I received this in my inbox earlier today. After confirming that the service was indeed free, I felt that it was worth posting here.
Hi Michael,
My name is Jason Shah; I’m a college student and the creator of INeedAPencil.com, which provides free online SAT and college prep through informative articles, comprehensive lessons, challenging practice questions and a number of additional tools.
I am contacting you because while my program can help anyone with a computer and internet access, I am failing in reaching out to students. My attempts to contact guidance counselors and find groups who work with high school students in need of free test prep have generally stagnated.
You are well acquainted with online education and systems, and I was hoping you could either offer for me some advice or help me get the word out via your blog or personal connections. Of course you should check out the site first to see if you like it in the first place. I found your blog through a google search for ‘education entrepreneur’ and while reading about the MindTrust.org fellowship from 2007, and then followed that to your current blog on Virtual Schools hosted on Word Press.
Thanks in advance for your thoughtful consideration. I really hope to connect with you and discuss things further to learn from you.
Sincerely,
Jason Shah
On the advice front, I suggested to Jason that he may try contacting some virtual schools directly, as they cater to students who should already be somewhat web-savy and have the ability to tap into an opportunity like this. Also, as most statewide virtual schools work with schools throughout the state, this means that there would be students from a variety of schools who would be exposed to this program. Finally, I suggested that he might try and make the curriculum in a format that could be uploaded to a variety of course management systems, that was a virtual school could adopt the course and offer it from within their system.
Anyone else have suggestions for Jason?
