Robin Cicchetti's List: 7213 EdEntrepreneurialism

• hey say teachers are “frustrated by constantly “reinventing the wheel”, former teacher Alex Grodd founded BetterLesson to provide all teachers access to the best instructional content available. Through its file sharing and social networking application, BetterLesson helps teachers connect and share lessons, best practices, and ideas within communities of practice. BetterLesson differentiates itself through a unique content management system that allows educators to organize and share lessons, units, and courses in an intuitive, sequenced structure. It also provides teachers with recognition for their creative achievements and facilitates collaboration both within and across real-world learning.”

  • social networking aspect
• • What were the challenges that caused him to leave the classroom and begin this venture?

• mission: Provide an easy way for educators to connect with each other and share their lessons.
• they were tired of watching as cool, original lesson plans would disappear into the folders and hard drives of obsolescence. So the founders set out to design an open, social platform to aggregate the best K thru 12 teacher-generated content.
• attracted a community of “tens of thousands of educators”,
• according to the company’s blog post

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• We set out to build an open, social alternative to aggregate the best teacher-generated content. 
• built a vibrant community of tens of thousands of educators from across the world. 
• Last summer, KIPP, the prominent 112-school charter network, signed up as a customer and helped us develop a suite of premium features for school networks.  In fewer than 12 months, our paying customer base has grown to include a dozen school networks (with over 200 paying schools), including Uncommon Schools, Rocketship Public Schools, Achievement First and Friendship Public Charter Schools.
• We recently closed a $1.6M funding round from Highland Capital Partners, General Catalyst, New Markets Ventures, NewSchools Venture Fund, and a talented group of angel investors: Steve Kaufer (Trip Advisor), Matt Greenfield (Stonework Capital), Jon Sackler (North Bay Associates), Shawn and Jennifer Carolan (Menlo Ventures, NewSchools Venture Fund), Zach Zeitlin (ZZ Ventures), and Don Kendall (Kendall Family Foundation).
• This new financing also allows us to leverage the deep knowledge and creativity of these investment partners who bring decades of experience in building compelling products and communities.

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  The Problem:

  Creative teachers across the country develop outstanding lesson plans—often in isolation. Teachers lack ways to share ideas and create more effective, inspiring lessons based on their collective knowledge and experience, rather than start from scratch each time.
• former teacher Alex Grodd founded BetterLesson to provide all teachers access to the best instructional content available.
• file sharing and social networking application,
• Over 66,000 educators have used the website for lesson sharing and networking, and over 1,700 school districts across the country have turned to BetterLesson to assist their teachers.

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• found BetterLesson to help change things for other teachers.
• the tools of social networking
• effective educators
• already gaining traction in some of the nation's highest performing charter organizations and has even greater future potential to leverage the highest-quality instructional content and connect teachers so that they no longer feel alone. [Read more.]
• BetterLesson is a platform for educators to connect and share lessons, techniques, and ideas. We are making it simple and easy for teachers to access the highest quality instructional resources in the world.
• For me, the successes are all about the individual stories of teachers coming to the site, connecting, not feeling alone or having to go it alone. There's a transformational moment for teachers on our site when they connect with another teacher in the same grade-level and subject and are no longer forced to "reinvent the wheel" each evening. This has a profound effect on their personal morale and the quality of their instruction.
• challenges
• Teachers are really busy, especially the best teachers. Creating the right incentives for teachers to take time to upload and create content is going to be the core challenge for a site like ours.
• tough challenge is committing to stay focused on the teacher as the core customer
• the key to our success so far is our focus on creating value for teachers.
• We want to save every teacher from "reinventing the wheel" and allow them to focus their energies on "innovating on the margins" and delivering engaging instruction to their students.

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• What rubric should we use to rate “effective” content? Do we use some of the categories mentioned above (engagement, student-centricity, etc.)? How do we make these categories measurable? Should effectiveness be tied to student achievement data? What data should we use?

• Basically, we’re going to create a living, breathing body of knowledge that is rooted in the common core and centers around incredible teachers. How, you ask? By sourcing and recruiting the best teachers from around the country; by giving them access to the most capable common core-knowledgeable coaches in the country; by supporting their development of full courses built from the common core up; by capturing their approaches to planning, instruction, and classroom management in the context of these courses; by sharing this with every teacher via the BL site; and by providing the community the tools to discuss, remix, and adapt these resources to meet the needs of their students.

• As with most social networks, there’s a way to rate and comment on each lesson.

• Until it is clear that a library is the portal of learning, students will be without the means to accomplish their essential, lonely task. Libraries are the common intellectual meeting ground of individualized learners.