John Davidson

Last night I emailed Elaine my business review and market segmentation, and tonight I spoke on the phone to John Davidson, who had done extensive research with teachers and technology in the past.

The conversation with John will be primarily used in my PEST section. John wasn't optimistic about teachers' reception to web pages, saying that Mary Ann's best shot was to market to teachers and educators that were already excited about new technologies and the internet, instead of trying to convert people with old habits. John's experiences have taught him that people that haven't been inclined to move to the internet in the past wouldn't be profitable to try and convince - and ultimately, that teachers are a tough crowd to win over in this regard.

Good to know. I believe the money to be made for Mary Ann will not be from the schools and administrators, but rather with outside arrangements, like affiliate marketing and Google's AdSense.

Next up, a SWOT, Competitive Review and target market piece... then an executive summary to tie it all up. Then on to next week's deliverables.

Sunday Roundup

I've got a date to speak with John Davidson on Tuesday night about some research he did on the subject of the educational climate and technology (the internet, in particular). That will help round out my PEST.

I've also received another small handful of questionnaire replies, which will likely be the last replies I'll use in my deliverables, for logistical reasons, if nothing else.

On the list of things that need to be finished by the 15th, the deliverables, rubric, documentation and a hearty portion of the business review are finished. Also, I'm sitting on the information necessary to create the market summary and, for the most part, the competitive review.

A diligent night of work tomorrow should generate decent drafts of almost everything I need for the 15th, which I will hopefully be able to run by Elaine - and maybe Art and Jeff, because Elaine will be away for a few days and I'm not sure what her access will be.

Friday the 9th

Today I prepared for the drive from Maine to Vermont by polishing my rubric and sending a copy off to Elaine for perusal, and sent one last email off to Carla Fogg's husband, John, who Jen Kramer (a web design guru at Marlboro) told me had done some research on teachers, students and technology.

I think some of his findings may be able to help me create a more accurate PEST, detailing the cultural climate that Mary Ann's going to have to deal with.

There still exist some outstanding questionnaires, but I'm not waiting much longer to process what I've got. I already see useful information in what I've gotten back, and I'll hopefully get a few more replies this weekend while I'm at classes in Vermont. Once I return to Maine on Saturday night or Sunday, I'll work on the analysis portion of the information I have and begin churning out the deliverables that are due on Thursday.

Some answers, more questions

Mary Ann responded to my email with a lot of company documentation, all of which is useful in one way or another. What I received was her presentation packet that she used for pitching to schools, her resume, a document answering most of the questions I grilled her with when I emailed her and finally a promotional document not entirely dissimilar to the presentation packet.

I like a lot of her concepts, but I think there are specific things she needs to do in order for her organization to stand on its own. I emailed Elaine to ask if she thinks I should do my deliverables based on Mary Ann's vision of Connected Classrooms (which is probably more likely to be put into fruition) or mine.

Over the course of the last three days, I emailed almost 40 teachers (and got a handful of mailer daemons back), significantly now including Mary Ann's clients themselves.

The purposes of these emails has been to help in the preparation of the PEST and market summary.

Notable common themes in the emails I've received thus far include:

-No teacher believes teachers should have to pay for their individual websites, and most of them believe the administration would be hesitant to do so.

-As revealed in earlier studies that I had perused, most respondants thus far have said websites aren't utilized more because teachers aren't aptly trained to do so, and furthermore don't have the time to become so trained.

-Teachers don't feel the administration prioritizes school websites enough for adequate time, money or other resources to be devoted for their creation and support.

-There are slight differences in what the respondants would want in hypothetical (or not so hypothetical, depending on the teacher in question) websites, but most agree that access to homework and fluid communication with parents are desirable attributes.

One respondant notably mentioned that left out in all this discussion is the student user interface. He suggested the sites be "deeper" and more useful to the students, essentially as a critique to TeacherWeb's set up. Each teacher from a different school has an entirely different web page on TeacherWeb's directory, and this respondant suggested that a single student ought to be able to view a page that captures all of his/her classes - going to one page to access his five classes instead of five different pages individually.

More research

Still awaiting word from Mary Ann and the 16 remaining teachers that use TeacherWeb, I spent tonight emailing 12 teachers that DON'T each have websites with questions about how they view the prospect of class websites.

All 29 (36 if you count the seven mailer daemons) emails were sent to teachers in New England (13 Mass., 7 Conn., 6 Vt., 5 NH & 5 Maine).

The questions I asked tonight's 12 were all something to the effect of the following, with slight variances depending on what job the teacher had and where:

1.) Do teachers in your school have class websites? If so, what do they use them for? If not, why don't they use them?

2.) Do you have a class website? If not, why not? If so, what do you use it for?

3.) Do you think class websites could be used more often or more effectively? If so, how? If not, why not?

3.) If you had a third party make you a website, what features would you like to see on that website? Would you ever pay for a website? If so, how much would a class website be worth?

4.) If you have time, peruse www.teacherweb.com. As a potential client of this company, what would you change?

More research

Still awaiting word from Mary Ann and the 16 remaining teachers that use TeacherWeb, I spent tonight emailing 12 teachers that DON'T each have websites with questions about how they view the prospect of class websites.

All 29 (36 if you count the seven mailer daemons) emails were sent to teachers in New England (13 Mass., 7 Conn., 6 Vt., 5 NH & 5 Maine).

The questions I asked tonight's 12 were all something to the effect of the following, with slight variances depending on what job the teacher had and where:

1.) Do teachers in your school have class websites? If so, what do they use them for? If not, why don't they use them?

2.) Do you have a class website? If not, why not? If so, what do you use it for?

3.) Do you think class websites could be used more often or more effectively? If so, how? If not, why not?

3.) If you had a third party make you a website, what features would you like to see on that website? Would you ever pay for a website? If so, how much would a class website be worth?

4.) If you have time, peruse www.teacherweb.com. As a potential client of this company, what would you change?

Discovering a need

In addition to a request made to Mary Ann for a fairly significant amount of information centered around her vision of what Connected Classrooms should/will be, I sent 23 emails out to teachers that have posted websites with Mary Ann's most direct competitor, TeacherWeb.com.

Of those 23, seven immediately came back with Mailer Daemons, so only 16 were effective. The emails were all something like the following:

My name is Seth Bradford Koenig and I'm a student at the Persons School of Marlboro College in Brattleboro, VT, working toward my MS in Strategic Technology Management.
For my Capstone Project, I'm working with an organization that's trying to break into the field of teacher-oriented websites.
My research thus far shows that you decided to put a class website on the internet, and if you've got a few minutes to answer some basic questions for me, I'd truly appreciate it.

First, what motivated you to post a website for your class?

Second, are there any things you'd prefer your current class website do that it doesn't? How would your ideal class website be set up and used?

Third, do some of your students have trouble getting internet access at home? If so, how do you make your website integral to class work while still allowing those with limited home access to keep up with class duties?

Finally, what need do you see - if any - exists for class websites in general? How have they helped you so far and how do you think they can be utilized better in the future?

Thanks for your time and interest.
SBK

As for Mary Ann, I questioned her about a mission statement and who she feels her target audience specifically is. I also asked her about her experience in the classroom and how/why she feels qualified to consult on technology integration/websites. I also asked for a very detailed up-and-down of what exactly Connected Classrooms would offer its clients, from both the standpoints of each the teacher, student and community member.

It's nice to have a fast laptop again

When I bought the Compaq 1200 notebook computer back in 2000, it was a top notch machine. In the years since then, it has become antiquated and slow, and I avoided using it if at all possible basically until about a week ago, when I added 128 MB of RAM to it and a wireless networking card.

Now, the wireless networking card has done me no good whatsoever thus far because here in Maine there are still very few places (my house included) that are hotspots. That said, I'm excited about maybe getting it to work this weekend in the Tech Center.

I mention all this because I've been off on my computer much of this past week and a half, plugging away in many remote environments and neglecting to charge up the home PC and point out my successes and failures on this blog. I know Elaine has felt a little out of the loop lately, and for that I apologize. I really should have been better about checking in at the end of the respective days to keep her and Mary Ann up to speed.

Speaking of Mary Ann, she recently noted that she didn't realize there was a patent pending on TeacherWeb. Because Connected Classrooms has temporarily dissolved until she and Jason (from Gravity Switch and The Persons School, for review) can get together and renovate, she doesn't really have a site with which to compare the patentable portions of TeacherWeb.

Which serves as a smashing segue into another mention, which is that I then asked Mary Ann for a listing of what she believes the strengths (and conversely, the weaknesses) of Connected Classrooms will be when it reemerges, whenever it is that it will reemerge.

This is important, because I'm trying to add a SWOT analysis to a document for this weekend's Capstone Fair, but I can't come up with strengths and weaknesses for a website that doesn't exist... well, I guess a significant weakness would be that it doesn't exist... but theoretically, it will, and I'll need to know what Mary Ann plans on offering that other websites won't.

Otherwise, the display board for my Capstone is coming along swimmingly, and I'm particularly proud of a certain graphic design I made featuring a school bus with webpages for a windshield. I'm so clever.