mme_dl

Smooth, clear and easy to follow pitches. I appreciated how both of your pitches logically followed an explanation for the need for this service. Our school has piles of DVDs that become outdated or damaged quickly. The idea of being able to stream educational videos would be well received as long as school bandwidth could support use. As an EVA, I would invest with the understanding that growth might start slowly, but could ultimately replace school dvd collections. I might include a payement system with school board-wide accounts in addition to individual accounts to encourage bulk sales.

Hi Laurie, Having just received my Estimote beacon kit in the mail, I was excited to see your pitches. I agree that inclusion of data tracking and usage would be really helpful for those buying into using beacons at BCIT. Addressing concerns about security might also be worth addressing once you're presenting to a body of student stakeholders (like student representatives, etc). As an EVA, I like that you had a plan for test piloting usage and a rough budget for extending wifi for future support. I also wonder if you would have to improve the network as a cost for this project, or whether you could collaborate with other departments/projects to cover the necessary funds.

Hi John, I agree that your product could have real potential in American markets where college sports (including basketball) are highly valued and there is major funding for sophisticated training. As an EVA I would invest in the early stages of development and I would likely want to know if I would be able to have some amount of ownership or paid dividend in return. I think your product might also benefit from low-cost VR options (maybe partnering with Google cardboard, or something similar) which might allow you to create software and save institutions some money on the hardware. Overall, an interesting and educationally helpful venture. I think your product will also benefit from any advances in VR technology while you continue to develop the software in your first year (or so) of starting this business.

Hi Ben, I can see the use for your product at both the school level and the school board level. Boards often have kits for science/tech experiments and projects that they lend to elementary schools. You might have additional business opportunities there as well. I thought your inclusion of shopping sites could also provide opportunities for cross promotion or advertising, and could lower the cost you need to charge for the subscription service. Overall, I think the student-centred management of resources is an important selling feature for secondary education teachers.

Your video is appearing as private.

I imagine for budgetary reasons, my organization (a school board) does not use any of these LMS options, but rather builds their own in-house. The result is a choppy mishmash of services and plugins that do not work together well. Often on days where staff (over 50 000 people) are given time to do online training the servers become overloaded and the service crashes or does not save one's learning. The whole experience is frustrating and unreliable, but without more money to invest in any of these other options, the process is unlikely to change. Given more funds, the Adobe Captive Prime sounds like a great option given the lack of plugin problems and the ability to save content for offline viewing. Training often included videos and quizzes for the purposes of workplace training for either online services or workplace safety.

As an EVA, using Edmodo seems most flexible and age-appropriate for high school students. It's look and feel mirrors that of Facebook, which may be more familiar to teenager. FreshGrade may also work, but is often used to communicate with parents, as opposed to being a platform for students to share and collaborate on their projects. I think iTunesU provides a great way to share coursework, lectures, and other content. I can envision using iTunesU for course materials and then using Edmodo for the day-to-day running of the course. Again, I'm not sure that Edmodo is worth the an investment, however, with the rapid growth of Google Classroom across North America. My biggest concern as a professional educator, is discussing student privacy with parents. Making sure that student data is being collected, reviewed, and removed from a system in a manner that is acceptable to students and parents would require planning and research into the company's policies. As an EVA in Canada, I might be more interested in a CBL that has Canadian data storage, like FreshGrade, but I might be concerned about the competitive advantage of global juggernauts like Google.

1. In my opinion, the three 2016 ISTE Standards that are most important for an elementary level LMS to nurture are the first three in the list. Having not followed the conference closely I’m not sure that they’re listed in priority order, but I believe that the first three are the foundation for the other four standards. For example, empowered learners (#1) should have the motivation to explore problems and design innovative solutions (#4), solve computation problems (#5), and communicate their knowledge creatively for a variety of audiences (#6 & #7). Students also need to be aware of their own safety and their responsibilities within a global digital community in order to thrive in a technological world (#2). Lastly, students who are learning to research and solve problems need to critically evaluate information (#3). Together, these three standards support students as engaged, responsible, and critically thinking people who are independent learners. 2. The LMS that best encourages the development of these three standards is Agilix Buzz. Schoology is presented as a teacher-cantered convenience that does not support personalized learning. Agile Buzz emphasizes supporting student learning at their own pace and ability by collecting on assessment data. The differentiation of learning content underscore the standards of empowered learner and knowledge constructor. Canvas focusses mainly on student collaboration and teacher assessment. It also has a number of paperwork-reducing tools that offer little educational benefit (eg. storage of seating charts and attendance records). 3. I would argue that an LMS is not necessary for the integration of technology in the elementary classroom. Personally, I would prefer a tool for student work in a digital portfolio and then be able to share this portfolio with parents (eg. FreshGrade, SeeSaw, etc.). As someone who is relatively keen to try out new tech tools, I would find an LMS cumbersome and limiting, at least when looking at these options. I can easily push and pull assignments without another system. Additionally, having students login and out is time consuming and takes up valuable class time. I see no need for it in early elementary grades (K-4). Perhaps as students get older, such system would provide a useful way to organize assignments and materials for multiple teachers and classes. In that case, however, most public schools will choose a free (or extremely low cost) solutions such as Google Classroom.

I agree with Michael, in that I think that schools should have access to a 3D printer, but I do not think that every school needs a 3D printer yet. As they continue to come down in price, purchasing a 3D printer would be more likely. Schools with sufficient parent fundraising can already purchase them, but without an interested teacher to put in the effort to maintain and learn about using them, that money may go to waste. From year to year teacher also change schools or go on leave and it may be difficult for each school to have someone support the use of the printer. What I have seen done in my board is that there is a 3D printer for a given number of schools located in a resource centre that has knowledgable support staff and there are science coaching teachers available to help plan the purposeful use of the printer with classroom teachers. This also provides an equitable solution, since many schools cannot afford a printer themselves, but could afford the printing cost of a few 3D models. For the moment, this type of shared accessl make sense. Once printers are a few hundred dollars this approach would likely change.

Currently, there's a 3D printer for a family of schools in my area within my school board. This seems like a cost-effective way to make use of a 3D printer as needed for projects without having to purchase one for the school. In addition, there are science coaching staff that can meet with teachers to discuss lesson plans and activities, to make sure that the students are well prepared to create their own 3D projects. Most likely, I would have my grade 2 students create their imaginary robot main characters from their comic book writing, as a way to combine language arts and 3D geometry. They might need a lot of time or an older student buddy to help them organize and review their designs before printing. It looks like these printers will print a reasonable number of designs within certain limitations (a class set of 25 seems within reason). They're on holidays now, so it's a bit difficult to get specific details, but it looks like they have some budget (and perhaps they can use some of the school's budget) to cover these costs. Designs can be submitted from TinkerCAD in an email with a link to a Google Drive folder with the files. Overall, this sort of project would be feasible, but it would require a moderate amount of planning ahead of time, and most likely be limited to teachers with a motivation to bring 3D printing into their classrooms.