A Better Way to Learn
This week’s blog is from Dave Shpigler, founder of Intelligent Pathways and first runner up in this year’s FastPitch competition. Dave is a hands-on kind of guy…so much so that when he sees a problem, he starts devising solutions. Read on as Dave teaches us the value of parenthood, listening, learning and the excitement of being an entrepreneur! FYI – – The Creative Coast’s blogspot is Savannah’s sounding board for local thinkers, innovators, wanderers and wonderers. Guest bloggers share their thoughts, opinions and creative noodling from all over the map…
.The Idea
I came up with the idea for Intelligent Pathway from working with my own children. As a father of 7 children, I’ve spent a lot of time working with my kids on reading and math from a young age…and thought I had it all figured out. Then, my youngest taught me otherwise. Although I used the same approach with her that I had with my older children, it became clear that she simply learned differently. I realized that she wasn’t the problem – the educational approach I was using was. Using the same approach for different learners simply doesn’t work. Furthermore, if one approach didn’t work for all of my kids that had the same father, mother, and household, what did it mean for so many other children learning in different households with different access to resources and in different parts of the country? There had to be a better way.Personalized Learning
Living in New York at the time, I began doing extensive research on the concept and decided this was something worth pursuing. I decided to move to Georgia partially due to lifestyle issues and partially because research indicated it was a good place to start a business. Locating in suburban Atlanta in the summer of 2015, I began work on the effort to launch Intelligent Pathway. During customer discovery, I had the opportunity to speak with 148 parents, teachers, and administrators to better understand the issue at hand.