Frequently Asked Questions:
1. Why focus on school safety?
We believe school safety is one of the most important issues we face today.
To provide safer schools, we have to create a multi-pronged approach involving parents, teachers, administrators, children, and of course, concerned community members. We bring our management and tech skillsets to our problem-solving approach.
With our apps, ThinkingApp and reThinkIt!, we believe we offer a solution to this endemic challenge.
2. How will your funding be used?
We plan on spending roughly 70% of any funding we receive on product development, further expanding our offerings to students. Specifically, we hope to use your contributions in these areas:
- Complete development of 24 eBooks for ThinkingApp (PreK-2nd graders);
- Add additional social-emotional learning modules and lesson plans for reThinkIt! (3rd-12th graders);
- Complete our Parent Engagement Study to identify the tools and strategies for engaging parents and then implement those solutions;
- (For our tech aficionados) Work with The Michigan Data Hub to optimize the artificial neural network and improve the predictive models behind with historical data from schools;
- Hire at least two key team members: a marketing director to capture the momentum from this iFundWomen campaign and an ed techy sales manager to close on $8 million of identified opportunities.
3. What's the background of the founders?
Co-founders Beth Carls, CEO, and Amy Looper, COO partied, as the Prince song goes, like it was 1999! Literally – because they took their internet consulting firm public in September 1999. By creating the first internet consulting company to fully integrate tech and creative under one roof, they picked up a client list of the who's who in the Fortune 500. Who wouldn’t be partying, happy and ready to kick back and relax? They’d just come off of a huge rocket-ride of success.
Not Beth and Amy. They knew this was just the beginning for them. The beginning of what they really felt called to do as social venture entrepreneurs – use technology and sound business principles as a force for doing good and doing well in the world, especially for kids.
Today, Beth and Amy – along with OneSeventeen Media’s innovative team – share a common commitment to using technology so kids can thrive.
You can find the founders' LinkedIn profiles here:
Beth Carls - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethcarls/
Amy Looper - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-looper-3603542/
4. Tell us more about the products. What is ThinkingApp and what is reThinkIt!?
ThinkingApp
ThinkingApp is designed to help students from PreK- 2nd grades explore their feelings, self-regulation, manners, problem-solving and learn other behavior management tools. The content plan for ThinkingApp includes:
- Stack 1: Disruptive Behavior: Understanding feelings and managing to self-regulate and control behavior choices;
- Stack 2: Our Manners Matter: Understanding manners and learning how to use them effectively. Practice using respectful ways to communicate.
- Stack 3: Building Success Skills: Understanding and developing effective attitudes, skills and behaviors to be successful in school and beyond.
- Stack 4: Problem Solving Tools: Understanding how to analyze a problem. Understanding how specific problem-solving strategies work and how to apply them to a specific problem. Lessons include growth mindset practices.
- Stack 5: Adding To Your Toolbox: Understanding and developing effective attitudes, skills and behaviors to be successful in school and beyond.
reThinkIt!
Students in grades 3 - 12 love technology and reThinkIt! meets them in their technology comfort zone and helps them make wiser decisions. Students experience more empathy and improved relationships with the adults in their life who now have the “real story”.
reThinkIt! uses the CASEL SEL Competencies as a foundation for its self-help modules, lesson plans and activity worksheets.
- Stack 1: Self-Awareness: Recognizing one's emotions and values as well as one's strengths and limitations.
- Stack 2: Social Awareness: Showing understanding and empathy for others.
- Stack 3: Self-Management: Managing emotions and behaviors to achieve one's goals.
- Stack 4: Relationship Skills: Forming positive relationships, working as teams and dealing effectively with conflict.
- Stack 5: Responsible Decision Making: Making ethical, constructive choices about personal and social behavior.
5. What differentiates your products from other EdTech products?
Our products, ThinkingApp and reThinkIt!, are evidence-based apps for mental health and behavior management in and beyond the classroom. Unlike other products on the market, our solutions include:
- Real-time mentors;
- Social self-help modules based on restorative, trauma-informed and social-emotional learning principles; and
- An admin dashboard built to provide districts with the actionable metrics to both comply with state and federal mandates (like the Every Student Succeeds Act - ESSA) and address students’ needs sooner.
Whereas some products help teachers track classroom behavior, ThinkingApp and reThinkIt help to actually transform negative conduct into healthy behaviors by enabling students to express their frustrations and process difficult emotions.
6. What third-party research have you completed?
Backed by seven years of evidence-based research, components of our mobile-based technology resulted in a “statistically significant reduction in student’s emotional distress”.
- One school reported a 77% decrease in alternative school transfers, preserving more than $100k at that school.
- The same school reported a potential school shooting was averted due to real-time, actionable insights provided to educators about a troubled student
- Students share five times more information via the apps than they do in face-to-face interactions with adults.
- Additional data showed a 50% reduction for in-school-suspensions.
All data that makes OneSeventeen’s reThinkIt! and ThinkingApp all the more relevant to today’s urgent need for improved school safety.
7. Describe your provisional patent.
OneSeventeen Media seeks to produce engaging social-emotional learning (SEL) content delivered through a unique interface that utilizes SMS-style messaging and other social network-style elements (in the form of a “thread”) and video content. This process of syncing video, sound and animation to thread-based communications received a provisional patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in January 2018.
8. Tell me more about how you use artificial intelligence to improve student outcomes.
Meeting students in their tech-based comfort zone, ThinkingApp and reThinkIt! employ intelligent, adaptable machine learning technology to tailor advice to a child’s specific needs, helping them make wiser decisions. The mobile apps assess emotional and mental states, enabling students to process difficult emotions, understand their own behaviors, and navigate those of others, while adults receive real-time, in-depth insight into what is on a child’s mind.
Whereas many school safety solutions are reactive in nature, ThinkingApp and reThinkIt! are based on trauma-informed, restorative and social and emotional learning (SEL) principles to provide a real-time “emotional digital triage” for upset students before they escalate any damaging behaviors, engendering a safer learning environment for all students.
9. Where have your products launched so far?
reThinkIt! has piloted in two Austin ISD schools - one traditional middle school and one middle/high school charter. ThinkingApp piloted in several Austin ISD elementary schools through the Child Study System Program. All received rave reviews! Both products are now available for purchase and will be continually updated as feedback is received and new content developed.
10. What are the iFundWomen fees?
iFundWomen takes a 5% fee on the funds OneSeventeen Media raises. We like it that they have a pay-it-forward policy to give 20% of their profits from standard fees directly into live campaigns on the iFundWomen crowdfunding site.
11. Will you be donating a portion of your campaign proceeds?
Yes. Four of our rewards - the ThinkingApp and reThinkIt! Charter School Editions and the ThinkingApp and reThinkIt! PTA Editions - include 20-50% discounts.
12. How long will it take to receive my reward(s)?
Approximately 6-8 weeks from the close of the campaign. We will fulfill orders chronologically in the order they're received, so getting in early definitely helps! We will notify you via email the day your reward ships.
13. Can you provide remote demo presentations for interested schools?
Yes. We're happy to schedule demos, which typically take 25 minutes. plus time for Q&A or about 50 minutes total. You can reach Beth at beth.carls at oneseventeenmedia.com to schedule.
If there are any questions we didn't address here, please feel free to reach out directly! We're available at beth.carls at oneseventeenmedia.com or amy.looper at oneseventeenmedia.com.
