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Step Up Your Goal Consciousness!

roderick — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 06:29:05 +0000

Setting goals and sharing goals makes them ‘official’ but it does not drive behavior. http://amplify.com/u/21os

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Get Uncomfortable!

roderick — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:55:22 +0000

Tomorrow I want you to do things in a way you normally wouldn’t do. Try brushing your teeth with the opposite hand, lock the front door with the opposite hand, etc. You get the picture. Just make sure you don’t drive on the opposite side of the road! How long will you stick to this before you go back to the old way? It’s easier to stick with what is comfortable.

I know there is no advantage to brushing your teeth with a different hand so it only makes sense to doing things the easier way. What about in our professional lives? We all know that technology has found ways to make our everyday tasks easier. It may not be the answer to everything but it is the answer to many things. So, why is it that we work with people that never change? We all know people that are using antiquated systems to get things done. Why? Because they are comfortable doing things the old way.

Stretch yourself. Start learning new things. Be honest with youself. Ask yourself what it is that you can learn to make your job easier. Do it the new way. While you are doing it you’ll notice that you are paying closer attention to what you are doing. When it starts to get tough resist going back to the old comfortable way. So, go get uncomfortable!

Let’s hear the results: #uncomfortablemondays

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Thoughts from Charlotte

roderick — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:36:04 +0000

I’m in Charlotte on my way to NYC to see 6 or 7 more schools. I can’t complain because things are going very well. The problem is that I have close to 60 schools that have shown interest in the application, the new school year is about to begin, and I will not be able to see all of these schools. I see that as a ding in our customer support armour.

In order to keep our customer support at the level that we feel we need to be, we will be offering afternoon web seminars starting next week. While we will still be setting appointments for school visits, we will be offering the web seminars as an option to view the application, participate in a question and answer session, and discuss how we can develop Schoolbinder into the small learning community platform that schools need.

If you are interested in attending a web seminar, look out for an email from us next week. It will outline the simple steps to setting an appointment and clicking your way to the seminar.

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Lowdown: The new way to develop an applicaiton

roderick — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:34:50 +0000

The Rails Rumble is a 48 hour web application development competition. As a contestant, your team gets one weekend to design, develop, and deploy the best web application that you can, using the awesome power of Ruby and Rails. Some members of Schoolbinder’s development team entered the Rails Rumble this year and developed an application called Lowdown.

What is Lowdown?
Lowdown keeps your software project on track by helping developers, designers, project managers and owners all focus on satisfying stakeholders. How? Simple.

Feature Stories

When developing an application the client and the developers need to make sure that the ideas that the client has in his mind are exactly what the developer has on his mind. Feature Stories are basically the stories that are created to describe the many features of the software application.

Lowdown allows the client and the developer describe exactly what is going to happen in the application. It lets you create, edit and discuss feature stories using a fun and helpful interface. After using the application, I realize that the interface keeps you focused on the exact details of the functionality of the feature. It does not let you drift off like one would in a long-winded email.

Estimates

Once the stories are complete the developers can then enter the number of hours they will need to develop that specific feature. It gives the client a clear understanding of the full cost of the feature. It keeps a running total of the cost of the complete project too!

Prioritize

Once you have an idea of what the features will cost, you can drag and drop each scenario to create a group of features that will make up your next release or iteration.

So why is this all so special?

I have been on the client side of building an application. The developers and I built a good working relationship. All of this that I spoke about was being done using Basecamp, Google Docs, emails, etc. As the project evolves and the pace picks up it becomes very difficult to manage all of this information and ideas and requests can easily slip through the cracks.

Lowdown, even in its infancy, is the equivalent of a task master. It organizes everything. It gives you a clear picture. Best of all, when it comes down to development decisions, picking features is like picking off of a fast food menu. “Let me get number one, number four, and let’s also go with number 6.” All you do is drag and drop and you are done. You know exactly what you are going to spend and there is no confusion over what is going to be done next.

This is my ‘client perspective’ review of Lowdown. I did not even get into the Cucumber features. I’ll leave that for the hardcore programmers. As a client, you should demand that your developer use Lowdown. Trust me, it will make for a better development project.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Coming soon: NEW FEATURES: Bulk Editing and Goal Setting History

roderick — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:13:17 +0000

We are currently developing the new features for Schoolbinder’s 2.0 release. I am happy to say that among the many new features, Bulk Editing and Goal Setting History are two of them.

As a teacher, when you choose to view your “History”, you will see a list of the past goals that you have set. They are clustered by the date created and by the long term goal. It makes it extremely easy to see the goals you set “last friday.” Then, after clicking on that set, you will be able to bulk edit those short term goals.

Check it out!

Stay tuned for more sneak preview shots of upcoming features.

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NYC DOE Dream Team

roderick — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 03:09:29 +0000

The last two weeks have been outstanding. Putting aside the frequent flyer miles and the crazy schedule, the NYC Pilot program could not have started any better.

I have met some amazing people at the NYC. I have learned a lot about the difficulties of managing a school. I also realize that we have developed a very good application.

If the administrators that I met are an example of the people that will joining our venture, Schoolbinder will have a tremendous impact in NYC. The ideas that have been brought up during these meetings are examples of leaders knowing what technology can do for education.

I look forward to the 2009-2010 school year and the challanges it may bring. We are putting together a dream team of schools so bring it on.

Roderick

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NYC Pilot School Program

roderick — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 14:18:31 +0000

The NYC Pilot School program is off to a great start. Many schools responded via phone and email to take advantage of the “price freeze”. To show appreciation to these schools, we have discounted the price of application 30% and locked in the price of the application for life.

I want to appologize to the schools that I could not visit during the Aug 5-7 trip. We still have 15 spots available in the program. I will be in NYC again on Aug 10-11 to meet with more schools and every Monday and Tuesday until all schools have been met.

If you are interested in a demo please fill out the short form on our website at: www.myschoolbinder.com and click on the “I’d like to see a demo!” image on the top of the page.

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Back to NYC: Aug 3-5

roderick — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 05:14:50 +0000

I am making some last minute changes to some of the slides for my presentation. I am headed back to NYC to speak at a network group meeting on Aug 5. Twenty four schools will be at the meeting. We are trying to come to an agreement that will make this group the first NYC pilot group. I recently visited two superintendents who have also shown interest in using Schoolbinder in their districts.

Between these three groups, we should be able to meet our goal of 50 pilot schools. I will personally assign these schools under my supervision. These schools will receive special professional development and our Total Experience customer support. I will personally visit every school, each and every month, and will attend any of meetings that I am invited to attend. It is important that our pilot schools shine. I will personally make sure that happens.

Besides all of the special attention each school will receive, they will also lock in the special pilot school rate. The price of the service will never increase. That is another promise we will make to every pilot school.

Ringmastr's Total Experience support is like nothing else any NYC DOE school has every seen. We will visit schools and meet with the educators and the students and get ideas and feedback on future features. Basically, we are building the application to fit their needs. One NYC principal said this was "radical." I just think it is the normal way to build an application; the way the users need it.

I will fly in on Monday, Aug 3, and will be visiting schools in the New York area. If would like to schedule time for me to stop by just contact me.

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There Are Two “P”s in Collaboration

roderick — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 03:17:53 +0000

Collaboration is an essential element in designing a powerful learning environment for schools. When designed properly, a collaborative network will cultivate relationships that thrive on the exchange and formation of knowledge. An effective platform will provide students and teachers the opportunity to reflect, discuss, agree, debate and challenge their existing knowledge. How is collaboration designed?

Purpose

Purpose can guide decision making. It is the motivation to improve. It is why you take action. It gives meaning to your actions. Collaboration will not exist without a meaningful purpose.

When students are involved in academic goal setting they take ownership of their education. Standards based goal setting gives students and teachers a clear picture of where they currently stand and where they need to be. Once they understand what needs to be learned, the standards and goals have meaning. It gives them a purpose.

Platform

Collaboration occurs through communication. The proper platform will allow individuals or groups to interact. Whether it is a face-to-face conversation or an online application, there needs to be a vehicle for collaboration to occur.

Like doctors practice medicine and educators practice teaching, we at Schoolbinder practice collaboration. Schoolbinder was developed to allow users to easily set multiple goals for multiple people. That is the easy part. Managing the setting, monitoring, and approval of hundreds of goals, while actively collaborating with hundreds of users, is the hard part. Schoolbinder is built around a collaboration framework. We keep in constant communication with the users and actively make changes to the interface. Eventually the user interface disappears and the collaboration becomes natural.

Schoolbinder is creating a scalable collaboration application that will allow students and teachers to build a strong personal learning-network of users that will work together to collectively increase their knowledge. It is a learning community where knowledge grows exponentially.