Means a lot to hear that and super cool that you were doing something similar for other subjects! I have this strong thesis that if we can nail ELA (English Language Arts) that we can utilize this format of bringing subjects to life for math and science as well (fingers crossed).
Great way to see the top IPO’s Where’s Zoom, my favorite ipo of 2019. Cool visual representation. Now if it was cross referenced with private valuation to market cap
We play tested this with 10 year olds at the San Francisco Public Library recently and the kids LOVED it -- keep in mind, these were not middle or upper middle class privileged kids, but lower income at risk ones.
The challenge is that after about 45 min of "play" time, they want to 'build' something and create--and Playgrounds doesn't provide the environment to do that. Then, they get bored and feel encumbered.
After working with over 1000 kids in our beta phase, we've tested almost every product on the market.
I personally like Scratch + Learntomod.com which uses Minecraft to teach Javascript and CodeCombat.com (My YC batchmates).
We're soon launching an online course (for a nominal fee) that has progression, milestones, and support for parents who want their kids to 'complete' a project. Message me or check out our beta site if you're interested to in being a beta tester for our online product--would love to hear from you.
I think you need to dig deeper into Swift Playgrounds. The iPad user can definitely start their own playground outside of the preprogrammed ones provided by Apple.
In addition, you as a developer can create additional playgrounds in Xcode and transfer them to Swift Playgrounds on the iPad. That means you can give the kids a basic template and allow them to fill in the code. For example, create a template with a couple of pages with the imports already complete and a basic template of empty procedures to get them started.
And from watching the WWDC session it seems the playgrounds can have access to the whole iOS SDK, including rather fun stuff like corebluetooth so there is a huge amount of potential in Playgrounds.
However, with the .playgroundbook format (folder), it seems that I can only export it to Mac (as a folder) and can not AirDrop back to iPad. And it seems that XCode 8 beta-2 does not support playgroundbook yet.
130+ IQ doing anything about any problem does not me give any hope unless those doing have a good understading about it.
So far engineers have shown "if the only tool you have is a hammer…" attitude towards the problem than any other.
How do you know their IQs? I don't think I've ever heard anyone discuss their IQ in real life. I don't mean this as an attack; I'm just curious where the "130+ IQ" qualifier comes from.
I just emailed customer support at Enterprise Car Share and shared them your TC article. They have a lot of cars in SF and they could probably benefit from you guys--especially since their cars are sitting in lots all day. It could be a great lead source!
Totally, I'm always stuck with the Enterprise Car Share car with less than 1/4 tank and get stuck with an extra $25 'refueling fee' when I don't take it back (I have to pay for the extra 15 min of rental time PLUS stop by a gas station--which is super annoying). This would be a killer use case for their fleet to manage.
He never knew we raised $100k nor got into YC (until sometime in the Spring of '14). It wouldn't have mattered. If you are in, you're in. If you're out, you're out. It shouldn't be conditional.
Yeah--not very YC of them to discourage me. But then again, I didn't seem like I was YC material at the moment they talked to me. I'm glad PB and my interview team took a chance on me though, I'm still going strong!!
I swear there was a comment here earlier--did they delete it? Hey! Any comments? This was my first stab at writing a personal blog post and the most difficult for me. I hope it helps everyone keep their head up!!
Thoroughly enjoyable! The voice you're writing with here is really fun and easy to read. I hope that feedback makes it easier for you to keep writing more with confidence!
Just as a heads up, on Roo's landing page there is one screenshot has a typo on the button. "Rread More." :-)
nicely written, made me want to root for you :) also really nice to see people succeeding in solving "unusual" (for the sv tech startup crowd) problems.
I created programs for title 1 schools / kids in math and always wanted a cool way to inspire kids to be more curious and excited about reading.
Can’t wait to see Litnerd grow and reach more kids!