krispii is a philosophy. A philosophy which emphasizes that everything we do has to have value and purpose.
Ultimately, our goal is to create critical and creative thinkers who are able to make connections - with each other, with their educators, and between ideas. We are compelled to empower learners of all ages to make a difference - whatever that is or wherever it may be.
We don't just make "a platform" and load it with “content”. What we provide is a flexible, simple, creative infrastructure for teaching and learning.
krispii makes learning possible at any level. We are all students. We are all teachers. At the core of what we do is the old Latin principle, Docendo discimus: “the best way to learn something is to teach it.”
We firmly believe that ideas are best understood when we can establish that no subject domain is an island, and that fostering those connections between domains is paramount to creating critical and creative thinkers.
At krispii, everything we do - from the toolset to our core library - ultimately empowers teachers and students to focus on exploring and expressing those connections.
Donna and Petros met while they were both engaged in consulting on evaluation for English Language Arts at the Québec Ministry of Education (MEES). Their first project was the production of a magazine for students called ‘Beautiful Voices’. It was the beginning of a professional relationship that has lasted more than 12 years
Donna and Petros, with the help of Andrew and a few others, produced, wrote, designed, edited, and directed the production of a Grade 6 Learning and Evaluation Situation (LES) about wolves. The project focused specifically on the Great Bear Rainforest - with the help of the Raincoast Conservation Foundation and the photography of Ian McAllister. This served as a model for all future projects.
Now knee-deep in projects on subjects as varied as farming, technology, ecology, advertising, conservation and self-expression, we saw the need for an online library of freely-available classroom resources for Québec educators. Over time, the library developed into a dynamic streaming-ready resource centre for ELA teachers in both the English and the French systems across Québec. Educators in other provinces also expressed interest..
We continued honing our production skills on a wide range of projects: farms, social media, consumerism, celebrity and technology. Each of these projects was cross-curricular to the core. At the same time, we continued to develop and improve DEELA - using it as a growing, free-to-use library for Québec educators.
It became increasingly obvious to us that the widespread adoption of tablets, laptops, digital projects, in-classroom WiFi and other assorted technological solutions, lacked direction or clear purpose. In response to this phenomenon, we began to develop a roadmap for how best to harness the combination of content and tools in way that would suit educators and students alike, without requirements that would impede their use/adoption/growth.
With an increasing push for even more materials, coupled with shrinking budgets and lots of technology being used or left unused, we began to test some ideas for a new interface for sharing, exploring and working in a learning environment with a combined content/software toolset.
We began to implement some ideas for an online classroom experience as part of a research project with the Québec Ministry of Education. Taking ideas from our "pool" of concepts, we helped the Ministry experiment with online exam situations - both software and content – while gathering experience and feedback on our unique approach.
We turned to in-house development of a new software tool based on two years of research and experimentation. The final year of the research project took place with an early alpha version of the krispii platform.
In February 2015, Donna officially resigned from her position at the Ministry of Education. The lawyers got involved and krispii became official. We set to work with some seed money from family and friends, and thus began the real adventure
krispii released the first in what was to be a series of projects produced in and around Tadoussac, Québec - home of the Saguenay Saint-Lawrence Marine Park, which is one of only four federal marine parks currently in Canada. Parks Canada graciously provided their support and gave us access to their facilities during production.
krispii entered a beta testing phase with a number of educators. We tested content, workflows and stability - all while listening to the concerns of students and educators who helped us to finely tune our content and toolsets.
We opened for business. Individual educators can now sign-up online and manage their accounts.
All of the schools in the Eastern Shores School Board are now online with krispii. We have begun ramping up content development for the new school year, all while preparing some new and amazing features for our community.