BetterLesson.com
founded by a group of teachers from Atlanta and Boston public schools to help educators create, organize, and share their curricula.
Search My Posterous
Subscribe
BL Tech Watches User Tests
A nice picture of a few members of BL Tech gathering around a computer to watch the recorded video of a teacher using BetterLesson.
The Couch-Fort: Noise-Canceling for Screencasts
Who doesn’t love a great screencast? They are as popular as ever as a way to keep consumers informed about new products, design enhancements and software updates. We like the recent screencast from Skype, delivered as one would expect — using Skype — to introduce a slick new design and enhanced features.
But producing a quality screencast poses a series of audio and visual challenges, each one more than likely resulting in another time-consuming take. Screen grabs, using products like Jing or Quicktime, can always be improved though techniques like panning, zooming and screen-switching. Then comes sound. We've heard audio tracks that come through crystal-clear with the use of fancy microphones and soundproof rooms. As a lean startup, however, we tried something different. Chris (Community Director) and Matt (Research Director) improvised in the BetterLesson office kitchen, creating a fort-like structure out of couch pillows to block out any external sounds and absorb any potential echo:
The screen grabs in our most recent screencast (seen below) on our new home page could always be improved, but we think the sound is great, given the setup. Tell us what kinds of tricks your startup uses to produce the perfect screencast.
BL Team Call (Powered by Skype)
Matt Lenard is also Skyping in from ATL (on the nearest laptop).
Starbucks: the Startup World's Collective Office
PS Great internet log-on UI and UX.
BetterLesson Tech Starting a Blog
Soon, the awesomely dedicated BetterLesson technology team will share technology stories at http://tech.betterlesson.org.
BetterLesson has been built by some great coders and tech advisors. Some of the tech team has participated in dozens and dozens of projects, one is also co-organizer of a popular technology meetup, and two others have very recently won a contest in a cutting-edge web technology. Mostly, we're proud of how much our small team has accomplished.
My two years at BetterLesson have been a great experience. We work with some of the most awesome, dedicated teachers I've ever seen; from those educators who founded and help build the company, to those users of BetterLesson who have been helping develop our beta through their enthusiastic use of the site.
A die-hard technologist might find building a website not as interesting as working on other technologies. With so much happening in the Boston area in Technology, geeks like myself have a lot of amazing work to choose from. However, BetterLesson is a tremendous opportunity to discover and solve problems affecting millions of people. Solving problems is not only about the good feeling you get from helping people - it is also the core of entrepreneurship. "Make something people want" is a well known mantra of technology startups from YCombinator, and we also believe this dedication to people is what it takes to succeed in technology.
Technology at BetterLesson is an enterprise in the service of improving the lives of educators. We take the best, most agile, open, lean technologies we can find, and we've worked hard every day for over two years to make something people want. And, even better, we have some really exciting stuff on the way.
The tech team is going to write at least a couple posts a month to give back to the technology community that really supports us. We're working with technologies that have had millions of hours of people's time and effort invested - and I can't think of a better place to apply that effort than to education.
- Jonathan Hendler
BetterLesson's Alex Grodd Part on 'Future of Teaching' Panel
Our very own Alex Grodd joined some great minds in education to discuss what teaching might look like in 30 years. A nice snapshot of the panel:
(Note: Alex Head Scratch Shot)
Panelists included:
Becky Crowe Hill, Exec Director of Partners in School Innovation, 2003-2009
Dave Levin, Co-Founder of KIPP
Joel Rose, Founder, School of One
Jose Ferreira, CEO Knewton
Alex Grodd, CEO BetterLesson
To learn more about the event, check out the event's invite: Brooklyn Future Meetup Group +30 Years
