Acquire Skills and Knowledge Education Inc (ASK) is an educational technology company building new education tools for the 21st Century.

We focus on building skills such as problem solving, communication, team building, ethics, and creativity, as well as developing health and wellness curricula. We make this stick by building games and lessons that enable learners to interact with each other both formally and informally to learn from and with each other.

We plan to provide tools for teachers to incorporate the platform into the classroom activities or to use synergistically as an outside activity. We plan to provide assessment measures for skills such as problem solving and ethics which are harder to objectively evaluate in the classroom. Our goal is to provide products that invigorate Pre-K through 12th grade students and improve health literacy in the US and around the globe.

Two problems in the U.S. education system that we at ASK intend to tackle are the poor health literacy of the nation's youth, and the inability to measure skills such as communication, problem solving, ethics, creativity and team which are commonly referred to as the “21st century skills”.

Since that 2012 call there has been little done to address the adolescent population. The top health issues for adolescents are accidental injuries, mental health, HIV/AIDs, substance abuse, teenage pregnancy, other infectious diseases, and nutrition.

Center for Health Care Strategies, Inc.

At ASK we plan to create new digital tools for learners and equip them with skills for the 21st century.

We plan to create an immersive and engaging experience for the learner that also allows for the parent/guardian and teacher to interact with the student through objective game management and growth monitoring systems. The gameplay can be managed on the backend by facilitators at home or at school. This allows for difficulty, pace, and objectives to be adjusted based on the learners needs.

Unlike many pieces of learning software available now, the goal of ASK is to create an education community around the child so that everyone can help develop their skills without having to retain a tutor or other services to complete the assignments. Creating an education platform that allows for such depth will encapsulate the learners needs and keep them focused on the education goals assigned.

Three Portals for Three Stakeholders

The three portals we plan to build into the platform include one for the learner, one for the parent and one for the educator.

• The Learner

  We plan to include in the LEARNER platform an invitation to the learner to engage in various activities. We plan to include an opportunity for the learner to pick among topics that have been chosen for them to learn by either the parent or the teachers. The learner will be supported in their learning with rewards, opportunities to fail, opportunities to practice, and the ability to communicate with their teachers, parents, and other learners in their sphere as defined by either parents or the teacher. We plan for each learner to have a dashboard where they can see their accomplishments, view opportunities, and be supported to learn more.

• The Parent

  We plan to include in the PARENT portal the opportunity for the parent to interact with the platform in two ways. If the parent owns the tool then they will be able to choose the topics, goals and objectives for the learner. If this is a school owned platform the parent or guardian will be able to see goals and objectives that have been assigned by the educator. The parent will be able to see the progress the learner is making and be provided data about how their learner is progressing compared to others of their age. We plan to develop the portal so that the parent can interact with other parents, if they wish to join the community of parents. Supportive information will be included in the parent portal with tips for how to encourage the learner who is having difficulty, and how to provide continued support to a learner who is doing well.

• The Educator

  For the EDUCATOR portal we plan to include a dashboard that provides information on all the topics and lessons available. The educator will be able to choose age appropriate tools for use with their class. We plan to include supplemental materials that they can use with the topics either in the classroom or asynchronously. We plan to give them access to all of the data for their class, which may be built into a report that shows progress of the class, goals and objectives achieved, hours a student spent on a topic, and their achievement level. We also plan for the teacher to be able to communicate with the parent to provide support for the parent and the learner.

What will we build first?

Our plan is to first build tools to address health. Mental health topics such as recognition and signs of mental health disorders, prevention of mental health disorders, reducing stigma, increased awareness of resources and strategies to support others, and prevention exercises for drugs, alcohol and nicotine.

We understand that students today desire immediate feedback and we plan to build tools and educational games to provide that. The educators and parents will also receive tips on how to support their learners and how to help the learner who is having difficulty. Teachers will be provided with opportunities to present reports on the learning and the number of hours each student has been engaged with various objectives. These are not present in any other program that we have found to be available.

Schools systems are ready to test the tools we build. We have a committee of advisors who are teachers, business leaders, and health professionals.

Our target market includes the United States and Canada and with possible future expansion to other countries.

Our initial target customers are school districts in the United States. Specifically, we plan to target school districts in Florida. We chose Florida because state regulations require 5 hours of mental health education for students grades 6-12each year. The entire Florida market of students is approximately 2.6 million. Our technology could help fulfil that requirement.

Florida's required mental health education includes suicide prevention, recognizing mental health, understanding cues of mental health issues in peers, and which health professional are available to help. In addition to the learner tools that we plan to provide, we plan to give parents and teachers access to this information.

There are 5 counties in Florida with the largest population of learners, Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Orange, and Hillsboro (this represents Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Orlando and Tampa). There will be approximately 750,000-1 million learners in grades 6-12 in these districts. We plan to target these districts first.

Our goal is to have product into the hands of the district leaders and teachers for the fall 2020. However, due to the budgeting process for school districts they are already past having budget available for the 20-21 school year. By meeting with school district leaders by March and April of 2020 we will be able to get into their budgets for the 21-22 school year. Funding from those sales would likely be available beginning June 2021.

The next targets for sales will be the California and the Texas school systems. The curriculum for all California and Texas schools is decided at the State level. The goal is to begin conversations with those State Education Dept leaders in the spring of 2020.

Florida, California and Texas contain 14 of the 30 highest populated school districts in the US. In addition the following states or cities have school districts with more than 100,000 students: Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, Virginia, Maryland, Hawaii and Chicago. These school systems would be targeted within the 2020-2021 school year for sales in 2022.

The graphs indicate the number of school districts in the US, the schools illustrated by type, public or private, the number of students in the top 10 largest school districts in the United States. A fourth graph represents the number of students by age group in the United States. It is not shown in these graphs but the top 30 school districts in the United States have 5.6 million students. The total number of learners in the United States is estimated to be approximately 50.8 million.

There are various online companies that provide reading, math, and science curriculum. There are over 200 learning management systems each with various options, but despite those that indicate they have games associated with them, there is little engagement of the “serious game” type.

There are free online programs that provide free lessons. The topics vary widely. Some content has been called into question. While it is free, there is little to engage the student, learner and parent in a community. There are some health education tools that are created for individual topics but don’t necessarily span a wide variety of topics in one program.

ASK is a software as a service (SaaS) company and plans to use a monthly recurring revenue model for its products.

ASK is a B2B company, although there may be sales to consumers who are home-schooling students if the school district does not provide the tools. We plan to charge school districts annual or multi-year subscriptions for their students based on the number of students.

Pricing will be per student starting at 35.00 a student. However, school districts that purchase a license for all of their students may be able to purchase initial copies for as low as 5.00-10.00 a student. As more content and features are added the pricing will be increased. For example, Miami Dade county has 357,249 students. The annual cost for the tool for all of their students ages PreK-12 would be approximately 1.8 million for the district.

Many software companies are pricing their software licenses at 75.00-100.00 a learner. Our goal is to build the company, but to price the product so that it is accessible to all learners.

Starting with the State of Florida, Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach, and Hillsborough counties are in the top 10 largest school districts in the US. We have contacts at each of the districts to work with them to meet the education needs they have regarding the State Mandate for mental health education for grades 6-12. We have met with principals, teachers and leaders in other school districts in other States such as Ohio, Ga, Va and Texas.

The first customers will be the counties in Florida. Meetings with the district leaders will start this spring of 2020, although we have already informally presented to educators and parents in the 3 districts. They have given us positive feedback. In addition, I met with the Florida State Dept of Education, Dept of Health and Office of Management and Budget. These individuals indicated that I will need to work with each District independently in order to sell them the tool.

Teachers and district leaders in Ohio, Atlanta, Fairfax County Va, and Texas have been involved as advisors in our early development. Each is committed to helping us with contacts at the States and Districts in these states. In Puerto Rico, there are almost 400,000 learners in their school system. I will be working with the health professions schools at the University of Puerto Rico, for content and translation. We will work with them, and the leaders of the PR government education offices to have the tool purchased in that school system.

A partnership with the University of Puerto Rico also provides the opportunity to more rapidly translate the tool into a second language. Although, since English is the language of science it may be an opportunity for english as a second language learners to practice and there will be some appeal in that option for countries like Puerto Rico.

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