This is incredible. Back in college I took a social entrepreneurship course and we extensively discussed prison system reform and recidivism. Upon release, so many leave prison with few legitimate skills they can turn into careers. Even then, it's nearly impossible to find a job that will look past their incarceration and record.
If you don't mind sharing @mcornstu, is Edovo currently in-use at prisons or jails within the US? What type of adoption are you currently seeing? Are you focused moreso on short-term or longer-term inmates? How easy is it to use for older inmates/the less tech-savvy?
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Hunter
@stttories@mcornstu I have these same questions, and I'd like to add--
How are these integrated in to prison life? Do guards just hand out the tablets? How does that work?
Are you able to get user feedback? Are you using any type of analytics software to track use?
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@UXAndrew@stttories Tori and Andrew, thanks for your support and your curiosity!
We are indeed live in the US at a pilot scale, including in Philadelphia. (See the Forbes or the CNN articles!)
We are definitely interested in supporting learners with a variety of sentences; we don't make a selection based on sentence length, and we have content to meet the variety of needs. However, someone with just an overnight stay is unlikely to interact with our product.
We've been encouraged so far at how users of all ages engage! Hat tips to John Timpone and John Franchi on that one.
The operations will vary from facility to facility, and even building to building within a given facility. Suffice it to say, we are confident this integrates smoothly and securely into the daily life of an incarcerated individual.
We are able to get feedback in-person and through our analytics suite (Kibana/Elasticsearch).
Thanks again for your questions and support!
This hits really close to home for me. My mother spent ~25 years working in public education (first as an upper-ed teacher, then as she progressed through her post-baccalaureate degrees to administration) and she switched from high school admin to working as an educator in a prison a few years ago.
Her overall happiness definitely increased: turns out max-security prisons are rewarding places to work. She has better hours, and can actually tailor her classes more specifically to her students. In many ways the stories make it sound more like a classic one-room school house with many students of varying levels learning together.
Anyway, I sent this to her to get her opinions.
*Edit* she responded with the following:
Looks interesting. I haven't studied much at all on what's out there. We are starting to see more "connection" to internet for testing and are currently involved in a MN DOC offender network upgrade. [previously very few of the computers were connected to the internet, and no offenders were allowed access to the internet] Would this be a tablet based program or could it be a server based thing? I am part of a committee that will be making some recommendations on GED curriculum purchase.
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@willimholte Thanks, Will! The folks who do education in correctional facilities day in and day out are an inspiration to us, and we're working hard to amplify their efforts. I've sent you a follow-up email!
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@UXAndrew SO much this! There needs to be complete reform. Instead of helping the incarcerated, we often traumatize them and send them back into the world without having received any real assistance for their mental and emotional well being and improvement.
A close friend of mine who went to jail for a couple years came out reformed but said jail was the "Ivy League for becoming a criminal". Said there are things you can learn in jail that would be nearly impossible to learn in the real world and that it's so easy to fall back into crime (gang recruiting, lack of opportunities, etc). This education product is so necessary and such a service to humanity.
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Love Brian and team and lucky to have worked with them from the beginning. Mission driven to the core!
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