I'm in a business plan competition at UCSB, the winner gets 10k.
I'm 1 of 9 people who's executive summary was accepted to go into the final round. My business is creating online yearbooks by creating communities like killoggs, where online content would end up making it into the physical yearbook as well as just being searchable and integrated in the future. Would all you KLers like to have had such a service when you were in HS? I want to submit the best bplan I can and would love any input you guys can give. I'm beginning work on the full plan now.
josh [email] said at 11:27 PM 02-10-2003: It's a cool idea... But I really don't care if I see most of the people I went to high school with again, so I doubt I'd use it if it existed.
josh [email] said at 3:41 PM 02-11-2003: I didn't like them then, either. I doubt I would have used it unless I could have created a group inside of it for just my friends at the school... But there's no way a high school would go for that because it promotes clic-ish-ness.
The more I think about it, the less likely I think a school would be able to (legally speaking) or would want to (maintenence) have something like this. If it's a school tool, someone would have to moderate it to make sure nothing untoward was going on/being said - which it would be.
Everything from people making fun of students to kids posting test answers from a test in first hour so the third hour students have the answers to review... Someone from the school would have to review the site relatively constantly, which leads to a high TCO.
Still, you are a pretty convincing guy, I bet you can win the competition.
kiche [email] said at 3:49 PM 02-11-2003: it goes far beyond that. you wouldn't be able to curse. many schools would be upset over words like "crap" and "darn".
in addition it would most likely need to have anything even slightly "untoward" removed. the moderator(s) would have to thoroughly review an enormous site for even something that slightly sounds amiss.
seth [email] said at 4:10 PM 02-12-2003: you're right, you've identified the biggest problem with the plan.
I actually was seeking legal advice for this - I made an appt and the bastards flaked. Anyway, I'm thinking that parent's would sign something saying its ok - have convincing evidence and proof that parents don't really know their children, through this they could observe how they really interact with their peers and form stronger families. Same with the teachers, as I'd be expecting them to participate in some parts of the community as well.
It would also give the students a great introduction to free speech, as anything they say can be quoted and dished back at them in school newspapers and what not.
Basically, my solution: let the untoward stuff go on, but let parents be able to go in and see it; if their kids are up to "untoward" stuff, we're not bringing it to them, we're just letting them bring it to a recorded form online. Having "see all posts by this user" features would ensure that parents could moderate their own kids' content.
Anyway, there were basic forums at cswsn.org - cambridge school of weston, where the teachers would talk about stuff as would the students. It was student run though, but everyone really loved it; I'm not sure if it would scale though, that was a small private school.
kiche [email] said at 4:57 PM 02-12-2003: nice try, but this is america.
other kid's parents are going to care what other kids are saying.
what if there is a kid in the class who practices wicca. the kid's parents also practice wicca. so they don't mind their kid talking about wicca.
christian fundamentallist parents are going to go bezerk about the school endorsing satanism.
some of the christian fundamentallist kids harrass the wiccan kid online. the christian fundamentallist parents have no problem with this. the school steps in.
the christian parents go ballistic because they are being discriminated against, i mean the wiccan kid can practice satanism but when their kids threaten the wiccan kid so their kids aren't allowed to practice christianity.
i can guarantee you something like this will happen...
josh [email] said at 5:46 PM 02-12-2003: Private schools would want this even less. In private schools they don't generally tolerate as much criticism of the school as they do in public schools...
josh [email] said at 5:47 PM 02-12-2003: Also, what about when some kid publishes a post about how a girl puts out really easy... Her & her parents probably wouldn't like it and could definitely sue.
seth [email] said at 7:59 PM 02-14-2003: thanks for the input, this is definitely my biggest hurdle and you've nailed it on the head. The girl putting out thing isn't a problem as much - what about kids who pass around notes in class already anyway?
I once almost got kicked out of school for writing dirty poetry because me and this other clever guy finished the AP comp sci final in like 10 minutes of the hour allocated. No way the teacher would have read it though, it was all about her and how stupid she was.
If we knew she was reading it though, we probably wouldn't have written it. Similarly, I think kids would, for the most part, understand that their words are being seen by everyone. Remember in camp? They could post in the forums, and the worst that happened was when they made fun of lisa and talked about how smelly boy masterbated too much. They changed everyones names and totally put in a lot of fluff so it was funny and not harming to everyone. I think kids are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. However, this wont save my ass.
Private school kids would want this even more - probably pay for it even if the school's didn't endorse it. But getting the school endorsement is essential. At my school there was an underground newspaper where students would submit poetry making fun of different teachers, one student put up www.ourschoolsname.org and totally made fun of this one teacher who always hit on his female students.... didn't get kicked out for it, but pretty close.
Later he changed it to a click through for penis enlargement device and made a few hundred bucks.
The abuse is going on anyway; maybe not online wiccan ritual invitations (blowjob party at kyles!)... but still. I argue that it gives the parents more knowledge of what their kids are up to, and that they'd go for it because of that.
Because this is a key issue, over the weekend I will be calling 200 parents from students at a high school in san diego and asking for their input. Next weekend I'll try out north CA.
Thanks again for the input.
Oh, only issue that I'm going to completely leave out is the posting of test answers. Good observation. I have no idea what to do about that. I think they would need to evolve their method of testing, as bright students already have these web tools and are doing it themselves. Heck I know some students with an online DB of the AP calc,chem, and bio tests. Again, the thing I need to stress is that students have the capability to do all this themselves already and this tool would only make their parents and the school admin aware of it.
