TinyTap Taps into Educational Games and Interactive Lessons
Just as indie coders can create hot new apps, teachers and students can develop educational content with widespread appeal. However, teachers and students often face technological barriers to producing and distributing great content. TinyTap, a platform for creating interactive lessons and educational games, solves this problem: TinyTap allows anyone to easily create and share engaging educational […]
Real Pain Points, Real Solutions: Oakland Startup Weekend Education
When we met Nina Portugal two weeks ago at a Teach For America information session about Oakland’s first-ever Startup Weekend EDU, she described the specific struggles of her long-term English learner students at Castlemont High School in Oakland. Nina was on the fence about pitching her idea in front of hundreds of strangers, but eventually joined the other 32 brave souls who pitched ideas to improve education. Little did Nina expect that over the course of just 54 hours, her team, Rock Your Voice, would create a product she could put to use on Monday morning in her classroom. Nina now has a voice transcription tool to better assess her students’ language and literacy skills.
Video: NewSchools Entrepreneurs Celebrate Our Work Together in This Holiday Video
It is that time of year when we reflect on what occurred in the past and what we have in front of us in the future. This year, we thought we’d let our entrepreneurs do the talking for us. As a whole, the entrepreneurs in NewSchools portfolio embody what Nelson Mandela encouraged all people to strive for in their lives when he said, “What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others…”
Welcome Zach Levine, Learning to Teach EIR
How are we meant to prepare our children for a harder future when we don’t have enough teachers, let alone qualified ones, to inspire them?
This is a crisis. A crisis of both quantity and quality of the most important ingredient for a first-rate education system. Fortunately many have heeded the call and are working hard to address this serious but solvable issue, including our new Learning to Teach Entrepreneur in Residence, Zach Levine.
I’m thrilled to welcome Zach to NewSchools and thankful that he’s working with us to found ElevatED, a new nonprofit that adds to the shared mission of NewSchools and our partners to improve STEM education by building a cadre of great STEM teachers.
NewSchools Invests in Accelerator to Elevate Leaders of Color
It is often stated that education is the civil rights issue of our time. While there are many aspects related to equity in education that need to be addressed, a particular area of concern for NewSchools is the lack of racial diversity in leadership roles representing the very communities we serve. In a step toward change, NewSchools is pleased to be working with Carmita Vaughan on a leadership accelerator to identify, train and provide career counsel to emerging leaders of color in the education reform movement.
Book Smarts vs Street Smarts: aka Edtech Founders as Action Researchers
Last week I was in Boston visiting two of our portfolio companies, BetterLesson and Socrative. Spending time with entrepreneurs is, by far, the best part of my job.
I’m always moved by the passion of our entrepreneurs. As always, Ben Berte (Socrative) and Alex Grodd (BetterLesson) left me inspired by their commitment to supporting teachers. However, in this visit, I took away a new appreciation for how technology products are moving beyond just teacher productivity and into deeper issues of instruction and teacher learning.
Announcing Readworks.org: The Best Kept Secret in Reading Comprehension
We are thrilled to welcome Readworks.org to the Seed Fund portfolio. It’s a humble and hardworking nonprofit, with a maniacal focus on quality. They’ve mostly flown under the radar since their founding in 2010, spending zero dollars on marketing. Even so, they’ve grown organically through teacher word of mouth resulting in 3 million reading lessons downloaded and 270 websites linked to their materials.
Learning in 2028
We are happy to make recordings of all the Summit 2013 sessions available to you. You can also check Our Vimeo Page where these and other sessions live.
Innovators in Education
After 15 years of working to improve education by supporting and enabling the ideas and efforts of passionate innovators, instead of looking back, NewSchools Venture Fund is looking 15 years further down the road. We believe that looking toward the future is key to preparing for it. We also believe that the best way to understand the future is to listen to those creating it. Hear from NewSchools entrepreneurs about the challenges facing education, the solutions they are creating and the visions of the future informing and driving their work forward.
Lessons from Mark Pincus
A great sales and marketing executive I once worked with was fond of saying: “If you don’t know you’re winning, you’re probably not.” I was reminded of this quote during John Doerr’s fascinating conversation with Mark Pincus of Zynga and Andrew Ng of Coursera during Summit 2013’s closing plenary.