I appreciate my past ventures, even when they were abject failures. I’ve collected all of them in one place to show my students and here they are. I poured my heart into all of these ventures, usually late at night, after the kids went to bed.
I made this page to show to my Innovative Arts students. It fits with so many of the mindset topics that we talk about!
What I tried and What I learned along the way
It would be a waste if I didn’t learn SO MUCH along the way. Here are the broad strokes.
Natural Upgrades
Make sure that people actually will want to pay for what you are selling, not just admiring and aspiring to it. Research before diving in.
Flawed Fridays
Teaching science was my first project. I started ‘Flawed Fridays’ and developed about a dozen ways to show flawed thinking.
Education Blog
This could have been great! If I would have stuck with it, it would have been about 10 years old in 2022.
Youtube Channel
This wasn’t a mistake at all, the only way to get somewhere is to just start. It wont be perfect but you will improve as you stumble around at the beginning. The experience is the only way to get better
Learning how to code (Ruby)
Ruby on Rails is a fast way to make a website. I spent a winter pouring over everything I needed to know to start building websites like this.
I didn’t stick with it because my passions lie elsewhere. I mostly enjoyed learning the process and understanding how code becomes a webapp.
Coding my own webapp
Here is the one site I did complete. It advertised my library program business (that ended because of covid).
Knowing how the internet works on the backend is very handy for troubleshooting problems, fixing problems, and improving this site. Coding is fun if you have the time.
Class Valet
This was a tool that would email parents with notes very quickly. We had a grid view of all students & classes. Emails would be sent with a summary of everything in that’s students squares.
You have to properly develop the thing you are creating if you want someone to pay their money for it. Using it has to be easy, simple, and easy.
Also, you get what you pay for when you try to find a cheaper solution. Do it right.
Creator’s Co-op
I wanted to basically import cheap, bulk materials for makerspaces and re-sell them at cost.
The Puzzle Shift Create Podcast
