10,000 Credit Flex Students by 2013


Funding for: Outreach to schools, student logo & video contest

about my venture

What would you (or did you!) do for Credit?

 Last year Ohio HS students did some radical projects for graduation credit. Dance. Improv. A trip to Spain. Researching Lou Gehrig's desease in a real research lab. Environmantal studies on Kelley's Island. And more. 

If we want to change schools, it should be much, much more. So we ask students, teachers and community members: what would you (did you) do for credit? We ask them to share successful past projects and potential new ones.

It all builds on Ohio's leading-edge new "Credit Flexibility" law. It's all about challenging students to be their best--and allowing them to challenge themselves. One person put it as "Stop making them 10% better at stuff they're bad at & make them 100% better at things they're good at".

Not that it's all about new skills. We learned the old skills (physics, managent) the hard way and we're sticklers for rigor, too. So, its also about finding new, more appropriate ways to learn the basics.

For some students this will mean Khan Academy or iTunesU for credit. For some it will mean a Latin or programming or geography, or dance or music class not available at their school--but taught by a teacher cross-state. For some it will be credit from summer activities; for some it will be volunteering, or internship; for some it will be a research project mentored by a professional researcher.

 Our video about the law: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAg1pNu2eWY

And about the urgency of supporting students to use it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slF8NYm39hU&feature=related

We've built a web app to serve as a networking platform for students, teachers, parents, community members to share past successes, needs, and ideas about credit flexibility: OhioCreditFlexibility.org/

(Although initially targeted to the unique setup in Ohio, other states are following, and the effort can be scaled across the nation soon.)

The next steps are further evangelization, project-sharing, and community-building:

 - Printing and placing flyers at ed
schools and universities
 - Conducting a logo contest among HS students, to try to
build awareness.
 - conducting a HS video contest
 - conducting  a poster contest; then distributing copies of the winning posters
 - speaking to Rotary, Kappa Delta Pi, anyone who will
listen!
 - figuring out how to scale, go multi-state, attract capital
 - building more of the site
 - finding more examples to share

10,000 Credit Flex Students by 2013:

The project will bring participation from a few hundreds of students today, to 10,000 by early 2013. It will bring "Blended" digital learning to students who power down their apps and switch to staid textbooks when they get to school.

It will make learning more customized. It will change how many students think of school.

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  • elevator pitch

    Change High School in Ohio: Bring digital and custom learning to students. Empower teachers to inspire them, to work together, to help make it real.

  • backer rewards

  • Certificate of students helped.

    We think the nicest thank-you gift would involve the students who learn more due to your help. So we’d like to design a couple things listing names and credit-flex achievements. It will include the most unique, inspiring, and educational projects. We’ll throw in their county, too, so you can see how your gift has helped across Ohio, and across social lines. At the $35 level we'll print this up nice for you to display on your wall and tell your guests all about what Credit Flex is doing to make HS more compelling for Ohio's teens. Part of the project is a logo contest. We want you to have the resulting logo too. The document/plaque will look nicer than this!

    0 backers

    $35.00+ pledge

  • Certificate of Students Helped--Polymer-Substrate

    We think the nicest thank-you gift would involve the students who learn more due to your help. So we’d like to give you a plaque listing names and credit-flex achievements. It will include the most unique, inspiring, and educational projects and we're sure there will be some inspiring ones! We’ll throw in their county, too, so you can see how your gift has helped across Ohio, and across social lines. At this level, the plaque is printed matte-finish on a solid PVC substrate. Also, part of the project is a logo contest. We want you to have the resulting logo too. The document/plaque will look nicer than this!

    0 backers

    $200.00+ pledge
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about entrepreneur

Ed Jones

Ed is appalled by the state of education for urban students and black males. So appalled, that he left a fun and rewarding career in aerospace/defense engineering to try to do something about it. Along the way he's worked to develop open solutions for learning history, geography, and more; and now seeks to open up the credit-granting system for more such ways of learning. Ed lives in a small, rural community which has taught lessons and given rewards of its own kind. He's looking to move at least part time to more urban, tech-savvy areas. For the past four years, Ed has bootstrapped a Park District from almost nothing, building a government organization with no tax revenue, only volunteers, donors, and public-private partnerships. Ed has done way too much volunteer and self-funded writing and R&D work.