Knowmia

Video lesson library with accompanying creation tools and sharing of student assignments

Overview

Knowmia is a free video lesson library that allows teachers to create and share their own lessons as well as interactive assignments for those lessons. Teachers log-in and browse through the library, searching by subjects, specific topics within those subjects, and for particular teachers who have shared lessons of interest. It also contains free online training and how-to guides for several lesson creation tools, including Knowmia Teach. Additionally, teachers can access the Video Revolution Project to hear interviews with teachers from all over the world discussing the best practices for creating and implementing video in the classroom. Every teacher has a profile on Knowmia, which includes their background, lessons they have shared, and lessons they have liked and used for their own students.

Teachers can now create assignments with Knowmia’s Assignment Wizard, which is still in beta. Assignments are a collection of slides, questions that can be posed in multiple formats, and video lessons that a student can progress through linearly. Teachers can log-in at any time and see which of their students have done the assignment, when it was completed, how they spent on each step, and how well they did on it. Teachers can then assign specific video lessons to those students who are struggling with certain concepts in the assignment.

Teachers can create their own lessons using the Knowmia Teach iPad app. Teachers can record themselves talking over interactive whiteboards while they proceed through an explanation or an example problem, annotating points of interests. Teachers can then upload their video lesson with the app for use in their classroom, as well as for sharing with other teachers in the Knowmia community.

Knowmia is a Y-Combinator company that was founded in 2011 by Ariel Braunstein and Scott Kabat, who are the co-founder and marketing director, respectively, of Pure Digital Technologies, the creator of the Flip Video line of digital recording devices. Their initial focus is on giving high school students the incredible experience of learning from “your favorite teacher.” As of September 2013, they have collected over 17,000 video lessons from teachers.

The Knowmia team is based in San Francisco, California. Since they released the product in 2012, they have accumulated teacher users from over 10,000 schools as of October of 2013.