eduFire - Live Video Learning
We have a simple (but not easy) mission: Revolutionize education. Our goal is to create a platform to allow live learning to take place over the Internet anytime from anywhere.
Most importantly...for anyone. We're the first people (that we know of) to create something that's totally open and community-driven (rather than closed and transaction-driven).
We're excited to create tools for people to teach and learn what they love in ways they never imagined possible. If changing the world is your thing and you're as passionate about education and learning as we are, please get in touch!
Ryan Busch has established a successful history success for higher education and elearning organizations. A former marketing manager and analyst for University of Phoenix, Ryan managed millions of marketing dollars for the nation’s largest, private accredited university.
In 2007, Ryan left University of Phoenix to build a new and revolutionary higher education course model, StraighterLine, a company focused on the delivery and instruction of general education, required college courses needed for an undergraduate degree. As the chief architect behind the innovative concept, Ryan earned success for StraighterLine with two highly innovative concepts: establishing a social media program responsible for delivering revenue growth that increased by 50%, and the invention of a “college-as-a-subscription” model, dubbed “StraighterLine for $99” which significantly boosted revenues and now accounts for over 85% of all StraighterLine sales.
Ryan oversaw successful course reviews and approvals by the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC) and earned nods from the Software Information Industry Association (SIIA) as both a 2009 CODiE finalist for Best Virtual School Solution for Students and a finalist in the SIIA Innovation Incubator program. In 2009, StraighterLine was successfully acquired through a management buyout and continues to garner acclaim from students and media organizations as a disruptive innovation in higher education.
A marketer for over 10 years, Ryan holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Arizona State University in 2000, graduating Cum Laude and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from University of Phoenix in 2007. Additionally, Ryan is adjunct faculty for the College of Arts and Sciences at University of Phoenix. The time he spends teaching on evenings and weekends is one way in which he gives back to the community at large. Working in education allows Ryan to have a truly positive impact on a person's life.
Scott is the engineering leader behind eduFire. He has led engineering teams building a variety of different products from one of the first commercial hypermedia tools to a large scale corporate Knowledge Management platform. Most recently Scott founded Feedster.com, a leading blog and RSS search engine which he scaled to over 20,000,000 blogs. Prior to Feedster, Scott was with Mascot Network, a leading provider of portal software for higher education. A Connecticut native, Scott graduated from the University of Bridgeport and has spent his career building large, scalable systems.
Jared is eduFire's Senior Software Engineer and one of the key implementors driving our platform forward. An experienced Ruby on Rails guru, Jared has been published numerous places including Advanced Rails Recipes and is a regular contributor to the Rails community. eduFire marks Jared's fourth major Rails project making him a leader in Rails applications.
Marco is a dual national born in England of Italian parents and speaks both languages natively.
He has worked in two major areas; initially on leaving Hereward College of Further Education in the city of Coventry, England, with one of the UK's leading banks working solely with overseas clients; and then later as Customer Service Manager for the UK's largest PC manufacturer where he was involved in restructuring the organization’s technical support department. During this time he also represented the company in media interviews both on national radio and the press. During this time he achieved a Professional Certificate in Management (2003) followed by a Post-Graduate Diploma also in Management (2004) with The Open University Business School (http://www8.open.ac.uk/business-school).
With a lifelong passion of understanding and helping people it seemed inevitable that in 2007 he obtained his BSc. (Hons) in Psychology with The Open University (http://open.ac.uk) and is currently studying towards furthering his counseling qualifications with the Institute of Counseling. (http://www.instituteofcounselling.org.uk) accredited by The University of the West of Scotland (http://www.uws.ac.uk)
Being bilingual and really enjoying helping people achieve their goals, teaching both English and Italian has always been a part of Marco's life, even as a child. Since being involved in the I.T. industry it seemed natural to fit these two together and in 1997 he started teaching online.
Since this time Marco has been a firm believer in furthering online education. In 2008 he joined eduFire.com as part of the management team and a site Admin. His primary role was helping teachers with anything from technical support, marketing, orientation to supporting traditional face-to-face teachers becoming accustomed to teaching online and managing a class.
Marco loves thinking outside the box and looking at challenges from a unique perspective. He encourages those he helps, whether online teachers or counseling clients, to think about their situation with an alternative approach which often leads to great success.
Upon leaving school at Paddington College, London in 1987, Debbie had completed a sound engineering qualification; she then went on to work in central London as a sound engineer in a recording studio. She pursued her love of music presenting her own show in community radio whilst working closer to home in finance for Lombard North Central PLC. There she was an internal co-coordinator overseeing the deposit of monetary investments for branches of National Westminster Bank.
Debbie has always been interested in health and Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). In 2006 she studied and achieved a Certificate in CAM with the Open University http://open.ac.uk. After much personal research she developed her own cream which saw her long standing skin ailments disappear. From this she went on to create her own skincare range of organic products (http://shearoots.com) where all products were individually made to order from the highest quality ingredients. For Debbie, the motivation was not to make money, but to provide the highest quality product so others could benefit with a natural product.
In 2008 Debbie became a part of the team at eduFire.com where her main role was to support students. She then went on to support not only students and teachers but to take on projects to help promote and grow eduFire. Good customer service is what drives Debbie to make a happy and fulfilled community. Her personal touch and dedication to customer service has given her a reputation among the eduFire community of being a central part of eduFire.
Jon was the business visionary behind eduFire and has over a decade of experience helping people to teach and learn online. He has been involved in starting two companies that have been acquired by publicly-traded companies (The 2000Tutor.com Network, acquired by Penton Media in 2001 and Zaadz, acquired by Gaiam in 2007) and a third (LearnOutLoud.com) which is currently operating profitably. A Minneapolis native, Jon graduated from the University of Minnesota and the UCLA Anderson School of Management and has an extensive background in the areas of training and education. He has taught business courses at the University of Minnesota, GMAT preparation courses for Kaplan Education and corporate training sessions for hundreds of technology professionals.
Copyright 2011 eduFire, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
