Video Games Are the Future of Education
Love it. Especially the failed business plan I had from 8 years ago. The OP is correct, but good luck getting the education world to change. It&#x27;s monitored by &quot;moms&quot; that don&#x27;t like change, school districts that run on what is known, and a publishing industry without a single success in interactivity in the decades computers have been around. Any success has been small and anecdotal, even Khan Academy. In order to truly change our education system, we need to spend a hundred million dollars on R&amp;D with interactive storytelling to get the breadth of material correct, then another billion developing the depth. After words, students could freely &quot;roam&quot; through stories and learn at their own pace. Interactive software could monitor reading and comprehension levels and adapt, it can provide real-time feedback to teachers who can &quot;steer the ship&quot;.<p>I worked on this for several years, got close to the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation. The guy in charge of their education grants eventually stole all of our ideas and put them in their next grant application process that was directed at &quot;publishers with an existing customer base of at least 100,000 students&quot; which means established companies.<p>Pearson, Britannica, McGraw-Hill, and all of the other education publishers have one goal. Maintain the status-quo. Feed their existing content-developers who are solely focused on static page-oriented content. Why change? They have billion dollar contracts with states to deliver textbooks at exorbitant prices ($100+&#x2F;student&#x2F;class&#x2F;year).<p>I&#x27;m not bitter. Just disappointed. I definitely did not know what I was getting into and did not have the pedigree to chase down this business. But I did have a pretty good team and had Gates Foundation took a chance, we may have been able to prove the interactive model. That in itself would have been worth the investment.<p>It&#x27;s dated, but still relevant. Here is Textfyre&#x27;s business plan...<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;plover.net&#x2F;~dave&#x2F;textfyre&#x2F;Textfyre Investor Presentation September 2012 V3.3.pptx" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;plover.net&#x2F;~dave&#x2F;textfyre&#x2F;Textfyre Investor Prese...</a>