Delivering the first major company presentation at TechCrunch 40, Scott Moore and Bill Scott from Yahoo presented Yahoo Teachers, a new research focused service aimed at making life easier for teachers. Yahoo Teachers is a clip to database style service; users utilize the “gobbler” that is an online clipping service with a desktop interface client where they can drag research and reading materials when formulating lessons. Where it becomes an even more appealing service for teachers is with the sharing capabilities: think Wikipedia but written by school teachers with a focus on delivery to children.
Sure, it’s perhaps not the sexiest product release from Yahoo, and when some of the details leaked last week it was already written off as a product that is “a yawner.” But having spoken with a few teachers about the idea prior to today’s presentation, every single one of them thought it was a good idea. Folks without children can ignore this next line, but for those of us who do have kids, I think every tool that empowers and enriches the abilities of school teachers to teach our children are without doubt a good thing. I’ve got no idea whether this service will be as good as Yahoo makes it out to be, but here’s hoping it is.
For our children, such as!
Good for Yahoo!
oh, yeah, i heard about this FIVE YEARS AGO when http://www.netsnippets.com launched their academic software and web tools…now they offer http://www.esnips.com for free, and this is basically what yahoo has copied…
yael, are you reading this too!!!???
This is a cool idea and if I was a teacher I would be excited about the possibilities. The video explaining this on the other hand is horrible and should really be no more than 30 seconds. I felt like I was watching a poor infomercial and wanted it to stop. I hope the product is better and more concise than this video.
Good luck to Yahoo on this, hopefully the schools and teachers will embrace the system.
This could be pretty amazing. This kind of stuff might not seem sexy, but it is big business. In some respect it might seem like just “nice thing to have,” but in many places online portfolios for students (and teachers) are becoming a requirement for showing how learning standards are being addressed over time. There are a number of solutions out there (I helped build one of them), but if Yahoo does it right in leveraging their intuitive user interfaces and network of other tools (e-mail, flickr, video, etc.), then they might be able to pull off an integrated solution that the other guys haven’t been able to do. Best of luck to Yahoo on this.
By the way, if the product does what I think it does (from the little that I learned from the video), then it is much more than a simple “clipping” tool. The real power is going to be in its integration with learning standards, assessment features, and collaboration tools (sharing lesson plans). The clipping feature will be icing on the cake if they can get these other components correct.
Is that a Mac I see on the stage?
*&&^%$ you!
I have a good mind to buy your whole little company here and pave it over!
YA Know ….
I think I will, muahahahahaha
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