At every edtech or digital learning meetup/conference my developer colleagues and I went to, it was all other developers, non-profits, and edtech startup people, but almost never any teachers. And yet, all of us were dying to connect with classroom instructors! We understood of course that teachers were super busy, but edtech is a two-way street. Teachers have to meet developers at least part of the way if they want edtech products to improve, right?
Anyway, I'm really thrilled that you're finding those teachers who are willing to give feedback and beta test and putting them in touch with developers. I wish this had been around a few years ago.
I have done lots of research in the field and found the 3 top 'no no's' and why the disconnect can still exist:
EdTech developers (not all) make the mistake of talking and forgetting to listen once they finally get in touch with a teacher.
Teachers are tired of being told "we have the BEST tool for ...." Let them make that judgement.
Giving teachers your sales pitch instead of a 2 way collaboration process.
I hope that with TinkerEd we will continue to narrow the gap. As you say it is a 2 way process and it is exciting to see some great advances from all parties.
"...both sides of the community, both teachers and EdTech entrepreneurs"
Aren't students part of this community? Are EdTech companies trying to solve problems for teachers, or for students?
Many schools make centralized decisions: you either sell the school board or the IT department or both. The people stuck with the decision aren't the people you need to convince for a conversion.
By the time teaching is happening, you are one level removed. By the time learning is happening (or not), you are two levels removed.
If I were being adversarial and trying to design a system to achieve suboptimal results, this is the sales and feedback channel I would set up.
This may be one of the most surprising innovations we've made at AltSchool; it's completely non-technical but running your own school lets you iterate on the metric that matters: learning.
"I was surprised how insightful my six year olds were." TinkerEd teacher.
"My students loved that they got to share their ideas with a developer, they thought it was really cool." TinkerEd teacher.
I am part of and see daily the frustration that teachers have being bombarded with tools clearly untouched by teachers and where teachers have never been asked for their opinion and have certainly never been engaged or approached in the early development stage.
In response to this massive problem, I created a platform where EdTech developers can actually collaborate and share their products with our community of willing teachers. They get real time feedback and expert eyes on their products in the early stages. In your words, we hope that there will no longer be an excuse to not 'engage with teachers.' You can check out our site:
http://tinkered.co
We have 500 teachers onboard and they are taking on paid jobs for the summer to Tinker with new tools and take part in meaningful interviews and user testing studies. Their input leads to iterations of Edtech products that meet real classroom needs and solve real problems. It is a lot of fun and rewarding to both sides of the community, both teachers and EdTech entrepreneurs.