CHOMP. That's the sound of our teacher sharks going at three brave and willing entrepreneurs at our very first official meetup, "Teacher Tank: Can your company stand the test?" Many, many thanks to the 150+ who stopped by to share this most historical of moments with us!
The audience was treated to a sweet preview of what GlassLab has in the works with a classroom-friendly version of SimCityEDU from Jessica Lindl and Michael John. And Gregory MacBeth struck a chord with the teacher panel as he explained how Bloomboard aimed to solve the teacher support and development problem. But the evening, and both audience and panelists' choice awards--went to Meograph's Misha Leybovich, the "accidental edtech entrepreneur" who shared the story of how teachers became the loudest fans of his storytelling tool--even though that wasn't what he initially had in mind.
The evening was less a shark feeding and more a bountiful feast of ideas and compelling questions from teachers Jamey Everett (fifth grade comprehensive), Rebecca Horowitz (math lead), Meghan Jacquot (English), and John Kittredge (digital literacy & expression).
Some memorable questions from the night:
- "How do you make it so compelling that I know it's going to make me a better teacher?"
- "Student choice is really big. The more that students could be designing the problem as opposed to just picking where things go--that'd be really interesting"
- "If one of the reasons for this is to push students to justify their reasoning through action, we also need a space for them to articulate their reasoning, rather than just judging their action."
Our next meetup will be a townhall style sharing: we invite teachers to share what kind of tools would help them in the classroom -- and for entrepreneurs to share what they're trying to build. We will kick it off with a couple of special guests, but most of the evening will be around sharing and brainstorming. We hope you'll walk away with ideas for new practices -- whether you're a teacher or entrepreneur.
