Cast Your Vote to Innovate Education!
By: Miriam E. Marks
If you could pick, would you revolutionize education with a creative portfolio-maker, a tablet to make reading more fun, or software to generate fun sentences that improve grammar?
These three products are contestants in the Citi Innovation Challenge at Education Nation, NBC News’s year-round initiative to examine solutions to education in America by engaging the public.
The Contestants
NoRedInk is a web-based learning platform that helps students improve grammar and writing skills by generating content that uses students’ hobbies, friends and favorite celebrities as source material. Rather than do grammar exercises with fictional textbook characters, students’ interest will be retained by figures more relevant to their lives.
PathBrite, the local San Francisco favorite, aims to help users collect, track, and display their achievements in customizable portfolios. Like a resume, users use PathBrite highlight skills and showcase what they have accomplished. Unlike a resume, PathBrite enables users to build their portfolio with image, sound and video.
ReadImagine is tablet technology that brings interactive books and individual-specific recommendations to students, as well as an analytics engine for parents and teachers. While students are engaged with beautiful animation and tablet touch interactivity, parents and teachers can monitor progress – all on one device.
Don’t Wait, Vote Now!
Which product would you like to see up and running, whether in your child’s classroom or available at home? Go ahead and vote for your favorite start-up! The winning team will receive $100,000 and assorted other perks so that the start-up can focus its efforts on launching a product.