Like most teacherpreneurs, former elementary school teacher Emily Starr created StarrMatica to solve her own problem: hours of wasted time spent looking for low-cost, high-quality digital content that would help her students master reading and math. StarrMatica is a curated collection of resources designed to teach, reinforce and assess basic skills for grades K-6. Students or teachers begin by searching or browsing a topic by grade, state or Common Core standard, or textbook unit; then, they select whether they want to learn it (or in the case of teachers, to use the animated lesson in front of a group or class along with a projector or interactive whiteboard), practice it, or test it using open-ended responses. Many topics also contain dozens of links to related resources from other providers. If StarrMatica’s classroom management system is used, teaches can develop and share collections of content for individual students, and StarrMatica will record students’ first attempt and best attempt on practice activities and tests.

StarrMatica has moderate reach: it is used by hundreds of schools and tens of thousands of schools across 20 states. Parent memberships cost about $100/year, and for schools, annual costs range based on the number of students and whether the membership includes individual student progress accounts, from $300 for an individual classroom to $2100 for a large K-6 school that also wants to track individual student progress. A mobile version is in development.