Memiary for Education
[If you just want to try it out, click here]
Over the last couple of months, I’ve been getting questions like, “So, are you still working on Memiary? What’s the future plan?”. This is one that has been perplexing me for a few months, too, so unfortunately, I couldn’t answer them at the time — I didn’t want to be brutally honest and admit that there was none, and I didn’t want to promise something that wasn’t. Meanwhile, another problem was the site’s financial status: it costs me $600 a year to keep it going, and while that was initially something I was gladly paying out of the iPhone app’s earnings, it started adding up when the sales dropped to the lower double-digits/per day (inevitable for most iPhone apps.)
So a month ago, I decided something had to be done. I put a few messages out on Memiary’s Twitter account about suggestions for a way to fund the site, features, and a general inquiry about whether a pledging system would work. After getting a mixed response to the pledging system, and a bunch of suggestions to run ads on the site (something that has been my last resort from day one), I got a nice e-mail from Mark Warner in the UK, who runs the popular teaching resource website Teaching Ideas, about a potential educational version.
To cut the long-story short, after we discussed some details, it came down to this: I’d build a modified version of Memiary specifically for the educational audience — teachers, students, classrooms — and it would be financially and conceptually supported and sponsored by Teaching Ideas. The version would include a bunch of new features, some of which would even be copied to the main website, thus giving me an opportunity to deploy some much-requested features while being financially rewarded for my time, effort and Memiary’s hosting bills, and most importantly cater to its educational/classroom audience.
And that was how Memiary for Education was created.
Now, for the quick run-down. The site is a spin-off from Memiary, under the sub-domain edu.memiary.com. At its core, it provides a way to use Memiary in multi-user and group environments.
There are two types of accounts: student and teacher. Every account is a student account upon signing up, which is free and open to anyone. A teacher account adds a few extra controls and features, including a unique ‘teacher code’ which can then be used to attach subsequent student account at sign up, a ‘class overview’ page where the teacher can get an overview of all their attached student accounts, and the ability to change or modify the default questions. In a classroom environment, where Memiary is widely being used, this setup is easy and efficient.
Additionally, there are a bunch of features that can be seen in both versions of the site. These include:
- A widget — embeddable on any blog or site, which shows the user’s 7 last days of memory entries.
- A date picker — a cool way to browse through your memories.
- Jump to random date — seen under the ‘browse’ menu. Heard of I’m feeling lucky?
…and if you missed it, the ability to search was added not too long ago.
To be honest, I couldn’t think of a better future for the site — not to mention a way to fund it — than this one. Education is an environment that has been long linked with Memiary’s usage, and it’s great to finally be able to cater to it. Mark Warner has been a long-time supporter of the site, having introduced it to a number of teachers in the UK region (check out this presentation), so this link-up feels anything but unnatural. I’m immensely thankful to him for this opportunity; it’s not everyday that you get to work on something you love so dearly, for a noble and important cause and audience, and be supported for it.
I’m hoping that if you’re a teacher, you’ll try it out in your environment and see if it is a fit. If we can help in anyway at all, feel free to let us know.
1 year ago
