
A Start-Up Moves Teachers Past Data Entry - pg
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/a-start-up-moves-teachers-past-data-entry/?_r=0
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pvnick
Clever expanded through Florida pretty rapidly as I was working with them
earlier this year. I already wrote about my great experience with them at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6856714](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6856714),
but again I wish them the best of luck because I've seen their potential to
get in a position as a platform to really do some revolutionary stuff to
improve the way we educate our children.

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greattypo
Co-founder of Clever here. If anyone is excited about building APIs and
improving education, we have a few positions open:

[https://getclever.com/about/jobs](https://getclever.com/about/jobs) (full
stack, devops, security..)

Also, feel free to drop me a note if you're interested but would like to get
more information (tyler@).

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coolrhymes
Is this for k12 only or are you planning this for higher ed? @kipinhall, we
are pivoting towards professor centric app, so having the access to student
info would be great. we can talk more if you're interested, ping me
@agileseeker

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clavalle
Clever is great. I've had the pleasure of working with them on behalf of some
clients. Their company and API is a breath of fresh air in a space that has
historically been very complicated and messy.

I would love to see a Clever in the finance space...requisitions, invoices,
purchase orders and the like.

I do foresee a problem with Clever. Their API is almost too simple. It would
be trivial for a school ERP provider to set up a 'Clever compatible' API
(since an API cannot be copyrighted) and either undercut the price or just
offer it for free to education software vendors to get that nice demo room 'We
are compatible with over x many applications for students, teachers, parents
and administrators!'

I hope that doesn't happen but the threat does seem to be there.

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sethbannon
This is a perfect example of an "unsexy problem" that needed to be solved.
With so many people building education apps, it's great that someone decided
to take the time to work out some of the unsexy underlying issues in the space
that were slowing the pace of innovation. Standardizing and surfacing
educational data may not be the sexiest work, but it can spur the pace of
innovation across the entire domain.

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camworld
This is great, if....the school software vendors adopt it as a standard and
allow their systems to be Clever-enabled.

I work for a large school district and a large majority of our vendor
solutions come with their own proprietary, locked-down technologies. When
queried, some of these vendors see the writing on the wall and say they are
working on integrating with Clever while others keep their heads stuck in the
sand while counting their millions of taxpayer dollars spent on overly-
complex, un-flexible and un-interoperable solutions.

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ryanhuff
Schools need industry mandated open standards that force the systems to inter-
operate. This isn't it.

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mathattack
Great idea! I believe that teachers feel like data is mostly about grading
them and their students, and not about improving the educational experience.
Some "Get it" but most either lack the tools, the support, or the mindset.

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ericHosick
The logistics behind keeping track of 100+ students a trimester can become
daunting. Most tools available to teachers are wanton.

Then throw in classes with 600+ students requiring multiple teachers. Trying
to align fairness (rubrics), plagiarism (tools like Turn-it-in) and the
uniqueness of teaching style is difficult.

We'll, I think it is more about teachers being overloaded with the minutiae of
data that causes them to lose focus of the bigger picture (education).
Actually, in my opinion, education has lost focus on the bigger picture of
education and may have never really had it.

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saraid216
> Actually, in my opinion, education has lost focus on the bigger picture of
> education and may have never really had it.

This. Solutions like these are good in that they'll help schools get the space
they need to be able to consider good reform, but said reform isn't a
conversation that Americans seem capable of having.

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xd
"The different vendors pay Clever, and Clever offers the service to schools
for free."

This is the sole reason this will never work. I've been in education and
developing education software for well over a decade now, and no one I know
(vendors) want a single provider monopolizing the game in this way. In the UK
at least, we (vendors) are struggling to remove the strangle hold of the
monopolizing few; namely Capita and Serco.

But all that said, I do wish you the best and hope you find some solution that
works. Interoperability of school data/systems is a giant PITA, which I've
spent way to much of my life on.

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jv22222
Another interesting disruptor in the education space is:
[http://digedu.co](http://digedu.co)

