Develop a new Quill Mission Video

[petergault]

Based on this feedback, let's develop a new version of the mission video:

https://docs.google.com/a/quill.org/document/d/1HgSZprgHju--Aaef_za1wDnTgpfAi604baHmO9OsGKg/edit

[petergault]

1. More Images Let’s go through the script and think about all of the instances where we can add pictures. This can help with the transitions.
2. Looking into the Camera Don’t look off, look into it.
3. Comparison Story that makes sense What is a good story about teams? We want to compare ourselves to wikipedia, with us as small teams vs. one big organizations.
4. Different Lengths What does a 1 minute, 3 minute or 5 minute video look like?
5. Microphone The reverb is pretty bad.
6. Aesthetic Peter should look good - makeup to cover baggy eyes, go running before hand to have a clear voice, mouthwash to clear up sinuses, etc.

[petergault]

Feedback from Noortje

• Keep it under 2 minutes.
• More graphics.
• Cap Kiera’s story with another line.
• Use a style of myself writing it down onto a blackboard or whiteboard to jot the ideas down as I’m presenting. It helps cement the key take away ideas.
• Think about what are the 3 bullet points that I want people to take away from this presentation?
• Present them at the beginning, exposit it, and cap them at the end.
• Start with kiera - this one of our tools of 3. explain one of three tools. Show the tools, show the community, show the platform.

Follow up Animated Version

• Have an image pop up of someone writing the text with an error.
• Show the animations - someone writes a sentence, the error then pops up.

[petergault]

• Start with introduction to the students
• Talk about the story they wrote
• Talk about why they love it
• talk about the problem in ed-tech
• talk about the problem in a lack of writing. not given a chance to express ideas.
• talk about why this is important - express ideas can write well and critical express your own ideas.
• not only writing well to love writing - our generation faces big challenges - the first step towards challenging those tackles is by making each person a strong writer so that he or she can tell her own stories - all of this as minute 1.

Minute 2 How we solve this problem:

• We're solving this problem through three key tenants: tools, platform, community.
• The tools we have right now. used by hundreds of thousands of students.
• learning by writing and constructing ideas. In the next 2-3 years, in the next 5 years. -the platform - brings all of the tools together into a seamless learning experience. Data no longer siloed. Teachers see vibrant dashboards that measure student success.
• community - all of this powered by an open source community. Our generation has thousands of new app developers, and thousands of educators with great ideas. Sites like wikipedia have brought these together to build tools that have revolutionized the world. Likewise, we are going to create these communities.
• Together, as a community, we can question the status the quo and build new tools that challenge it. With our platform we can measure student progress at every step along the way. And with our tools we can make an impact on every student's writing skills. By questioning, measuring, and impacting we'll enable every person to write their own stories. Our generation faces big challenges, let's solve them together.

[petergault]

Hello,

My name is Peter Gault, and I am the Executive Director of Quill.org. We’re empowering people to write their own stories.

I’d like to introduce you to Kiera and Olivia. They are 11 and 12 years old, and they are some of the first students to play Quill Writer.

They got so into writing their story that while the Olivia was writing her part of the story, Kiera was nagging her to “finish already” so that she could go. We’re pilot testing Quill Writer right now, and kids love being able to write and learn together.

The problem that edtech faces today is there are very few tools that enable students to write. There are many video based and multiple choice based activities.

These are not engaging because they are passive learning experiences. Let’s get kids actively involved in the learning process by getting them writing.

In my own education, writing out an idea into an essay is when the idea came together. I studied philosophy and history in school, and it was when I wrote an essay, and put it into my own words, that the idea came together.

I participated in parliamentary debate for eight years, which was the single best educational experience of my life. Those debates challenged me to construct my own arguments.

I’ve been working on Quill for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for the past 2 years because I want to get people actively involved in the writing process - getting them to construct their own ideas and challenge one another. I was fortunate enough to attend schools that made learning meaningful. However, I also had many elementary school friends who ended up in uninspired schools were learning was a chore. They ended up hating school because it consisted of sitting in a chair being lectured to all day.

At the same time, these friends love games because they are actively involved in the process. My background is in educational games, and I recognized at an early on that video games are going to revolutionize education because they get students actively engaged in the learning process.

I’ve been working on this night and day not only because I want people to love learning but also because there are big problems that we need to solve. Our generation faces challenges from global warming and income inequality, and the first step to solving those problems is giving each person a voice so that he or she can express his or her own opinions.

Learning how to write well not only makes you a better writer, it also makes you a better thinker. It allows you to structure your ideas and defend them.

Right now our mission is focused on teaching the basic aspects of writing - grammar and vocabulary.

In the next 2-3 years we will get into more advanced components of writing such as essay writing and peer review.

In the next 5 years we will open up our platform to apps, games, and tools that teach all types of subjects, with a focus on learning by writing and actively constructing your own ideas.

We have an expensive vision and there is no way we can solve it alone. A core part of our DNA is to build a massive community. There are thousands of educators out there who have great ideas & want to share them. There are also thousands of developers who want to build their open source portfolios.

We can bring these two communities together and let the collaboration happen. We have had over 100 people contribute to Quill so far, with teachers creating activities and developers improving the code.

Our vision it organize all of these people into teams. The problem with many open source organizations, such as Wikipedia, is that it can be difficult for new people to get involved. Our vision is to organize people into small teams of 7-20 people a piece. New contributors can form their own teams and small teams can request new contributors.

Here you can see the six teams we are launching with.

Over time we will build hundreds of teams. Our vision is not to be a single massive cruise ship, but rather to be hundreds of speedboats, each one zipping around and quickly and agile creating positive learning experiences.

In sum, the Quill vision is components of three central parts:

A community that collaborates and questions the status quo.

A series of tools, apps, and games that engages students in the learning process.

And a platform that pulls all of these tools together into a seamless learning experience and which measures success.

[petergault]

This should be snappy - one sentence for each of these points. - Right now / With Quill; Right Now / With Quill

Tools

How we change the game. It goes from paper to instant feedback.

• Students earn points
• Engage with one another.

Platform:

How we change the game:

• data doesn't transfer back to the core platform.
• teachers don't see progress on the common core. real-time feedback.

Community

• Right now - behind closed doors.
• Right now - thousands of open source developers
• Right now - thousands of educators with great ideas.
• In sum: W're changing the game of how students learn; we're changing the game for how learning is captured; we're changing the game for how community is built.

Laser focused on writing - basic aspects, advanced aspects, all subjects.

How you can get in on the action - our schools, our funders to date.