News of an education technology and learning-focused accelerator emerged in February, with the promise of eight spots for startups striving to revolutionize how we see our schools. Today, LearnLaunchX is ready to open its doors and announce the inaugural cohort of companies participating in the three-month program.
LearnLaunchX is pouring $350,000 into the program, which covers the cost of seed funding, and mentorship, along with facilities and infrastructure support. In a prior interview, the accelerator stated each startup would be granted $18,000 and that the team, in turn, would take a six percent equity stake in each of the participating companies.
Entrepreneurs will work with LearnLaunchX mentors at the newly-opened Exponential TechSpace in the Back Bay, and are expected to leave the program “ready for the next stages of funding, deployment, scale and growth.”
“These startups were carefully selected from a large, highly-competitive pool for their rich potential to help transform education by engaging and empowering learners and educators, and enabling institutions to navigate change and pressing challenges,” said LearnLaunchX Partner and Co-Founder Eileen Rudden, former chief officer of the Chicago Public School System, in a release. “As LearnLaunchX alumni, they’ll be poised to scale, grow and emerge and both successful business and education innovation leaders.”
For a look at the first class of LearnLaunchX, check out the descriptions below, as provided by the accelerator.
Listen Edition — Public radio stories, lesson plans and activities, led by respected public radio reporter Monica Brady-Myerov.
Createbiz — An online business school and professional development network for the new creative economy. Founded by Dave Kusek, former CEO of the successful online music school Berkleemusic.
Gradeable — A new assessment and feedback tool that helps teachers give students smarter, faster feedback and reduces their overall workload. Developed by a team from MIT and Harvard.
Cognii — Using powerful natural language processing technology, Cognii enables automatic assessment of students’ essay answers.
Empow Learning — Transformative experiences that empower young learners to create and build using technology and discover their superpowers, a successful STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) afterschool and summer program for grades 4-10.
Countdown — A planning tool for creating Common Core-aligned instruction that allows teachers and districts to map standards by day across the school year, link curricular resources, share calendars, manage changes and record what is taught. Improves pacing, co-teaching and standards-based teaching and learning.
eduCanon — Powerful, easy-to-use tools to create on-line direct instruction that links videos, assessments and student interaction, and lets teachers quickly identify and track students’ grasp of concepts. Created by teachers, for teachers.
Intellify Learning — Framework for online course developers and schools, curriculum and learning designers, and ed tech application developers, led by LearnLaunchX entrepreneur-in-esidence Chris Vento, former CTO of Blackboard, WebCT and Cengage. Drives the progressive refinement of on-line learning experiences.
