Ultimate Daily Planner

The Ultimate Daily Planner (UDP) is a Software as a Service (SaaS)web application (with related smart phone apps) that will be sold to preschools and Head Start programs worldwide.  The UDP is a powerful planning tool will allow teachers to work smarter and more efficiently and effectively engage children in their children’s learning.

The UDP will feature a series of integrated services:

• ·       Tens of thousands of published developmentally appropriate activities
• ·       Hundreds of the best children’s picture books, eBooks, and educational apps
• ·       Recipes
• ·       Black line masters
• ·       Music

 The concept is to provide a service curated by early childhood educators for early childhood educators and parents.  One powerful search engine will quickly bring the most useful results in all of the categories to allow teachers to easily build their lesson plans.  For example, if a teacher was going to be studying “rocks,” a search might bring up:

• ·       Music: Big Rock Candy Mountain
• ·       Book and/or Recipe: Stone Soup
• ·       Activity: Earth Day, paint rocks to look like the Earth

 The team at iActive Learning developing the UDP has decades of experience building services like these.  For example, while at a previous job, I created CreativeCurriculum.net (now Teaching Strategies GOLD), an online assessment system used to annually assess more than 500,000 preschool children.

Ultimate Daily Planner Music Service

UDP music service will be an “iTunes for preschoolers,” providing teachers and parents with a wide variety of quality music choices for young children.  By carefully choosing the music that is included in the store, we will be making sure that teachers have access to the “classics” while also providing multicultural diversity and exposing them to other artists.  By moderating the titles included, we are providing a valuable service of recommendations to both teachers and parents.

Structure

Access to the storefront will be available to all: subscribing teachers, families of subscribing programs, and the general public.  This “public” view will be a straight pay-per-download service.  This is creating a clear niche product that will provide expert choices and give parents security that they are getting good music for their children without concerns about quality or appropriateness.

Within the confines of the UDP, parents and teachers will have additional options.  Selections from the music service will show up in the general searches along side the activity and other databases.  The advantage of this is clear: quickly helping teachers get materials they need for their classrooms.  For parents it is an easy way to add music to their children’s lives.  Teachers could inform parents of the music used in the classroom to further the home-school connection.

The site will include top-selling lists (for both albums and songs) and staff recommendations.  There will be early childhood specific categories and all of the songs will be indexed to fit into the UDP structure.

Program administrators will be able to purchase music “allowances” for their teachers.  They would buy in bulk and then divvy them up among their teachers.  Teachers would have balances in their account that they could then use to purchase music.  Additional purchases via credit card would always be allowed.

Weekly emails will sent to parents listing all the resources the teachers used in their classes that week, along with direct links to purchase them.

Sourcing

Our goal is not to have every song by every artist.  The goal is to have a selection of children’s classics and quality artists.  To date we are working with Music for Little People, Gryphon House, Bill Harley, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, Red Grammer, Hap Palmer, Brady Rymer, Trout Fishing In America, Dan Zanes and many others.  We will have a great balance between the “big names” in early childhood education, the classic children’s songs, and wonderful multicultural and multi-genre selections.  We're committed to featuring the best of independent children's music.

Business Terms

For this non-exclusive distribution arrangement, iActive Learning will offer the following terms:

• ·       $0.99 song pricing
• ·       $9.99 album pricing 
• ·       70% royalty (iActive keeps 30%)
• ·       Quarterly reporting payments

I'd love to hear from you, either through this site or directly.