Job Description

The Director of Product Management will be the first Product Management hire for PresenceLearning.  The Director will help guide our engineering team to continue enhancing our market-leading platform.  He or she will also work closely with the senior management team to shape the company’s long term product strategy.  Ideal candidates will be able to manage both the day-to-day aspects of executing on a product roadmap and have the business instincts / research skills to evaluate new opportunities.

Location: San Francisco

Responsibilities:

• Work closely with the senior management team to define the long-term product strategy, including new business and product opportunities
• Solicit feedback from customers on current product and potential new initiatives
• Provide clear prioritization of product initiatives
• Lead the definition of product requirements for product initiatives
• Create wireframes to convey product ideas
• Work closely with the engineering team to deliver quality features on schedule
• Ensure our platform is easy to use for all customers
• Track and improve key metrics
• Build the product team over time through well-chosen engineering and design hires

Qualifications:

• 3+ years experience in product management in SaaS or consumer web
• Proven track record of launching successful web products at a rapid pace
• Skilled at defining and prioritizing product ideas
• Ability to rapidly wireframe product ideas (e.g., Balsamiq)
• Proficiency working with Agile development processes and tools
• Familiar with the latest web technologies
• Ability to collaborate well with developers
• Customer-centric perspective
• Aptitude for principles of good user experience design
• Strong project management skills
• Experience conducting qualitative research (interviews) and quantitative research (surveys)
• Strong communicator with excellent oral and written skills
• Bachelor’s degree required, MBA or equivalent degree preferred

Bonus points for:

• Passion for and/or domain expertise with education technology and special needs children
• Strong analytical/quantitative skills

PresenceLearning offers competitive salary and stock options plus comprehensive benefits.
Apply Here By Email

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Job Description

The Controller will be the first on-staff financial hire for PresenceLearning.  To date, we have worked with highly competent outside professionals, but our strong growth now means we need a full-time hire.  The Controller will be a critical member of our team, with direct responsibility for reporting, budgeting, forecasting and cash management.  Star candidates will be strong business analysts as well as good day-to-day financial operational managers.

Location: San Francisco

Responsibilities:

• Support the founders’ strategic / financial planning efforts and communication of these plans to the board of directors
• Manage all day-to-day accounting operations for the company, including A/R, A/P, payroll and bank accounts / cash flow
• Develop and implement best practices for working capital management
• Drive continued improvements to financial IT systems and processes
• Manage month- and year-end closing, including account reconciliations and financial statements
• Assist in the development of annual operating budgets
• Manage auditors and tax consultants to complete financial audit and tax filings
• Other finance and reporting duties as necessary (e.g. 1099 filings, insurance policy review, etc.)

Qualifications:

• Financial manager first, accountant second
• Very strong Excel / analytical skills
• Hands-on
• A “start-up person”
• Deep working knowledge of Quickbooks Online
• Experience with Salesforce.com is a plus
• Several years of financial / accounting experience working with start-ups/small business

The post Controller / Senior Accountant appeared first on PresenceLearning.

In celebration of Autism Awareness Month, the team at PresenceLearning wanted to bring light to another common misconception: “What exactly is Special Education?” Much of this confusion is due to the fact that different entities from schools to school administrators call “special education” something different.

To clear up any confusion, the team at PresenceLearning rounded up “35 Different Names for Special Education” and created a graphic for everyone in the community and beyond to share and spread awareness of a very common misconception.

Embed This Graphic On Your Site!

<br> <a href="http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/t/0/0/presencelearning/~presencelearning.com/blog/school-districts/35-different-names-for-special-education/"><img title="35 Different Names for Special Education from PresenceLearning" alt="35 Different Names for Special Education-PresenceLearning " src="http://presencelearning.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/35-Different-Names-for-Special-Education-PresenceLearning.png" width="540" height="671" /></a> <br> <a href="http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/t/0/0/presencelearning/~presencelearning.com">Infographic by PresenceLearning, The Leader in Online Speech Therapy</a>

Feel to share your thoughts by leaving comments below!

The post 35 Different Names for Special Education appeared first on PresenceLearning.

Technology now offers schools and families a new way to get access to high-quality speech-language therapy from virtually anywhere: online speech therapy.

Some school districts struggle with providing enough specially-trained staffing in the right locations at the right times to serve their students with speech-language disorders. With a chronic, nationwide shortage of thousands of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) many districts are choosing to use online speech therapy as part of their approach to delivering high quality speech-language services.

The post Ask a Therapist: What is Online Speech Therapy[?] appeared first on PresenceLearning.

Homebound distance learning students receive speech therapy services online

SAN FRANCISCO, April 8, 2013 – To consolidate the management of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and more efficiently provide speech therapy services to homebound students, Fossil School District in Fossil, Ore., partnered with PresenceLearning, the leader in online speech therapy services for K-12 students. With this new partnership, Fossil School District can now provide speech therapy services to students in the district’s Distance Learning Program.

“Prior to using PresenceLearning, we had to subcontract with SLPs in different areas, which was very difficult to manage” said Brad Sperry, superintendent of Fossil School District. “We had to have different SLPs in different cities to accommodate the students in the Distance Learning Program. PresenceLearning not only consolidated SLPs, it streamlined the student progress reporting process and our accounting. It made the process of providing services much smoother and more fluid.”

The Distance Learning Program, now in its fifth year, provides online learning options for 140 homebound students in Oregon’s Willamette Valley area, approximately 400 miles away from Fossil School District. The district provides the homebound students with the same support services and treatment that an on-site student receives, except it is done online. Similar to their other course work, the students use district-issued iPads to work with a live online SLP.

“The specific needs of our families vary greatly,” said Sperry. “Because the Distance Learning Program is based at home, the PresenceLearning SLPs have to contact families directly, not the district, to schedule sessions. The SLPs have been very flexible and willing to work with families’ specific needs. I have heard nothing but praise about the program and we plan to use PresenceLearning’s services for as long as our students need speech therapy.”

Since 2009, PresenceLearning’s high quality online speech therapy has provided schools with web-based access to a nationwide network of highly qualified, fully licensed speech-language pathologists who are available whenever and wherever they are needed. By partnering with PresenceLearning, school districts can fill staffing gaps related to acute and chronic SLP shortages, reduce high caseloads and workloads for onsite personnel, improve student outcomes and save money. PresenceLearning also offers access to technical specialists, as well as culturally and linguistically diverse speech-language pathologists.

During the 2012-13 school year, PresenceLearning will conduct more than 120,000 live online therapy sessions in public, charter and virtual school districts of all sizes nationwide.

About PresenceLearning
PresenceLearning (www.presencelearning.com) is the leading provider of live online speech therapy services for K-12 students and now offers online occupational therapy as well. The company offers school districts web-based access to a growing, nationwide network of hundreds of highly qualified speech language pathologists (SLPs) and occupational therapists (OTs) via live videoconferencing combined with the latest in evidence-based practices and powerful progress reporting.

Serving thousands of students in public, charter and virtual schools throughout the U.S., PresenceLearning has shown that online speech and language therapy is practical, affordable and highly effective.  PresenceLearning is an ASHA-approved continuing education provider for SLPs and a U.S. Department of Education grant-winner, dedicated to bringing the highest clinical standards to online therapy.

For the 2012-2013 school year, PresenceLearning is delivering 120,000 online sessions with thousands of students in public, charter and virtual school students.

###

Katie Povejsil, Vice President of Marketing, PresenceLearning
415.625.0150
katie@presencelearning.com

Christine Allman, Public Relations for PresenceLearning
410.975.9638
christine@kehcomm.com

The post Fossil School District Discovers Missing Link to Speech-Language Success appeared first on PresenceLearning.

The Position
We are looking for a Sales Development Representative who can help accelerate our growth by setting appointments for our field sales team. Your job will be to confidently pitch the value of PresenceLearning’s services to schools and families, by responding to inbound leads and proactively calling prospects. You will make roughly 200 calls per week and send nearly 500 emails.

In this role, you will learn everything about creating tailored value for our potential clients. Successful candidates are tenacious, highly organized, and genuinely enjoy speaking with people.

Our sales team will coach you on all crucial strategic and operative aspects needed for success.

To learn more about PresenceLearning, we encourage you to take a look at our website.

Ideal Background and Experience

• 1-2 years of sales experience and/or teaching experience
• Disciplined and task-oriented. You like checking everything off your list before you leave work in the evening
• Exceptional verbal communication, articulate writing, collaboration, tenacity. You also have fun celebrating the wins along the way
• Self-starter who takes initiative to go above the assigned task and is always trying to find out how things can be better
• An entrepreneurial spirit and high career ambitions
• University degree with strong academic results

Compensation
Competitive. Salary, bonus, benefits, and equity.

How to Apply
Send your resume and a cover letter explaining why you would be the right fit for this position, highlighting relevant experience based on the description above.

The post Sales Development Representative appeared first on PresenceLearning.

Does your child have severe cognitive disabilities?

An advocacy network called “The Collaboration to Promote Self-Determination” released a series of recommendations designed to help you and your child.

The basic issue – according to this advocacy group – is that schools need to do more to figure out where students have learning disabilities, pinpoint those problems, early and then intervene appropriately.

It’s all things we’ve heard before.  What’s interesting to us – at least – is that this particular group is linking its recommendation to special needs children and their post-graduation plans.

According to Madeleine Will, chairwoman of the Collaboration, “High quality assessments can drive high quality instruction.” At this point, The Collaboration, believe that tests aren’t rigorous enough and some students are not tested at a proper grade level. The end result is that students with disabilities are behind without any real shot at college or employment after high school.

The ultimate goal is to have members of Congress include these changes suggested by The Collaboration when the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is up for renewal.

The Collaboration recognizes that improving test standards isn’t the only factor deterring students with disabilities from post-high school opportunities. Schools should be held accountable for providing proper instruction, according to The Collaboration.

If you are a parent, it’s great to see a national organization thinking about the real purpose of school:  which is to prepare your special need child for what happens after they graduate, be that college or work.

But we have to ask – aren’t we already asking our schools to do a lot with very little funding?  What do you think?

Here at PresenceLearning we’re all about the kids.  We want to see every special need child thrive through K-12 and – most importantly beyond.  While we don’t yet have the data to back this up, our belief is that speech therapy is critically important to special needs children and their success either in college or in the workplace.

Source: EdWeek

The post Can Schools Prepare Students with Special Needs for College? appeared first on PresenceLearning.

Reading is a great way to reinforce speech and language concepts for children. However, picking the right book can make all the difference. The Our Little Tongginator Blog explains why these book genres may be helpful for children with speech and language delays.

Interactive Books
Reading a story with interactive features is not only fun, but instructive. Interactive books are great for comprehension. When a child can read about an action and then is asked to do the action, it helps him or her understand the meaning of the word. Books that make children lift flaps or touch objects reinforce motor skills in addition to comprehension. While some adults might find Interactive books silly, the benefits of adding actions to words far outweighs the silliness.

Animal Sound Books
Animal sounds are easy for young children to imitate. Books that incorporate animal sounds are great confidence boosters for children because they can easily imitate the noises, follow along and have fun.

Repetitive Books
Books that have repetition built into the story make it easy for children to anticipate what will happen next.  For children with autism, repetition can act as a safe haven. Children with autism often see change as threatening, so having a book that repeats a motif or phrase can be soothing.

Books that Teach Sign Language
Books that teach sign language help children see they can communicate in more ways than one. For children with speech delays, sign language may liberate them to be able to effectively communicate. Once children can convey their thoughts so someone can respond, a dialogue can begin. Reading sign language books to young children can help them communicate before they can speak.

To see more genres and recommended books, click here.

Identifying with Characters
Another important genre that is often overlooked is books featuring characters with special needs. It is important that young children can identify with the characters in the books they read. This can help them better retain what they learn in the story and it can reassure them that they are not alone in their disability.

This also gives them opportunity to ask questions so they can better understand the world. Here is a list of books with a variety of special needs characters.

What books do you like to read to children with speech and language delays? Share your picks with us below on Facebook and Twitter!

The post Books for Children with Speech Delays appeared first on PresenceLearning.

The impact investors at City Light and I wrote a paper on this topic last year suggesting that education-focused foundations should:

• engage private enterprise with grants, contracts and program related investments (PRI), and
• invest endowment funds in edtech startups or funds (often called mission related investments, or MRI).

What to invest in? Or, edupreneurs might ask, what categories are attractive? Or, what teacher problems should we solve? Here’s a list of twenty trending K-12 edtech categories and company examples (mostly Learn Capital portfolio companies where I’m partner):

• Special Education (PresenceLearning)

The post A Short Guide to EdTech Investing appeared first on PresenceLearning.

With more SLPs leaving primary and secondary education for positions in health care, the same question is always asked, “How high is too high when it comes to caseloads?”

This past Thursday, PresenceLearning presented their response to this question with an in-depth webinar seeking to persuade schools to try a different approach that would benefit SLPs and students alike.

With guest presenters Barbara J. Moore Ed.D., CCC-SLP and Judy Rudebusch, Ed.D., CCC-SLP leading the way, audience members including school administrators and in the field speech-language pathologists learned about the workload approach versus the current caseload approach and how different ways of delivery treatment to students can help schools become more effective in the long-run.

Key Takeways:
1. Continuing to use caseload (# of students served) as the basis for determining SLP needs is contributing to the “spiral” of SLP shortage and related negative impacts. To break this negative cycle, leaders must move to using a workload (total time needed to manage all aspects of cases) approach to calculate SLP needs.

2. The key to moving to a workload approach is flexibility – being able to use flexible scheduling and different approaches to delivering SLP services, including online SLP.

3. Even though the workload approach is a policy supported by ASHA, SPED leaders hold tight to old behavior. Why? The culture of our schools limits our thinking and blinds us to new ideas and approaches. It’s a leadership issue: SPED directors, Superintendents, and other senior administrators need take charge of change management, encouraging new approaches and taking risk.

Here is a brief breakdown of the three-parts of the webinar:

Part 1: Workload Approach Overview

Currently, a speech-language pathologist’s workday is broken down based on the number of children and adolescents they see per day – the caseload approach. But is this an accurate view of how many responsibilities and tasks a SLP must fulfill in a workday? According to ASHA, the workload appraoch considers all aspects of the SLP’s “Day in the Life.”

Part 2: Staffing Assignments

Is 1-1 attention from a speech-language pathologists truly better for a student? Or does group learning allow a student to develop communication and skills simultaneously? With the workload approach, schools can treat students based on their abilities more effectively.

Part 3: Flexible Scheduling

What the workload approach promotes is the concept that no student is like so they shouldn’t be treated within a bubble. With the development of online speech therapy and more schools adopting new academic schedules, the workload approach allows schools to let speech-language pathologists breathe, allocate staff resources more effectively, and test new models of delivery that can ultimately help a student with special needs best.

To be the first know when the full webinar is uploaded, make sure to subscribe to our blog and join our community on PresenceLearning’s facebook and twitter (@PresenceLearning)! 

Again, thank you to all the attendees who came out and supported the webinar. To watch past SPED Ahead webinars, check our entire section devoted to them on PresenceLearning.

The post RECAP: Breaking The Barriers to Effective SLP Services (WEBINAR) appeared first on PresenceLearning.