Last year I covered Berkery Noyes' first-ever Venture Capital Summit in Education held at Stanford, where VCs and private equity firms talked about the enormous potential in disrupting one of the world's biggest industries, one that still remains tantalizingly locked up by bureaucracies within bureaucracies. This year's edition will be held at the SoHo HQ of Scholastic, the ginormous kid's publisher, and co-sponsored by Startl, the "venture philanthropy" and educational startup incubator. Yesterday they announced the 10 early-stage companies that will be part of their showcase. These run the gamut of approaches to the challenges of better teaching and learning using technology.
There are the gamers: Muzzy Lane
Software, which does immersive 3-D learning environments (like a
really cool one of Boston's Chinatown), and Launchpad Toys, which makes
Toontastic, "a storytelling and animation tool for the iPad" that
debuted at this year's Maker Faire.
There are the social networks: Everloop
is for tweens and Notehall enables
the sale of notes and tests, student to student (sounds a little
shady!) There are iPhone/iPad based companies: Watermelon
Express (test prep), Irynsoft (full course
delivery, with social networking) and CCKF (an
agnostic "adaptive learning" engine). Then there's the miscellaneous: Presence Telecare brings speech
pathologists to work with students over video chat, and FairChoice Systems helps
colleges organize their health information and deliver needed info to
students on their smartphones.
To read the full, original article click on this link: 10 New Education Companies to Watch (Plus 3 More for Extra Credit) | Fast Company
Author: Anya Kamenetz
