Visualize History

(This is a follow up on my previous post, “Making software that I want to use”. I posted it yesterday, but the thoughts really formed about a month ago.  So I’m pretending a month has passed since yesterday).

I am not a teacher of history, and, having read as much as I can cram in my head over the last 4 weeks, I am no closer to being able to picture a teacher’s needs than I was then. So I cannot pretend to address the needs of teachers.  I would like to bill my project as fitting in the world of 21st century learning that is discussed today, but I don’t really know what the term means, and I don’t really know if e-learning is the right way to go.  I’ve read good arguments for and against, such as Jay Mathews’ take:

I think the 21st-century skills movement is mostly a pipe dream, promoted by well-meaning people who embrace the idea of modernity but fail to consider how these allegedly new and important lessons can be taught by the usual victims of such schemes, classroom teachers. (A Surprisingly Sensible 21st-Century Report)

For instance, I cannot tell what skills students will need for their jobs, and when to teach them those skills.  When I applied for a job my freshman year of college, one section of the application required that I find the answers to about 20 problems in about 10 minutes.  I was given access to a computer.  My future boss knew that my ability to find answers far outweighed my current knowledge of the answers. Patrick Woessner expresses that particular sentiment well:

In our increasingly flat, information-rich world, the skill of locating information has become as important as the skill of memorizing information. (Effective Search Strategies)

To be perfectly honest, my primary goals never included teaching.  For me, the idea, the technology and the implementation are goals in and of themselves.  I know that teachers have a tough time keeping up with technology.  For them it is about teaching, but, as is so often the case in programming, for us developers it is about the technology.  Teachers generally have enough on their hands, at least in my limited experience.  Technology can help them solve a problem, but that’s not exactly the type of tool that Visualize History aspires to be.

So, I’m not aiming at teachers.  Unfortunately, that means I have no clients for my new business.  Some might say that I can postpone my thoughts about clients until later, but I’ve been told otherwise:

You start building the product before you have a (real) client identified.  Again, if you can’t sell the idea, you are definitely not going to be able to sell the product.(OnStartups)

Luckily, my primary goals do no include starting a business either.  I have a rewarding day job and I do not plan on leaving it.  So, a lack of users won’t prevent from starting a business if I don’t try to start a business.  And so, I won’t.

So if I’m not focused on teachers, and I’m not focused on a business, what am I focused on?  Let’s go back to those primary goals.  I like my idea.  I may not be a teacher of history, but am most certainly a student of history.  I like seeing the relationships of events, both in time and space.  So I will build a tool that lets me explore those relationships.  Who knows; maybe if I build it, they will come.