MEET THE 6 STARTUPS
STARTUPS FOR CHANGE IN EDUCATION & PASSIONATE FOUNDERS
Standard printed worksheets offer equality to every student, but fail to deliver equity and meet individual student needs. Worksheets are a time and money drain for teachers, and do not provide the data teachers and administrators need. Bright Angle’s platform transforms a teacher’s printed worksheets into an engaging and equitable format. Once a digital Brightsheet is created, it is tailored by our technology for student’s individual learning needs (dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD, ESL, visual/auditory, etc.) and interests (favorite color, activity, sport, animal, etc.) while providing valuable data summaries to teachers, parents, and admins.
Brittany Hicks
Brittany left her corporate engineering career to pursue her passion for innovation in education. Although she has never been a full-time educator, she has spent many hours as a volunteer in the classroom facilitating lessons and designing curricula. The Bright Angle platform was inspired by opportunities for improvement she observed inside the classroom and while helping her nephew, who has ADHD, complete homework. She is a passionate advocate for girls in STEAM and for students with learning disabilities.
disruptED is bringing learning to life and reimagining education by using Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality to create interactive, engaging, and immersive education tools for Pre-K to 3rd grade. We created a blended learning program that brings immersive educational tools and conventional teaching methods together to engage all children in the process of learning in an affordable and portable way. Our mobile platform gives learners a choice of AR or VR for their immersive learning journey. We include gamified activities in each book that allows readers to explore deeper learning objectives. Our Teacher Guides offer the vital roadmap educators need to take the guesswork out of integrating this exciting new immersive technology into the classroom.
Kate Peiler
Kate is the Founder and CEO of disruptED. She evolved her creative and technical skills into interactive, scenario based and gamification learning. She has over 20 years experience running her own production company, building award winning learning teams, and pioneering AR/VR into marketing and learning campaigns for fortune 500 companies.
This app provides a revolutionary framework for introducing and practicing elementary math. It is simple and intuitive enough to support counting into the thousands (and back down to zero) without the use of words. It is also deep enough to introduce many more advanced topics* using the same simple, tangible, intuitive model. This app is badly needed and can help heal, and prevent, oceans of math trauma. The app has not yet been named. It is written in Java and currently in an advanced prototype phase.
*supported topics include: addition, subtraction, number bonds, mental math, regrouping, multiplication, and division.
Mike Otten
I'm a passionate educator with a deep, almost pathological, commitment to preparation. I prepare instructional materials to teach with, and practice materials for learning and reinforcement. Before launching this project I spent 5 years teaching K-5 Elementary Math. Prior to that I spent 15 years teaching college and professional Computer Science courses. I find that the harder I work, and the deeper I dig, the more empowerment I get to witness in students.
Learn2Code.Live’s solution addresses the imperative need for K-12 computer science teachers by empowering every K-12 teacher to confidently integrate coding in their classrooms. To this end, Learn2Code.Live provides on-demand K-12 coding curriculum, teacher professional development and live help integrated in one cloud-hosted LMS accessible from anywhere. Learn2Code.Live’s on-demand professional development and live virtual coaching sessions with teachers is staggered across the academic year ensuring continual feedback and improved confidence among teachers. The standards-based solution works with existing technology at school and scales across campuses with ease.
Smita Shrivastava
Smita is a software industry veteran and an entrepreneur with two decades of experience in various technical and business roles at Silicon Valley technology companies. She is passionate about computer science education and founded Learn2Code.Live with the single goal of enabling easy access to computer science education at K-12 schools. She holds a Bachelors in Engineering from IIT Kharagpur, India, Masters in Computer Science from the University of California, Santa Cruz and MBA from INSEAD, France.
MamaLingua is a language learning platform that helps parents raise bilingual kids. Our first app, organized by daily activities and routines parents share with their kids at home, empowered parents with young children to speak Spanish through everyday words and phrases. The app is bilingual and continues to be downloaded by users across the globe, with minimal marketing. We're in the process of launching our second app, MamaLingua Go!, with audio stories, e-books, and learning activities. Our content is informed by teaching standards and evidence-based practices that support a bilingual education. We’ve created a platform for parents to support a bilingual education where they can find rich content for everyday moments with their child at home and on the go!
Aileen Passariello McAleer
Aileen Passariello-McAleer is an American of Venezuelan descent from Miami, FL. Her parents immigrated to the United States to provide their future children with better opportunities. Shortly after graduating from the University of Texas with her MBA, Aileen launched MamaLingua with her co-founder, Christia Madacsi Hoffman. As new moms with an entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for language, they wanted to help families raise bilingual children and set out to create a new solution.
Moolah U has spent decades understanding how young people can build good financial habits, and has developed a series of real-life real-money programs with the sole mission of equipping families with the tools to build lives of financial stability and contribution. To make this available to parents everywhere, our learning system is now embedded in a family financial App that structures hands-on experiences with money, building financial responsibility skills from a young age. We believe that with a system that integrates education and budgeting systems, with transactional services, parents can confidently offer their kids financial autonomy through real experiences with money.
