Written on July 11, 2020
Corona has turned the world upside down in the last couple of months. Or, better say from outside to inside, and suddenly we found ourselves as part of an experiment in remote work and digital teaching, which neither of us had fully anticipated, nor schools or universities would have agreed to if proposed.
Before Corona, using digital tools for teaching was an optional addendum to in-person classes and lectures: nice to have but not essential. Then, digital teaching and learning suddenly became the only mode schools and universities operated for weeks. By now, more and more social distancing restrictions are slowly lifted, and face-to-face meetings have become feasible again. But teaching will have changed forever.
Going Beyond Self-Publishing
At the end of June, I met Tim Kantereit (@herr_ka_punkt) on Twitter: teacher, blogger, podcaster, and organizer of the book sprint “Hybrid Teaching 101”. Jointly with 33 teachers and digital education enthusiasts throughout Germany, he has written an entire book on hybrid teaching during and after Corona — and I am really proud that he chose Visual Ink Publishing to publish his book. It is our second #VIP project, and you can download a free copy under the CC-BY-SA license from our website (German only)
https://www.visual-books.com/hybridunterricht
At first, digital teaching may seem unfamiliar to many, lacking feedback once everyone’s Zoom video is turned off. Let alone choosing a conferencing platform in the first place that abides by all privacy requirements. And when the meeting is all set up, there are numerous challenges for successfully transferring knowledge and relating to a course held entirely online.
How do I build a strong relationship with my students also digitally?
How do I motivate them in a digital learning setup?
How can I leverage the potential of both in-person meetings and digital tools?
The book offers various examples and impulses on how these questions can be answered in practice. It is also an invitation to develop ideas yourself and implement them early on in your teaching career. While it’s mostly targeted at young and aspiring teachers, also senior teachers will gain fresh impetus.
Starting with the Crowd
We released the ebook on Saturday, June 27, 2020, in the morning, free to download as a PDF from the VIP website and on Apple books. Around noon Tim wrote to me that his Twitter was exploding, and by the evening, our release tweet had been liked and retweeted more than 200 times!
Within a few days, that number increased beyond 500 times, our book being downloaded several thousand times and becoming the fourth most downloaded free ebook on Apple books for a moment in time.
At this point, we realized that we were on to something exciting and huge. Within a few days, Tim and I came up with a pitch video, set up a crowdfunding campaign on Startnext, and hit the start button just five days after the ebook release.
And the campaign took off. After three days of crowdfunding, we had reached one-third of our anticipated funding and gathered 30+ backers. Now, after just ten days, we have surpassed our first crowdfunding goal of €2000, and it’s now time to say Thank You! for all the amazing support we have received.
As for any project, the start is subject to lots of uncertainties, and at first, Tim and I weren’t entirely confident whether crowdfunding would be the way to go. Especially since the ebook version is still and will forever be free to download as creative commons.
And that’s exactly why we were amazed and grateful that so many people were supporting our campaign, which will now allow us to print the first edition both as softcover and hardcover at the manufacturing costs. Our goal with this is to reach out to those who are not yet acquainted with digital teaching but who would like to get a first impression and prefer having a printed book right in their hands.
Outlook
Reaching the first crowdfunding goal is just the beginning. At this point, our campaign has been converted into a flexible campaign, which means that all additional funding will reach us no matter whether we arrive at our second crowdfunding goal. But the more pre-orders we receive, the larger the first edition that we can print, which will help us offer the book at a more attractive price even for the long-term: more books printed = fewer printing costs per book.
Therefore, please keep sharing the link to our Crowdfunding campaign and tell others about this book project. Together we can inspire much more people within Germany and beyond to leverage the potential of digital teaching.
www.startnext.com/hybridunterricht
Some final words
This is the first time I am running a crowdfunding campaign myself, and I am super excited about how it is going so far. I will update this post after the campaign and share more of our experiences.