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I'm not going to sign up for this unless you tell me what pricing ballpark you are looking at, or give me some guarantee it will always be free. Do you know th

I'm not going to sign up for this unless you tell me what pricing ballpark you are looking at, or give me some guarantee it will always be free. Do you know the amount of trouble it would be to move an entire school to your system? And what if you come and say $500 a month and then we have to move the entire school back. That's why I'm not going to sign up - I don't want to enter a bait and switch situation. Another thing that turns me off is the language - the teachers I deal with are serious people. Smileys, share the love, Sit tight and such things will make the tool seem frivolous to them. The school owners would see this as a toy and not a proper tool for management. You are speaking designer language, not school teacher language. What about the exams and the result generation for the students? Can't see it in a quick look over.

mikegioia 17y ago
Thanks Max. Right now it's completely free and not designed to be used as a school wide system. The main purpose is for individual teachers to use it in their classrooms. We wanted to make something that teachers could use to manage all of their course material and eventually view really granular reports on their students' progress as well as use the service to add more collaboration to their classes. We have discussions set up now but are planning to roll out project pages and and public profiles for students. Hadn't thought as in depth about the language but that's a great point.
- maxklein 17y ago
  You assumption is that teachers are motivated enough to actively seek out ways to make their classrooms better. Hope you've insanely tested that assumption out and you're sure it's true.
  - ams6110 17y ago
    And your basis for the contrary assumption is....?
    - maxklein 17y ago
      Experience running a private school.
- ams6110 17y ago
  Many schools have a district-wide system in place for this already, which ties the administrative grade records to a "family access" portal where parents and students can see their records. My kids' schools use the Skyward system. http://www.skyward.com/ http://www.skyward.com/ A problem you'll have with any district that's already using a system like that is that teachers won't want to double-enter grades and assignments or use two different systems.
jamiequint 17y ago
I have friends right now who have a similar product that is made for high schools, based out of NYC too actually. Their website design is terrible, but they know how to sell. 75-80% of the work they do is transferring over data from old systems to their new system and doing training, and as maxklein said its all sold on a school level and requires support and maintenance contracts. Also, I'm pretty sure most schools require grades to be entered into some sort of common system so report cards can be generated, administrators can see performance, etc. Anything on top of that would necessitate extra data entry wouldn't it?
- mikegioia 17y ago
  Could you PM me the name of their website? We figured as much that writing the application conversion stuff would be needed but those are interesting points. And you're right. additional data entry on assignments would be needed to more granular level analysis. However, we have a few reports we're designing just to run an over-time analysis / student comparison among classmates that don't require additional data.

mikegioia 17y ago

Thanks Max. Right now it's completely free and not designed to be used as a school wide system. The main purpose is for individual teachers to use it in their classrooms. We wanted to make something that teachers could use to manage all of their course material and eventually view really granular reports on their students' progress as well as use the service to add more collaboration to their classes. We have discussions set up now but are planning to roll out project pages and and public profiles for students. Hadn't thought as in depth about the language but that's a great point.

maxklein 17y ago
You assumption is that teachers are motivated enough to actively seek out ways to make their classrooms better. Hope you've insanely tested that assumption out and you're sure it's true.
- ams6110 17y ago
  And your basis for the contrary assumption is....?
  - maxklein 17y ago
    Experience running a private school.
ams6110 17y ago
Many schools have a district-wide system in place for this already, which ties the administrative grade records to a "family access" portal where parents and students can see their records. My kids' schools use the Skyward system. http://www.skyward.com/ http://www.skyward.com/ A problem you'll have with any district that's already using a system like that is that teachers won't want to double-enter grades and assignments or use two different systems.

jamiequint 17y ago

I have friends right now who have a similar product that is made for high schools, based out of NYC too actually. Their website design is terrible, but they know how to sell. 75-80% of the work they do is transferring over data from old systems to their new system and doing training, and as maxklein said its all sold on a school level and requires support and maintenance contracts. Also, I'm pretty sure most schools require grades to be entered into some sort of common system so report cards can be generated, administrators can see performance, etc. Anything on top of that would necessitate extra data entry wouldn't it?

mikegioia 17y ago
Could you PM me the name of their website? We figured as much that writing the application conversion stuff would be needed but those are interesting points. And you're right. additional data entry on assignments would be needed to more granular level analysis. However, we have a few reports we're designing just to run an over-time analysis / student comparison among classmates that don't require additional data.