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Building customized software and solutions

Created by Silicon Schools Fund and Clayton Christensen Institute.

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Video transcript

- [Voiceover] Schools often are tempted, as they get into this work, to think, "Oh, we'll just build our own software "to drive our teaching." And you may remember that Summit Public Schools actually did this when they created those individualized learning playlists and they curated lots of content for their students. - Right, and the obvious upside to this is you get exactly what you want, it's customized, you built it. Unfortunately, it's also really, really hard, and it's something that even the experts with dedicated teams can spend months doing. So, just like I would not advise a school to go build a customized bus themselves because they want the perfect transportation option, we generally don't think schools should necessarily get themselves into the business of having their teachers staying up at night learning coding and building customized software. However, one model that we have seen work really well is the idea of schools working in closely-aligned partnerships with a software company. And when we talked about Summit earlier, they built their new Activate platform with a company called Illuminate Instruction. Illuminate needed what Summit knew how to do, which was how to build really good content and find what students wanted. And Summit needed what Illuminate knew how to do, which was to create really robust software. The interdependence was the key here, so when a new feature was developed, they could get it quickly into the school and the teachers could pilot and try it out. Then, that feedback would get back to the software developers, who could quickly iterate and create a new tool. And that mutual interdependence has created what we think is a very promising new software product that neither of them probably could have built on their own. - A few years ago, my CAO and I had a vision for what could exist. This was the early vision for our playlists and what might be possible there. But we didn't have the skill or the ability to create this, and while we could imagine it, we had no way of making it happen. We got lucky, in that we got introduced to some really thoughtful, committed, educational entrepreneurs who wanted to work with educators like us. So we got into a room, we literally flew down, got into a room, and spent about five hours whiteboarding what we thought would solve a lot of our problems, and how they started to think about and could imagine their technology being able to meet that need. From there, a relationship was born. Fast-forward several years. We have worked side by side in an interdisciplinary team, if you will, to build the Activate platform. This is a platform that we're now making available to anyone and everyone, free by design. We had a common interest, common values, and a real desire to build something that we felt like would enable blended learning and next generation learning for all kids and for all teachers. That experience has been invaluable for both parties, I believe.