Start-up: Kidblog
Founded: 2007
Location: Richfield
Key players: Matt Hardy and Dan Flies, cofounders
Funding: Self-funding
Web site: kidblog.org
These kids have it good nowadays, don’t they? Back when I was in school, if we wanted to talk to our friends, we actually had to walk up to them. If we wanted a variety of music, we needed to spend all night making a mix tape. And, if we wanted to send our secret crush a message, we had to write it on a piece of paper, fold it up, and slide it in their locker vent.
I’m not going to sugarcoat it for you—we had it rough.
Today, kids have cell phones, MP3 players, DVRs, and platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and the list goes on. The evolution of technology has definitely changed the way that younger generations consume information and communicate.
Technology has also changed learning. In fact, because of the advancements, kids have even more to learn, and at higher levels. Not only do kids need to learn to write grammatically correct, they also need to learn to write in text-message code (LOL, OMG, etc.), and within 140 characters.
Yes, penmanship may be down, but you can bet that the average words per minute of a kid now far exceeds what we were capable of at their age. The fact remains: Writing for kids has evolved. Rather than pen on paper, it’s now words on screen. And, rather than a journal, it’s a blog.
Helping school-age kids break into the wondrous world of blogging is in the hands of Matt Hardy and Dan Flies. The duo has created Kidblog, a safe and simple way for teachers to provide their students with their own blogs.
The brilliance behind Kidblog is that it allows teachers to control the blogging environment, thus protecting the students while helping them learn an invaluable skill.
Cofounder Matt Hardy tells us more.
Please describe what Kidblog does and how it is used.
Kidblog is a blogging platform designed for elementary and middle school students and teachers. Kidblog’s simple-yet-powerful tools allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over student blogs. Kidblog is used by thousands of classrooms around the world to provide authentic publishing opportunities for students.
The idea of getting kids writing early is great. What makes Kidblog a better or easier platform than something like Wordpress?
Kidblog is a free service that has many advantages over other available blogging platforms. Our streamlined back-end interface provides only the features and menus that are relevant to students. The teacher’s control panel contains additional features that facilitate post and comment moderation. Teachers have a range of unique blog-visibility settings that allow blogs to range from totally private to fully public. User creation/management is extremely easy, and no student e-mails are required. Our customer support is also personalized and responsive, providing teachers with peace of mind, knowing we're here to help with technical support issues, and even ideas for successfully implementing Kidblog in various contexts in the classroom.
Kidblog is based upon a highly customized installation of WordPress. We capitalize on the stability, security, and software maturity of WordPress, while integrating our own proprietary features.
Do you see your service being available to parents wanting to get their kids blogging in the future?
Kidblog is suitable for a wide variety of publishing contexts. Our strengths lie in moderation of content and user-management functionality. While our focus remains on classroom teachers, parents and families could certainly benefit from Kidblog’s user-friendly interface and robust features.
With every start-up, there’s always the question of revenue. How do you plan to monetize your business?
Education technology faces the challenge of providing services to users and organizations with traditionally limited budgets. While our commitment to providing a free service for teachers remains paramount, we have plans to offer private-label services and custom-hosting options for district-wide implementations and other large-scale integration of Kidblog’s services.
Since your launch, what has been your biggest challenge?
Our biggest challenge has been our most positive challenge: keeping up with exponential growth. Our primary effort involves scaling our servers to meet high traffic levels during peak school hours with the start of the new school year. We’ve tripled our server resources over the past month to meet this increased demand.
Are you where you thought you’d be at this point?
Kidblog was created out of my own need for a blogging platform that was safe for my third grade students to use, with essential post/comment moderation features for the teacher. Other blogging platforms did not offer the level of user management and content oversight I needed, so Kidblog was developed. Since its inception in 2007 in a single classroom, Kidblog.org has become one of the top online blogging services for students and teachers. We knew that Kidblog had the potential to meet teachers' needs in this area, but our recent boom in popularity has exceeded our initial expectations. We’re proud that so many teachers have found Kidblog to be an invaluable resource in their classrooms.
What advice would you offer to other aspiring entrepreneurs?
Kidblog’s success arose out of meeting a need that I faced in my own daily experience. With my unique perspective as a classroom teacher and professional Web developer, I was able to match my strengths to a problem to be solved. I would encourage other entrepreneurs to leverage their strengths in a way that benefits them personally. Then see if that idea could become popular with others.
For more information on Kidblog, visit kidblog.org.
Great post, Dana. I've met these guys, and I really think they're onto something! Go, KidBlog!
cheers,
Graeme
www.gtamarketing.com
www.tech-surf-blog.com
Posted by: Graeme Thickins | 09/29/2010 at 04:57 PM