Starship School plans speedy acceleration beyond Chicago pilot

Internet Strategies for Education Markets: The Heller Report, Nov, 1999

Edventions, L.L.C. (Chicago, IL, www.edventions.com) has recently released their version of making the Internet useful to schools, Starship School. It is essentially a ready-made intranet for elementary schools, a private portal that is not so feature laden as to be called an enterprise portal.

Edventions places a server in a school, and with it the school and its community of families gets communications between the home and school, security features such as Internet content filtering and a firewall, a private destination web site with school-produced learning material and other educational content, an authoring system for teachers to create online lessons, access to search engines and remote support of the system by Edventions. Teachers, administrators, students and parents can access resources through a graphical interface featuring caricatured aliens. Irv Shapiro, chairman, says that he intends for parents of children in Starship Schools to use the system as their first point of entry for any online activity.

The offering is intentionally low tech. The authoring system, for example, does not require dragging or double clicking and does not permit the creation of animation. Shapiro says that his research shows that Starship School's template-based authoring system is what works best for 90% of teachers. It also works best for the company's educational philosophy of using the Internet to support the teacher, not to provide CBT. The lessons offered are not computer based lessons, but computer available guidelines, primarily text, for projects such as science experiments that use real objects. Every Starship School also gets a digital camera that makes it easy for teachers to insert photos in the templates.

"We are not a technology company and we are not an education company," says Shapiro. "We are a media company." One implication of that business focus is the realization that Edventions is in the business of communications and community within a school, and reaching the maximum number of people requires offering the lowest common denominator technology. Reaching the maximum number of people is also essential for their advertising-based revenue strategy.

Advertising, Subscription and E-Commerce Revenue Models

While students never see ads mixed into the educational environment, adults using the system get banner ads. The advertising can be localized and personalized. By offering commissions to companies with sales forces already selling to local newspapers and radio stations, Edventions can handle local sales. And Shapiro points out that while this model proved to be disappointing for the cable industry, web ads can be created for a fraction of the cost of television adds and make the system extremely viable. For local or national accounts, Edventions can target ads based on their information on users. Back to school merchandise can be timed just right and targeted to the right grade, for example, or shin pads can be promoted to soccer players at the beginning of the season.

Edventions will also soon introduce corporate sponsorship activities in which a company can sponsor an entire school's Starship School subscription fee. Once out of the pilot, schools will pay a subscription fee of ten cents per day, or about $36 per year, per child. Shapiro says that wealthier communities will likely have parents pay the fee. For less affluent areas, the offerings are subdivided to qualify for e-rate and Title 1 funds. Other schools simply pay from their own budget.

Shapiro sees corporate sponsorship of subscription fees as philanthropy that, because Starship School generates extensive usage statistics, offers far more accountability than, say, simply donating PCs. And where one company dominates employment in an area, sponsorship makes life easier for employees with children. There are also opportunities for corporate sponsors to build lessons with the Starship Creator authoring program, such as a bank building a series of lessons on money management.

E-commerce will eventually supply a third stream of revenue in addition to banner ads and subscriptions. Key investors in the company are former owners of Quill Corp., an office supply company. They sold that company to Staples for $600 million and are now on Staples' board of directors. That background has generated some keen interest in e-commerce within Edventions. Shapiro, for example, plans to offer parents a school supply package at back to school time, but offerings will extend beyond school supplies.

There is also interest in figuring out a system that allows teachers to purchase classroom supplies online. Shapiro says that linking purchases to school fundraising initiatives is a top priority.

Financing and Expansion

Shapiro, who recently sold the systems integration company Metamor, began Edventions with $1.4 million of his own money. Its impetus came with his donation of 40 computers to his children's elementary school. The school wanted to put them in a lab; he pushed for closer classroom integration. When the school said they didn't know how to do that, Shapiro says he figured that he could write another check and hire someone who could tell them. He couldn't find anyone, and so he formed Edventions and Starship School. The Miller Family, which owned the office supply company, has since invested another $1.5 million in Edventions, diluting Shapiro's ownership to 70%.