JOfferijns
Joined 14 years ago
Karma
784
Submissions
70
Member since
Feb 21
my public key: https://keybase.io/offerijns; my proof: https://keybase.io/offerijns/sigs/sAnS1bmE4k-x66H6tgbsR1RZ_Lkman0ZWXdxBN6qKdM
View on Hacker NewsRecent submissions
Comment · 10 years ago
Hi Michael, Aaron, I'm a co-founder of an educational games platform based in the Netherlands. At the moment, games on the market that are targeted at K-6 students are not that much fun, they are not thoroughly aligned to school curriculums (just to CCSS goals in the US), and they're not connected in terms of content + analytics.
We've built 4 games, generate content for math questions (and soon starting work on literacy), and have a dashboard for teachers/parents. Early pilot results are quite positive (most importantly, children want to play the games at home).
I've been thinking about the next step in 3-6 months: should we expand to a neighbouring country (e.g. France, UK) or start looking at the US. The latter seems to be the first choice for most startups originating from Europe, but our improvement over existing competitors is much more in non-English speaking countries than it would be in the US (as 90% of educational apps are English). Any thoughts on this?
Also: what is YC's view on EdTech startups? It seems there haven't been many in recent batches.
Comment · 11 years ago
On the bottom of the page it says "Powered by readme" and links here: https://readme.io/
Comment · 11 years ago
You should look at Art4Apps: http://www.art4apps.org/
It's a library of images in the same dimensions and a uniform style, licensed under Creative Commons.
They created it for developers of educational apps, but it could work just as well for worksheets!
Comment · 12 years ago
There are quite a lot of these contests, namely the various X PRIZE competitions: http://www.xprize.org/
They aren't taking the IP and are also giving the cash as a pure incentive, meant to inspire new innovations in a certain sector.
Comment · 12 years ago
Well in the Netherlands it's 1800 euros a year for Dutch students, so that's not free but still very inexpensive.
(note that it's significantly more expensive for foreign students though)
Comment · 13 years ago
At Unfilled, we are trying to rethink and improve the way people learn how to read, write and code and we are currently looking for a Designer to be part of our co-founding team.
You will find yourself designing the wireframes for the mobile app, newsletters, presentations about the product and more. You will also be working with other teammates sharing knowledge and learning from each other.
Furthermore, you can play a role in changing the world, as the platform we're creating could potentially impact millions of lives.
If you are interested in being part of our team, take a look at the key points we are looking for: http://unfilled.org/get-involved/
If you think this position fits to you, just send an email to jeroen[at]unfilled.org and we'll get back to you!
Comment · 13 years ago
This is simply not true, the US has both signed and ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention [1], though it still has to destroy some of their stockpile [2].
[1] http://www.opcw.org/about-opcw/member-states/
[2] http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/11/us/u-s-chemical-weapons/
Comment · 13 years ago
This is very evident when you start watching TED Talks.
Nearly every single one starts with a personal story, which probably means they are trained to use this technique.