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Comment by hospadam | Hacker News Reader

While I can get behind the general sentiment of this (marketing towards the people who will make the purchase) - I think it overlooks one unique problem with teachers: traditionally they don't have money for purchases like this. My wife is a teacher in a fairly good school district - and she was only given $100 for all of her purchases for the whole year (paper, supplies, etc.) We have an iPad that she occasionally uses in the classroom... and even with the relatively cheap apps (<$5 range) - she sometimes second guesses purchases and is quite hesitant to buy an app.

I just think the primary and secondary school system is a very rough market to target a paid app/software towards.

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I'm suggesting that teachers will pay for it out of his/her own pocket if it's done right.

Just like any other purchase (i.e an iPad)

I taught for a few years in a fairly-sized school district. Even the best teachers I knew in my department--ones who were very internet savvy and technological proficient--admitted they wouldn't pay for an application in the classroom. They just didn't have the money. They constantly look for free things, such as Google Docs for teaching students how to collaborate and edit papers together.

Target to teachers, yes, but there are other ways to do business with them than to take from their tiny bank accounts.

We have found the opposite - teachers will pay for software if it is made well and makes their life easier. The price point obviously still needs to be set appropriately.

Life was very busy when I was teaching, anything that saves time on busy work is appreciated.

My experience and market research echos yours, just to get another tally mark here. Differenct schools allocate discretionary budgets differently, and there is some variance also between elementary, MS, and HS in the same district. A good time to reach for discretionary $ is near the end of the school year, after they've spent 7 months being frugal but don't want to "underspend," in part for fear that they won't get the full budget the next year if they don't spend it this year.

I understand that. All I'm saying is that (in my experience) teachers already purchase a lot out of their own pocket for their classroom. And most don't like it - but find it necessary. Getting them to buy even more is more difficult (than say getting a web developer to purchase a more efficient IDE or project management software).

Hmm. I'm not sure that's a great idea for two reasons:

* It means that kids are going to get an inconsistent experience throughout the school.

* It means that a teacher's personal finances affect their job performance and the benefit to their kids. Since when was the precedent to be full-time employed AND have to fork out for your resources out of personal pocket. That isn't really acceptable.

Both of these are grossly unfair, in my opinion - both to teachers who may not be as well off, and to kids who happen to have those teachers selected and thus don't get the benefit.

There's also the factor of whether the inconsistency across a school of having each teacher with different bits of software is going to negatively impact things.

I do agree with the sentiment of allowing teachers to decide what is purchased based on it being actually useful - I see a lot of "edugeeks" trying to pitch software they claim will revolutionise teaching to school boards and heads of IT, when in reality it's fucking useless for teachers, and irritating to students.

Hey Jarred - since you're actually in a school, could you ask a couple of your teachers if they would actually pay for something out of their own pocket even if all it did would make their work life easier? And how much? And what would it take?

I ask because conventionally companies that have taken this approach (eg. Xobni) of building a great consumer products that solve problems in the workplace have generally struggled to actually monetise it. Typically folks expect their boss to pay for that sort of thing.

Perhaps the classroom is different though - perhaps teachers perceive something that makes their work-life easier (maybe halving the time they need to spend marking after class) as being worth personal investment (because they know the stogy guy in the IT Department will never pay for it).

Ask a couple of teachers (and if you could, let us know what they say!).

I'll do that.

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