EDUC 338X 2011
DP2 Project Descriptions
A couple of notes. . .
• The education challenges in this DP2 book are
snapshots of the full proposals which can be
found on our class wiki:
https://dschool.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/a7
9b9/EDUC_338x_2011_DP2.html.
• If nothing excites you here, please feel free to
develop your own solution
• There will be a small budget available for teams
to receive reimbursement for items such as
conference fees, travel costs, printing materials
GoalPost Labs
• Who are they? GoalPost Labs is an early stage, for-profit startup
with plans to build a student motivation layer for K-12 that rapidly
cycles feedback about incremental learning progress to students,
parents, and teachers in a social and game driven environment.
First product is a social, reading tracking tool.
• The Project: How do you design the collection, sharing, discussion,
and display of incremental learning progress data as a motivational
experience for students in K-12? How can we use this data to make
learning feel iterative (students see failure as a learning opportunity
for a future success--as in the best video games) rather than a high
stakes assessment of a student's aptitude?
• Contact: Matt Pasternack (CEO & Founder)
• Who are they? An early stage, for-profit
technology and services startup that provides
online speech language pathology to school
districts.
• The Project: How might occupational therapy
happen remotely for kids?
• Contact: Jack Lynch (CEO and Co-Founder)
• Who are they? NTC is a national nonprofit organization
dedicated to improving student learning by accelerating the
effectiveness of teachers and school leaders. NTC
strengthens school communities through proven mentoring
and professional development programs, online learning
environments, policy advocacy, and essential research.
• The Project: NTC’s core business is in-person mentoring for
beginning teachers. This project is about developing the
right strategy and user experience to grow their new ementoring program so it can benefit every beginning
teacher nationwide.
• Contact: Alyson Mike
• Who are they? TFA recruits the most promising
recent college graduates and trains them to teach
in America’s most challenging schools.
• The Project: Employ the best social networking
strategies to improve and promote TFANet – an
online community for corps members and alumni
to share, communicate, and collaborate.
• Contact: Melanie Hoffert and Meg Loucks
• Who are they? The W.K. Kellogg Foundation
supports children, families, and communities as
they strengthen and create conditions that propel
vulnerable children to achieve success as
individuals and as contributors to the larger
community and society.
• The Project: Researching commonalities between
the most effective K-3 teachers in order to inform
the foundation’s funding strategy.
• Contact: Arelis Diaz
EdSurge
• Who are they? EdSurge is a new (pre-launch)
news/information startup for education
technology. Their aim is to be the central hub
connecting education entrepreneurs and the
teacher community (techcrunch for education).
• The Project: Researching & designing the best
way to help teachers discover and make informed
choices about adopting education technology
products.
• Contact: Nick Punt
• Who are they? Education Elements seeks to transform
public education by enabling CMOs (Charter Management
Organizations) and districts to develop and deploy cost
effective hybrid learning environments.
• The Project: With the growth of blended schools, where
online learning provides a material % of the core
instruction, teachers need to understand how to easily
modify their lessons based upon student progress in the
online courses. The project is to develop an application
which helps teachers integrate the face-to-face instruction
with online instruction, particularly around scope and
sequence and lesson plans.
• Contact: Anthony Kim (CEO & Founder)
• Who are they? A company that partners with
institutions of higher education to deliver online
degree programs to students globally.
• The Project: How might we use game mechanics
to help train new teachers? This project asks you
to design a customizable online simulation tool
for new teachers to practice teaching techniques
in a variety of realistic scenarios so they are
better prepared to manage and make academic
gains in their classroom.
• Contact: John Katzman (CEO)
Formative Teaching
• Who are they? A learning management system for
educator training, certification and accreditation.
• The Project: We are building targeted online communities
around individual areas of teacher practice. One theme
that we are exploring is how to provide individual teachers
(in very unsupported environments) with guidance from
experts using forums, online discussions, and book-based
resources. The project will explore current online teacher
communities, perform empathy work about what teachers
are looking to get out of the experience, and then
prototype tools that would be most helpful in supporting
this use case.
• Contact: Jason Lange (CEO & Founder)
• Who are they? “HMH” is the world’s largest publisher
of pre-K-12 learning products.
• The project: Less than 70% of students entering high
school will graduate. Furthermore, the highest dropout
rates are concentrated in major urban districts where
the graduation rates drops below 60%. However, one
bright light remains constant when considering why
students do NOT drop out: parental engagement. The
project goal is to improve parental engagement in
these large urban districts, especially among the most
at risk student populations.
• Contact: Jim O’Neill & David Lawson
Classroom Sense, Inc.
• Who are they? An early-stage startup founded by two
Harvard Business School grads. The venture will “provide
school administrators and teachers with a suite of tools and
applications that will improve how they leverage data to
run schools and classrooms.”
• The Project: “Of the three elements in our business model open development platform, killer apps, app store - there is
the greatest uncertainty around the app store…Answering
these questions will involve end user research as well as
rapid prototyping / design iteration and we look forward to
working with you on these critical issues.”
• Contact: Ben Glazer and Stuart Frye
• Who are they? Aspire is the largest charter
management organization (CMO) in California.
• The Project: Create an iTunes-like platform for
content mapped to the Common Core, so that all
curriculum companies, districts, individual
teachers, etc. can plug their stuff in and
download what they need. The days of Googling
stand-alone lesson plans will be over!
• Contact: Liz Arney, Manager of Curriculum Dev.
Envision Schools
• Who are they? A charter management organization based
in Oakland, with 4 high schools in the Bay Area. The schools
are designed around performance assessment with a
rigorous portfolio defense system.
• The Project: Our performance based portfolio system
prepares students for college and career. However for
teachers - the ultimate guides of the process - the vision of
success driving our portfolio feels too complex, leaving
them wondering how the pieces fit together. What changes
in our materials and language can we make in order to
clarify how the pieces of our vision fit together so that
success feels possible in daily practice?
• Contact: Erika
Education.com
• Who are they? A for-profit website servicing the
education industry broadly defined. Top 5
websites for parents and fastest growing.
• The Project: Can learning to read be as addictive
as Angry Birds? Extend the reach of
Education.com's web platform by designing a
captivating app that works on the fundamentals
of reading for children ages 4-7, within an
addictive gaming environment.
• Contact: Ron Fortune
Innovate Foundation
• Who are they? Family Foundation focused on
improving K12 education, especially for
underserved kids.
DP 2 = d.thinking + education problem
•Select a topic/problem that interests you
•Work in a team
•Develop “solution” using design thinking
•Consult with industry mentors/advisors for
feedback
•Interim check-in on May 3rd - feedback
•Present solution on May 26th - reviewers
Presentation on May 26th
-10 minute presentation x3 to “reviewers” - partners,
funders, thought leaders, practitioners, industry leaders
Feasibility
Viability
Desirability & Usability
Feasibility
Viability
Desirability & Usability
Feasibility
Viability
Market
Risk
Desirability & Usability
Feasibility
Viability
Market
Risk
Desirability & Usability
Will the dog eat the dog food?
Does it address a major pain point?
Feasibility
Viability
Business
Risk
Market
Risk
Desirability & Usability
Feasibility
Viability
Business
Risk
Will the dog hunt?
Do the economics work?
Is the risk worth the reward?
Is it sustainable?
Market
Risk
Desirability & Usability
Feasibility
Viability
Technology
Risk
Business
Risk
Market
Risk
Desirability & Usability
Feasibility
Will it work?
Viability
Technology
Risk
Business
Risk
Is it possible?
Market
Risk
Desirability & Usability
Feasibility
Viability
Technology
Risk
Business
Risk
Team
Risk
Market
Risk
Desirability & Usability
Feasibility
Viability
Technology
Risk
Business
Risk
Team
Risk
Should I bet on this team?
Market
Risk
Desirability & Usability
Feasibility
Technology Risk
Viability
Business Risk
Desirability & Usability
Market Risk
Feasibility
Viability
Technology
Risk
Business
Risk
Team
Risk
Market
Risk
Desirability & Usability
Feasibility
Viability
Market
Risk
Desirability & Usability
Feasibility
Viability
Market
Risk
Desirability & Usability
Will the dog eat the dog food?
Does it address a major pain point?
Feasibility
Viability
Business
Risk
Market
Risk
Desirability & Usability
Feasibility
Viability
Business
Risk
Will the dog hunt?
Do the economics work?
Is the risk worth the reward?
Is it sustainable?
Market
Risk
Desirability & Usability
Feasibility
Viability
Technology
Risk
Business
Risk
Market
Risk
Desirability & Usability
Feasibility
Will it work?
Viability
Technology
Risk
Business
Risk
Is it possible?
Market
Risk
Desirability & Usability
Feasibility
Viability
Technology
Risk
Business
Risk
Team
Risk
Market
Risk
Desirability & Usability
Feasibility
Viability
Technology
Risk
Business
Risk
Team
Risk
Should I bet on this team?
Market
Risk
Desirability & Usability
Feasibility
Technology Risk
Viability
Business Risk
Desirability & Usability
Market Risk
Feasibility
Viability
Technology
Risk
Business
Risk
Team
Risk
Market
Risk
Desirability & Usability