Ideablob — Crowdsourcing a social enterprise

Hey all,

So most of you know I’m taking this year off from school to start up some sort of entrepreneurial venture with 5 of my Olin peers. Our idea is still very loosly defined, as we are still in the trailing end of the first round of user studies and immersion.

Our vision is to design a web based tool for middle school students, parents, teachers, and administrators. It serves to enhance communication and collaboration in the middle school environment by virtually extending the current time and space boundaries of the classroom. It aggregates the best internet software into an intuitive environment, keeping the entire learning community involved and engaged in learning. The participants will each have individualized access to our secure software through their preferred browser. We provide a safe space for students to begin learning how the internet can bolster their learning experience, in and outside of school, while fostering mentorship, friendship, and professional relationships for the educational community.

We’ve actually uploaded our idea on IdeaBlob, an online community for ideas which allows you to vote for other ideas and give advice, and the grand prize winner for every month gets $5000 to get their idea off the ground. Being the poor still-college students-but-not-taking-classes-right-now that we are, it would be amazing to have those funds for the next 6–8 months of work! It might even allow us to survive during the summer and work on this another two months!

You do need to create an account, but I don’t feel bad about that because IdeaBlob is a cool website anyways. Sign up, show your friends! Vote for us! (or whoever you think has the best idea, but still…vote for us!)