Please review my startup. Safe text messaging for teachers
classparrot.com
classparrot.com
If teacher/student ends up as an unattractive market for whatever reason, I'd consider teacher/parent - regular parent outreach a huge pain for teachers, and its also their number one "contact" after other teachers and district employees. I know my wife runs into a lot of headaches from the "fog of communication lag" or whatever you'd want to call it.
Alternatively, this could be used as a small business tool for managers and shift workers. No more need to go about finding a replacement by calling down a list. Of this could just be a generic communication tool with employees who may not have regular access to email (things like trades, etc.)
TL;DR: I think it's a cool tool, but teacher/student communication may be a little risky to start with.
EDIT: You do deserve a huge credit for developing a tool that helps teachers, rather than attempts to remove them from the process. I've seen too many tools developed as "teaching aids" that seem to be rooted in the belief that teachers are somehow lacking and that a massed produced video game or application could replace them. These ultimately assume that the teachers are lazy or ignorant and would hand their students over to an outsider; which is why they never succeed. Congrats for not holding those assumptions.
Love the design btw. Simple and clear.
This is an attitude I've observed before, but don't understand. A large number of startups are developed as "X aids" rooted in the belief that an application could replace X (examples include wufoo, craigslist, wikipedia, etc).
Why do people dislike such startups when X == teaching?
You are correct, however, that your competitors (teachers, in this case) will not promote your product and your startup is likely to fail if it is based on the assumption that they will do so. Similarly, wikipedia would have failed if it required Encyclopedia Brittania to promote it.
The short of it is that there hasn't been a good "X aid" that's been proposed yet that solve the classroom issues. For me, the "I've seen..." etc. opinion comes from seeing a majority of education startups claiming to be "disruptive" without doing enough due diligence in the industry. I can often tell that the bulk of the research done by the entrepreneur is thinking back to their own school days or that of their kids.
The reality is that, most likely, if you are a technology entrepreneur, you were at the top of your class your entire academic career, whether it be via GPA or through raw intelligence or through hard work. When you were in school you needed something "more" to augment your education, and the current system held you back. The entrepreneur now uses this experience to create a tool that would have sped his own learning along as a kid. It's not a "bad" assumption -- heck this was me for a while. I used to wholeheartedly believe that well-made learning games would change education forever and usher the US into a new knowledge renaissance.
However, the reality of a classroom is far different than what one would assume. The process of education is different for each student, and is so dramatically different that modern software, videos, or digital tools cannot replace a teacher. Lets go back to the "future entrepreneur in the grade school class" example. For every first grader that's light years ahead of his peers, there's another who is light years behind. A first grader who doesn't know 75% of their letters of 50% of their digits. In the same class. To assume a tailored, yet mass produced lesson will teach this class better than a trained individual is ill-fated. To tell a teacher that one could is condescending. Each class and student deserves unique, custom education, and that's what the current system provides.
Then there's the reality of a teacher's life. It's no picnic. Countless hours are spent grading, making lesson plans for the bulk of the class, coming up with extra projects for the gifted kids, and coming up with remedial training for the behind ones. On top of it all, teachers are forced to pay for the overwhelming majority of their office supplies. Need construction paper? Fork it up. Need extra copies? Fork it up. Need lamination? Fork it up. Need reading books that aren't falling apart? Fork it up. Want to get extra training to better teach your students and get a tiny pay raise? Oh, you'll definitely fork that up. The list goes on. Those expenditures make up the XYZ thousand a year that teachers spend on their classes that you see in market research reports. There's little room, if any, for software, especially if that software will ultimately do a poor job at reaching students. Bringing software in is high risk without the payment. Its the same as handing the class off to another teacher that they haven't met yet.
And there's no summer break -- just a few months without students. They're working during that time period.
Finally, the US is getting destroyed in science/math education by other nations. Those other nations are not using software to leapfrog us. They're using more interactive discussion, reasoning, and practical application of these concepts. Socratic learning, where the students lead the conceptual discussion with the teacher as a guide, not a lecture.
Things like software and videos are great for teaching small groups. I plan on buying them myself when I have kids, and I plan to have the Kahn Academy site as my homepage.
But the classroom ecosystem and supplemental learning scenarios are very different, and products developed for them should be targeted for the needs of that environment. I support innovation in the classroom wholeheartedly, but without the right level of research in developing products, you might as well be bringing a football to a basketball game :)
With class sizes of 30 to 40 students with radically different motivation and comprehension levels, it is impossible to provide each student unique, customized education. The obvious (and economically infeasible) way to solve this without the parents of lagging students getting upset that their kid was put in the "dumb class" is to have class sizes of one (i.e. private tutoring). The next best thing, IMO, to a private tutor is access to engaging and entertaining learning software that adapts to the student's needs. Once the students are brought close enough to the same level they can efficiently learn as a group in a classroom.
From what I remember, they did have a teacher on the team - and were recognized as one of the stronger groups for this reason.
Also, I don't see any information about it on the site, but I think that one feature of the site may be that the teacher's bosses (department heads? headteachers?) can review all the communications. Hopefully that mitigates the legal risks a little - even if only because teachers would be more careful about what they text.
You are also correct, our school plans give admins and other teachers read-only access to all communication. The idea is that the transparency will protect teachers from any appearance of impropriety.
This is not a concern in modern private schools. In addition to the Saas apps they use that display grades, homework (e.g. which book or worksheet and which problems), etc. they have blogs incorporated in them. In addition, teachers frequently send emails. Texting would be just another form of electronic distribution. There is not reason to focus on it specifically as a way that a teacher could get fired. They now have a myriad of ways to say something stupid, but that is the way things are.
Also, the software that you're referring to, in my experience, is targeted for the parent, rather than the student. Its twofold better in that there's less ethical liability in parent communication as opposed to student communication, and these tools include the parent in the education process. They know about grades, attendance, and other things and can then take a more targeted role in their child's education.
Having an intermediary certainly won't eliminate risk, but it might mitigate some of it. I don't think it's a tool that all teachers will use- it's going to depend a lot of teaching style. My gut instinct says enough will use it to make it an interesting tool, and anything that adds to a teacher's box of tools sounds good to me.
Another idea (and you may already be doing this) would be to log all communications, and maybe even make them visible to everyone in the "class" via a web login. People are less likely to say something stupid if they know it's being recorded, and it gives teachers an easy resource to fall back on if a "he said/she said" scenario comes up with a student.
That being said, I think it's a great way to mitigate risk for the teacher, but I wouldn't let that overshadow the main benefit, which is ease of use.
Our main value add, is to eliminate this 'creepy factor' and give teachers a way to communicate with students that doesn't risk their jobs.
From my tired evening neurons idly percolating over that thought, some of the video game type things from my youth, and the business book/self help category...
"All I really needed to know, I learned in Oregon Trail"
Maybe event take it one step further and encourage parents to sign up with it as well, so they know what type of messages their kids are getting that their child's teacher considers important enough to send using this medium (perhaps include an email-delivery option for these ones).
The basic product is one-to-many double-blind logged communication; don't make it about the exact mechanics of how the conversation is delivered, make it about the logged/safety aspect of it. SMS, email, voice-drop, robo-call, AIM-bot, etc. are all communication media that could benefit from this approach.
We do have an auditing tool, and keep records of all texts back and forth. We should definitely highlight this more.
Also working on a way for parents to register their kids' phone numbers and get cced on all communication.
Please note that this was determined off a very small sample size
Teacher/parent is definitely a more viable place to start this kind of a tool. Good luck!
To satisfy school regulatory bodies you might want to have something labled "privacy policy" which lists relevant laws and your compliance.
I'd stick the pricing somewhere more prominent. You're not sleazy or spammy, so let people know how you're funded so they don't have to think whether you're going to be selling ads. (I did have that thought until I found your pricing.)
I just changed the wording on the "Perfectly Free" area and linked to our costs. Do you think that's prominent enough?
You might want to tweak the Perfectly free message on the home page to sync up with the freemium model described in the FAQ. It will probably help with your target market to explain you do actually have a business model.
Good luck with the venture!
I like the "Perfectly Safe, Perfectly Simple, Perfectly Free", but stylistically it's quite different from the infographic on top. The logo is also a bit off from the rest in style. And the call-to-action button is a bit washed out. The main menu has horrendous choice of colours.
The sign-up form has a lot of empty space that makes the page look only half done. And there is some lack of consistency on how you style forms in general. (Grey background for the whole form or just the submit-button panel?)
All minor things, but going over them a few times could really improve the finish a lot.
You might want to present your layout on forrst.com. If you don't know it already, it's a community with the focus of bringing hackers and designers together. You can usually get some good constructive feedback there. If you need an invite, let me know.
ETA: The Upgrade plan > Hide link manages to replace the page with "[object Object]"; the password field is mandatory but lacks the asterisk.
btrax.com gave us 10 hours of free design for winning startup weekend. I highly recommend them.
copywriting was by joanna (she's a real pro see this thread for background: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1836538)
Giving teachers more ways to communicate with their students is something I'll always be a fan of, and I'm sure even some parents wouldn't mind being on the list for some texts (assignment reminders?).
Congrats on a cool idea and a neat startup.
If you're still reading :) It's an interesting idea, it's a nice design, it's focused on a single problem, and congrats on shipping it! I'm not saying these things to discourage you, but I think you should be sure that you have considered issues like these.
Good luck!
I think there is a market there. My kids would like it.
I don't know if you have this feature, but I would suggest logging of IPs/everything else when sending a broadcast (the number of teachers whom I saw have their password guessed or captured with keyloggers in high school was out of control, I would not put it past a student to get access to the tool and broadcast things for shits and giggles), and additionally maybe set up time windows that cannot be used for broadcast. I.e. if teacher is out with mates drinking one might think it funny to send a broadcast at 2am to all the kids, that'd be bad news.
Oh, and automated reminders maybe! Set up to send a message at 7pm 'remember to bring your permission slips for the field trip!'.
I imagine that parents might want in on the broadcast system as well, so they can also receive messages that have been sent to their kids.
Anyway, brilliant simple idea with a real use. Exactly what tech is for!
The first 500 credits are free. Every month we'll add another 200 free credits. (each credit is one text message to one person)
Users can also get more credits by inviting others to use ClassParrot. Inviteer and invitee both get an extra 200 credits.
Paid plans offer unlimited credits:
For a single teacher $9/month (or $90/year) For schools up to 20 teachers $100/month (or $1000/year) For schools with more than 20 teachers $200/month (or $2000/year)
Thoughts?
We don't want to add to that burden, and would really really like to find a way to have the schools pay.
If I was a teacher I would simply purchase a month-to-month subscription and not pay for your service during June/July or July/August(depending on your school system) when there are no school days.
From a personal standpoint I would consider offering some kind of "account parking" so that teachers can suspend their account for a 2 week period during christmas break. It never 'feels right' to pay for a service when you're not able to use it.
Also, if 1 credit = 1 message, then why not just call it a 'message' to keep things simple. So you get 500 free 'messages' and you pay for 500+ 'messages'.
To emphasize your value prop and highlight the safety, landing page message could again say 'secure' instead of 'hassle free'. My rule is that repetition is good.
(Definitely a version 2.0 feature, though. You would get into the whole dangerous world of visualizing feedback, integrating with interactive whiteboards, audience polling competitors, etc.)
Text message's, although cheap, are not free.
What are your plans for revenue and why not charge $2.99/month?
"But, Mom, I have to get a phone now!"
It would seem we're into some kind of transition phase where digital education for K-12 will have to be completely furnished by school districts or this is another class divide. Many can't afford phones or laptops for their children. Where will the responsibility lie for this?
With that in mind it might be worth it to enable a feature that will allow teachers to also send an email to students who desire it, as to allow students who don't have phones to be included as they can access the internet at school (if they don't have the internet or a computer at home).
Laptops and tablets are already being used in certain school districts and required as such. Convincing the mobile phone providers that we only need IP access and not expensive monthly phone bills is going to be one ugly battle. Hence, my asking who's going to cover the subscription costs until this becomes settled and normal. And relying on someone like Google to make this "free" while becoming my child's identity provider is not OK.
How much does it cost?
We want ClassParrot to always remain useful to you at the free level. The first 500 credits (messages) are free. Every month we'll add another 200 free credits to your account.
You can also get more by inviting your peers to use ClassParrot. We'll give you 200 credits for each person you invite who starts using ClassParrot. We'll also start them off with an extra 200 credits when they accept your invitation.
If you need unlimited credits, our unlimited plan for teachers is: $9/month (or $90/year) for unlimited texts and unlimited classes.
For schools (or other groups of teachers) we offer a bundled plan: $100/month (or $1000/year) for unlimited use up to 20 teachers $200/month (or $2000/year) for unlimited use and unlimited teachers