Benefits
The true benefit of the eduk8 platform is an enhanced educational experience for everyone: students, teachers, parents, and content providers alike.
This is accomplished by eliminating many of the obstacles and barriers to efficient schooling that were once necessary in pre-digital eras. Not only can content be unbound from textbooks which are expensive, heavy to carry, hard to keep together, and tedious for schools to track; but conventional barriers to distribution, communication, and resources can be removed as well. Looking at the benefits for each stakeholder in the educational arena is an important way to determine the true value of eduk8’s model.
Students
Making eduk8 beneficial to students is, of course, paramount: the reason for creating it in the first place. The platform would offer students numerous high-impact advantages that could be realized almost immediately upon learning the system, including:
- bringing all content together in a way that makes more sense than carrying and shuffling between multiple heavy textbooks
- offering an in-built system for organization of tasks and management of time
- adopting the latest collaborative approaches that integrate communications and documents in a way that makes work make sense
- making research resources available in real time, without the need for travel, copy machines, or physical editions of reference texts
Teachers
Every teacher knows that the ideal benefit for them is increased simplicity, control and efficiency, goals which allow them more time doing what they love: teaching. That’s why eduk8 provides teachers with easy ways to:
- individualize student learning by creating reusable agendas filled with guided lessons, tasks, and readings so that students can work individually, at their own pace, with less time spent waiting for help or something else to do
- distribute licensed and original content without tedious time at the copy machine
- choose the content they would like to use, as they need it, helping their schools avoid cost over-runs, and helping their students get the best materials available
- communicate with students, parents, and other teachers to offer help, report on progress, or share activities, lessons, and strategies
Parents
No parent, anywhere, wishes they knew less about their child’s education. With easy web access, eduk8 allows parents to log on anytime, anywhere, and:
- look through their child’s task list, work, and communications
- send their child a note to be made available during free time
- communicate with teachers, administrators, and other parents to ask questions, share ideas, offer support, and recommend resources
- easily access approved extracurricular materials through the eduk8 marketplace—locate free worksheets, or pay-per-use articles, stories, and books that are on-level and relate to what their child is learning at school
Schools
By opening up a streaming channel for content, schools no longer need to purchase static learning systems and textbook suites that must be tracked, stored, and maintained for several years in order to justify their costs. This means that eduk8 can helps schools do what many have come to consider impossible: increase student performance while lowering costs at the same time. This can happen by:
- giving administrators and teachers more choice in the materials they select
- allowing schools to purchase content on a rolling, micro-purchase basis so that only those readings, activities, and lessons which are actually used are bought
- all but eliminating the incredible costs and labor involved in handling, tracking, and storing physical learning materials, as well as those involved in photocopying
- connecting school faculty and staff directly to parents and students at home, so that announcements, ideas, solutions, and enrichment content (such as test-preparation materials, for example) not only flows freely, but can be tracked
Publishers and Media Companies
eduk8 offers publishers and media companies a convenient opportunity to adapt to the emerging digital marketplace without the need to develop and market in-house delivery systems. This would allow such companies to:
- streamline business units and costs related to printing, packaging, and shipping
- generate substantial revenue through expanded marketing of individual units, readings, worksheets, films, audio programming, and assessments
- connect directly to purchasing agents, teachers, and parents who then act as “editors” to their own, multimedia volumes of work, which have reduced costs for everyone
- better assess which materials are effective, profitable, and popular, then use these metrics to quickly react to the demands of the market
- help parents identify cost-efficient ways to supplement their child’s education using approved resources
