IMAGINEERS, UNITE: The second batch of Imagine K12's startups shared their four-minute stories with a room of investors and edtech dabblers at Tuesday's Demo Day, the culmination of their three-month odyssey in the program (but just an early milestone in their long, long journey). And it certainly seemed like Alan, Tim and Geoff whipped the guys--and gal--into shape: they delivered lean and crisp pitches, sans the fluff. Fun Imagine K12 factoid: 6 of the 10 from the first cohort have raised funding; 4 of the current 9 are in serious talks. Here's a cheatsheet on who's coming out of the gate.
- instaGrok: visual research engine with a proprietary algorithm that helps students locate relevant learning materials and make connections between topics
- Hapara: New Zealand-born, a dashboard that helps sort, organize, and track students' real-time use of Google apps in classrooms
- TeachBoost: performance management platform designed to make the teacher evaluation process more intuitive, transparent, and meaningful
- EdShelf: directory/app store that helps users find, buy and use educational apps
- LearnSprout: creating APIs to make it easier for developers to make apps work with schools' existing student information systems (SIS)
- Braingenie: platform for learning videos and practice problems for middle and high school students studying math and science
- Socrative: real-time classroom assessments and feedback from any mobile device
- LearningJar: a platform that helps people document and display evidence of skills acquired via non-traditional channels; "making informal learning count"
- Tap To Learn: learning games (primarily math and language arts). Currently over forty in the Apple app store.
