Meet the startup founders bringing edtech back into the classroom and into teachers' hands

Advertisement
Meet the startup founders bringing edtech back into the classroom and into teachers' hands

Students work laptops library university computer internet

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Advertisement
  • Education Technology, or ed-tech, is experiencing a resurgence thanks to a new crop of startups building powerful tools for the millions of teachers in classrooms.
  • Some of these startups are graduates of prestigious Silicon Valley startup programs like Y Combinator. or have won the backing of the Chan Zuckerberg initiative.
  • Business Insider spoke with the growing field of "teacher tech" startups to learn why designing with teachers in mind is crucial to the next wave of edtech innovation.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

After disrupting taxis and hotels, Silicon Valley set its sights on the classroom.

On Tuesday, a pension fund in Canada announced a new investment group focused solely on startups creating tecj for teachers. Although the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan hasn't' yet set an allocation target for its Teachers Innovation Platform, the move is a sign of growing momentum in a new "ed-tech" boom.

Complimentary Tech Event
Transform talent with learning that works
Capability development is critical for businesses who want to push the envelope of innovation.Discover how business leaders are strategizing around building talent capabilities and empowering employee transformation.Know More

Education technology took off years ago with products to help parents bolster their children's education, especially in areas where schools sometimes fell short like science and engineering. Parents used these apps to gamify learning and supplement what their children were taught in the classroom.

Read More: Slow Ventures, the VC firm started by ex-Facebook employees, is losing 2 partners but spreading its bets on bigger companies

Advertisement

But the edtech industry, now in its adolescence, is working its way back into classrooms and into teachers' hands. The idea is to enhance teaching, as much as learning. Business Insider caught up with some of these new "teacher tech" startups to learn about the latest trends and innovations.

Here are some of the hottest startups designing tech products for the millions of teachers in the US and throughout the world.

{{}}

Education Modified

Education Modified

Melissa Corto founded Education Modified in 2011 to improve instruction for students with special needs. Education Modified uses verified research to back up its approach and provides teachers with instant access to learning-needs information, strategies, data collection & workflow tools to support them in the classroom

"As a former special educator for 9 years, it was important for us to build technology for teachers — specifically special education teachers — because as professionals they need it," said Corto in an email statement to Business Insider. "We know more about special needs and neuro-diversity than we ever have before, but teachers don't have easy access to this information, nor are there workflow solutions to tie this content to students and track what works for student progress."

Brightwheel

Brightwheel

In 2014, Dave Vasen founded Brightwheel to provide an all-in-one software platform to help teachers manage their preschool classrooms. The platform, backed by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2018, also allows preschool administrators to run the school in addition to helping on the business side of things.

"Our focus is on teachers," Vasen wrote to Business Insider. "We have spent hundreds of hours observing, shadowing, and listening to teachers in order to build a product that is intuitive and adds real value. As we take feedback from teachers every day, we rapidly make improvements and launch new features. The result is a product that is built for them. We're proud that Brightwheel saves as much as one hour per staff member per day — time that goes back to young students and making life easier for teachers."

Advertisement

Tailor-ED

Tailor-ED

Tailor-ED launched out of Silicon Valley incubator Y-Combinator in March 2019. Founder and CEO Maayan Yavne started Tailor-ED to take on the "one size fits all" approach of matching students and teachers in the classroom. Her company assesses student needs via short quizzes and groups them based on the results. Tailor-ED then matches teachers to personalized lesson plans based on the groups' needs.

"Teachers are almost always overlooked and undervalued, yet have the greatest impact on student achievement," Yavne told Business Insider. "The key to unlocking the potential in every student is empowering teachers with the tools and resources to do so."

RocketLit

RocketLit

Another Y-Combinator alum, RocketLit works with science and social studies teachers to develop lesson plans around adaptive reading and reading comprehension. Brendan Finch, CEO and cofounder, said the goal is to train "the next generation of scientists" by teaching them to use skills learned in the classroom to solve novel problems.

"I started RocketLit from my classroom after teaching science for 7 years to brilliant students that struggled with reading," Finch emailed Business Insider. "They needed to improve their reading level and learn new Science concepts, so we built RocketLit so teachers could individualize instruction for every student."

Advertisement