IMA 501 12/01/09 Marketing Plan

Marketing Plan

*Niche Penetration

Market Characteristics

Large Potential demand (online learning), Fragmented market, Short adoption process.

Product Characteristics

Many sources of supply (internet, global market).

Relatively simple production process (cloud computing and internet).

Competitor Characteristics

Many potential competitors (University of Phoenix, MIT Opencourseware, AUI online).

Some potential competitors have substantial resources and competencies (University of Phoenix).

Firm Characteristics

Limited product (online courses, online lesson plans).

Insufficient financial or organizational resources  to build capacity in advance of growing demand. (start-up)

Limited marketing skills and resources (start-up).

Short term objectives

Maximize number of triers, users, and adopters in target segment; limited investment to build volume and hare in chosen niche.

Advertise in Bookstores, High Schools and Community Colleges.

Intermediate-term objectives

Maintain leading share position in target segment even if some sacrifice of short-term margins is necessary.

Long-term objectives

Maximize ROI.

Strategic objective and tasks

Increase customer’s awareness and willingness to buy

Heavy advertising directed at target segment to generate awareness.

Offer free trial, liberal return, or extended warranties (services) policies to reduce target customers’ perceived risk.

Extensive introductory sales promotions (free cloud computing) to induce trial, but focused on target segment.

Extensive salesforce efforts focused on potential customers in target segment.

Increase customer’s ability to buy

Penetration pricing, or bring out lower-priced versions in anticipation of competitive entries.

Offer engineering installation (online videos), and training services to increase new product’s compatibility with customers’ current operations.

*Walker, Boyd, Larreche “Marketing Strategy: Planning and Implementation” 1999, pp. 229-233

Return on Investment

The return on investment will be based on how many users use the site.

ROI= (Gain from investment – Cost of Investment) / by Cost of Investment

This means that if we have class online $500 and we register 15 students total of $7500

and the professor charges $1500.00 per class and it cost $500 to run.

ROI = (7500-2000)/2000=2.75 or 275%

There are going to be return investment base on advertising (technology companies) and fees on mentors teaching online while using our site.

IMA 501 11/17/09 Production Timeline

Production Timeline

Release Date May 2011

Number of Developers

1 Project manager

6 Programmers

8 Artists

2 Designers

1 Quality assurance

1 Sound and music engineer

2 Salesforce

Length of Development

Project Initiation 30 days

Project Planning 90 days

Project Execution 90 days

Project Close down 60 days

18 months

Gantt Chart

Production Budget

Project manager $85,000

Assistant Programmer $65,000

Programmers (5) $250,000

Assistant Artist $55,000

Artists (7) $315,000

Assistant Designer $55,000

Designer $45,000

Quality assurance $45,000

Sound and music $45,000

Salesforce $80,000 plus commission

Technology $150,000

Hardware $30,000

Total $1,220,000

Development Team Duties

Project manager — Will oversee the whole project from beginning to end.

Assistant Programmer — Will work very closely with the project manager and manage the programmer group.

5 Programmers — Will work under the Assistant Programmer and will execute the code needed to create the product.

Assistant Artist — Will work very closely with the project manager and manage the artist group.

7 Artists — Will work under the Assistant Artist and will create the art that is needed to produce the product. (1-Artist Flash, 1-Artist Photoshop, 2-Artist Film, 3 Artist Web Designers, 1-Artist storyboard and illustrator).

Assistant Designer — Will work very closely to the project manager and will manage the designer group.

Designer — Will work under the Assistant Designer and will design the product’s website and functionality.

Quality assurance — Will work very closely with the project manager and the groups assistants.  In addition it will report on the project’s pros and cons.

Sound and music engineer — Will work very closely with the project manager and the groups assistants.  In addition will support the projects’ sound and music demands.

2 Salesperson — Will work very closely with the project manager and groups to learn the product.  Will create awareness of products to potential customers.

IMA 501 11/10/09 Production Statement

Production Statement

Our Organization Bringeth Forth Technologies

Bringeth Forth Technologies gives the birth and support to online learning.  It is a comprehensive technology website.  It operates 365 days out of the year 24 hours a day.

Vision

To teach is to learn.  Bringeth Forth Technologies website is the students, mentors and faculty dream website.  Together they are going to teach and going to be taught by the students, faculty and mentors.   It is the learners dream website.

Mission

Our mission is to bring technology forth to the ideas and needs of the users students, faculty and mentors.

Values

Bringeth Forth Technologies is fresh style website that promotes online learning.  Bringeth Forth Technologies provides a welcoming environment for teaching and learning where the core values are compassion, respect, encouragement, motivation and the pursuit of excellence.

Operations

Bringeth Forth Technologies is a website that uses the latest technologies in order to run efficiently.

Cloud Computing–Storage for the amount of online video content and lesson plans.

WordPress–This is an ad-free tracking options, plug-0s and templates that now includes CMS.  It also excels in the range of traffic tracking options.  Leader in blogs.

Joomla–Huge number of add-ons, excellent interface.

Drupal–Highly scaleable, excellent default templates and themes.

Second Life–A virtual environment place where students, faculty and mentors can learn.

Macbook pros- website designers and programmers

IMA 501 11/03/09 Flow Chart and Design Samples

Flow Chart
“A flow chart is a graphical or symbolic representation of a process. Each step in the process is represented by a different symbol and contains a short description of the process step. The flow chart symbols are linked together with arrows showing the process flow direction.” from FlowBreeze

“Illusion is Everything: A 3-D appearance gives the impression of a functioning real-world device, such as a real, pressable button. The term for such an effect is isomorphic correspondence.” from Visual Design for the Modern Web by Penny McIntire

Design Samples

Interface 1

http://blogs.cisco.com/news/comments/first_cisco_on_stage_telepresence_experience_demonstration_in_africa/

IMA 501 Essay #2 10/27/09 The adoption of online learning and technology by the faculty

When I was a kid my grandmother used to tell me “no seas testarudo” which means “Don’t be stubborn.” The world has changed. In 1995 a book by Nicholas Negroponte was published. I am so upset, because I did not hear or know about this book, “Being Digital” until last month. Negroponte was right on in regards to what is happening today with technology and the world, making him look like a prophet. He mentions in his book that we have to look at things depending on what they are, and how things can be represented as either “atoms” or “bits”. In other words according to Negroponte “When you go through customs you declare your atoms, not your bits.” This is fascinating and he warned us that this drastic change was happening. It is the content “bits” that is most important not on how we get it “atoms.” The “atoms” can be our laptop, blackberry or ipod. This is what has changed. Content is king, how we get it doesn’t really matter. He mentioned “This is changing rapidly, the methodical movement of recorded music as pieces of plastic, like the slow human handling of most information in the form of books, magazines, newspapers, and videocassettes, is about to become the instantaneous and inexpensive transfer of electronic data that moves at the speed of light. In this form, the information can become universally accessible.”

This brings us to education and online learning. How are we going to get educated in the future? How are we going to get the content (Education) and transfer (Teach) to the “Net” generation? How are educators today going to engage students in the 21st Century? Are we being “testarudos” or “stubburn” when it comes to online learning as educators? Shouldn’t we have embraced online learning by now.

Links
Our Lady of Lourdes School is a Catholic School in West Islip, NY. Parents and Students can find everything (homework, handbook, calendar, events, forms and some textbooks) in regards to the school on this site.
http://www.ollschool.org/home.aspx

MIT Opencourseware
Massachusetts Institute of Technology has over 1900 courses to view online along with the courses’ notes and handouts.
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm“I found lecture notes, handouts and slides from presentations, and some problem sets. It helped me a lot.”
Maria Karamitsou
Student
Greece

Education Sector
The site Education Sector “is an independent think tank that challenges conventional thinking in education policy. We are a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization committed to achieving measurable impact in education policy, both by improving existing reform initiatives and by developing new, innovative solutions to our nation’s most pressing education problems. The ultimate beneficiaries of our work are students. Our mission is to promote changes in policy and practice that lead to improved student opportunities and outcomes.” Bill Tucker the director believes that “Virtual schooling is growing rapidly—especially at the high school level.”
http://www.educationsector.org/

ScienceDaily
Distance Learning Moves Into ‘Second Life’ Virtual Classroom
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070207193301.htm

Virtual U
http://www.virtual-u.org/

Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT)

International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)

IMA 501 Essay #1

How does play relate to learning?

Play and learning are interrelated because both absorb the player or student in the task or challenge at hand. The goal of a game developer is to create a game that engages the user. During recent years parents, teachers and sports coaches have complained that children spend too much time playing video games. Video games have a bad reputation. They are blamed for childhood obesity, inattention to schoolwork and lackluster participation in school’s sporting activities. Today technology plays a large role in society and Generation Y. Gadgets like iPods, PSPs, computer laptops, Internet, Facebook and YouTube keep students disconnected to our world but connected to the global world of their choice. These tools have enabled children to choose the topics they study; as well as the time and place that the learning takes place. It is critical to learn these new tools in order to reach out and teach to this generation.
By learning these new tools we now can communicate and create new and innovative environments. The use of these tools has been limited in the past due lack of funding and bureaucracy. We use our imagination and technology to create a constructive environment that is inviting to students and accommodating to individual learning styles. Maybe because of this technology and games we can take advantage and use it towards learning. Educators can use technology the same way private enterprise has used it for years to recruit customers, promote and sell products. According to Jesse Schell’s book “The Art of Game Design” There are four elements of a game (mechanics, story, aesthetics and technology). Mechanics are the rules of the game. A child playing guitar hero knows there are certain rules, and if the player fails to hit the proper note on the guitar the player will fail. This is fascinating because the child will try it again until he succeeds. A child is not so persistent in their schoolwork. Students react differently to learning and failing in school. Implementing a game environment in the classroom allows educators and students to create rules that it will facilitate coping with failure. Story is the sequence of the game. We can create fascinating stories that engage students.
Aesthetics is how the game feels, looks, tastes and sound. Imagine creating an environment in Second Life portraying Dickens’ “A tale of two cities.” Using visual graphics to illustrate the actual conditions in the novel would absorb the student in the learning process. Students would have the opportunity to experience what that situations were actually like. Technology is the materials and interactions that make the game possible. In the book “The World is Flat”, the author Thomas Friedman blames technology as one of the reasons the world is flat. Because of the technology, countries like India now have access to the world and vice versa. In the year 2000 MIT created Openware, which provides online classes. Actual math, computer science, management classes are now available for the world to see. That is amazing technology.
In “The future for (second) life and learning,” E-learning professor Gilly Salmon, University of Leicester, notes three perspectives in her exploration of the future for three-dimensional multi-user virtual environments (3-D MUVEs) in higher education . She states, “trends and emerging issues, the power of pedagogical imagination and the potential impact of humans as learning avatars.” These three perspectives are critical to the existence of because Second Life. Professors now have the power to create environments crafted by their pedagogical imagination. As avatars in Second Life we need to interact more in order to communicate effectively. For instance, we must acquire gestures, movements and camera skills in order to interact with other avatars. Even if the student, through the avatar, decided not to acquire the gesture or behavior for the avatar, the moment he comes across a TAICHI class he will be intrigued on how the avatar made that movement. The student will engage with the Second Life-learning environment.
Learning environments have elements similar to those of game design: A syllabus and the expectations (participation, attendance, discussions) of the instructor in a course are the “mechanics” of the course. The class rubric is the “story” of the course. The classroom environment is the “aesthetics” of the course. In our case our environment is the virtual Second Life. The “technology” element depends on the environment, for instance an instructor can use Classroom Performance System (CPS) or Student Response System (SRS) also know as “clickers” or smart boards to engage students in the classroom. In the case of an environmental studies teacher a field trip to the aquarium can create a supportive climate. In our case we use the computers to login to Second Life.
An example of how play relates to learning is America’s Army, http://www.americasarmy.com/, which is a recruiting game used by the United States Army. The game creates an environment that is supportive, challenging and suspenseful. The player learns to become a soldier by interacting with simulated military scenarios where he must accomplish different missions. Every time he accomplishes a mission he then advances to next level. There are training courses that once the player has finished them they can acquire different skills to become a medic, sniper or paratrooper. The player and user are not just being entertained but they are also experiencing the life of a soldier. This is one of the best recruiting tools the Army has created and according to the book “Changing the Game: How Video Games are Transforming the Future of Business.” by Edery and Mollick “30% of all Americans age 16 to 24 had a more positive impression of the Army because of the game.”
In conclusion implementing game strategies into learning environments will appeal to a student’s love of play. Combining video games and learning is a wonderful motivating tactic. Virtual gaming contains a lot of elements that are similar to elements in a classroom. Gaming and learning have become interrelated. Educators must acquire the skills necessary to implement gaming elements in learning environments.

Bibliography
Edery, D Mollick, E (2009). Changing the Game: How Video Games Are Transforming the Future of Business. Upper Saddle River; Pearson Education Inc.
Friedman, T (2005). The World is Flat. New York; Picador.
Salmon, G. (2009). The future for (second) life and learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, Vol 40 (3), 526-538.
Schell, J (2008). The Art of Game Design. Amsterdam; Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

Microsoft Project Natal

IMA 501 In the Beginning (First Assignment)

My Great Site Project Week 1

1) Great Tutorials, Wallpapers and Articles PSD tuts

http://psd.tutsplus.com/

2) Can the Future be Built in America

www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_38/b4147046115750.htmchan=magazine+channel_top+stories

3) Fabbio Sasso is Brazilian Graphic Designer from Porto Alegre.  His blog abduzeedo which means “abduct” by designhttp://abduzeedo.com/

4) Designer’s Revolution

http://www.designers-revolution.com/

5) Carnegie Mellon

http://www.cmu.edu/index.shtml

and http://www.gigapansystems.com/