chit chat lincolnville presentation 2007-10-05
DESCRIPTION
Introductory presentation by Jack Phelps @ Lincolnville Central School on Oct 05, 2007TRANSCRIPT
Introduction to
Educational Network
Jack Phelps - Fall 2007http://ChitCh.at
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What is ChitChat?
ChitChat is an educational network: a web platform for classwork, organization, sharing, and collaboration in k-12 schools
ChitChat is an educational network: a web platform for classwork, organization, sharing, and collaboration in k-12 schools
A complete platform for classwork, assignments,
grading, scheduling, messaging, and collaboration
Powerful, web-based workflow, organization & automation tools
A unique educational network
Everything teachers and students create can be shared
around the entire ChitChat network without any extra
work
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Why Is This So Important?
• 1:1 Computing is the way of the future– Laptops approaching $200 can’t be ignored– 30 mil. 5th-12th grade students in the US
alone(DOE) will need them
• But going beyond web research and word processing is still too hard– No fully articulated vision for improving
education– User adoption problems with traditional LMS– “Stuck in 1997”
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ChitChat’s Educational Workflow
Teachers assign work •Unique, friendly interface •Designed to make creating course content as simple as possible
Students Deliver Work•Students see an integrated view of assignments across classes•Compose work in ChitChat’s rich-text web interface
Complete Learning Support•Teachers see all responses in one place for grading and feedback•Administrators gain visibility needed to support excellence
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The ChitChat Educational Network
• Sharing creates leverage from already completed work– Student work turns automatically into organized portfolios– Teachers find new content to use in their classes
• The network acts like the blogging world– Fosters innovation– Drives the best content to the top
• Schools don’t have to worry– Safe, closed network– Educational focus– Complete auditability
Users click one button to share their content with the entire network
Users click one button to share their content with the entire network
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A math teacher in the UK posts a weekly brain-teaser for her classes
Math teachers around the world begin
awarding credit for students who solve the
problem every week
Students around the world start competing to see who can solve the
problem first every week
When the math teacher runs out of problems, she solicits new ones
from other users
Vision for Collaborative, Networked Learning
A science teacher in CA posts about an
interesting experiment his class conducts
A student in Maine reads about it and asks her teacher if they can
include it in their lessons
The students in Maine discover a way to
improve the value of the experiment and post lab
reports about it
A student somewhere else reads about it…
A network of lit teachers creates a new course
each semester based on recent popular books
Working together lets them reduce their
individual workloads while increasing the
course’s overall quality
Their students are more interested in and stimulated by the
relevant topics
The course content is always new and up-to-
date, reducing the threat of plagarism
In short, moving the educational model into a collaborative, networked web application enables the same rapid, user-driven, participatory transfer of ideas and information that happens every day in “web 2.0”
In short, moving the educational model into a collaborative, networked web application enables the same rapid, user-driven, participatory transfer of ideas and information that happens every day in “web 2.0”
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Demo Break / Appendix
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How ChitChat Supports Learning Excellence
Students often fail due to simple organizational issues
ChitChat shows them what’s due next and organizes the work they’ve already done along with teachers’ feedback
Teachers lack time & resources to create engaging new lessons; there’s no good way for teachers to share their best lessons with each other
ChitChat automatically networks content together between schools so teachers can find the best stuff from around the entire network of users
Administrators & parents lack visibility into the classroom, hindering their ability to support and encourage excellence
ChitChat gives them visibility into what’s going on in their schools and lets them be supportive without being overbearing
Problem: Solution:
Problem: Solution:
Problem: Solution:
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Technology Roadmap
You can see for yourself what ChitChat looks like right now. Here’s a glimpse of what we’re adding in the future:
Item DescriptionTimelin
e
QuestionsAllow teachers to create and share questions students respond to individually, work towards automatic grading, secure testing, and math wildcards
1Q08
Advanced gradebook
Gradebooks showing all students & assignments in one view; features including letter mapping, categories, scaling, and performance & effectiveness analytics
1Q08
Advanced Administration
Stronger user administration, analytics & reporting functions, data visualizations, configurable alerts, etc.
1Q08
Static school & class pages
Let teachers/admins attach static informational pages to existing class and school pages
1Q08
Groups Allow users to join extracurricular groups, give groups pages and blogs 3Q08
Parent loginsAllow parents some access to view student assignments and work and see teacher feedback
3Q08
Increased personalization
Custom school look and feel, class personalization, etc. 3Q08
Curriculum management
Allow teachers and schools to group entries into larger learning objects to create, standardize, and share entire curricula
Long-Term
Educational Games
Who’s the fastest typer in your school? Simple educational games integrated into ChitChat’s educational network
Long-Term
3rd-party content
Offer 3rd-party (and user-created) content in a marketplace format Long-term
We want your feedback as pilot users! Help us prioritize and add to meet your needs!
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Benefits For Teachers
• Educational network – makes finding and using high quality educational content
simple• Easy syllabus maintenance
– Designed to be as easy as—and more useful than—typing in Microsoft Word
– Automatically pushes assignment data onto students’ to-do lists
• Assignment tracking– See all student responses in one place, attached to original
assignment, for easy grading/feedback– Dashboard shows teachers their outstanding grading work
• Versatile feedback system– Easy “writing in margins”– Preserves comments for teachers/students/parents
• Nothing makes quality teaching easier than students who are organized, up to date, and engaged
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Benefits For Students
• Easy organization and management– Unified view of everything assigned across all classes– Like one notebook instead of five – Automatic portfolio
• It’s like social networking…– User profiles– Blogging– Shared bookmarks (“Stars”)– All with an educational focus, to engage students in learning
and let them explore their interests • …but you don’t have to block it
– Educational focus– All user access authenticated by schools, and no anonymity– We retain all data and can trace everything that happens– We use nicknames and don’t use sensitive data like SSNs– Users as safe as they are in school from things ranging from
“e-bullying” to sexual predators– Still, users should never post sensitive data on the internet
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Benefits For Administrators
• Creates visibility into the classroom– Administrators can be sure they’re offering support as necessary
without being intrusive– Down the line, will enable uniquely detailed reporting, analytics, data
visualization, and automatic alerts• Safe & auditable
– No sensitive information, users go by nicknames and icons– Can turn off selected networking features like user images and
messages• Makes customizing/standardizing curriculum easy
– teachers can collaboratively develop and share standard curriculum across courses easily
– Update automatically without sending around new documents• Simple to manage, no operating a server, no coding
– Hosted by ChitChat at a fully redundant, state-of-the-art data center– Visual interface for all management functions– No installing software & minimal customization– Free up IT personnel for user support
• Green and cheap– Nearly paperless classroom– Reduce Microsoft Office licenses– Reduce support costs
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Who’s Behind ChitChat?
• Jack PhelpsJack founded ChitChat after several years investment banking at McNamee Lawrence & Co. As a tech banker, he learned a lot about corporate and consumer software contributes to the value companies and individuals are able to extract from their computers. Having participated in one of the earliest college laptop programs, and caring deeply about Maine (where he graduated from Camden Rockport High School), he founded ChitChat with the vision of developing global educational network with a simple, intuitive workflow that would bring this same value to education, easily and affordably.
• Better LabsBetter Labs is a San Jose, California- and Pune, India-based team of experienced programmers focused on bringing flexible, elegant web applications to market with an eye on design and usability. Better Labs
• FinancingChitChat is financed by its founders and by McNamee Lawrence & Co., a Boston/London/San Francisco firm advising growth technology companies in enterprise software, media, and clean technology.
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Concluding Thoughts
1. Thank you!
2. Tell your friends!
3. Why “ChitChat”?