After several weeks of wrangling and a couple of weeks of solid work, we're wrapping up our first round of lessons built from existing teacher content this week. It's been an interesting process, taking materials that are usually delivered on paper and converting them into an interactive tablet experience. The transcription part is easy - even typing materials out by hand doesn't take very long, and copy/paste takes even less time. The interesting part is coming to terms with the ways in which the technology makes you think about the content differently. A couple of examples:
1. If students can move at their own pace, and storage is free, you quickly realize that you want MORE - more videos, more references, more quizzes. Different students will be reached by different presentation styles, and if they don't have to wait for the class to catch up, you want them to keep going. We spent a lot of time adding, fleshing out, and finding several different ways to communicate the same idea.
2. Being able to see a lesson as a playlist and flip through it makes you think hard about when to switch learning styles. The flow of a lesson becomes an interesting challenge, bouncing between Watch, Read, and Do in order to engage different parts of the brain and combat fatigue. Everyone, adults included, needs some variety in their activities in order to stay focused, and Thumbprint's lesson layout turns out to be a very effective way of highlighting areas where one form of engagement is being leaned on too heavily.
I'm very proud of the team's work on these lessons, and I look forward to a lively discussion with the teachers about how the materials can be further improved.
Goals!
This week there's a million tiny goals all adding up to one big goal: Visibility.
This week we're presenting to two schools, introducing ourselves to three more, being filmed for TV and talking with members of the community about partnering for growth. Sound vague? Sure does! I won't give out details about folks that haven't agreed to do anything with us yet, but the overall picture is very positive. The word is getting out. We're having exciting conversations about helping the local community and schools nationwide. I get the feeling that Thumbprint's "toiling in obscurity" phase is coming to an end.
October 29th Goals
What are we going to do this week.
1. 1000 Facebook likes. We're only 105 away. I believe in you. You can do it.
2. Bring on a new team member. Growing the family is one of the most nerve wracking and satisfying parts of my job. We have someone awesome identified, and I hope that you'll be hearing from her very soon. Watch this space.
3. Implement course materials for our first two client teachers. It's been more than a year since I first sketched our a process for helping teachers get their course materials onto the app, and now we finally get to run it with real, live teachers.
Stay tuned. On Thursday I'll let you know how we did.
It's been a madhouse around here lately so you're getting a double post today!
Goal: Get our rotation back to normal and keep up this pace!
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