9 ms·

Imagine K12

230 points by pg 16y ago

btipling 16y ago
Something built around the model that Khan Academy presents would be really interesting. Videos and learn at your own time. Home work help, helping parents and students find tutors, helping with test preparation. The long summer months are also a problem for a household where both parents are working. There is a lot of opportunity to help students here. Will be exciting to see what comes of it. Good luck!
- chrismanfrank 16y ago
  My company is tackling the tutoring component. We think with free content like the KhanAcademy, the only thing missing is personalized help when you get stuck. We're launching a summer program where K-12 students can work with tutors from Stanford via Skype. The tutor will be like a coach, though, most of the instruction will be from Khan Academy videos. What do you think? We're at IgnitionTutoring.com
  - ern 16y ago
    Have you had to work around Khan Academy's CC noncommercial license?
    - Symmetry 16y ago
      Khan Academy would presumably we willing to permit this for a relatively small amount of money.
- mahdireilly 16y ago
  A huge problem that the Khan Academy fails to address is the digital divide. Often the children who attend schools who are the most at risk do not have access to computers/internet at home and community centers are often hard to reach both due to their distance and the danger in their traveling there. I, a CS masters student, and my wife, a PhD EE, who attend University of Texas at Austin run an after school program for middle school kids to teach robotics and programming using lego mindstorms. The school is one of the poorest in the city, but also has an integrated math/science magnet program within it. Our students are a mix of both the local children and the magnet kids who are bussed in. At the beginning of class we place logic problems on the board and we were surprised to find that often the kids not in the magnet program solved them correctly often on par with those who were supposed to be the best and brightest in the city. However when it came to programming and using the computers, the non-magnet students lagged behind the others at a pace of almost half the speed. Though they both were able to mechanically develop and debug their robot equally well. I meet with the parents throughout the program and the correlation I noticed most prominently with those that suffered with programming was if the kid had easy access to a computer outside of school.
pclark 16y ago
This reminds me of jedc and his MBA research about startup accelerators and how, and more importantly, when to clone. His #1 point was: > You need to be unique, where unique is not just a seed accelerator in a different city Imagine K12 is unique in their knowledge and connections. What a fascinating proposition. http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2011/02/23/looking-back-1-5-years-since-copying-y-combinator/ http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2011/02/23/looking-back-1-5-...
- jedc 16y ago
  Thanks, Peter. This is exactly the kind of program that I was talking about. I hope their connections to schools are able to turn startups in this market into businesses with real impact quickly.
BenSS 16y ago
This is fantastic, and aligns with a project my wife and I have been discussing. It's frustrating that one or both of us would have to hit the Bay Area to do it (on the wrong coast), but certainly going to consider it.
u48998 16y ago
Two things which should be basic human rights and absolutely free, are: communication and education. But people wish to earn $$ off of them. And then they wonder why the world is in such a messed up state. Kudos to Khan Academy and Bill Gates for patronizing and liberating the education.
- btipling 16y ago
  I guess you expect publishers to print and give away textbooks for free too?
  - frak_your_couch 16y ago
    Well, I'd love and welcome a good high-quality open source textbook movement that happens to also be high quality. It's the quality issue that's the major problem at the moment, I'd say. I've LOVE to see, for instance, Math textbooks written like they wrote "Real World Haskell" in wiki format with a single (or a small,finite set of) editor(s) ensuring that content and quality is up-to-snuff. I think that there really should be minimal educational infrastructure provided for free or very low cost.
    - ph0rque 16y ago
      Have you heard of OERCommons (http://www.oercommons.org/ http://www.oercommons.org/)? They sound like what you describe.
      - frak_your_couch 16y ago
        I have not, thanks for the tip. I looked at a book or so, but didn't see an easy away to comment on individual paragraphs like in "Real World Haskell", but maybe more of the interface opens up if you log in. ANyway, thanks for the tip!
        pixcavator 16y ago
        My site is a wiki similar to what you describe, http://inperc.com/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Courses http://inperc.com/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Courses. I would like to allow comments but afraid of spam. Maybe one day.
prestia 16y ago
This is a really exciting announcement! Education is probably the most important factor in maintaining long-term competitiveness and the American system is in desperate need of improvement. That said, the hurdles in this area are overwhelming. To name a few: -Layer upon layer of bureaucracy (states, counties, districts, individual school administrators) -Teachers that are reluctant to adopt new technology -Students that are difficult to motivate I have a ton of respect for anyone even trying to take on this challenge.
- shaggyfrog 16y ago
  I'll add another one: academia who teach education seem to have an almost visceral reaction to any suggestion of for-profit educational product development. There's this almost dogmatic principal that anything related to education should be done not-for-profit. I speak from experience... I have an idea for an educational game (software) and I haven't had any luck getting the time of day.
  - ianb 16y ago
    OTOH, there are a lot of for-profit educational ventures, and they all seem really skeevy to me -- places like Kaplan or Phoenix University, for instance, or frankly a lot of educational software. Perhaps a pro-market explanation is that the bureaucracy itself undermines the market, creating a market that is not truly driven by stated goals (education) but other factors. I'm not sure I believe that, but it's possible. The difficulty of procurement might in part mean that heavy up-front marketing costs dominate, and once you've made a sale it's both fairly large and neither increases nor decreases based on the quality of the product -- poor products tend to be maintained based on the commitment of the administration even when in practice they don't end up being useful. It would be interesting if teachers were allocated money to purchase products themselves. While it seems somewhat chaotic, and challenging with student turnover (which is generally very high in the US in particular), it seems like the only way to actually have a market driven by real experience and taste rather than politics or theory.
    - jbooth 16y ago
Alex3917 16y ago
For what it's worth, there is also a new SF incubator for physical products called Magic Beans. I haven't seen them get any press yet, but it seems like they have some quality companies.
shii 16y ago
It seems Imagine K12 will/has solved the classic chicken-and-egg problem with education startups. I've been asking on how to get traction at schools online in different communities for years when I was working on a side project in this area. It's virtually impossible to sell to school districts, and unless pioneering teachers who are savvy enough to use something like Google Apps for their classrooms and see your product in the Marketplace or look for solutions on their own time while somehow fitting it in their already tight classroom curriculum and time budget, you have no way to gain traction from authority figures in the school system. Enterprising students are basically they only way I've found that educational startups/sites can get active users to join on.
- BenSS 16y ago
  "It's virtually impossible to sell to school districts" This is exactly the problem I've been wrestling with. The best idea so far has been to appeal to private&charter schools first, and then attempt the big system. Public education is very much like a large company (risk-adverse, and process-oriented).
  - patio11 16y ago
    School districts have the sales cycles of Fortune 500 megacorps, the technical savvy of convents, and the budgets of hair salons.
    - timsally 16y ago
      As a general rule this is true. However in my experience there is a segment of this market in the US that is extremely lucrative; essentially the top X% of public high schools. These schools are private for all intents and purposes, as most of their budget comes from property taxes. These schools have massive budgets that approach $100 million, extraordinarily qualified and perceptive teachers, and a community that is heavily vested (and almost neurotic) in the success of the students. Also, the staff at these schools are surprisingly tech savvy, often with a large dedicated budget for technology. All the above factors combine to create a perfect storm for a business with an innovative product. If you've got a product that will make students at these schools more competitive in the college admissions process, it will be purchased at a massive price tag. All the key players, the parents, the teachers, and the administrators, have the will and the budget to make these types of acquisitions. Note, marketing to these schools is difficult. A connection in the administration or the education space is the easiest way, but I'm convinced you could bootstrap yourself through the teachers. They are smart and savvy and the senior teachers can have surprising influence. Further, the market is on your side. One you convert a few of the top schools in the area, it is likely most of the other top schools will follow, as not to be left behind. Top schools will follow the leader, as these things go. Overlook this market segment at your own peril. :) There's only a (relatively) small set of schools that fit the above criteria, but they have a combined budget of billions nation wide. You may note that I did not mention the top %X of private schools. That is because in my experience, parents (one of the key players) aren't necessarily as invested in the school on a day to day basis. There seems to be a higher rate of apathy with parents in top private schools, whether as a result of geographic separation or some other factor. The bottom line is that at top public schools, the parents made the effort to move to the community, buy a house at a ridiculous value, pay outrageous property taxes. In practice that seems to create a much more invested base of parents that will be much more involved in the school. I still think you can sell to top %X private schools, but it seems harder in my mind. If someone is thinking about starting a product in this space, happy to chat via email.
mraybman 16y ago
The economy of scale here will be huge - if the founders of Imagine K12 build vertical expertise in promoting education startups (i.e. connections with schools, VCs who invest in education) it will be a lot easier for startups to do customer development and build/implement cool ideas. Our education system will benefit big-time.
gcheong 16y ago
I'd really like to see a "request for startups" type post from this group.
- PakG1 16y ago
  I think better it come from the schools than from the group, no? The schools are the ones feeling the pain you're trying to solve, and it's a targeted segment where you don't have to searching for a customer. Your customer's right there, so the knowledge is right there. Of course, there's the caveat that the customer isn't always sure of what they really need. But in this case, I'm sure they could think of some good ideas. :)
  - gcheong 16y ago
    I would hope that the requests/ideas would be informed by the people they are building relationships with at the school level. So perhaps more along the lines of "here are some things we are hearing again and again" rather than "these are ideas we think are good" but I wouldn't want to exclude either kind.
  - jtheory 16y ago
    That's the point of the group, though, really -- they have close relationships with a good set of schools, and can be involved enough to see actual pain points that are amenable to technological solutions, talk through ideas with teachers, find the teachers who give reliable/insightful feedback, find administrators who can give insights into what expenses would be easy to get sign-off for & what wouldn't, etc.. Soliciting ideas from the target market directly isn't as useful -- you get a lot of ideas of what people think would be neat, but often the ideas are seriously flawed (ideas for flashier solutions that in practice are less efficient/practical/flexible than the old method... ideas for things that would be better but would not fit easily into any budget... etc.). I've gotten lots of ideas from teachers directly for my (education-targeting) site, but most of them aren't actually very valuable - things that are either obvious (and already on my to-do list) or far too specific to their particular needs, or ideas that seem good at 3000 feet up, but explode when you look into actual implementation details.
philfreo 16y ago
I'm excited about this program. Hopefully it will bring a lot more smart entrepreneurs and developers into the edu-tech space. It's definitely an industry that's in need of good talent, innovation, and creative problem solving. Quizlet.com (Alan Louie, one of this program's founders, is an advisor) is looking for a few great people to join the small team in SF. If you have an interest in edu-tech (or just working on a web product that's helping millions of students study already), please get in touch. Email phil@[thedomain] or http://quizlet.com/jobs/ http://quizlet.com/jobs/
shortlived 16y ago
This is nice and all but the real issue lies with getting all families involved in their child's education. All of the technology in the world will not solve this problem.
- chrismanfrank 16y ago
  Maybe that is an opportunity in itself.
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ilovecomputers 16y ago
I have a naive notion of business, but does your startup idea necessarily have to be a for-profit venture?
scottshapiro 16y ago
This is fantastic. But we also need a breakthrough in K-12 tech adoption. n=1: my girlfriend is a math teacher at a better district in California. The only technology they provide her is a desktop with Windows 98. So she uses her own mac to admin a tumblog filled with photos of assignments and answers to problems she uploads from her iphone. She uploads PDF's to google docs and 'shares with everyone'. She links to Khan academy videos since the school bans youtube and none of the district computers support flash. Then her students use their home computers (if they have them) to consume this content. They're excited about it (most never heard of Khan before this) and it seems to be effective. Back in the late 90's IBM installed a token-ring network at my high school. It was obsolete before they finished the project and the computers we had could barely get IE3 to load a web page. So I hope this incubator does a lot not just to foster edu focused startups but to also get the right people in education to push for decent technology at schools.
- oscilloscope 16y ago
  Many friendly Linux User Group members volunteer to install and administer Ubuntu at public schools in the Bay Area. Ubuntu's a decent experience even with 256MB of ram, so schools can even reuse those 8-12 year old computers. Free software's great for all kinds of technical, practical and cultural reasons. It's existed my whole life, but I didn't really feel its presence until using Debian in a research lab 4 years ago. We don't all need to be RMS, but it's a worthy thing to think about for anyone who makes a living off free software.
thefreshteapot 16y ago
"If we fund you, the goal will be to build a compelling prototype or demo to raise money from appropriate investors" - Perhaps i'm a bitter competitor* yet shouldn't this read. "If we fund you, the goal will be to build a compelling prototype or demo to raise the standard of education for all, inspiring a thirst for learning" I'm skeptical to private groups with funds who want to invest in a lucrative market which is not purely based on "capitalistic ideals". To use a famous quote in context "Education is for life, not just for Christmas". * One day! for those who know me and my snail like pace at getting to a version 1.
maxharris 16y ago
The major problem I have with any of the computer learning stuff out there is that I still need to reach for paper and pencil each time I actually try to solve a problem. I wish there was an iPad app that taught college-level introductory physics (with a place to draw with one of those 3rd-party stylus things).
MrTurner 16y ago
SHORT COMMENT: Hey hackernews, I'm a teacher/hustler looking for a technical co-founder. Let's build something together. Apply for this program. And worst case scenario, we don't get in but we have a kick@ss product we can sell to school systems. EXPANDED COMMENT:I'm a long time reader of hackernews and I have never left a comment. But this was the push over the edge. I am a math teacher in an urban school. Before that I ran a (very non-tech) business, and before that I was a business analyst (read documentation nerd) for the mobile technology division in a very large bank. I have been telling everyone that will listen that we can save public education and make a bunch of money through innovation. All of our technology, frankly, sucks when compared to similar wares that are sold directly to consumers. I am bursting with ideas and some I have already tested. But I can no longer work in a vacuum. So like dating ads of yesterday here is my pitch- Me: Undaunted math teacher in an urban school with 2 years of experience. Using data driven instruction my students achieved the highest passing rate in my school system. While I can't hack (YET!) I can sell water to a whale and snow to an Eskimo. More importantly I can take complex systems and teach them to almost anyone. I have rewritten documentation for our 3 most popular programs in my systems and I hold monthly workshops for other teachers where I teach them how to use the technology in their classroom. Plus I understand teachers and I have experience in market research. And did I mention, I am a fearless hustler? You: A) Want to change the face of education. B) Build stuff. So let's do like voltron. Team up. Build something amazing. And if ImagineK12 doesn't want us, lets keep moving forward and kick down our own doors. Mr. Turner P.S. You can reach me at BRODERICK dot TURNER at GMAIL dot COM P.P.S. Last year my school system's revenue was 662 Million Dollars. The money is there. P.P.P.S. A list of companies whose lunch we could eat with a good enough product and A WHOLE LOT OF HUSTLE= CARNEGIE LEARNING PROMETHEAN INFINITE CAMPUS QWIZDOM
- jtheory 16y ago
  Of course, it's "Mr Turner" -- what self-respecting teacher goes by their first name or a silly nickname? ;) Seriously, I love these kinds of pitches, though I personally am so over-extended I can't do much beyond offer hit & run advice. I don't know what other technical contacts you're making, but my biggest suggestion is not to wait. There's a huge amount of work you can do without being "the technical one" yourself, and the great thing about this work is that it gradually leads you into a better understanding of the technical side yourself -- which you'll need to do at some point, if you want to be centrally involved in a tech business. You don't have to write code, necessarily, but you have to learn a lot about the tech side. All that really means is "details" -- take the best of your ideas, and start breaking it down all the way into separate pages, separate bits of data ("so we're letting teachers enter assignments here... that needs a name, description, due date -- er, wait, some teachers will have sets of assignments to do in sequence with no specific due date -- and what about extra credit assignments?" etc.); how to enter data, organize it, show it to the users who need to see it (and how to organize them). And so on. What do you do when the user "does it wrong"? Will you handle different time zones, languages, etc.? This is where the important work is; you have to add in solutions to problems, then remove most of your ideas and strip it down to what's most essential & useful & easy to build. This process is much more difficult than the original brainstorming, but also more rewarding -- your project becomes so much closer to "real".
asuth 16y ago
Alan Louie (one of the founders of Imagine K12) has been advising us on Quizlet.com for awhile. What they're doing is terrific. I think it'll produce some great companies. (see http://quizlet.com/about/team/ http://quizlet.com/about/team/)
julianb 16y ago
This reminds me of SchoolTool - http://schooltool.org/ http://schooltool.org/ It's a project conceived by Mark Shuttleworth, the Ubuntu project founder.
ericdobbs 16y ago
Computing should be enabling us to start teaching physics and calculus and linear algebra (among other advanced subjects) in elmentary school. When I suggest such things to educators they look at me like I'm insane. But the future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed. In 1967 Seymore Papert was introducing elementary aged kids to LOGO. The turtle graphics in logo are differential geometry -- very advanced mathematics made completely accessible to young children. Papert's work in LOGO inspired Alan Kay and his colleagues to invent most of what we recognize in a modern computer: mice, GUIs, object-oriented programming. Kay's recent work to make computing accessable to children includes fifth-graders recreating Galileo's experiments and then building computer models of gravity to compare with their experimental data, then going on to apply their gravitational models to a simple computer game. That's physics -- newtonian mechanics to be specific -- made accessible to grade schoolers. Here's his TED talk from 2007. Skip ahead to 9 minutes 30 seconds and watch the next 9 minutes of juicy educational ideas: http://www.ted.com/talks/alan_kay_shares_a_powerful_idea_about_ideas.html http://www.ted.com/talks/alan_kay_shares_a_powerful_idea_abo... Think about it. Fourty four years after Papert gave elementary kids a tool to understand and experiment with differential geometry, we still don't see even LOGO among educational standards, or any programming tools. The culture of education has not recognized what a huge leap turtle graphics are for teaching mathematics. In the late 1970s Apple II computers poured into many schools and LOGO became widely available in education. But those thirty plus years ago a bunch of adults saw some pretty pictures, shrugged, and ignored it as child's play instead of recognizing it for the little revolution it really could be. Moreover, Alan Kay and company have been actively pursuing educational technology for four decades and still no traction for computing in education. Four decades by the people who brought you OOP. Education is a big mountain to move. I'd very much love to be proved wrong, though.
detokaal 16y ago
There is a basic problem with many of these ideas. Current research in education is showing that technology alone is not enough enhance student learning. In other words, putting a computer, device, method or software in a classroom adds nothing to test scores or student outcomes. (As a time saver, I'll let you Google up the citations). We have learned this far too late in education, having spent billions and billions in this area with virtually no return in concrete results. The trend is to use these things as fancy drawing and typing and adding gizmos that simply replace pens and paper: a waste of potential. It is also true that teachers don't want to mess with more of this stuff. We are already beat over the head on a regular bases with the latest and greatest methodologies, books, ideas, etc. on a regular basis. Ask any experienced teacher about their faculty development meetings and they will just laugh and tell you about the last 30 years of innovations that were supposed to have changed education. Here is what someone needs to do in my opinion. Ideas should include LONG TERM training (2-3 years) that is mandatory in their sales package, back it up with solid research, and provide a payment model similar to a lease or student pay-to-play (where you aren't hoping their newest principal or school board also likes the idea the previous group did). In other words, PROVE it works, teach teachers how to use it, and give schools a realistic way to pay for it over a period of years. If not, you're just another one of the 40-50 "latest and greatest" idea I've seen come and go over the decades. Good luck.
codeodor 16y ago
I don't know how most states are doing on education budgets, but the districts around me in Texas aren't doing so hot. From what I can tell, we're cutting budgets by 1/6. (I saw spending of 54 billion in 2008-09 with cuts of 9 billion this year in separate reports) How does that play into this?

230 points by pg 16y ago

Something built around the model that Khan Academy presents would be really interesting. Videos and learn at your own time. Home work help, helping parents and students find tutors, helping with test preparation. The long summer months are also a problem for a household where both parents are working. There is a lot of opportunity to help students here. Will be exciting to see what comes of it. Good luck!

chrismanfrank 16y ago
My company is tackling the tutoring component. We think with free content like the KhanAcademy, the only thing missing is personalized help when you get stuck. We're launching a summer program where K-12 students can work with tutors from Stanford via Skype. The tutor will be like a coach, though, most of the instruction will be from Khan Academy videos. What do you think? We're at IgnitionTutoring.com
- ern 16y ago
  Have you had to work around Khan Academy's CC noncommercial license?
  - Symmetry 16y ago
    Khan Academy would presumably we willing to permit this for a relatively small amount of money.
mahdireilly 16y ago
A huge problem that the Khan Academy fails to address is the digital divide. Often the children who attend schools who are the most at risk do not have access to computers/internet at home and community centers are often hard to reach both due to their distance and the danger in their traveling there. I, a CS masters student, and my wife, a PhD EE, who attend University of Texas at Austin run an after school program for middle school kids to teach robotics and programming using lego mindstorms. The school is one of the poorest in the city, but also has an integrated math/science magnet program within it. Our students are a mix of both the local children and the magnet kids who are bussed in. At the beginning of class we place logic problems on the board and we were surprised to find that often the kids not in the magnet program solved them correctly often on par with those who were supposed to be the best and brightest in the city. However when it came to programming and using the computers, the non-magnet students lagged behind the others at a pace of almost half the speed. Though they both were able to mechanically develop and debug their robot equally well. I meet with the parents throughout the program and the correlation I noticed most prominently with those that suffered with programming was if the kid had easy access to a computer outside of school.

pclark 16y ago

This reminds me of jedc and his MBA research about startup accelerators and how, and more importantly, when to clone. His #1 point was: > You need to be unique, where unique is not just a seed accelerator in a different city Imagine K12 is unique in their knowledge and connections. What a fascinating proposition. http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2011/02/23/looking-back-1-5-years-since-copying-y-combinator/ http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2011/02/23/looking-back-1-5-...

jedc 16y ago
Thanks, Peter. This is exactly the kind of program that I was talking about. I hope their connections to schools are able to turn startups in this market into businesses with real impact quickly.

BenSS 16y ago

This is fantastic, and aligns with a project my wife and I have been discussing. It's frustrating that one or both of us would have to hit the Bay Area to do it (on the wrong coast), but certainly going to consider it.

u48998 16y ago

Two things which should be basic human rights and absolutely free, are: communication and education. But people wish to earn $$ off of them. And then they wonder why the world is in such a messed up state. Kudos to Khan Academy and Bill Gates for patronizing and liberating the education.

btipling 16y ago
I guess you expect publishers to print and give away textbooks for free too?
- frak_your_couch 16y ago
  Well, I'd love and welcome a good high-quality open source textbook movement that happens to also be high quality. It's the quality issue that's the major problem at the moment, I'd say. I've LOVE to see, for instance, Math textbooks written like they wrote "Real World Haskell" in wiki format with a single (or a small,finite set of) editor(s) ensuring that content and quality is up-to-snuff. I think that there really should be minimal educational infrastructure provided for free or very low cost.
  - ph0rque 16y ago
    Have you heard of OERCommons (http://www.oercommons.org/ http://www.oercommons.org/)? They sound like what you describe.
    - frak_your_couch 16y ago
      I have not, thanks for the tip. I looked at a book or so, but didn't see an easy away to comment on individual paragraphs like in "Real World Haskell", but maybe more of the interface opens up if you log in. ANyway, thanks for the tip!
      - pixcavator 16y ago
        My site is a wiki similar to what you describe, http://inperc.com/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Courses http://inperc.com/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Courses. I would like to allow comments but afraid of spam. Maybe one day.

prestia 16y ago

This is a really exciting announcement! Education is probably the most important factor in maintaining long-term competitiveness and the American system is in desperate need of improvement. That said, the hurdles in this area are overwhelming. To name a few: -Layer upon layer of bureaucracy (states, counties, districts, individual school administrators) -Teachers that are reluctant to adopt new technology -Students that are difficult to motivate I have a ton of respect for anyone even trying to take on this challenge.

shaggyfrog 16y ago
I'll add another one: academia who teach education seem to have an almost visceral reaction to any suggestion of for-profit educational product development. There's this almost dogmatic principal that anything related to education should be done not-for-profit. I speak from experience... I have an idea for an educational game (software) and I haven't had any luck getting the time of day.
- ianb 16y ago
  OTOH, there are a lot of for-profit educational ventures, and they all seem really skeevy to me -- places like Kaplan or Phoenix University, for instance, or frankly a lot of educational software. Perhaps a pro-market explanation is that the bureaucracy itself undermines the market, creating a market that is not truly driven by stated goals (education) but other factors. I'm not sure I believe that, but it's possible. The difficulty of procurement might in part mean that heavy up-front marketing costs dominate, and once you've made a sale it's both fairly large and neither increases nor decreases based on the quality of the product -- poor products tend to be maintained based on the commitment of the administration even when in practice they don't end up being useful. It would be interesting if teachers were allocated money to purchase products themselves. While it seems somewhat chaotic, and challenging with student turnover (which is generally very high in the US in particular), it seems like the only way to actually have a market driven by real experience and taste rather than politics or theory.
  - jbooth 16y ago

Alex3917 16y ago

For what it's worth, there is also a new SF incubator for physical products called Magic Beans. I haven't seen them get any press yet, but it seems like they have some quality companies.

shii 16y ago

It seems Imagine K12 will/has solved the classic chicken-and-egg problem with education startups. I've been asking on how to get traction at schools online in different communities for years when I was working on a side project in this area. It's virtually impossible to sell to school districts, and unless pioneering teachers who are savvy enough to use something like Google Apps for their classrooms and see your product in the Marketplace or look for solutions on their own time while somehow fitting it in their already tight classroom curriculum and time budget, you have no way to gain traction from authority figures in the school system. Enterprising students are basically they only way I've found that educational startups/sites can get active users to join on.

BenSS 16y ago
"It's virtually impossible to sell to school districts" This is exactly the problem I've been wrestling with. The best idea so far has been to appeal to private&charter schools first, and then attempt the big system. Public education is very much like a large company (risk-adverse, and process-oriented).
- patio11 16y ago
  School districts have the sales cycles of Fortune 500 megacorps, the technical savvy of convents, and the budgets of hair salons.
  - timsally 16y ago
    As a general rule this is true. However in my experience there is a segment of this market in the US that is extremely lucrative; essentially the top X% of public high schools. These schools are private for all intents and purposes, as most of their budget comes from property taxes. These schools have massive budgets that approach $100 million, extraordinarily qualified and perceptive teachers, and a community that is heavily vested (and almost neurotic) in the success of the students. Also, the staff at these schools are surprisingly tech savvy, often with a large dedicated budget for technology. All the above factors combine to create a perfect storm for a business with an innovative product. If you've got a product that will make students at these schools more competitive in the college admissions process, it will be purchased at a massive price tag. All the key players, the parents, the teachers, and the administrators, have the will and the budget to make these types of acquisitions. Note, marketing to these schools is difficult. A connection in the administration or the education space is the easiest way, but I'm convinced you could bootstrap yourself through the teachers. They are smart and savvy and the senior teachers can have surprising influence. Further, the market is on your side. One you convert a few of the top schools in the area, it is likely most of the other top schools will follow, as not to be left behind. Top schools will follow the leader, as these things go. Overlook this market segment at your own peril. :) There's only a (relatively) small set of schools that fit the above criteria, but they have a combined budget of billions nation wide. You may note that I did not mention the top %X of private schools. That is because in my experience, parents (one of the key players) aren't necessarily as invested in the school on a day to day basis. There seems to be a higher rate of apathy with parents in top private schools, whether as a result of geographic separation or some other factor. The bottom line is that at top public schools, the parents made the effort to move to the community, buy a house at a ridiculous value, pay outrageous property taxes. In practice that seems to create a much more invested base of parents that will be much more involved in the school. I still think you can sell to top %X private schools, but it seems harder in my mind. If someone is thinking about starting a product in this space, happy to chat via email.

mraybman 16y ago

The economy of scale here will be huge - if the founders of Imagine K12 build vertical expertise in promoting education startups (i.e. connections with schools, VCs who invest in education) it will be a lot easier for startups to do customer development and build/implement cool ideas. Our education system will benefit big-time.

gcheong 16y ago

I'd really like to see a "request for startups" type post from this group.

PakG1 16y ago
I think better it come from the schools than from the group, no? The schools are the ones feeling the pain you're trying to solve, and it's a targeted segment where you don't have to searching for a customer. Your customer's right there, so the knowledge is right there. Of course, there's the caveat that the customer isn't always sure of what they really need. But in this case, I'm sure they could think of some good ideas. :)
- gcheong 16y ago
  I would hope that the requests/ideas would be informed by the people they are building relationships with at the school level. So perhaps more along the lines of "here are some things we are hearing again and again" rather than "these are ideas we think are good" but I wouldn't want to exclude either kind.
- jtheory 16y ago
  That's the point of the group, though, really -- they have close relationships with a good set of schools, and can be involved enough to see actual pain points that are amenable to technological solutions, talk through ideas with teachers, find the teachers who give reliable/insightful feedback, find administrators who can give insights into what expenses would be easy to get sign-off for & what wouldn't, etc.. Soliciting ideas from the target market directly isn't as useful -- you get a lot of ideas of what people think would be neat, but often the ideas are seriously flawed (ideas for flashier solutions that in practice are less efficient/practical/flexible than the old method... ideas for things that would be better but would not fit easily into any budget... etc.). I've gotten lots of ideas from teachers directly for my (education-targeting) site, but most of them aren't actually very valuable - things that are either obvious (and already on my to-do list) or far too specific to their particular needs, or ideas that seem good at 3000 feet up, but explode when you look into actual implementation details.

philfreo 16y ago

I'm excited about this program. Hopefully it will bring a lot more smart entrepreneurs and developers into the edu-tech space. It's definitely an industry that's in need of good talent, innovation, and creative problem solving. Quizlet.com (Alan Louie, one of this program's founders, is an advisor) is looking for a few great people to join the small team in SF. If you have an interest in edu-tech (or just working on a web product that's helping millions of students study already), please get in touch. Email phil@[thedomain] or http://quizlet.com/jobs/ http://quizlet.com/jobs/

shortlived 16y ago

This is nice and all but the real issue lies with getting all families involved in their child's education. All of the technology in the world will not solve this problem.

chrismanfrank 16y ago
Maybe that is an opportunity in itself.

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ilovecomputers 16y ago

I have a naive notion of business, but does your startup idea necessarily have to be a for-profit venture?

scottshapiro 16y ago

This is fantastic. But we also need a breakthrough in K-12 tech adoption. n=1: my girlfriend is a math teacher at a better district in California. The only technology they provide her is a desktop with Windows 98. So she uses her own mac to admin a tumblog filled with photos of assignments and answers to problems she uploads from her iphone. She uploads PDF's to google docs and 'shares with everyone'. She links to Khan academy videos since the school bans youtube and none of the district computers support flash. Then her students use their home computers (if they have them) to consume this content. They're excited about it (most never heard of Khan before this) and it seems to be effective. Back in the late 90's IBM installed a token-ring network at my high school. It was obsolete before they finished the project and the computers we had could barely get IE3 to load a web page. So I hope this incubator does a lot not just to foster edu focused startups but to also get the right people in education to push for decent technology at schools.

oscilloscope 16y ago
Many friendly Linux User Group members volunteer to install and administer Ubuntu at public schools in the Bay Area. Ubuntu's a decent experience even with 256MB of ram, so schools can even reuse those 8-12 year old computers. Free software's great for all kinds of technical, practical and cultural reasons. It's existed my whole life, but I didn't really feel its presence until using Debian in a research lab 4 years ago. We don't all need to be RMS, but it's a worthy thing to think about for anyone who makes a living off free software.

thefreshteapot 16y ago

"If we fund you, the goal will be to build a compelling prototype or demo to raise money from appropriate investors" - Perhaps i'm a bitter competitor* yet shouldn't this read. "If we fund you, the goal will be to build a compelling prototype or demo to raise the standard of education for all, inspiring a thirst for learning" I'm skeptical to private groups with funds who want to invest in a lucrative market which is not purely based on "capitalistic ideals". To use a famous quote in context "Education is for life, not just for Christmas". * One day! for those who know me and my snail like pace at getting to a version 1.

maxharris 16y ago

The major problem I have with any of the computer learning stuff out there is that I still need to reach for paper and pencil each time I actually try to solve a problem. I wish there was an iPad app that taught college-level introductory physics (with a place to draw with one of those 3rd-party stylus things).

MrTurner 16y ago

SHORT COMMENT: Hey hackernews, I'm a teacher/hustler looking for a technical co-founder. Let's build something together. Apply for this program. And worst case scenario, we don't get in but we have a kick@ss product we can sell to school systems. EXPANDED COMMENT:I'm a long time reader of hackernews and I have never left a comment. But this was the push over the edge. I am a math teacher in an urban school. Before that I ran a (very non-tech) business, and before that I was a business analyst (read documentation nerd) for the mobile technology division in a very large bank. I have been telling everyone that will listen that we can save public education and make a bunch of money through innovation. All of our technology, frankly, sucks when compared to similar wares that are sold directly to consumers. I am bursting with ideas and some I have already tested. But I can no longer work in a vacuum. So like dating ads of yesterday here is my pitch- Me: Undaunted math teacher in an urban school with 2 years of experience. Using data driven instruction my students achieved the highest passing rate in my school system. While I can't hack (YET!) I can sell water to a whale and snow to an Eskimo. More importantly I can take complex systems and teach them to almost anyone. I have rewritten documentation for our 3 most popular programs in my systems and I hold monthly workshops for other teachers where I teach them how to use the technology in their classroom. Plus I understand teachers and I have experience in market research. And did I mention, I am a fearless hustler? You: A) Want to change the face of education. B) Build stuff. So let's do like voltron. Team up. Build something amazing. And if ImagineK12 doesn't want us, lets keep moving forward and kick down our own doors. Mr. Turner P.S. You can reach me at BRODERICK dot TURNER at GMAIL dot COM P.P.S. Last year my school system's revenue was 662 Million Dollars. The money is there. P.P.P.S. A list of companies whose lunch we could eat with a good enough product and A WHOLE LOT OF HUSTLE= CARNEGIE LEARNING PROMETHEAN INFINITE CAMPUS QWIZDOM

jtheory 16y ago
Of course, it's "Mr Turner" -- what self-respecting teacher goes by their first name or a silly nickname? ;) Seriously, I love these kinds of pitches, though I personally am so over-extended I can't do much beyond offer hit & run advice. I don't know what other technical contacts you're making, but my biggest suggestion is not to wait. There's a huge amount of work you can do without being "the technical one" yourself, and the great thing about this work is that it gradually leads you into a better understanding of the technical side yourself -- which you'll need to do at some point, if you want to be centrally involved in a tech business. You don't have to write code, necessarily, but you have to learn a lot about the tech side. All that really means is "details" -- take the best of your ideas, and start breaking it down all the way into separate pages, separate bits of data ("so we're letting teachers enter assignments here... that needs a name, description, due date -- er, wait, some teachers will have sets of assignments to do in sequence with no specific due date -- and what about extra credit assignments?" etc.); how to enter data, organize it, show it to the users who need to see it (and how to organize them). And so on. What do you do when the user "does it wrong"? Will you handle different time zones, languages, etc.? This is where the important work is; you have to add in solutions to problems, then remove most of your ideas and strip it down to what's most essential & useful & easy to build. This process is much more difficult than the original brainstorming, but also more rewarding -- your project becomes so much closer to "real".

asuth 16y ago

Alan Louie (one of the founders of Imagine K12) has been advising us on Quizlet.com for awhile. What they're doing is terrific. I think it'll produce some great companies. (see http://quizlet.com/about/team/ http://quizlet.com/about/team/)

julianb 16y ago

This reminds me of SchoolTool - http://schooltool.org/ http://schooltool.org/ It's a project conceived by Mark Shuttleworth, the Ubuntu project founder.

ericdobbs 16y ago

Computing should be enabling us to start teaching physics and calculus and linear algebra (among other advanced subjects) in elmentary school. When I suggest such things to educators they look at me like I'm insane. But the future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed. In 1967 Seymore Papert was introducing elementary aged kids to LOGO. The turtle graphics in logo are differential geometry -- very advanced mathematics made completely accessible to young children. Papert's work in LOGO inspired Alan Kay and his colleagues to invent most of what we recognize in a modern computer: mice, GUIs, object-oriented programming. Kay's recent work to make computing accessable to children includes fifth-graders recreating Galileo's experiments and then building computer models of gravity to compare with their experimental data, then going on to apply their gravitational models to a simple computer game. That's physics -- newtonian mechanics to be specific -- made accessible to grade schoolers. Here's his TED talk from 2007. Skip ahead to 9 minutes 30 seconds and watch the next 9 minutes of juicy educational ideas: http://www.ted.com/talks/alan_kay_shares_a_powerful_idea_about_ideas.html http://www.ted.com/talks/alan_kay_shares_a_powerful_idea_abo... Think about it. Fourty four years after Papert gave elementary kids a tool to understand and experiment with differential geometry, we still don't see even LOGO among educational standards, or any programming tools. The culture of education has not recognized what a huge leap turtle graphics are for teaching mathematics. In the late 1970s Apple II computers poured into many schools and LOGO became widely available in education. But those thirty plus years ago a bunch of adults saw some pretty pictures, shrugged, and ignored it as child's play instead of recognizing it for the little revolution it really could be. Moreover, Alan Kay and company have been actively pursuing educational technology for four decades and still no traction for computing in education. Four decades by the people who brought you OOP. Education is a big mountain to move. I'd very much love to be proved wrong, though.

detokaal 16y ago

There is a basic problem with many of these ideas. Current research in education is showing that technology alone is not enough enhance student learning. In other words, putting a computer, device, method or software in a classroom adds nothing to test scores or student outcomes. (As a time saver, I'll let you Google up the citations). We have learned this far too late in education, having spent billions and billions in this area with virtually no return in concrete results. The trend is to use these things as fancy drawing and typing and adding gizmos that simply replace pens and paper: a waste of potential. It is also true that teachers don't want to mess with more of this stuff. We are already beat over the head on a regular bases with the latest and greatest methodologies, books, ideas, etc. on a regular basis. Ask any experienced teacher about their faculty development meetings and they will just laugh and tell you about the last 30 years of innovations that were supposed to have changed education. Here is what someone needs to do in my opinion. Ideas should include LONG TERM training (2-3 years) that is mandatory in their sales package, back it up with solid research, and provide a payment model similar to a lease or student pay-to-play (where you aren't hoping their newest principal or school board also likes the idea the previous group did). In other words, PROVE it works, teach teachers how to use it, and give schools a realistic way to pay for it over a period of years. If not, you're just another one of the 40-50 "latest and greatest" idea I've seen come and go over the decades. Good luck.

codeodor 16y ago

I don't know how most states are doing on education budgets, but the districts around me in Texas aren't doing so hot. From what I can tell, we're cutting budgets by 1/6. (I saw spending of 54 billion in 2008-09 with cuts of 9 billion this year in separate reports) How does that play into this?