IEM Senior Project

Good Intentions

One of the great aspects of the IEM program is that the Senior Project is an opportunity to take the lessons learned from the program and apply them to a project which means something to the client. These projects can be something we’re doing as part of our career, a project to better the IEM program, a typical research project, or a venture we wish to pursue. This page is a presentation of my project including a definition of my venture, the problems it is intended to solve, the deliverables for this project, the progress on those deliverables, the results of the deliverables, and the next steps of my venture beyond this project. This page will be updated periodically from Jan 2010 until April 2010 to show the status of my project. After that time frame, this page will be preserved for future IEM clients as a static display. My venture, as you will see, extends beyond the timeframe of this senior project and I will continue to update the main blog page of this site as the venture migrates and matures into reality.

Abstract

During the entrepreneurial series, I discovered my passion for education, particularly in a homeschool setting.  To the homeschooling parent, time is a precious commodity.  One of the most time consuming tasks facing any homeschool parent is teaching math.  As compared to other subjects, math requires an inordinate amount of time to create lessons, ensure the student understands the lessons, assign an appropriate amount of practice, grade the practice, review missed item, and administer quizzes and tests.  The time demands of teaching math can become overwhelming to a parent who is also trying to teach other subjects and often other students.

I plan on building a lesson engine which will pull lessons and exercises from a database and present them to a student, thus freeing the parent of the daily drudgery involved in teaching math.  The software will show video, build practice lessons, generate drill sheets, track grades and trends, and allow the parent to control lesson flow.  Initially I will present content from Saxon Math, an immensely popular homeschool curriculum which is widely acclaimed for its incremental approach.  Although it is considered a premier math program, Saxon does not address the time issue for the parent.   My software will be adaptable to other curriculum and subjects, with Saxon as a starting point.  As a business venture, the software will solve the time management issue for parents.  On the technical engineering side, it will update my software, application, and database design skills.  In this way my project is inspired by both the entrepreneurial and technical engineering series from IEM.

Deliverables

As an entrepreneurial effort, this project will continue beyond the April timeframe. To be successful in this venture, I need to launch 2 main endeavors.  First I need to begin to brand myself as someone knowledgeable in the home school arena.  To accomplish this, I will start a blog which discusses homeschool and related educational topics.   Second, I need to produce and market a product.  To accomplish this, I will design software, produce video content, and market the product via a webpage, homeschool providers, and curriculum discussion boards.

While the venture will continue beyond the timeframe of the senior project, listed here are the deliverables that can be completed by April.

Branding effort (blog)

• Have hosted site up and clean by Feb 12^th meeting date.
  • [Complete – This is the main blog site: http://www.ralphjordanblog.com/

• Have page added to hosted site specifically for senior project work reporting by Feb 12^th meeting date.
  • [Complete: the URL for the Senior Project is: http://www.ralphjordanblog.com/project - I updated this site with the latest status of the project, an offer to request the complete set of documentation, and will have a link to the final YouTube video.]

• Post at least once every 2 weeks on blog (not including senior project reporting) on topics pertaining to education, reviews, math, logic, and IEM / business. This is for both Feb 12^th date and Apr 23^rd date. The purpose is not to create a for-profit blog using Ad-Words or an affiliate program. If an opportunity to use these presents itself, I would consider adding it, but the focus is adding personal credibility.
  • Complete: The main site is – http://www.ralphjordanblog.com/ containing the bi-weekly posts.  I’ve received a nice comment from Marlin who is the CEO I interviewed and from a person identified as “Mrs C” on costs of Homeschool compared to health care.

• Begin to see at least some traffic to site by April date.  Again, the blog purpose is for personal branding and is parallel to the main effort of producing a product.  I think initially the bulk of my effort should be on product creation as opposed to blog posts and blog marketing.  Any traffic here adds to the marketing of the product and may act as a venue to vet ideas for the product.
  • Compete: I’ve received a greater response here than expected considering the bi-weekly nature of my posts. I saw over 20 views a couple of days after the last few postings with the last one seeing 30 +.  I’m also seeing traffic from search engines and show up within 20 on Google searches for my name.

Product effort

• Produce a business analysis for the product including needs solved, competitors, and potential market / income.  Initial draft due Feb 12^th with final completed by Apr 23^rd.
  • Completed: Please see document “1 – Seeing Solutions Business Analysis – Ralph Jordan“.

• Research and choose a software development tool.  I will produce a short briefing on which tool is chosen and why for Feb 12^th.
• Completed: Please see document “2 – Seeing Solutions Dev Tool Analysis – Ralph Jordan “. One of the course corrections – struggling with tool and may have to change.

• Learn the “language” of the tool and how to develop in it.
• Completed and On-going: Spent time learning tool and how to produce an engineered application – specifically using the GLX framework. Taking longer than anticipated.

• Produce a functional and data design document for Feb 12^th
• Completed: Instead of producing 1 functional decomposition document as originally conceived, I produced 2 documents to better match an iterative agile approach. I produced a features requirement document (“3 – Seeing Solutions High Level Features – Ralph Jordan ) and a presentation walkthrough document (34 – Seeing Solutions User Presentation – Ralph Jordan ) in its place. I have the data design document (5 – Seeing Solutions ERD – Ralph Jordan ) “

• Produce a walking skeleton prototype by Apr 23^rd
• Altered Deliverable: This is the course correction. I under estimated the time it would take to come up to speed in a current development tool. I feel like if I knew a tool, I would be able to produce this in the allotted 2 months. Advisor initially concerned that this was an ambitious goal and agreed to change this to an optional deliverable. While the prototype didn’t see fruition, I have accomplished a more important goal – education. The effort spent on learning these tools will benefit the project as it moves forward beyond IEM and benefit my marketability in general IT.

• Produce a marketing plan for going forward by Apr 23^rd.  Will eventually produce a standalone product sales web site when the   product is ready to sell.  I’m not sure I will have time to produce this site by April.
• Completed: Without a skeleton, it is premature to develop a sales site. This was originally considered an optional deliverable. The marketing strategy is embedded in the “ 1 – Seeing Solutions Business Analysis – Ralph Jordan ” and “3 – Seeing Solutions High Level Features – Ralph Jordan ” as these include an analysis of my target market and differentiating features. Also the YouTube presentation is aimed at marketing.

• Future: Going forward, I will continue to research and learn a software tool. Then I will produce the walking skeleton into a subset product (like just fractions) to sell to a test market. I will continue to contribute to the blog. I may even produce more YouTube videos for marketing.

Project Status

Instead of keeping a running dialog of updates, which can be confusing, I will use this area to reflect the current status.

Date: April 16, 2010

For April, all of the deliverables are due. As expected, we have made some minor course corrections over my project. These are noted on the deliverables above.  The original deliverables are updated in green and listed are the documents that relate to them. These documents have also been updated to reflect the latest status.  Instead of trying to copy the full content of these documents onto a web page rendering it unreadable, I will make them available via email. I also would like to know if anyone finds them useful (or cares). Plus, I would love to get your feedback as well and welcome an ongoing correspondence. If anyone would like these, please leave a comment with your name, email, and what you’re up to.  I have to approve comments before they post and will not post your real name or email.

We’ve also had the addition of a YouTube video presentation in lieu of a class presentation, which is available below via the link.

Project Presentation

This is the YouTube presentation submitted for this project. Because the documentation listed above contains the technical specs and the market analysis, this video is aimed at the market – homeschool moms – who make the purchasing decisions for a product like this. It is designed to be quirky and entertaining while making a sales point. My inspiration for this is the old show Connections with Burke.

Now to finish getting this product built …