There are several places an edtech startup can go to find early adopter teachers:
- Conferences, like ISTE (the largest education technology conference in the US). This conference tends to attract a lot of tech-savvy early adopter teachers.
- Local Edcamps, which are “unconferences” set up by teachers for teachers. They don’t always cover technology, but the very nature of an unconference tends to attract progressive teachers.
- Twitter, especially hashtags like #edtech and #edchat (there are many, many more). Early adopter teachers are good sharers of information and communicate fairly frequently here.
- Blogs, which many tech-savvy teachers use. Some blog regularly, others wax and wane as their workloads change. Many are former teachers that still have colleagues in schools.
- Tumblr, using the hashtags #education or #edtech. There is a pretty dedicated group of teachers here, somewhat similar in demographic to those that have standalone blogs.
- Pinterest, which you can find if you do some relevant searches. Hashtags exist here, but not all teachers use them. This community is vibrant, but does not always have the same early adopter mindset as those from other sources.
- Local meetups, which you can find from Meetup. Not all cities have such meetups, however. And most edtech meetups attract more entrepreneurs than teachers.
