Making the Grade with AssignLink-Project Olympus - Carnegie Mellon University

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Making the Grade with AssignLink

Spiral-bound school planners are as outdated as mimeograph machines, and yet, these planners are the tool most students use to manage homework assignments and class schedules.  Thankfully, Carnegie Mellon student Daniel Gorziglia has developed a better solution, one that may send those paper planners to a Luddite graveyard.

In the fall of 2011, while at Abington Friends School, Daniel and three friends approached administrators with an idea for managing homework on the web.  Daniel said, "Our goal was to simplify school life for students and show them a timeline of all of their classes."

After working every day for several months, the team developed a prototype which they named AssignLink. And with the support of the administration, they introduced the system to their peers in a special assembly.  Daniel said, "It was in the middle of the year so we couldn't force people to use the product.  In spite of that challenge, we were able to get an 85% adoption rate.  In fact, students got really annoyed when teachers didn't put homework assignments up on the system."

School Director Martha Holland said, "One of the things we are proudest of with the AssignLink story is that it grew organically out of a need that our own students identified and challenged themselves to meet. And that is what we should all be encouraging students to do in school."

But with the end of the 2012 school year, Daniel and his three teammates went in different directions and work on AssignLink lost momentum...Read More»

By: Tim Huntley An Entrepreneurial Life