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”?