of the "Big" players in this over-saturated market. Powerschool has customised badging and LinkedIn has made a name for themselves with accepting certifications completed by employees that use their recently acquired Lynda.com (now LinkedIn Learning). API integration with systems like Slack is also not an original feature. All one needs to do is search "best LMS for business" and you will find the host of LMS systems available: https://www.capterra.com/learning-management-system-software/ In his pitch, he spends a lot of time listing all of the clients they have and how much money they have earned, but Sri Lanka is a small market and 21000 users (as stated on their website) on their system is frightening if you consider Powerschool has 20 million users. In my opinion, the best these guys can hope for is to be bought out by another big player in the space. Sheran said the best part of the system was the user experience but spent zero time talking about how that user experience was any better than his competitors. Ryan

As a principal looking for ways to promote Stem and Steam initiatives in the primary levels at my district, I would certainly be interested in this product. There are products like https://littlebits.com/ that are similar but are not targeted to that young of an age group. Another consumer based product https://www.elenco.com/brand/snap-circuits/ is marketed in toy stores for a comparable price, and I think this product wouldn't have trouble competing against it and arguably creative potential. A concern I have is with the dough specifically, having worked in a primary environment I have witnessed a lot of playdough dry out and we are continually buying more to keep our stock up. I like the idea of having dough that promotes stem learning, but it would not be a viable venture if the school had to continuously have to replace the dough because it dried out especially if the replacement dough was costly. I do think that this product is innovative and would support steam curriculum in the classroom and would be a great scaffolding for a more robust program that included little bits at the junior level and possibly robotics at the older grades. On the other hand, the consumer "maker" market has seen a lot of new products spring up like the mentioned snap-circuts, and now you can even subscribe to a https://www.kiwico.com/ kit at a reasonable cost and get a new exciting project every month. The competition for this market is becoming saturated and I wonder if this product would have legs. The CEOs look to be competent and passionate, and after doing some research, it seems like they are continuing to produce other innovative toys that promote the same steam values. I think as a venture investor, I would look to invest in the company for this reason as well.

Marc, We used this resource at our school to justify some of the changes we have made to our program. I think they mirrored their report from the World Economic Forum report https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2018. This report has a lot more detail and the website has many other reports and articles on initiatives they are taking to modernize systems and processes.

If you think about the blockchain in terms of security, privacy and verification it has a lot of potential to disrupt corrupt systems. One of the projects a group of our students took on during a blockchain hackathon was around food security and being able to track origins of products like fish. Where did it come from? how many hands did it exchange before it got to you? how fresh is it? These types of questions could be tracked and verified on a secure chain that could not easily be tampered with. In an educational setting maybe the blockchain could be used to store and verify grade data, personalized feedback, conduct, medical history etc.

Here is a short video review of my initial thoughts on VR in the classroom. It's Sunday night and others have written some good stuff so I figure a short 2 minute video was enough. https://youtu.be/TGjvnMvZyHM