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A Brief History of Ohana
Towards the end of the technology boom of the 1990s,
the Chan Family recognized a need and an opportunity to help bridge an
ever widening digital divide they saw springing up across the homes and
classrooms of the nation from Cupertino to Cape Cod, and the idea of the
Ohana Foundation was born. As a social venture, Ohana is designed to bring
together the best from the worlds of education and technology into an easy to use format that is accessible to all learners. Improving the educational attainment of school-aged children worldwide while using rich multimedia content via DVD is an ongoing objective of the Foundation. Fortunately, the Chans' philanthropic endowment of seed monies for the Foundation at its inception gave rise to a series of organizational initiatives and development projects that helped guide the transformation of Ohana from promise to reality, and still guide the work of the Foundation today.
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A New Direction for EFL
The Foundation entered the summer of 2005 with a fresh new direction
and recent staffing additions to augment and further complete the
EFL materials begun by teams in Hawaii. Ohana product development
and authoring teams are reconstituted to focus on completing the
Junior EFL DVD masters from the original PEP-inspired product version.
The Junior EFL DVDs are completed after a QC-triage involving excision
of lesser-quality video media and a new product idea germinates
around a streamlined EFL product. Market opportunities in China
suggest a new direction towards EFL services instead of product
provisioning only and a technical and market development team is
constituted to explore a service offering model for Ohana EFL content:
the idea for the Ohana Learning Center (OLC) model arises and plans
are made to test it out in the Winter of 2004. Product teams decide
to complete both the previous EFL product charter that was Sino-centric,
and to augment that offering with a new streamlined EFL product
that allows for an accelerated learning path that might be deployed
in the OLC. The 16 DVD discs for the 3 years of Junior and Senior
English for China are completed in December 2004. Remastered Senior
discs are reformulated to conform to the new curricular articulation
conducted by an EFL research team led by Dr. Bob Adamson of the
University of Queensland TOELF Program in Brisbane, Australia.
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Hard or Soft Technology?
The intensive focus on soft-technology in the form of content development
during the summer leads to the closing of the hardware development
unit of Ohana as new opportunities emerge in the content space,
that have been foreclosed in the much more competitive hardware
space - where DVD player technology was quickly becoming commoditized.
Reduction in force takes place by early fall, and engineers in the
product group working out of the SinoWhiz/ONIT branches in Beijing
are re-focused on the OLC Curriculum & Information Management System
and completing work on a set of proprietary tools for DVD authoring
and resource management. By early Fall, Ohana is decidedly positioned
as a content company, liquidating legacy hardware in video phones
and DVD players on an opportunistic sales basis out of Seoul. In
the move from being both a hardware and software venture, Ohana
refocuses into provisioning content as product and exploring learning/training
as a service offering. The shift from hard-technology is also occasioned
by the availability of commercial-off-the-shelf authoring and DVD
resource management technology that was increasingly becoming more
cost-effective than the internal development of proprietary tools
sets for our authoring and content teams.
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Ohana's
Language & Animation Product Lines
As a way to stimulate sales and as a result of sluggish sales for
animation titles licensed at MIPCOM in 2003/4 in South Korea which
is still experiencing reduced GDP growth, management decides to
increase the curricular content of offerings by adding supplementary
instructional materials to the VHS and DVD offerings of animations
products. The animations products are re-positioned away from the
"edutainment" category to the more solidly "educational" product
category. This change in offering orientation occasions a change
in product distribution channel strategy with a greater focus given
by sales teams to the ELT sell-through and educational institutional
sales venues, and with marketing communications more directly targeted
at generating end-user demand through promotional distribution of
content to 3,000 K-6 grade teachers and administrators in Korea.
Read more...
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Beijing Venture & Learning Center
By November 2004, the Foundation is poised to open an experimental
EFL learning center in Beijing during the December break through
the Chinese New Year to conduct market and educational research
into human factor issues and learning path sequencing. The Ohana
Learning Center is launched in the Chao Yang district of Beijing
in collaboration with the Xinghuali vocational school. The OLC enrolls
over 120 students in 6 courses across the 6 IELTS band scales over
a 3 month period from December to February 2005. Research into human
factor issues lead to Ohana dropping the 4-mode, 4-room approach
for EFL training due to both cost and also logistical hurdles related
to infrastructural deficits in facilities in the educational system
of China. Additionally, research into classroom management did confirm
the efficacy and effectiveness of rapid language learning with the
new accelerated Adamson curriculum.
But the intense competition and high barriers to entry into the
tertiary educational space in China for EFL/ELT training occasioned
a rethinking of the timeliness for market penetration given the
unfavorable intellectual property regime, commercial and regulatory
discrimination against instruction as Beijing readies for the Olympics
in 2008. The experimental OLC was closed and testing terminated
in February 2005. Management decides to forego the service-revenue
model in Beijing for the moment given the unfavorable market conditions
for private educational institutions as of yet. Instead, a decision
to focus on providing a selection of the Ohana Collection (OC) in
Mandarin is made and 52 titles are localized during Spring 2005.
Currently, the Beijing office is exploring and prospecting for a
distribution partner for the OC for China, additionally, unlike
previous product which was published and printed in South Korea,
future product for China will be printed in China in order to reduct
COGS, by-pass import restrictions and publishing restrictions imposed
by the Central Government in Beijing.
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International Educational
& Product Development Research
Due to re-positioning initiatives across the Foundation's operation
units, intensive market-facing research is undertaken to flesh out
the whole product requirements and administrative needs profile
of the private education institutes common in Korea: hak-wons. Research
findings point to the need for greater product differentiation and
product exfoliation with respect to supplementary and complementary
instructional materials that accompany our animated, character-based
product lines. The exfoliation of product takes aim at Yoko and
Hocus & Lotus principally for the early literacy market. The result
of this research is the creation of a series of 12 Phonics workbooks
targeted to the K-3 educator and learner audiences in that segment.
The workbooks incorporate the latest finding in Multiple Intelligence
research and also life-long learning pedagogy and androgogy.
Read more...
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International Humanitarian Initiatives
Ohana's presence in three national markets presents both challenges
and opportunities to collaborating with peer organizations, but
fortunately the international scope of UNESCO offers Ohana a partner
organization with a scope and mandate as broad as our own. The synergies
explored in working meetings with UNESCO in December and January
highlight a few opportunities for new humanitarian initiatives that
Ohana undertakes as gestures of goodwill to the peoples of the national
markets we serve. Ohana and UNESCO continue working on a collaborative,
thought informant basis to identify and scope out possible joint
projects to bring science education to areas of China where resource
have traditionally been limited, like the 14 Western Provinces and
the "ethnic" Southeast of China, bordering the Korean peninsula.
The engagement with UNESCO infuses the organization with a new energy
and direction in its ongoing non-profit and humanitarian efforts.
Leading to some in-kind and product donations to a series of educational
and cultural institutions that serve under-represented populations
and economically impacted communities around the globe.
Read more...
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Business Reorganization
The New Year brought a renewed focus on our core competencies in
content development for the OC and EFL product lines. The Foundation's
operating units were reorganized to reduce duplication of effort
and to streamline production operations as Ohana moved towards a
leaner organization model that made more use of outsourcing partnerships
for design and development.
Wizetek: Design Studio & Product Development
Wizetek, the single business entity in Korea, was re-organized into
two separate operating units that had a single foci. Wizetek, which
used to handle our hardware product lines - which we discontinued
in the fall - was repurposed to function as Ohana's design studio
and outsource managment center in Seoul, with responsibilites for
market development and humanitarian initiatives with Christian missionary
organizations in Korea.
Edunetworks: Sales & Marketing Arm
Historically, Edunetworks has functioned as the marketing and sales
arm of the Foundation in Korea, and it's mandate has been expanded
to include broader Asia and to allow for the sourcing of new educational
product lines that isn't necessarily produced by Ohana internally,
but to take advantage of new content coming out of Asia and South
Asia. The unit is charged with driving commercial sales through
the sell-through and book sales channels, and with maintenance of
an online presence in Seoul
Ohana US: A New eCommerce Frontier
A new direction for the Foundation is the decision to go direct
to the US consumer and education markets through the deployment
of an eCommerce website designed to sell OC DVDs directly to the
public. The project is in its infancy as resources are brought online
using the Yahoo! Merchant Solutions platform. And currently we're
exploring partnering arrangments for fulfillment and production
here in the U.S. This is an exciting new direction for the organization
since it brings us full circle back to the point where we had decided
to go direct to the consumer after the 9/11 business disruption
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Humanitarian Publishing & Missionary Support
At present, the Foundation's product development team is researching, exploring and gathering market requirements to provision educational content to the Christian Missionary marketplace. We've identified three prospective partners in these initiatives and are currently beginning the partnership formation process with the following institutions:
Korean Baptist Missionary Church & Global Missionary Training
Center (Seoul)
Living Word Christian Center (Milpitas, CA)
Joyous Ministries - Messengers of Mercy (Seoul)
Lastly the Foundation has embarked on the translation and localization
of a Christian apologetics and devotional book, entitled "Approaching
God" by Dr. Paul Enns. The manuscript is currently undergoing translation
into Korean and Mandarin for distribution via the web and as a free
print publication for distribution by missionaries affiliated with
the Ohana Foundation's programs.
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Global Outreach & Fiat-Lux Campaign
Ohana has entered the preliminary partnership formation phase with
several entities to help support After-School Programs in California
in collaboration with the California School-Age Consortium and the
Afterschool Alliance. Planning has begun to distribute free site
licenses to the top 200 after-school programs as identified by the
California Dept. of Education. An advisory committee made up of
representatives from the three agencies is planning a joint conference
call in early August to identify the beneficiaries and the logistics
for distribution for Fall 2005.
Ohana has extended an additional humanitarian distribution offer
to UNESCO-Beijing to donate 1,000 units of EFL product and 1,000
DVD players for ethnic and rural middle schools and community education
centers in China's 13 Western Provinces, Primorski, North Korea,
Japan and 3 ethnic Korean provinces in S.E. China, north of the
Korean peninsula. UNESCO is now in the process of forming an advisory
committee and drafting an additional MOU for this campaign to take
place during ceremonies in Mongolia celebrating the UN's 50th anniversary.
Ohana will be joining UNESCO for a presentation in Ulam Baataar
in November 2005.
In partnership with the California Youth Authority, Ohana will be
making a donation to 11 sites managed by the CYA around the state
for youth offenders. Ohana will distribute 11 site licenses to CYA
to use in its educational programs in youth correctional facilities.
Site identification has begun in collaboration with the Office of
the Superintendent for Correctional Schools.
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