

Show HN: Today We Learned - joneil
https://todaywelearned.co/

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iJebus
Huh, whaddayaknow. Perth. Spacecubed. Neat.

More relevant to the topic; while Alexcason has a fair point in that teachers
are already overworked, if TIL's research page is accurate (and I have no
reason to suspect it isn't), then it seems like there's a large payoff for the
relatively small time investment. Good job!

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alexcason
This would add another 30+ minutes every single day to a teacher's workload.

No teacher will ever use this voluntarily.

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joneil
Maybe the landing page isn't obvious enough. It's a 60 second update per
class, not per child. There's the option for teachers to send an individual
message to a specific family, which of course will take some more time, but
most of the time our pilot teachers just focus on the class update.

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skigg
The landing page definitely isn't obvious enough. I got the idea eventually,
but I had to work for it, and it wasn’t in the big print.

Part of the problem is unclear copy upfront. Here’s the first sentence:

> Today We Learned is a website and app that guides teachers through a
> 60-second update, which empowers parents to start learning conversations at
> home with their children.

How can guiding _teachers_ empower _parents?_ It doesn’t provide enough
information to make sense. Being guided through an update is a passive thing
to have happen to you; there’s no reason for us to assume that the teacher is
taking action here, or that the update goes not to them but to the parents
alone. Presumably the writer wanted to avoid any forthright statements that
the teachers will have to _work_ for the app to be useful, but in doing so
they buried the purpose of the program. And the only other sentence above the
fold, rather than clarifying, is boilerplate: _and this is a good thing._

Looks like an interesting app, though. I’d be curious to know what percentage
of users actually go in for the paid mobile app—email and web access being the
universal here.

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joneil
Thanks for the advice, I really appreciate the detail you've given. I'll take
some time to more carefully test the copy with people not already familiar
with the product.

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Ankur84
This could be very helpful. I used to have a private tuition company back in
my uni days. Keeping parents updated was rewarding but often took a long time.

Having something like this would have been great for all - parents,
teachers/tutors and most of all student.

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greggh
We have these conversations regularly with our kids, they are very important.
If you can actually get a lot of schools to go for this that would be amazing.

Is it only free for schools and teachers in Australia or everywhere?

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joneil
Thanks for the feedback - I'm glad you see the value in it.

It'll be free for schools worldwide. If we get enough interest in a particular
region we'll look for a local organisation to partner with, like RAC has here
in Australia. (My co-founder and I are big believers in helping businesses
find sustainable/effective ways to invest in education).

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M8
Wow, that start-up generator HN post sure did affect my perception...

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cunneen
I wish my kid's teacher used this.

