Ottiya

Ottiya is an international content hub and platform for 21st century skills and competencies.

Children need to develop 21st century skills and competencies to survive and thrive in tomorrow's world. However, not all educators and parents have access to information on how to facilitate creative learning. Enter Ottiya, an international content hub and platform for 21st century skills and competencies.

With hands-on activities, field notes, and articles by educators, school architects, and students from over 30 different countries, Ottiya provides a forum for the global education community to discover, share, and to inspire one another to improve education. We explore questions such as: how can design encourage free play? How can we encourage learners to become creators, and not just consumers, in the space of virtual reality? How can we nurture a environmentally conscious generation? We reach our audience through online content, publications, and augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR). 

Together with our growing education community, we will democratize the discussions about what quality education means for the future for children all over the world. 

At Ottiya, we are challenging the traditional practices of professional development (PD) and education publishing. We offer a platform whereby education practitioners can become the journalists who share educational news, coaches for people 100 miles away who want to implement playful learning practices, and writers of books for educators, parents, and learners. 

We use a combination of existing e-publishing tools + new technologies such as blockchain, AR/VR. 

Ottiya is a remote-friendly company with team members and contributors from over 30 different countries. Technology is vital to our operation--this is how we work with contributors, have team meetings, and edit/design content. 

In addition, we use technology to distribute our content in diverse types of formats, which all require different types of technologies: digital, print, and augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR). Through MIT Solve, we plan to integrate blockchain technology to our platform to proportionally reward all contributors for derivative works and advertising revenue. 

In the next 12 months, we plan to release our first AR/VR content and re-launch our website to include blockchain + self-publishing technologies. 

In the next 4-6 months, we are actively seeking investment and funding opportunities (like MIT Solve) to increase our global footprint and visibility in the global education community. We will increase the frequency of content production and more actively engage with our existing subscribers by bringing on more team members onto the team. 

We will reach out target audience through our web platform and print publications. Anyone with access to the internet will be able to access our content. Customers who pay a fee will have access to premium content. In the future, we want to create a foundation to freely distribute content to the most hard to reach lower socioeconomic status communities. 

We have over 50,000 people who have purchased access to our content (including individual and group subscribers). They get access to information about what innovative teaching practices and school/learning resources design looks like all over the way. Educators utilize the hands-on activities in their teaching and opinion pieces influence their thought process and indirectly influence their educational practices. 

We expect to serving more than 1 million people in the next 12 months and through our platform and publications. In the next 3 years, we expect to be serving more than 10 million people. We are currently pursuing partnerships with prominent technology companies to create learning resources for the global education community, we are diversifying our content offerings by launching AR/VR content in the next 12 months, and the relaunch of our web platform will encourage our existing/potential contributors to share work and benefit financially from their content. 

Our company is based in South Korea, but a majority of our customer-base is in the United States. We want to expand our presence in the US through funding/investment opportunities and to increase our visibility among influencers and education practitioners. 

We need more interaction with school leaders and teachers in the US to use our platform and purchase our products. We haven't been able to systematically market Ottiya to the US because of a lack of funding/investment. We also need 1-2 more developers on our team to implement new technologies in the next 12 months. Through Solve, we hope to network with and close a deal with investors in the US to finance our work and to find new talent for our team.