K12 Imagineers: A glorious four minutes. That was the length of the "graduation speech" each of ten startups got to give before 100 or so potential investors at the Demo day for Imagine K12's first cohort. EdSurge heard good buzz from investors who listened to the presentations. Even so, Imagine K12 cofounders cautioned their entrepreneurs that this was just the beginning of their funding steeplechase. The ten present again this Wednesday morning (9:30 am PT) at TechCrunch's Disrupt SF. Watch 'em here. Cheat sheet below. Beta alert! All of these companies are rocking into beta.
- ClassConnect: an LMS for creating, editing, and sharing content between teachers and their classes.
- ClassDojo: gets students to pay attention and behave by gamifying the classroom and offering virtual incentives.
- Educreations: lets teachers record and post short lessons on the web so students can access them any time. (Think ShowMe).
- Eduvant: a data dashboard for principals, loaded with analytical tools.
- Eleven Learning: a low-cost platform for crowdsourcing textbooks.
- FormativeLearning: professional development tool that helps teachers do federally mandated "teacher effectiveness" observations and evaluations, and build their own individual learning plans.
- Goalbook: a platform that helps teachers, parents, and students collaboratively track students' individual achievements and learning goals.
- Nunook: online social games for teaching grade-school children math and grammar. First suite of games: BrainNook.
- Remind101: a free and safe service that lets teachers text messages to any mobile phone used by students and parents.
- TutorCloud: feels like Odesk for tutoring: you get to pick your tutor and your price.
