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Over 1.1 Million “Lessons Served” to Students on Collaborize Classroom
Posted by: | CommentsDemocrasoft today announced a major milestone development related to Collaborize Classroom, the company’s flagship collaborative education platform. The company announced that more than 1.1 million individual topic-based lessons have been delivered to students since the official launch of Collaborize Classroom in January of 2011.
Collaborize Classroom has been steadily gaining recognition and high marks from teachers, students, and the education and technology industries. Collaborize Classroom, is available to all grade levels, and provides the ability to extend in-class conversations into private and secure online sites that are accessible with any Internet browser. Teachers post topic-based lessons on any subject in their own Collaborize Classrooms and invite their students to participate after school. Each time a new student receives a new lesson for the first time, it is counted as one “lesson served”. Lessons served on Collaborize Classroom have been increasing by about 5,000 per day, and are to be expected to top 1.5 million by the end of next month.
“Reaching this important milestone is important for us because it validates, for us and for the education and technology industries, that Collaborize Classroom is being recognized as an effective way of delivering curriculum to students outside of the classroom,” says Richard Lang, CEO of Democrasoft. “It not only improves student engagement significantly, but it also makes teachers’ jobs easier and more effective.”
One of the keys to successfully being able to deliver well over a million lessons to students in the past year has been the recently created Collaborize Classroom Topic Library. This free global repository of topic-based lessons enables teachers to share the best and most effective individual lessons that they create with other teachers around the world. This sharing capability includes a peer-rating system and enables teachers to easily find the most interesting and appropriate lessons for their own students. With just a few clicks, any topic on any number of subjects from the Collaborize Classroom Topic Library can be copied to any Collaborize Classroom anywhere in the world, at any grade level. To date, more than 16,500 teachers worldwide have launched their own Collaborize Classroom sites, sustaining a 25% average monthly growth rate since January of last year. All of this momentum has been is getting noticed. Collaborize Classroom has recently added two top education awards to its growing list of awards in educational technology. District Administration Magazine named Collaborize Classroom one of its Readers’ Choice Top 100 Products for 2011. While Edudemic.com readers chose Collaborize Classroom as one of the Top 100 Best Web 2.0 Classroom Tools (http://collaborizeclassroom.com/blog).
“These awards are particularly satisfying because they originate from teachers themselves,” said Lang. “These are the actual teachers deriving the benefits of Collaborize Classroom first-hand, so when they select us as a “top tool,” it means a lot.”
The company also announced today that Collaborize Classroom is featured in a short documentary video that was recently released by GOOD Magazine on its online site. Entitled “Sharing the Wisdom of We,” the video highlights Collaborize Classroom’s contribution to education. It is part of the magazine’s series entitled “Future Learning,” featuring visionaries in the field of education technology.
Sebastopol-based entrepreneur and global media executive John Kilcullen has been elected to the Democrasoft Board of Directors, bringing the number of directors to six.
An accomplished CEO and award-winning entrepreneur, Kilcullen is best known for creating and publishing the popular “For Dummies” brand of how-to books, which has gone on to sell over 250 million copies in 29 languages generating over $2 billion in retail sales and numerous New York Times, Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek bestsellers. Under his leadership, IDG Books Worldwide grew from $0 to $240 million in 10 years. He took the company public in 1998 and sold it three years later to John Wiley and Sons.
As President and Publisher of 115 year old Billboard magazine, Kilcullen architected the turnaround of a legacy music brand and subsequently was promoted to run the music & literary, as well as the film & performing arts groups including The Hollywood Reporter, Backstage and CineAsia.
Kilcullen has received numerous awards including Ernst and Young’s 1999 Entrepreneur of the Year. He was a member of Advertising Age’s 1995 Marketing 100 award and was recognized as a key influencer on FOLIO’s annual Folio 40 list and MIN Magazine’s 21 Most Intriguing People in 2006. He was also named a recipient of the Irish America Business 100 award in 1999 and 2003.
Kilcullen has been profiled in Forbes, People, The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today and in two books: Lead Like an Entrepreneur and The Rebel Rules. He has appeared on CNBC, CNN and popular talk shows in Australia, Canada, Singapore and the UK.
“Democrasoft has an exciting vision to leverage its cloud-based, social collaboration and e-commerce tools in a variety of fast growing vertical markets, starting with education,” said Kilcullen. “As an education entrepreneur and brand builder, I am delighted to assist the Democrasoft team in making that compelling vision a reality.”
According to Democrasoft CEO Richard Lang, “John Kilcullen brings a wealth of valuable perspective and contacts to our company, precisely at the time we are beginning to interface with publishers in the world of educational content and curriculum.”
“John is great fit for our Board and we expect a great collaboration in the coming months and beyond. We are very excited that he will be active in helping us with both strategic planning and growth management as we continue to implement our business plan,” said Lang.
Democrasoft Announces Three Collaborize Classroom Milestones
Posted by: | CommentsDemocrasoft, Inc. today announced three milestone developments related to Collaborize Classroom, the company’s flagship web-based education platform. Democrasoft announced (1) the official launch of the revolutionary Collaborize Classroom Topic Library; (2) that over 10,000 teachers worldwide have launched their own Collaborize Classroom sites and (3) a newly redesigned CollaborizeClassroom.com.
Today marks the official launch of Democrasoft’s Collaborize Classroom Topic Library, a free community resource that enables teachers to take the best individual topic-based lessons that they create and share them with other teachers around the world. All teachers using Collaborize Classroom will now gain access to topics that have already proven successful for other teachers utilizing the free Collaborize Classroom online learning platform. The click-and-go curriculum functionality makes it possible for teachers to easily populate their own Collaborize Classroom sites in a matter of minutes, with individual discussion topics and lessons from the global Topic Library, on almost any subject and for any grade level, at no cost. Teachers can also share the discussion topics that they create with other teachers on the Collaborize Classroom network, providing the foundation for a 24 x 7 global repository of peer-reviewed topic-based lessons.
According to Democrasoft Chairman & CEO Richard Lang, “We believe that the introduction of our groundbreaking Topic Library has the potential to revolutionize how education is delivered around the world, and, while the library is already well-stocked, we look forward to an exponentially increasing number of topic-based lessons becoming available to educators everywhere, as teachers continue to share their most successful work.”
Collaborize Classroom also announced the achievement of another key milestone goal this week: more 10,000 teachers worldwide have now launched their own Collaborize Classroom sites. The number of sites launched by teachers has been growing by at least 34% per month since January of this year, except for June and July, when the adoption rate increased by 60% in those months.
“We are extremely gratified to see the adoption of Collaborize Classroom continue to climb,” said Lang. “We have gone from nine teachers using our free online learning platform last October to over 10,000 today, and we expect today’s launch of our global Topic Library to further enhance our adoption rate in the coming months and beyond.”
Democrasoft also announced that the company’s central Collaborize Classroom website has been redesigned and now contains new features to further help teachers engage their students in the learning process. CollaborizeClassroom.com features new sections containing (1) free teacher resources, (2) free professional development courses, and (3) on-demand webinars.
Collaborize Classroom has emerged as a preferred choice in education technology because of its simple and engaging design, its ease of use, the “fun factor” reported by students, and its ability to embed documents, video and other multimedia directly into online discussion topics.
The free, collaborative online learning platform also provides teachers with student participation reports, and teachers using the system have found the quantified results of online student discussions very helpful. In fact, last week, the company received the following unsolicited thank-you note from a teacher in New Jersey, even before the official introduction of the Topic Library: “Beginning my 20th year next week and this ol’ dog is so psyched about this site and the possibilities! Thanks for such an amazing new strategy for my teacher toolbox.”
Democrasoft Enters Into Agreement with Major Corporation
Posted by: | CommentsDemocrasoft Inc. today announced that it has executed an agreement with one of America’s largest and best-known corporations to participate in a special joint project involving the Collaborize Classroom online learning platform, Democrasoft’s flagship product. Under the terms of the agreement, Democrasoft is not able to disclose the name of the other party. In addition, Democrasoft has agreed to prioritize the development of certain aspects of its technology with a view to accelerating the deployment of various new features that Democrasoft has recently developed.
While there can be no assurance that this agreement will lead to any continued relationship, this agreement represents the first significant revenue event for Democrasoft related to its Collaborize Classroom blended-learning platform. Under the terms of the agreement, the other corporation will make a payment in the low six figures in the current quarter and another equal payment at the completion of the project.
“We are extremely gratified that one of America’s household names has expressed this level of interest in how our web-based platform can potentially create a significant opportunity for both parties in the education arena,” said Richard Lang, Chairman and CEO of Democrasoft. “While nothing is guaranteed, this relationship, if continued, could go a long way toward achieving our long-range goal of extending the reach of Collaborize Classroom around the world,” Lang added.
In an unrelated development, Democrasoft announced that, since its last update on July 5th, the number of Collaborize Classroom sites launched by teachers has now topped 8,300.The monthly growth rate for launched sites has averaged 34% since January; in June the growth rate exceeded 60%, even though school was out of session most of the month in most areas.
Democrasoft Announces Management Update
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Democrasoft, Inc. today announced management updates in three areas of interest to the financial community and shareholders:
(1) The last of the legacy patent sales has been completed. U.S. patent #05262875 (also known as the “Mincer” patent) was sold for $50,000 net to the Company in a post-auction transaction through ICAP/Ocean Tomo, the same auction house that sold the rest of the Company’s legacy patents earlier this year. This concludes the process of monetizing the Company’s legacy patent portfolio and does not affect the pending patent applications related to the Company’s Collaborize cloud-based social networking platform.
(2) At last week’s Annual Meeting of Shareholders, all of the Company’s Directors were re-elected.
(3) As a result of ongoing marketing activities, including the Company’s previously announced participation at ISTE 2011 education technology conference in Philadelphia last week and the previously announced appearance of CEO Richard Lang on the Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC on June 24, new Collaborize Classroom sites launched last week were the highest weekly total since the Company announced the free online learning platform. The number of launched sites increased from 5,274 on Friday, June 24 to 6,380 at the end of the day on Friday, July 1, 2011 even though schools are generally not in session.
“We are extremely gratified by the growth of the Collaborize Classroom sites launched by teachers,” said Richard Lang, Democrasoft’s Chairman & CEO. “We are very hopeful that, as we launch our global Topic Library and other important new elements of Collaborize Classroom within the education community over the coming weeks, our teacher network will continue to expand to even greater numbers.”
