EdTech Startup SpeakingPal Pitches At LAUNCHedu Part Of SXSWedu [sxsw]

Nowadays people don’t have time for long tail language speaking courses like Rosetta Stone. Not only that but most courses, like Rosetta Stone, teach their students in just about the same manner you would learn a foreign language in high school.

SpeakingPal, an Israeli startup, is actually more successful because the platform teaches English in a more natural format.

SpeakingPal is a web based platform and also a mobile app platform that let’s the user engage with video content and actually have a “conversation” with the virtual instructor.

The guys at SpeakingPal actually ended up winning the highered category at LAUNCHedu as part of SXSWedu.

Check out their pitch below:

Check out more of our SXSW13

coverage here

Chicago EdTech Startup ThinkCerca Pitches At SXSWedu

ThinkCerca,Chicago startup,EdTech,startup,startups,starup video

ThinkCera founder Eileen Murphy Buckley pitches at SXSWedu (photo: NMI 2013)

50 years ago, a student challenging a teacher would be cause for a good paddle beating or wrapping on the students fingers with a ruler. Today, not so much.

Argumentation is now at the core of the new Common Core State Standards, and distinguished Chicago educator, Eileen Murphy Buckley, understands that with a passion. As the former Director of Curriculum and Instruction for over 100 Chicago Public Schools, Buckley oversaw the implementation of this kind of curriculum system wide.

Now she’s turned these important fundamentals into ThinkCerca a platform that helps build students critical thinking ability.

With argumentation we’re not talking abut back talking the teacher, Buckley and progressive educators worldwide are teaching students how to create valid arguments about everything built on five principles; claim, evidence, reasoning, counter argument and audience.

“ThinkCERCA is harnessing the unique combination of deep subject area knowledge, hard-earned, pedagogical design skill, and research-based expertise to build a marketplace that will give school districts economic access to the world’s largest selection of high quality literacy lessons. Unlike a the limited selection available in a static textbook, our dynamic marketplace will offer a distribution channel for expert teachers to refresh and deepen the lesson library in ways that both students and teachers find valuable.” Buckley wrote in a guest post to Chicago based Technori.

ThinkCera made it to the final round in the LAUNCHedu startup showdown as part of SXSWedu in the K-12 category.

Check out their pitch below:

SXSW team coverage from nibletz.com can be found here.

instaGrok Is A New Way To Learn, And It Works! SXSWedu Video Interview

When I first sat down with Andrew Bender, President and CEO of instaGrok I was mesmerized at what I saw. I originally though that a “research engine” would be boring, or at best a fancy way to say search engine, and Google has determined we don’t need anymore of those.

Once Bender took me through a demo I wished that instaGrok was around when I was in school. I told Bender that I am a very visual person. I “white board” just about everything, drawing webs, flowcharts and arrows all over the place. Well instaGrok takes whatever your researching and visually shows the user how things are connected.

Bender showed me two examples. The first was gravity. As you can see from the grok above gravity is connected to Einstein, equation, orbit, object, universe, scientists, force, astronaut, and Newton. When you’re on the instaGrok site if you click on any of the circles another web appears showing how the connections are connected to other things.

On the right side bar instaGrok connects the user to key facts, websites, videos, images, quizzes and a glossary. Now the user is connected to mountains worth of research in a very easy to understand and navigate UI. If a user was actually working on a research paper about gravity they could pin anything from the right hand columns directly into the grok.

The other topic we looked at was “Brown v Brown” and a user built grok. This grok features a bunch of links that the creator has added, or pinned, to it with the information they need.

You don’t need to register for instaGrok, but if you do you can save the groks you create for as long as you would like.

We got a chance to interview Bender at the LAUNCHedu showcase as part of SXSWedu. Check out the video interview below:

Check out instaGrok here

Here’s more of our SXSW13 coverage at nibletz.com

Flinja The Place To Find Free Lance Ninjas SXSWedu Video Interview

There are so many reasons we like Flinja. First off, their name is short for Freelance Ninja, and any startup with the word Ninja in it rocks. Secondly they are connecting college students with ways to make money by sharing their service as free-lancers with college alumni.

The startup, founded by Rebecca Bahr and Victor Young, is a market place for current college students to find free-lance employment opportunities from alumni. Bahr says they’ve pivoted several times. When they first set out on the free lance ninja concept the platform was closed to each students actual school. Well Bahr, who went to college in Montreal, found it hard to find people to connect with when she needed a service provider in California.

Now, any college student can be a service provider to any college graduate from any school in their network.

Students are utilizing Flinja to offer videography services, photography services, wedding planning services, tutoring in a variety of subjects and anything else that they could do for others for a little money on the side (legal of course).

The hope is that the alumni or college graduates that hire the students as freelancers may be a gateway to more stable employment.

The Flinja marketplace is self contained. When a college graduate is looking for a service provider they can search through Flinja, see a provider (students) feedback and ratings, set up the service, agree to pay and actually finish the transaction. Flinja takes a small percentage from the person hiring, not from the college student.

UCLA was the first school to adopt the Flinja platform. Students are being hired as videographers, editors and tutors.

Flinja is a finalist in the LAUNCHedu competition at SXSWedu in the higher education category. They will appear in the showdown later this week.

Check out our video interview with Bahr below and for more info visit flinja.com

We’ve got more SXSWedu coverage here.

NY Startup: Slate Science Launches SlateMath, Closes $1.1M Angel Roud

With a fresh $1.1 million dollars in the bank, New York EdTech startup Slate Science has announced the launch of their newest STEM educational product, SlateMath.

SlateMath can be downloaded in multiple languages and is available now in Apple’s App Store.

The SlateMath series was conceived to address a global frustration with math learning. The company’s breakthrough learning methodologies tap into children’s natural and intuitive learning processes, and help them acquire knowledge and competence constructively, using self-guided as well as teacher-guided exploration. “SlateMath has two purposes,” said Prof. Shimon Schocken, one of the company’s co-founders, “to teach math proper through self-paced and engaging discovery, and to expose children to the ways mathematicians think and reason about the world. We see a tremendous opportunity to use tablet technology and constructive pedagogy to endear math to children, and to help them develop into confident and competent thinkers.”

The SlateMath series was designed from the ground up for an environment consisting of tablets, cloud computing, and standardized curricula. The series is based on a huge portfolio of modular, richly-indexed, and recombinant educational apps that Slate Science is now developing. Subsets of the SlateMath portfolio can be assembled to support existing textbooks and learning programs as well as the new wave of emerging digital textbooks. The software also adapts the contents dynamically, to address the learner’s revealed strengths and weaknesses in real time.

“SlateMath is a game changer because it offers a new and innovative approach to teach math. The product is based on an experiential context, hands-on learning, and self-discovery, making the best utilization of the tablet’s touch interface I’ve seen thus far in educational apps. This approach allows children to acquire and understand math ‘in their bones’. The Slate Science technology and learning methodologies are applicable not only to math, but to many other STEM subjects as well,” said Robert Scoble.

In conjunction with the launch, Slate Science announced the closing of a $1.1 Million angel round of funding led by private investors. The funds will be used for continued product innovation, marketing and operational costs.

Slate Science was founded by an A-team of educators and engineers with more than 100 years of combined experience in science education, instructional software development, and mobile platforms. The company developed a proprietary technology and a field-proven methodology for teaching STEM fields. Rather than oferring frontal videos and drill and skill practice, the company is focusing on crafting constructive learning environments that guide children through a rewarding process of self-discovery and intuitive exploration. The company’s proprietary authoring technology enables it to develop and deploy its learning apps in a remarkably efficient and timely manner.

Slate Science builds portfolios of educational apps designed to support standard STEM curricula while allowing students to develop, deeply understand, and experience hands-on conceptual learning. The company’s first series of products is SlateMath, intended for the consumer market and aimed to support math instruction according to the Common Core Standards. A school version of SlateMath, intended for classroom use and equipped with a suite of teaching aids, will be released soon.

For more information visit: slatescience.com

Google Offers 3 Days of “Google In Education” At SXSW13

Educators, innovators and educational entrepreneurs have descended upon Austin Texas for sxswedu. This four day shoulder festival to SXSWi has doubled in growth every year since it’s debut in 2011.

This year Google has opened up Google School at the Austin Convention Center. At Google School teachers, educators and innovators can learn about Google in the classroom.

Google offers plenty of products for education. Here at the Google Classroom attendees can see how effective Google’s ChromeBooks can be for students in grades K-12 and Higher Ed.

Google is also offer round the clock programming (or classes) through Wednesday with topics that include Google Earth, 40 ways to use Google Apps in the Classroom, a Google Science Fair, Digital Literacy, Chromebooks in the classroom and much more. You can find an entire list of the programming here at google.com/edu

I just enjoyed a class taught by Jordan Pedrazzo on using Google Apps in the classroom. The focus was on using GMail and also Google Groups as a way to communicate with students and parents. Google’s educational services are perfect for all types of students even those in alternative education.

Check our more of our SXSWedu coverage here.

Check out the LAUNCHedu Higher Ed Startup Finalists at SXSWedu

Earlier this morning we told you about LAUNCHedu a new startup initiative going on now at SXSWedu. The educational festival as part of SXSW continues to grow and now offers four full days of programming, panels, keynotes and startups. The biggest startup portion for SXSWedu is the LAUNCHedu event.

LAUNCHedu celebrates the convergence of “today’s dynamic educators, and entrepreneurs transforming classrooms and revolutionizing schooling.” Four great educators and entrepreneurs will emcee the LAUNCHedu festivities. They are: EdSurge co-founder Betsy Corcoran, Trinity Education Group partner and CIO Clyde Boyer , GSV founder and managing partner Deborah Quazzo, and Trinity Education Group founder and CEO Hugh Norwood.

The criteria the LAUNCHedu startup finalists were judged on was:

Creativity (Originality of Idea)
Potential (Longevity, Actualization and Profitability of idea)
Functionality (Usability of interface for idea)
Team / People (Who is your team and how will they make your company a success?)

Here are the Higher Ed startup finalists from the LAUNCHedu website:

CollegeSnapps

collegesnapps.com
CollegeSnapps™ is a mobile communication platform that facilitates students’ progress to-and-through college by pairing an innovative mobile app that delivers just-in-time, high quality information and alerts to students with a multi-functional web-based dashboard in order for high school counselors and college advisors to effectively communicate with and support their students.

Flinja

flinja.com
Flinja is an exclusive, college-centric marketplace where students, staff and alumni can hire and be hired. We provide a vetted, freelance workforce of talented college students and alumni. Our mission is to innovate the hiring process by connecting user participation with college affiliation.

Kahoot!

getkahoot.com
Kahoot! is a platform that enables learners to play with knowledge in a collaborative and social manner. A web-based, mobile and tablet friendly educational platform, with a core emphasis on user experience design in a social, fun and game-like environment.

LRNGO

LRNGO.com
LRNGO.com is a marketplace where people can teach their skills and connect through learning. On LRNGO, you can buy, sell or trade what you know for leisure or achieving your goals. Teach. Learn. Share. LRNGO, INC. is a company that develops social learning utilities to accelerate the transfer of knowledge.

Matchbox, Inc.

matchbox.net
Matchbox disrupts undergraduate and graduate admissions by replacing outdated software with an iPad app. Our streamlined system gives customers a competitive advantage by arriving at decisions faster and gaining visibility into the incoming class. This insight enables universities to proactively adjust their recruitment efforts improving yield and increasing tuition revenue.

MediaCore

mediacore.com
MediaCore’s video learning platform is the fastest way for anyone at any institution to easily capture, manage and share media content securely and privately. Currently it serves over 500,000 students at 300+ schools and universities worldwide.

More Than Money Careers

morethanmoneycareers.com/
MTM Careers helps college students and graduates get clear, get connected, and get hired for well-paying jobs in CSR, sustainable business, and social enterprise. Since 2010, over 30 universities have leveraged our process and resources via our online staff and faculty training programs or our ‘Netflix for Impact Careers’ library.

School Yourself

schoolyourself.org
We’re reinventing math textbooks by making them more fun and affordable. So far, we’ve launched three e-books (most recently “Hands-On Calculus”), each of which we wrote and published ourselves. Unlike almost all other textbooks on the market, our books make math come alive with engaging content and touch-based interactive demos.

scrible

scrible.com
We make useful online reading and research apps that enable you to annotate/comment on webpages in your browser and then save, share and manage them in the cloud. Our Student Edition adds academic features (e.g. citations, bibliographies, reports, etc.). Instructors use scrible for thoughtful and collaborative e-reading assignments.

SpeakingPal

speakingpal.com
SpeakingPal is an innovative education company with a unique focus on teaching English speaking skills using automatic speech recognition on smartphones, tablets and Smart TVs. Founded in 2009, SpeakingPal’s multidisciplinary team has created highly engaging and interactive educational products that are used by over 1M people worldwide, and growing.

MapStory

mapstory.org
MapStory, a compliment to Wikipedia, is a new dimension to the global data commons that empowers a global user community to organize knowledge about the world spatially and temporally. Perhaps more important, MapStory is an infrastructure enabling ‘MapStorytelling’ as a means of communicating important issues to a global audience.

USEED

useed.org
USEED is re-engineering philanthropy in Higher Education. We provide universities and colleges with an innovative online fundraising solution specifically tailored to the unique challenges within the industry. USEED builds a large pipeline of new donors for the institution while simultaneously empowering students to pursue their dreams and discover their passions.

See These LAUNCHedu K-12 Startup Finalists At SXSWedu

South By Southwest’s education event, sxswedu, continues to grow. This year they have four full days of programming beginning today and running through Thursday March 7th. SXSWedu takes place at the Austin Convention Center and surrounding hotels, and is quickly gaining popularity.

While many startups are participating in SXSWinteractive, EdTech or educational startups are launching at sxswedu as part of the new LAUNCHedu event. Startups in the LAUNCHedu finals will be presenting at the Hilton Austin Downtown in room 404 throughout the event. The complete schedule of presenting startups in the LAUNCHedu Startup Showcase can be found here.

Here are the 2013 LAUNCHedu K-12 Finalists from the SXSWedu website:

Actively Learn

activelylearn.com
Reading is the bedrock of education, but two-thirds of eighth graders cannot understand what they read. Actively Learn has created a reading environment to teach students to be advanced readers. Educators are empowered with tools for personalized instruction and analytics of student learning within the context of Common Core standards.

Classroom, Inc.

classroominc.org
Classroom, Inc. prepares struggling middle and high school students for success in and beyond school. Acting as bankers, editors, and lawyers in our workplace simulations, students use their academic, critical-thinking, and 21st century skills to solve authentic problems.

Clever

getclever.com
Founded by a teacher tired of chaos in the computer lab, Clever solves a common frustration with educational software: logins. Clever automatically syncs student accounts from a school’s information system (SIS) into programs students use. Over 50 companies and 3,000 schools use Clever to make their classroom software “just work”.

Common Curriculum

commoncurriculum.com
Common Curriculum is building the Google Docs of education. Our free site lets teachers collaboratively plan units and lessons while aligning them to the Common Core. Teachers and districts will be able to sell their work through our online marketplace or purchase new material by dragging it into their plans.

DigitWhiz

digitwhiz.com
DigitWhiz is all about making sure kids master foundational math skills in a fun and effective way. We evaluate, prescribe individualized games and guide kids to master the skills they need. Play on desktops or iPad. Teacher-built and kid approved!

Duckie Deck

duckiedeck.com
At Duckie Deck we provide smiles. Over eight million toddlers played our games and smiled. We teach things that are important for their future, things that matter to their parents. We explain why sharing with others is so important. Why we should brush our teeth and what does friendship mean.

instaGrok

instaGrok.com
instaGrok is a research engine: we make it incredibly simple to discover, learn, and share information. Users explore graphical concept maps that show how ideas connect. They can also customize the maps (with key facts, links, and images) and then share them with friends, colleagues, and classmates.

Learnsprout

learnsprout.com
LearnSprout simplifies systems integration and reveals key insights on student performance and engagement with the first universal API to pull live data from leading student information systems. Free to schools and districts, LearnSprout is the easiest and most secure, FERPA compliant method for integrating an SIS within the edtech ecosystem.

Slate Science

slatescience.com
Slate Science is transforming mobile devices into interactive, adaptive learning platforms for K12 STEM education. Our platform enables rapid, multi-platform development of modular learning units, designed to offer performance-based, student-specific learning experiences. The SlateMath CC-compatible portfolio includes hundreds of recombinant learning units, each imparting a specific mathematical skill or concept.

Teaching Channel

teachingchannel.org
Teaching Channel is a community of educators focused on self-improvement that attracts 250,000 users/month. Visitors to the website find a high-quality video library – featuring exemplar teachers – paired with intuitive annotation tools. With TchTeams, Teaching Channel’s private collaboration platform, schools and districts can now enable their teachers to learn together.

ThinkCERCA

thinkcerca.com
ThinkCERCA is a Chicago-based company passionately committed to improving the quality of K-12 education. Developed by a team of nationally recognized literacy experts, the online platform allows teacher teams to design, deliver, and assess lessons using the CERCA argumentation framework. The expert lesson library delivers rigorous, personalized learning across disciplines.

zondle

zondle.com
A games-based learning web and mobile platform grounded in neuroscience that enables teachers and students to create, play and share games to support teaching and learning. User-created questions (multiple formats, any language, any age group) can be combined with multiple casual games for students to play and practice.

We’ve got much more SXSW13 coverage here!

EdTech Startup 19 Pencils Is Saving Lots Of Time For K-6 Teachers

Most teachers don’t have nearly enough time to spend finding resources and lesson planning. Cuts in education typically mean that average teachers have a larger class load, and some are often faced with pulling down multiple jobs in school and even after school. This can be especially difficult for K-6 teachers who often want to give their students all they possibly can.

This is where Jason Fabbri and his Sacremento based educational startup 19Pencils comes in. 19Pencils provides an online community for like minded elementary school teachers. Using their platform teachers can search and discover great educational content and upload and share things that have worked for them in the classroom.

Fabbri has been a software engineer for the last 17 years. He’s had a long career with Adobe contributing to projects like Photoshop Elements, Photoshop Services and more. It was volunteering at his children’s schools that prompted him to create 19Pencils. He saw firsthand the frustration that teachers had in curating good web content for first grade students, and then sharing it.

We got a chance to talk to Fabbri in depth about 19Pencils and the growing startup community in Sacremento, just 90 minutes outside of Silicon Valley. Check out the interview below.

Maryland Media Firm: Discovery Communications, Backs “Pinterest For Learning” Grockit

The Maryland mega media firm that owns cable channels TLC and the Discovery Channel, Discovery Communications has made a financial and strategic investment into valley startup, Grockit.

Grockit has iterated several times since coming onto the scene in 2006 as a video test prep course for standardized testing. They relaunched at TechCrunch 50 in 2008 as a hybrid of test prep and a multi-player learning game.

Today, they’ve iterated again, keeping their feet firmly implanted in social learning. They’ve added a new product to the mix called Learnist, which allows teachers and students to discover, share and clip content from the web to a clipboard. Grockit’s Founder Farbood Nivi told TechCrunch that the Learnist product has seen 400% growth and doubled their user session length from 10 minutes to over 20 minutes.

While Learnist targets students in grades K-12 quickly checking out the site you’ll find that in can easily be expanded to assist with socially learning anything from K-college and beyond.

TechCrunch is reporting that the financial investment from Discovery Communications was $20 million dollars. GigaOM is quick to add that the strategic partnership includes shared technology, marketing, distribution and promotion. Of course everyone is thinking that Discovery will integrate the Learnist and Grockit technology into the web/social companion products for Discovery’s top brands.

“We think of our audience as people who are curious,” said Roy Gilbert, CEO of Grockit said to GigaOM. “We’re blurring the layer between things I need to learn in the classroom – common core [content] – and general nonfiction media. People are coming to the internet, not just to do differential equations but to learn about what’s going on in Syria.”

Linkage:

Checkout Grockit here

More startup news from “everywhere else” here

Here’s more info on everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

Indian Startup: EduBuzzer Makes It Simple For Schools To Communicate With Students & Parents

Although the fundamentals of communication are often taught in schools, sometimes schools, colleges and universities have the hardest time communicating with students and even parents. That’s the problem that Indian startup EduBuzzer is fixing with their simple and easy to use application.

EdBuzzer makes it easy for any school teacher, or administrator at any level of education to communicate quickly with one set of students, a single student or the entire student body. EdBuzzer makes it easy to send out assignments, grades, and even newsletters without the cumbersome nature of bulk and mass emails.

The startup based in Chandigarh India, prides itself on absolute simplicity. They want busy teachers and even secretaries to be able to help communicate important messages at anytime.

EduBuzzer is actually a product from educational startup Chalkpad which bills themselves as “Educational Technology Specialists”.

We got to talk with Abhiraj Malhorta a trailblazer at Chalkpad and one of the co-founders of EduBuzzer. Check out the interview below.

Orlando Startup: ASPIREDU Is Helping College Students Stay In School

A group of educators based in Florida has teamed together to help prevent attrition and improve the dropout rate of college students. It’s a pretty big goal for Orlando startup ASPIREDU.

They’re not offering incentives, rewards or a cute little app to manage the school day better. The team behind ASPIREDU is taking their decades of experience in education and using an analytics tool to help identify at risk students enrolled in online courses so that they can help these schools better manage student retention.

While they’ve been working on ASPIREDU for quite some time they just launched their public facing product after months of testing, yesterday.

The combine a simple overview of at risk students with easy access to details about each student, which helps colleges and universities have a better overall picture of students that could drop out.

ASPIREDU was formed after one of the cofounders, who had been in higher education for ten years, found that she was spending over half her day working on student retention. When she went searching for a software tool to help identify and manage at risk students there wasn’t one.

The bootstrapped startup received a little seed money in the form of a grant from Startup Weekend EDU.

We got a chance to talk with one of the founders Kevin Kopas, about ASPIREDU, because the other two cofounders are still working on ASPIREDU while employed full time they’ve withheld their names for this interview. Check out the interview below.

California Teenage Serial Entrepreneur Creates EdTech Startup StatFuse

Jeet Banerjee is a 20 year old entrepreneur from Fullerton California, a town outside Los Angeles. He started his first startup at age 17 and sold it. Since then he’s had numerous other innovative ideas and he’s also written a book called “The Pursuit of Passion: Entrepreneurs Guide To Turn Hobbies Into Successful Businesses.”. Now he’s teamed up with 18 year old Supan Shah to create an EdTech startup called StatFuse, that really benefit students in their age group.

Their idea actually came out of a bet. Shah bet Banerjee that he could get into Harvard. There was a lot riding on this bet and neither young man wanted to wait the four months it takes to find out if he was accepted. They were shocked to find there wasn’t a website where they could quickly enter grades, extra curriculars and test scores to see if getting into Harvard was even a possibility.

Like all other great startups, this idea steam rolled into an entire suite of patent pending tools for prospective college students to use. Now StatFuse can estimate your chances at getting into a school, keep track of your applications, provide tips to improve chances of getting into colleges and even give virtual campus tours.

While there are other college preparation tools out there, StatFuse has been created by two incredibly intelligent founders who are currently at the age where their tools would be the most relevant.

We got a chance to interview Banerjee, check out our interview below.

Louisville Startup: Kodable Teaching Kids 5 And Up How To Code

When you start talking to technical co-founders of today’s startups, most of them talk about how they’ve been coding in some form or another since they were little kids. Such is the case for Jon Mattingly the co-founder of Louisville startup SurfScore and their newest product Kodable. Mattingly started “fiddling” with computers at the age of 6, and now he and cofounder Grechen Huebner are setting out to teach a new breed of grade school kids how to code.

Kodable is a new iPad game that teaches kids aged five and up how to code. This is taught by teaching the fundamentals of programming and problem solving in a fun way. Kids are learning these fundamentals without even realizing it.

“It introduces the basic concepts of programming, including conditionals, loops and functions, in an abstract way simple enough for young children to understand. Kids give the characters, called fuzzes, commands that guide them through a maze. This challenges children to think through a problem in multiple ways before deciding on a solution, then rewards them for choosing the most efficient path.” Huebner told us in an interview.

There’s a variety of software out there now that teaches even younger children the fundamentals of reading. Huebner and Mattingly thought that if those skills could be learned at an early age, programming could be taught the same way. Mattingly credits Hubener’s artistic ability with actually making these skills fun to learn and easy to understand.

Check out the rest of our interview with the SurfScore/Kodable team below.