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How is it any different from selling any other non-entertainment service? #1 Institutions means administrators with budgets. a) What do they want their budget

How is it any different from selling any other non-entertainment service? #1 Institutions means administrators with budgets. a) What do they want their budgets to do? b) These things are presumably on networked computers. Can you aggregate and present data to those purse-string holders to justify their expense on an ongoing basis? Do your stats make their spending look smart? #2 The public means people who spend money on things for kids. Likely parents. a) Do you just get parents to buy things to get their children to stop asking for them (unlikely for educational software) or do you figure out what else parents expect as a result? b) Do you show parents results? On an ongoing basis do you show them progress? Maybe text them in the middle of the afternoon when their kids achieve something meaningful?

Spooky23 6y ago
I’ve served on a school board and can say at a high level that parents get pretty crazy about weird things, games included. Boring stuff that checks boxes is the safe answer for an institution. If it’s fun, the school will get bombarded with complaints about taxpayers paying for games, the devil inside the computer, etc. Parents tend to not care or think about outcomes if the angry box is ticked. The best fun things are maker projects. The tangible outcome is understandable to people. The educational content/value varies though.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  > The best fun things are maker projects. The tangible outcome is understandable to people. The educational content/value varies though. Yeah, every parent these days seems to have the attitude "god forbid we teach more than one algorithm for addition, but it's unacceptable that you don't have CS in middle school!" And even get outright angry if you try to point out that teaching more than one algorithm that meets the specifications of addition over naturals is CS. But have the kids "build" some kit robot and you're a damn hero. The most frustrating thing about education is trying to explain to voters why their child has to learn something (at a young age) that the parent doesn't understand. You see this a lot in parental complaints about Common Core math. Over-involved stay-at-home moms who still can't add double digit numbers without using their fingers will complain that they don't understand their first grader's math homework. The point of the math homework is to teach mental math strategies for adding numbers together. Also, parents of fifth grade kids who are frustrated that they can't help their kids understand conditional probabilities, and express that frustration by telling us to "stop teaching their kids about gambling". It's impossible as a school board member to say "look, it's embarrassing that 10 year old German kids are better than you at math. Sorry we failed you. We're trying to do better by your kid."
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    The ignorance around math is amazing to me. When I went to a public school in NYC in the 80s, I had 1960s textbooks and a pretty poor initial math literacy — I struggled into middle school. When I look at the common core stuff with my young son, he gets what he’s doing in a more fundamental way. In first grade, he basically “discovered” division on his own and was incredibly happy about it. Not something I would have done for sure!
  - 6510 6y ago
    perhaps a short list of things for parents to study, a little bit of reading/study material along with some tests. Shouldn't be to hard to pick some topics and crudely compile something for parents who are interested. 4 classes per year seems entirely reasonable.
    - genocidicbunny 6y ago
      Unfortunately, the response to that is going to be something to the effect of "Are you calling me stupid?" Many parents are not going to accept that they had a bad education and could use some catch up. Even fewer are going to accept it if the catch up in question is of elementary school level.
      - imtringued 6y ago
        I guess the only way would be to have some sort of educational material that involves both parent and child.
      - 6510 6y ago
        No one is calling anyone stupid, we all know things and there are plenty of things to learn left.
    - throwawaygh 6y ago
      > 4 classes per year seems entirely reasonable. Suggesting upper middle class stay-at-home moms should take night classes because their addition skills are worse than your average second grader sounds like a great way to _spectacularly_ lose a school board election. These people are king makers in local politics.
throwawaygh 6y ago
> a) What do they want their budgets to do? Increase test scores, keep themselves employed and friendly SB members in office, and reform the institution/field in their image (or, for the cynical ones, make them look like leaders in the field). In that order. And lots of other stuff that's not really relevant to software (e.g., maintain the physical plant, retain good teachers, etc.) > #2 The public means people who spend money on things for kids. Likely parents. Meh. IME parents have almost no influence in software purchasing decisions (because they mostly just don't care). Even the board doesn't really dive that deep into the administration's budgets unless they're considering a change-of-command. In fact, the superintendent might not even weigh in on software depending on the size of the district. Activist yahoos might gripe about budget items, but can usually be safely ignored. Especially for software, which is often a rounding error even in the IT portion of the budget.

Spooky23 6y ago

I’ve served on a school board and can say at a high level that parents get pretty crazy about weird things, games included. Boring stuff that checks boxes is the safe answer for an institution. If it’s fun, the school will get bombarded with complaints about taxpayers paying for games, the devil inside the computer, etc. Parents tend to not care or think about outcomes if the angry box is ticked. The best fun things are maker projects. The tangible outcome is understandable to people. The educational content/value varies though.

throwawaygh 6y ago
> The best fun things are maker projects. The tangible outcome is understandable to people. The educational content/value varies though. Yeah, every parent these days seems to have the attitude "god forbid we teach more than one algorithm for addition, but it's unacceptable that you don't have CS in middle school!" And even get outright angry if you try to point out that teaching more than one algorithm that meets the specifications of addition over naturals is CS. But have the kids "build" some kit robot and you're a damn hero. The most frustrating thing about education is trying to explain to voters why their child has to learn something (at a young age) that the parent doesn't understand. You see this a lot in parental complaints about Common Core math. Over-involved stay-at-home moms who still can't add double digit numbers without using their fingers will complain that they don't understand their first grader's math homework. The point of the math homework is to teach mental math strategies for adding numbers together. Also, parents of fifth grade kids who are frustrated that they can't help their kids understand conditional probabilities, and express that frustration by telling us to "stop teaching their kids about gambling". It's impossible as a school board member to say "look, it's embarrassing that 10 year old German kids are better than you at math. Sorry we failed you. We're trying to do better by your kid."
- Spooky23 6y ago
  The ignorance around math is amazing to me. When I went to a public school in NYC in the 80s, I had 1960s textbooks and a pretty poor initial math literacy — I struggled into middle school. When I look at the common core stuff with my young son, he gets what he’s doing in a more fundamental way. In first grade, he basically “discovered” division on his own and was incredibly happy about it. Not something I would have done for sure!
- 6510 6y ago
  perhaps a short list of things for parents to study, a little bit of reading/study material along with some tests. Shouldn't be to hard to pick some topics and crudely compile something for parents who are interested. 4 classes per year seems entirely reasonable.
  - genocidicbunny 6y ago
    Unfortunately, the response to that is going to be something to the effect of "Are you calling me stupid?" Many parents are not going to accept that they had a bad education and could use some catch up. Even fewer are going to accept it if the catch up in question is of elementary school level.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      I guess the only way would be to have some sort of educational material that involves both parent and child.
    - 6510 6y ago
      No one is calling anyone stupid, we all know things and there are plenty of things to learn left.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    > 4 classes per year seems entirely reasonable. Suggesting upper middle class stay-at-home moms should take night classes because their addition skills are worse than your average second grader sounds like a great way to _spectacularly_ lose a school board election. These people are king makers in local politics.

throwawaygh 6y ago

> a) What do they want their budgets to do? Increase test scores, keep themselves employed and friendly SB members in office, and reform the institution/field in their image (or, for the cynical ones, make them look like leaders in the field). In that order. And lots of other stuff that's not really relevant to software (e.g., maintain the physical plant, retain good teachers, etc.) > #2 The public means people who spend money on things for kids. Likely parents. Meh. IME parents have almost no influence in software purchasing decisions (because they mostly just don't care). Even the board doesn't really dive that deep into the administration's budgets unless they're considering a change-of-command. In fact, the superintendent might not even weigh in on software depending on the size of the district. Activist yahoos might gripe about budget items, but can usually be safely ignored. Especially for software, which is often a rounding error even in the IT portion of the budget.