What were you doing at age 17?
Feedback reveals that this list trends nerdy. So your answer may not be scandalous.
Brandon Goon, on the other hand, was sneaking around.
In fact, he was sneaking...
wait for it...
INTO school!
Why?
After dropping out of his own high school, he was covertly researching project-based learning in other nearby schools. Did I mention we're a nerdy bunch? 💙💚
Brandon is the founder of Be Anything, a project management tool for the classroom. On the latest episode of The EdTech Startup Show Podcast, we discussed:
- Project-based learning 🛠 - Brandon calls this the "perfect pedagogy" because it can boost student engagement, improve teacher satisfaction, boost attendance rates, and more. The problem? It's hard for teachers to set-up and maintain. Brandon discussed what teachers need for support.
- Slack, Asana, Trello for school 🏫 - The business world has powerful software to support collaborative work. Students need to collaborate, too. But they also need more. Teachers need to manage student projects. They to track student progress. They need to provide feedback. Brandon's Be Anything product does this.
- Don't drop out ❌ About his personal journey, Brandon says, "It's a terrible idea. Your life’s going to be a lot harder than it needs to be, even if you are successful. And for me, sometimes I still look at it and I’m like, yeah, my life is a lot harder than it really could have been.
- Stop making excuses 🤬 People have great ideas, but claim they can't build their "thing" because they don't have money, tech skills, or an audience. Brandon hustled at free edu conferences, handing out paper resources that teachers wanted. The result? He built a 200-person list of contacts who want his product.
Do you have your headphones plugged in? If so, click here to listen right now (without having to open your podcast player).
Read a transcript of the interview here.
If you like this episode, can you leave a review and rating for the podcast? We doubled the number of ratings in the past month (5 --> 11!), so thank you for the support.
Thanks for reading,
Gerard Dawson
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