Becoming an Education Entrepreneur

Have a great idea to change education?

Flickr Photo by Life Mental Health

Step 1

The first stop for any entrepreneurial educator should be an EdTech Meetup, Hackathon, StartUp Weekend or EdCamp to further develop your idea and build a team to develop the product. 

Step 2

Before you start creating your product you'll want to become knowledgeable about what's happening in the EdTech community and check out your competition. 

• EdSurge - EdTech news, products, events and reports
• MaRS Commons - Educational technology startup library
• Mindshare Learning - Canadian EdTech news, products, events and reports

Step 3

Next, you'll need to do your research so that can demonstrate how your innovation will improve teaching and learning at scale. Here are some sources that you can provide with the data to understand the potential impact of your idea.

Canadian Data 

• Councils of Ministries of Education Canada: Publications
• Statistics Canada: Education Indicators

Ontario Data

• Ontario Ministry of Education - K-12Education Facts
• People for Education. (2013). Mind the gap: Inequality in Ontario's schools - People for Education annual report on Ontario's publicly funded schools
• People for Education. (2012). Making connections beyond school walls: People for Education annual report on Ontario's publicly funded schools
• People for Education: What does the research say?

American Data

• Digital Learning. (2014). Guide to EdTech Procurment
• SIAA. (2013). US EdTech Market Survey, Executive Summary
• GVS Advisors. (2012). Education Sector Fact book 
• GVS Advisors. (2012). Fall of the Wall: Capital Flows to Education Innovation
• GVS Advisors, (2012). American Revolution 2.0: How education innovation is going to revitalize America & transform the U.S. economy

International Data

• OECD Education at a Glance
• UNESCO Global Education Digest

Step 4

Develop your product / Refine your product.

• Learn to code: Codeacademy.com, HTML5 Rocks, MIT OpenCourseWare
• Hire a developer: Developer4Lease, Rent Your Developer, Students
• Join an incubator: MaRS, Velocity, Brock U (coming soon)

Step 5

To ensure that your innovation works, you'll need to find some schools to pilot your innovation.

• Canadian Education Association Directory of Key Contacts in Canadian Education - List of Ministries/Departments of Education; School Districts; National & Provincial Education organization
• ED.gov  - List of U.S. State Departments of Education
• Great Schools.org

Step 6 

Pitch your innovation at an EdTech event to showcase your product and secure  support so that your idea can grow into a self-sustaining company. 

• CONNECT: Canada's Learning & Technology Conference Start-up Alle
• Education Innovation Summit
• ISTE Pitchfest
• SXSW EDU 

* Be prepared to repeat steps 2 through 6 

as your company transitions from a start-up to a mature enterprise.