Schoooools

Schoooools empowers little kids with very simple tools and editors, that informally promote creativity, innovation, collaboration, sharing, learning by playing, all in a very natural way, as in a real school. At the moment schoooools is available in Portugal, Chile, US, Croatia, Poland, and moving forward to be available in other countries, soon, through partnerships. Learn more at: www.schoooools.com

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Delegation of Belgian Ministry of Education visits Oporto

A delegation of the Belgian Ministry of Education visited the north of Portugal so they can learn how our educative system does work, to share experiences, methodologies and education/training practices, to know the commitment to professional training of some of the Portuguese schools and to reflect on the educational models for the entrepreneurship.

The visit lasted three days and on the second day they were in Oporto city. The day began with a session in Área Metropolitana do Porto, in the heart of the city, led by Instituto de Empreendedorismo Social (IES). For this session IES selected Tecla Colorida (with schoooools) and ColorAdd to present their projects to the delegation of Belgian Ministry of Education members.

Both presentations were excellent and pleased this friendly group.

Dank u en kom snel terug! :)

[schoooools-blog]

E-xample signs agreement with Portuguese Government

On 23rd January, E-xample consortium and Portuguese Government signed an cooperation agreement.

Tecla Colorida is one of the 26 portuguese companies that are in new technologies for education field that form the E-xample consortium. This consortium has, as primary goal, to internationalize the capabilities and skills of the portuguese industry, in a highly strategic area for the development of societies and countries as Education.

This event, which happened in the Pavilhão do Conhecimento, not only served to signing the cooperation agreement, but also to present and exhibit the technologies of the companies present on the E-xample consortium.

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schoooools @ Beta Talk and UTEN!

Yesterday Ademar gave a talk about Tecla Colorida at Beta Talk Porto. Beta Talks are a series of free and informal meetings around Portugal, directed to entrepreneurs and curious people that want to share knowledge and tips. We were glad to be invited to this initiative and we received very positive feedback about the work we are developing!    Meanwhile, in Lisbon, at the Annual UTEN Conference, Jim Vance (IC2 Institute and the University of Texas at Austin) participated in a panel about "Internationalization of Startups and Business Development in the USA", where he plugged schoooools!   Currently, the Lee H. Means Elementary School in Harlingten, Texas, is part of our schoooools community, since we won the second phase of the US Connect contest.

Jim Vance @ UTEN, giving a plug to schoooools!

All in all a really good day for schoooools!

[schoooools-blog]

Thanks for the super-hero uniforms, Locale App!!

As we mentioned a while ago on Codecube, we use LocaleApp for translating our website to different languages. And we have to say: it's really great working with them! Not only because they provide a really great service, but also because they are all-around nice folks.

For example, today, each member of our team received an awesome Tony Stark t-shirt, as a gift from them. See for yourself how cool we look with our Arc reactors on, just like the real Iron Man!

Thanks, Locale App!  It's a pleasure working with you!

[schoooools-blog]

TC @ Silicon Valley comes to Lisbon

Good news, everyone! Tecla Colorida has been invited to Silicon Valley comes to Lisbon!

This event brings to the Portuguese capital city entrepreneurs and investors from around the world for two days of intensive networking and idea exchange. And we will be there, tomorrow, to present schoooools!

Come see us, it will be very interesting!

[schoooools-blog]

schoooools @ Global Education Conference!!!

As I mentioned last week, Ademar is going to present schoooools at the Global Education Conference, a free, online conference sponsored by EdSurge and GETIdeas. Now you can mark it on your calendar! Wednesday at 6 pm (GMT), you can watch the talk “Learning Digital Citizenship by Playing with Social Media @ schoooools”!

To watch and discuss the presentation, you will need to follow the link that will show below the title of the talk on this site and follow the instructions. 

Here's a short description of the session:

 Ademar will present schoooools, a very simple and intuitive social learning environment specifically designed to satisfy the growing needs for new ways of learning and to provide young learners crucial skills to become first-class digital citizens of the world. As an official digital school space, schoooools promotes better social interactivity, social learning, informal learning, and co-creation of new digital media, all provided as a single online platform, strongly anchored on the real social circles (classes, schools, families), and respecting their normal privacy rules. 

Don't miss it!!

[schoooools-blog]

Yesterday, Ademar Aguiar, Tecla Colorida co-founder, participated in an Google+ Hangout about "Innovation Perspectives in Education: Technology-Driven Education Innovation", as a warm up for the Global Education Conference, a free, online conference sponsored by EdSurge and GETIdeas that will take place next week. Ademar discussed this theme with other tech enterpeneurs that are inovating in the field of education, like Betsy Corcoran, from Lucere, Dr. Barbara "Bobbi" Kurshan, Executive Director of Academic Innovation at Penn GSE and Mary Anne Petrillo and Tony Wan, from GETIdeas. You can watch the video above, if you missed it!

Next week, Ademar will participate in the Global Education Conference, with a talk about "Learning Digital Citizenship by Playing with Social Media @ schoooools". More information about the time and date of his talk soon!

Stay tuned :)

[schoooools-blog]

Welcome to Tecla Colorida!

We have three new interns here at Tecla Colorida! Fábio, Mafalda and Anabela will work in our marketing plan for the next 8 weeks. How did they got here? They applied for an internship through the Startup Internship program, sponsored by the Faculty of Economics of the University of Porto and Startup Buzz, and were selected to work with us!

This week they had a very difficult assignment:  they had to convince the rest of the team (acting as clients) that we should buy schoooools. Results? Everyone got an A+! They answered correctly all the tough questions the skeptical clients asked!

Congratulations! Welcome to the team:)

[schoooools-blog]

Have a Spooky Halloween!!

Hey everyone!! Everything set for tonight? Do you have your spooky costume ready? Did you carve the scariest pumpkin in your neighborhood?

Here at schoooools we are ready for a great night of trick of treating around town and we hope you have a great All Hallows' Eve night also. Be careful not to eat to much candy... and try to avoid tricking haunted houses!!

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Codecube: Our developers blog!

Recently our programmers launched Codecube, a blog where they'll share with the world what they are working on. It is a great place to get ideas for your projects if you are also a programmer or web developer or if you want to learn or you're just curious about the process!

We have a very eclectic team of developers, so you'll read about a lot of different things, like html,css, ruby, ruby on rails, kaltura, unity3D, gamification, PLE and mobile development! And if you have any questions, tips or suggestions regarding what they should write about, just leave a comment! Trust us, it won't be as nerdy as it sounds!

Enjoy!

[schoooools-blog]

BIN@Porto

Last week we went to a BIN (Business & Innovation Network) Conference at FEUP. We had 3 days full of interesting talks and meetings. We participated in Actions Tanks, were we listened to business success stories! We had a lot of meetings with other interesting companies! And best of wall, Martina presented schoooools to a new audience!

Quick Presentation@Business Workshop

Overall, a great experience for our team! We hope we can see everyone again next year, in BIN@Brazil!

[schoooools-blog]

schoooools goes to Warsaw

Ademar Aguiar, schoooools co-founder, was invited by Warsaw University in Poland to participate in the ICT And Social Media in Language Education Conference!

Today, he is going to show how students can learn by playing with our platform!

Here is a sample of his talk's abstract:

Although ICT, per se, is not the solution to all current issues of traditional educational models, it is, however, a powerful and unavoidable tool that enable and motivate us to learn more and faster, be it in a formal or informal way, in classroom or at home, alone or supervised, and therefore it's seamless adoption in educational contexts and for educational purposes should be done by teachers, students and parents, altogether, as early as possible.

At schoooools, real schools and institutions can extend their presence to the digital world, with an official digital school space, having the same rules, roles, persons, and social circles as in the physical school, and where it is possible to read, write, draw, play, mash-up digital contents, collaborate, communicate, share, and socialize in a controlled way.

Good luck, Ademar!

[schoooools-blog]

Good news from...Croatia!!!

Last year, with the help of the Faculty of Organization and Informatics Varaždin, University of Zagreb, we introduced our platform to a couple of Croatian schools. So, a few days ago, a teacher from “II. osnovna škola Varaždin” wrote to tell us how happy they are with our platform!

According to the teacher, the kids love ‘schoooools’! They love to draw, chat, play the dozens of games we provide and embed their favorite video clips from Youtube on their assignments. It seems they like us almost as much as they like Justin Bieber!

Besides all the fun that the students are having, teachers are also very satisfied with the features of ‘schoooools'. They have been using the blog to share important information to their students such as dates of exams and information about their homework.

And this is just the beginning. After this first few months trying ‘schoooools’, teachers are looking forward to another school year with a lots of drawings, essays, images, videos and social co-working!

Big thanks to “II. osnovna škola Varaždin”! We love to receive feedback from our costumers! Hopefully more schools in Croatia will follow the example and join our happy community!

[childsmindinnovation]

We’d like every kid in America to have an experience of design by the time they are twelve and have the opportunity to study it in high-school if they want to.

~Bill Moggridge, director of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and an outspoken advocate for the value of design in everyday life, died September 8th, 2012, following a battle with cancer. He was 69. Designer of the first laptop computer and co-founder of the renowned innovation and design firm, IDEO, Bill pioneered interaction design and integrated human factors into the design of computer software and hardware. (via childsmindinnovation)

[schoooools-blog]

Features Highlight: Collaborative Editor

The way kids do their homework hasn't change in decades. They draw, write and do the math with their notebooks.

There's a reason for the longevity of the notebook. It is, after all, a very versatile tool! With just a pen and pencil, you can do a lot of different tasks!

But, at the same time, it can be pretty limited. It's difficult to share your work with others, unless you tear the pages apart or lend your notebook to a friend. It's also difficult for two or more friends to be working in the same notebook at the same time.

Enter our collaborative editor, an online digital notebook, that lets you do your homework online with the help of your colleagues.

You can do all the things you do with a real notebook and even more (okay, you can't rip the pages of this virtual notebook, but that's it). Besides the text editor, we have also available several pencils and brushes with lots of colors, so you can paint and draw whatever you like. Just take a look at the drawing we posted last week!

You can also embed other files, like photos, videos (including those from Youtube) and documents from other websites like Issuu magazines.

When the work is done, you can publish it, so all your friends can see what you did. But you can improve it even after it's published:)

Learn more about our collaborative editor here!

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Here's a drawing we did while fooling around with our Collaborative Editor, just to show you what you can do with this tool!

We will share some of our users' paintings in the future also, but for now you can see them here!

[schoooools-blog]

Schoooools Features Highlights:  A Private, Safe Social Network

At first glance, schoooools looks almost like other social networking sites, only adapted for education. It is, after all, organized just like a real school: the students are organized in classes managed by teachers, and the parents can keep track and supervise their kids activities and learning process.

But there's another big difference: schoooools is a lot more private and safer than the other social networks! Since most of our users are underage, it's a big priority for us to maintain their online privacy. We have to protect them from sharing private information with people that don't have their best interest in mind.

Since the registration is filtered, only people you can trust are allowed to use our network! Also, the only adults that can see their profiles are their parents and teachers.

But just because the access to the kids' private information and their activity is safe from prying eyes, it doesn’t mean that our network is limited in terms of features! 

Kids can add other friends from the network, even if they aren't their colleagues, and share their status with them. So, for example, during the summer vacation, they can keep in touch with their friends that are far. (with each other)

We also offer chat, e-mail and many ways to share files with your contacts (including a easy connection with Dropbox)! But those are features for another post, so stay alert :)

If you want to know more about our social networking features, click here!