PHILLY'S BEST: Osmosis and Totus Power each took home a nice chunk of the $140,000 cash prizes up for grabs at the 2014 Milken-Penn Graduate School of Education Business Competition, organized by Executive Director of Academic Innovation Barbara “Bobbi” Kurshan.
Philadelphia-based Osmosis won the First Place Milken Family Foundation Prize (worth $25K) and the American Public University System Prize for Innovation in Online Education (another $25K) with a tool designed to help medical students retain what they’re learning. San Franciso-based Totus Power, which creates battery packs to power schools in communities with limited access to electricity, took the Second Place Milken Family Foundation Prize ($15K) and the TSL Borderless Education Teacher Prize ($10K).
Other winners were:
- K12 Online Learning Prize ($25K): Branching Minds, a web-based tool that uses advances in neuroscience to help parents and teachers identify and address learning challenges more efficiently and affordably.
- Educational Services of America Prize for Innovation in the Fields of Special Education and At-Risk Students ($25K): Professor Word, a tool that encourages students to learn vocabulary words as they’re reading on the web.
- McGraw-Hill Education Prize for Open Educational Resources ($15K): EduCanon, an interactive video teaching platform (who also won Monday night’s 1776 U.S. Education Prize in Washington, DC).
- Halloran Philanthropies Borderless Education Social Impact Prize ($5,000): UBONGO, creator of edutainment-style digital content for young students in Tanzania.
All finalists and semi-finalists have been invited to participate in the Education Design Studio affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.
