Meet ParentLink

Its finally here, the next product in our line up. ParentLink (to be released this weekend) is our first product directly targeted at parents. It allows parents to hook onto their students HomeRoom accounts and view a very limited subset of what's going on in their courses, gives them guest access to their students course websites, and allows them to message the student's teachers directly using the same messaging system as HomeRoom.

Many of the features we have released so far in VirtualOffice and HomeRoom have sought to address secondary and post secondary education, but ParentLink will allow us to give some more attention to the under served secondary education market (junior high schools and high schools). In speaking to many high school teachers, we realized that parent participation was difficult, but none the less essential. As ParentLink evolves, it will grow to let parents talk to each other and help build a supportive network that allows their kids to grow without intruding too much in their development.

Please free to let us know what you think! We are always open to suggestions, comments, and concerns. We're not done yet. Stay tuned for more information on our VirtualOffice release this month!

Cheers, Dan

Traffic Jam

We got a report that the site slowed down a bit in the middle of the day. If anyone experienced that, it's because we had a little bit of a surge in traffic today, but things calmed down pretty quickly. We have actually made some serious performance improvements to the site (including VirtualOffice and HomeRoom) that will be rolling out within the next couple of weeks that we expect to speed up things up to five fold in some places. So something to look forward to! (for us at least)

Cheers, Dan

The Survey Is In

We recently conducted a survey at UC Santa Cruz for a class of about 100 students who used VirtualOffice for a quarter (thanks Kestrel for all your help!), and the results are in! Most students said the system was really easy to use, and they really found it helpful. We even had a few responses that said they liked VirtualOffice better than the school's current website solution, WebCT. This was especially encouraging.

I'm going to be compiling the exact statistics over the next week as I find time, but I'll be sure to post them as soon as they are finished. Sorry for the short post, but I'm swamped with work right now, so I better get back to it. Just thought I would share that piece of news.

Cheers, Dan

Hot Off The Presses

Everything we do in life (for the most part) has a reason or justification behind it, and starting E-Office Hours was no exception. In a perfect world I would spend all my time working 100% on our products, but sometimes I have to switch roles and do a little marketing. Part of that job requires that I scour the Internet in search of articles and news about developments in our market (i.e. educational technology), and in part continue to remind myself of our "reason". One of my colleagues came across a very fascinating article today.

Apparently Michigan is now requiring that all graduating high school seniors take at least one online course before graduating (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060423-6657.html). This presents several interesting problems, the most obvious of which being budget. I recently met with a local educator, who told me that grant money for technology and funding in general is starting to dry up. So the question becomes, how can schools afford such initiatives. The obvious answer is E-Office Hours! Articles and news like this is in a way what drives us to get our message out there that there is a real option available.

I think understanding the need is the best way to serve our clients, so if anyone has a story they would like to share about budget cuts, or general frustration with trying to fund a technology initiative, please feel free to post a comment. Who knows, we may be able to do something to help!

Cheers, Dan

The Never Ending Race

Well its Saturday, and I'm at home, catching up on some blogging! I should probably be out, but I'm a little too tired today. Sorry I missed last nights post, I was up until 3 am working on our next product release, due out within the next 2 weeks hopefully.

So far we've been pushing pretty hard to keep our releases pretty regular at one feature release every month. Its pretty ambitious, considering typical companies only see a feature release every 3 to 4 months. But hey, we aren't aiming to be just any typical company! As I said before, we are lucky enough to have some really great users (such as Marjory Thrash, thanks for all the feedback Marjory!) who really push us to go that extra mile. So for everyone using VirtualOffice or HomeRoom (or is considering using it), I want to remind you that these are your products, so if you want something that's not already there, let us know!

I guess you could say its our never ending race to keep up with our customers and try make the product their own. If you're wondering what our next product is going to be, tune in next weekend when we make the announcement. We currently have 6 (possibly 7, will decide soon) products lined up, so our plates (and schedule) are pretty full right now.

Cheers, Dan

The History of Our World, Part 2

So far I've hopefully given a pretty good explanation of what exactly we are trying to do, but I think to really understand the what, one has to know the why (in particular, this is my own why). I was and still am dyslexic, although I've managed to learn to compensate for it, and somehow I managed to double major in college in computer science and applied mathematics.

Growing up with dyslexia, I spent a lot of time after school with some great teachers and tutors who were willing to help me catch up with my classmates. I was lucky. As an adult I read about many students not so fortunate. School budgets are shrinking, class sizes are growing, schools are shutting down, and people are expecting teachers to somehow make up for the lost resources. Frankly it seems impossible. Just recently I read about schools shutting down all over San Francisco and Oakland, and it scares me. This is in big part why E-Office Hours was started.

I don't pretend to think that we can fix every problem, but I'm certainly willing to try. In an effort to do so we are already planning to build our company into more than just websites for teachers.

Imagine...

• You're a student in America, and have a physics question. You ask our global Virtual TA, who gets the answer from a small town in Israel.
• You're a teacher in Australia, and every student is asking that same last minute question, vital to their success for tomorrows exam. With one answer you can help your entire class and save yourself time.
• You're a parent, and your student just doesn't get how to solve that math problem. You log into their account and show them where the answer lies on their teachers VirtualOffice.
• You're a student studying French literature in England, and with the click of a button you can instantly connect to a tutor in France who sees everything you're working on exactly as you see it, and helps you in real time to understand that one concept that alludes you.

We are working on it. E-Office Hours has been and will be built for students and teachers, and the educational community they form. If you were ever a student in any form, taught in any way, then this product belongs to you as much as it does to us.

So I guess that's our history. I could go into much more detail, but once again, check out the site! Its all there. And please tell anyone you know who might need us.

Cheers,
Dan

The History of Our World, Part 1

Today I thought I would start the first installment in a brief overview of what E-Office Hours is all about. First I'd like to introduce our 2 products (and in some ways my children): VirtualOffice and HomeRoom.

VirtualOffice is our flagship product built for teachers to quickly put up websites for their classes. I won't go into much detail about the features (you can go to our website if you want to learn more), but the important thing is that its built for teachers, and as such in a very real way belongs to teachers. We have been lucky enough to have some very satisfied users who have been kind enough to give us some good feedback (in fact one of them called me from Indiana the other day to tell me personally!!!). As a result, the product has been built directly around teachers and their needs, rather than the school as a whole.

HomeRoom is our flagship product built for students. Once again, I'll spare you all the details (check out the website), but its important to keep in mind that HomeRoom is all about communication. Communication between students and teachers is what makes it so useful. HomeRoom was a great project to work on because I was able to draw on so many of my experiences as a student.

I was that one student you always saw in the professor's office hours, asking tons of questions, on a first name basis with my professors. That is actually the reason we called the company E-Office Hours (office hours online!). That interaction outside of the class probably taught me more than the lectures, and is in many ways what we've tried to do with our product line so far.

There's a lot more to the company than this small piece, but I'll save that for part 2 of our small history lesson. Also, please feel free to post your comments and questions here, I'd be happy to address them.

Cheers, Dan

Welcome!

You've come to this blog, and you're probably wondering what it's all about. What is E-Office Hours? Why should you even care? Well in short, E-Office Hours is my story.

The short story is very simple: This is my vision, my passion, and what I hope to make a company with a social conscience that actually tries to make a positive difference in the world. The long story, however, is still being written.

First let me introduce myself. My name is Dan. I am a recent (if 2 years is recent) college graduate, and I started this company a little over 2 years ago while I was still at school, working night and weekends out of a rented room in the middle of town. Since then I've grown the company to include 5 more very talented people who I've somehow managed to convince that this whacky idea of mine (free websites and teaching tools for teachers and students) might really work! Our goal is simple: Connect students and teachers around the world in new ways, in an open, free environment.

So why start a blog? My goal is to give the company a personality, let people know that there is more to it than just a name, a website, and a few products. I am a strong believer that what makes a company work and succeed is the people who invest their time and hearts in it, and I hope to share our collective experiences and growth through this blog. I will be chronicling our story as it unfolds through this blog.

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog. The journey is just beginning, and with any luck, someday E-Office Hours will become a household name, who knows?! Stay tuned :)

Cheers, Dan