What is ScienceWiz?

K-8th Science Education is:

Fewer teachers due to budget cuts

Provides too little time for content

Unaffordable

Elementary teachers lack background in science.

Seldom engaging

Lack of early STEM education leads to equity gaps by gender, language, culture, and lowers future career earnings.

What is the Problem?

affordable

Highly engaging, inspiring, student-oriented,
accommodates many styles of learning,
multimodel, effective, enriched content.

Each topic area is taught in a progression.
Builds a strong foundation of knowledge,
step by step, year by year.

Our Solution

How is ScienceWiz different?

refreshing

addictive

tells a story

engaging

Our classes are extremely easy to use.

How it Works

We bring a Ph.D. scientist, best selling STEM author
and experienced teacher directly into the classroom.

The learning experience is supercharged
with our smart, split-screen interactivity.
This breakthrough innovation is achieved
with in-house proprietary (patent pending) tools.

ScienceWiz is an established publisher in the consumer channels.

Accounts include: Hobby Lobby, Michaels, TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Target, Lakeshore Learning, museum stores, local books stores, some grocery store chains and upon occasion even Walmart and Costco.

ScienceWiz has sold millions of copies of Dr. Norman's titles.

Traction

These include craft and hobby stores,
specialty toy stores,
internet stores (.coms),
mass market accounts,
hardware stores, school supply and
home schooling channels.

We are in the initial stages
of entering the school market.

To that end, we are building
a solid national rep team
for the school channel.

We just sold 17,000
books and kits
to a school district.

We are signed-up
to attend state-based,
as well as national science
teacher trade shows
which include workshops
and presentations.

Business Model

Our strategy for school market penetration is to employ a freemium model to obtain initial adoption.

We have an existing business that has focused
on sales to the consumer channels.
This pays baseline overhead for
a production staff, fulfillment and marketing.
We are a manufacturer and wholesaler.

Our goal is to become a high-volume, high-margin manufacturer that sells directly to teachers and to schools.

We inspire a lifelong interest in STEM.

ScienceWiz links all-time favorite childhood projects to STEM learning.
We are immersive, cinematic and engaging.

Unlike all the competition, we insist that each child has their own materials
-- and we make it affordable.

Our classes review and build from lesson to lesson, class to class,
and year to year. We build an interconnected framework of knowledge.

A new paradigm for hybrid learning.

Competition - How Are We Different?

This is a nearly $3.0 billion market opportunity.
Unfortunately, nowhere near this sum is currently allocated
for elementary STEM education. It is closer to $1 billion right now.

With current changes in administration
this funding is expected to grow substantially.

Market Opportunity

40 million students are enrolled in K-8th in U.S. schools
87,500 K-8th schools in the U.S. (76.6% are public)

We are a household name with best sellers.
We have a pedigree. We are qualified.

We are completing a comprehensive
online hybrid learning curriculum.
It includes an online digital assistant and
makes use of our multimodal instructional tools.

We have printed books, workbooks, physical materials,
online simulations, interactive activities, teacher's guides, courseware and auto-grading assessment.

Progress to Date

Team Core Competency

Product Development
Capital Management
Educational Expertise
Sourcing & Procurement
Manufacturing & Logistics
Sales and Marketing
Advanced Technology
Leading Innovation
Guerilla Entrepreneurs

On to the Next Steps

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The ScienceWiz
K-8 STEM Education Solution

ScienceWiz® is a seasoned, retail-based science education brand now providing NGSS-compliant, K-8 curriculum solutions.

Our newly released Distance Learning materials are deeply appealing. We set a new standard for student engagement. Our materials are designed to not only teach STEM but to motivate students to embrace STEM-related careers. Our combination of visual appeal, interactive engagement and technical innovation advances the state-of-the-art in online pedagogy.

Our education content was created using proprietary, patents-pending design tools. ScienceWiz innovations solve urgent challenges in the teaching of STEM. These include:

Online distance learning classes that are delightful, captivating and amusing. They ignite student curiosity while providing enriched content.
Materials that are multi-modal both in the range of media available and in the variety of learning approaches provided. They are designed to meet the needs of our diverse population.
Online lessons that can be used either within a classroom setting or in a distance learning environment.
Online classes that can be either self-paced or teacher or parent guided.
Online lessons that include English and Spanish audio support.
Illustrated printed project books with hands-on lab kits.
Printed and online workbooks
Online flipbooks with video links, 3D maps and interactive simulations.
Online AI guided interactive learning.
Online courseware for in-class and take-home assignments.
Online teacher’s guides with a built-in teaching assistant.
Online assessment tools with auto-grading and performance metrics.
Assessment materials that include a text-to-speech option.
Assessment materials that include online note-taking.

TARGET

To capture more than a 15% share of the growing United States K-8 STEM school market within 5 years.

Our curricula is based on 20 years of experience working directly with both students and teachers to develop science and engineering materials for children from 5 to 14 years of age.

CHALLENGE

The ScienceWiz strategy more than meets the challenge by responding to the major issues resulting from the lack of effective early STEM learning.

Throughout the United States, there has been a decades-long decline in the quality of public school education. Science education has been almost eliminated from the elementary curriculum. Specifically, Common Core, which has been adopted by a majority of states, does not provide content in science, technology or engineering, particularly, for elementary school students. This was not its goal.
The new Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) is not being adopted by many public elementary schools. This is, in part, due to limited grade school budgets for science education. Motivation to adopt STEM learning is further impeded by a very narrow focus on teaching remedial math and remedial reading skills in many schools.
Students entering middle school and high school often have little or no exposure to either science or technology. This lack of formal exposure limits both their interest in STEM learning and in STEM careers. Specifically, this impacts districts with economically disadvantaged students, as well as districts with a large percentage of students with English as a second language. Additionally, girls are, all too often, not receiving adequate support and exposure to STEM education early on which again severely limits their interest in and, consequently, long-term accessibility to STEM careers.
We do not teach topics in science year by year in a logical progression. Whereas, we do teach mathematics in this way. STEM disciplines must be introduced at an early age and taught in systematic progressions, to address the increasing prevalence of science and technology-based careers.
Many elementary school teachers feel that they lack expertise in specific areas of science because they have not received adequate training in either college or in school in-service training.
Providing early STEM learning helps create a lifelong accessibility to STEM fields. STEM literacy impacts our ability as a nation to compete globally. The delayed exposure to STEM learning is impacting our economic competitiveness. We have a shortage of lab technicians, nurses, doctors, chemists, engineers and electricians. What a mess. And it is going to get worse.
If hands-on activities are provided at all for younger students, they are forced to do them with rationed materials. Limited materials means that only one out of every four or five students actually gets to do the experiments. Also, most lab experiments rely on teacher presentation for instruction. No visual or written instructions are provided. These limitations create classroom management problems.

SOLUTION

Teachers need an accessible and interesting approach to respond to these challenges. This is what ScienceWiz is offering. We make teaching STEM feasible and exciting.

ScienceWiz Online Distance Learning Classes overcome the science-literacy deficit many elementary teachers face.
ScienceWiz responds to this opportunity with a deeply appealing, time-tested STEM product line for schools. This content is based on Dr. Norman’s best-selling books and kits. These titles are designed to teach science in a content-rich, coherent progression for each of the STEM disciplines. Students gain a strong foundation, which prepares them to actively participate in the careers of the 21^st century, such as information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology and cognitive technology.
ScienceWiz addresses the equity problems facing our society by providing accessible programs that can prepare disadvantaged students for highly-paid STEM related vocational careers that cannot be outsourced.
ScienceWiz is uniquely positioned to meet this challenge by providing an extremely engaging, integrated and affordable approach to STEM education. ScienceWiz is building on decades of success, selling millions of copies of educational STEM materials to consumers.
In 2021, ScienceWiz is launching our STEM education solutions into the schools. Our STEM content is not only engaging and appealing, but also NGSS-compliant.

DIFFERENTIATORS

Many market entrants, new and old, have well-developed materials, but they are largely limited to a single dimension of engagement – print textbooks, physical kits, classroom visual aids, or online courseware. Many competitors rely only on one form of instruction and struggle to offer a more comprehensive approach that is so crucial to teaching. ScienceWiz has a full spectrum approach:

The Online Lessons teach each class. Many teachers feel that they lack expertise in specific areas of science. These deeply appealing lessons meet this challenge. They eliminate a major impediment to the essential need to introduce our students to science at an early age. In so doing, these materials motivate a lifelong interest in science. They make science the favorite class of the day.
Each student has their own project book and materials. There are no haves versus mostly have-nots. This overcomes one of the key issues with class-management by allowing each student to be a doer and not just a spectator. This is common sense but largely unique to ScienceWiz.
Most experiments can be done over and over. Learning by doing and redoing. Few of us ever get it right the first time. Experiments can be repeated for fun. Students gain confidence through repetition.
The projects accommodate a variety of learning styles. Students can follow each project step-by-step either by: 1) reading the directions, 2) having the directions read aloud to them, 3) by following the pictures or 4) following it in a multimedia-style presentation. These options allow each student to focus and to participate directly. The students are fully engaged. This helps to eliminate most class management issues so common in the rationed-materials approach.
Science topics are taught in natural progressions, lesson by lesson, class by class, year by year. We teach mathematics and language arts in this way. We review and build upon their knowledge each year. ScienceWiz does this scaffolding for science and engineering education.
Each topic area tells a story. We build a framework of knowledge by telling a story, topic by topic each lesson, each class, each year. ScienceWiz tells the story in an engaging manner and tells it correctly. Each presentation has been refined over years of working with children and teachers. We do not jump from one anecdotal factoid to the next. We DO assume that students, and all humans, want to see the connections, the storyline, the progression.
Meet our online teaching assistant. Our breakthrough teaching assistant, Electra, can be called upon to answer questions from both students and the teacher.
Affordability: ScienceWiz provides a graduated, very low cost, online STEM teaching solution. It seamlessly integrates with well-established physical kits and books, which are in the retail channels.
Curriculum: ScienceWiz’s goal is to provide a complete NGSS compliant curricula, which includes a suite of courses and materials that are modularized by both grade and subject.
Personalization: ScienceWiz provides both self-paced and group-learning materials, in physical and online formats. ScienceWiz uniquely supports learning equity requirements. These include diverse cultural backgrounds, learning styles, learning aptitudes, and gender differences.
Multimedia: STEM learning is best taught through multiple modalities that includes both physical and online content. The physical materials include printed books, equipment kits, printed workbooks and printed assessment materials. The online materials include online classes, flipbooks, teachers’ guides, AI teacher’s assistant, student courseware and assessment tools. Student online resources include: simulations, interactive AI dialogs, social interactions, vocabulary exercises, thought problems, expert systems and real world applications. These materials together motivate and inspire learning. ScienceWiz has patents pending for the tools used to develop the online technology.

SALES

ScienceWiz has a flexible adoption strategy with an easy get-your-toes-wet approach using a freemium model.

First time adopting teachers receive the first year of online distance learning for free. Schools can begin with one class at a time solutions, keeping the adoption modest and affordable. Many competitors require a larger scale adoption from the outset.
ScienceWiz has a unique brand recognition because we have a strong retail consumer channel presence. (These include large retail chains such as Target, Hobby Lobby and Michael’s, Lakeshore Learning, Ace Hardware Stores, and many online stores such as Target, Walmart, and Amazon.) ScienceWiz consumer products are available in English, and increasingly available in Spanish, as well as French, Dutch and German. We have international distribution in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and the Bahamas.
Our independent sales representatives have a goal of developing direct-to-schools sales.
We will attend state and national teachers’ trade shows. We will be giving workshops and presentations to attendees at these conferences.
We will organize a multipronged school funding initiative to facilitate affordability and adoption. These include facilitating both public and private grants, as well as school-by-school crowd funding.

MARKET

The K-8 school market is growing with an opportunity for reaching over 35.5 million students in public schools and 4.25 million in private schools (NCES).

There is a cost of $25 for each student for each physical kit, which includes a book and Teacher’s Guide. ScienceWiz provides STEM progressions consisting of 5 to 9 modules per student per grade. This represents nearly a $1 billion market for our physical kits and printed books. We also provide online courseware and online flipbooks at an extremely affordable annual price of $3 per student.
Management believes it can grow to own at least a 15% market share within 5 years, producing over $150 million annual sales. This estimate, assuming rapid growth, would provide a break-even point for investors within 30 months.

COMPETITION

ScienceWiz stands out from it’s leading competitors by providing a more multi-modal integrated, deeply engaging, fun, and serious foundational STEM learning curriculum.

Accelerate Learning, Inc. StemScopes focuses primarily on whole-district purchases. A minimum campus-level purchase requires an entire grade. StemScopes is largely limited to online textbooks, as the printed materials are extremely expensive. Their opportunities for lab-based learning are severely limited by the forced sharing of materials. Specifically, they provide one kit for every four students.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), as a traditional print publisher, provides largely printed materials. They offer no labs or hands-on experiences until middle school. This is a major deficit in terms of introducing young children to science. The content is often anecdotal and does not develop science topics in systematic progressions. Their online offerings are limited in scope and appeal.
McGraw-Hill and TPS Publishing focuses on printed textbooks. They have printed teacher’s guides. Their collaboration kits result in the rationing of materials, such that most students do not have the opportunity to experience labs directly. McGraw-Hill’s in-classroom bundles are very expensive and require yearly re-purchases. In teaching mathematics, we do not expect our children to share their rulers or pencils, yet we force it upon our students in science.
Delta Education/FOSS sells teacher’s guides and kits. Delta, like the others that provide kits at all, misuse the term “cooperative learning” by having 1 out of 4 students actually do an experiment. The other students have the task of fetching or returning materials or recording results. This means that only one student actually does the experiment while three do not – again a recipe for inattention. For the student, there is over-dependency on auditory learning, because there are no written or visual directions for students to follow. Rather the class depends solely on the teacher’s verbal instructions. Foss takes an anecdotal approach to learning. Teaching of each topic area is limited and fractionated. There is no continuous storyline. They have recently provided some online reading materials.
Learning A-Z sells at the individual teacher class level, but has dated online courseware with no interactive simulations, no printed materials, and no kits. Science topics are limited primarily to recently added e-readers.

TEAM

ScienceWiz brings deep subject matter expertise and market savvy to the nation’s STEM learning challenge. The team’s scrappy entrepreneurial grit, commitment, and world class award winning innovation experience helps guarantee greater success.

Dr. Penny Norman Ph.D., CEO, and author. Penny earned a doctoral degree in Biophysics from U.C. Berkeley, and has received grants from the National Science Foundation and the Franklin Foundation to research her educational programs. She became involved with the development of primary grade science materials through volunteer teaching when her own children started school. She became deeply concerned about the lack of science being taught in elementary schools. This translated into a 20 year effort to test and revamp science materials for the primary grades. The ScienceWiz Books and Kits she created have received awards from Scientific American, Good Morning America, Dr. Toy, National Parenting Magazine, American Specialty Toy Retail Association, Creative Child Magazine, Family Choice Awards and Woman’s Day Magazine. Her titles have sold millions of copies.

Ann Einstein, Senior Editor. Ann was an elementary education teacher in the Berkeley Unified School District for many years. She has been involved with the education of children for most of her adult career: as a director of early childhood education programs, as a teacher and coordinator of gifted and talented programs, and as chief editor for ScienceWiz. Ann has the capacity to see the world through a child’s eyes and has been invaluable in keeping each science kit clear and accessible to children.

Todd Mullins, Chief Marketing Officer, is a seasoned sales and marketing executive. He has in-depth experience in product development, in sales force management, as well as national account management, including Target, Amazon and Walmart. He also has social media communications expertise. He has developed presentations for meetings with national sales representatives teams and for trade show presentations. He is the director at Brandruptive. He has been the national accounts manager for Chronicle Books, as well as worked with Hero Arts, Bill & Bud Toys, and University Games.

William Moulton, Chief Technology Officer, has managed teams that build consumer electronics and provided professional hardware and software solutions for clients for over 20 years. These include AI expert systems for education and industrial applications, multimedia UI products, collaboration tools, speech recognition and voice messaging. He also developed vertical search tools for high school and college students. They used these tools to plan higher education goals, explore career paths and find scholarships.

Marcus Lee, Chief of Operations, has directed business operations and production sourcing for Norman & Globus for more than 15 years. He is multi-lingual in Cantonese and English.

Jennifer Zhen, Production Manager, has been with us for over 15 years, manages all product assembly, quality control, and scheduling.

Jessica Man, Office Manager for over 15 years, is the face for all our customer service, bookkeeping, and staffing. She is multi-lingual in Cantonese and English.

ACTIONS

ScienceWiz has a grassroots strategy to establish itself in the national education market.

We are currently or have been setting up pilot programs in a number of states (including California, Florida, and Kentucky) using our NGSS compliant curriculum. We are establishing these case studies to facilitate acceptance into the school market. We are developing a network of independent sales reps and teachers to introduce the ScienceWiz materials.

Norman & Globus, Inc. is delivering ScienceWiz STEM Progression products that seamlessly integrate print and lab kits with online components (apps, simulations, quizzes, feeds and knowledge portal reference) using our online, teacher-friendly course management system. Many of these products will also sell through our long-established national retailer accounts.

FUNDING

Norman & Globus, Inc., a California corporation, is seeking $4 million in a Series A equity financing.

These funds will enable timely completion of its STEM Progression product line, and launch the sales and marketing necessary for a successful national rollout. This will compliment its already long-established smaller scale national retail business. Use of funds includes:

$1m to execute continuing product technology development
$1m to complete the full K-8 NGSS compliant teaching curriculum
$1m to promote and market in public, charter and private schools in the United States
$1m to meet cash flow requirements for entry into the school market