For the second year in the row, members of the 4.0 Schools community swept Startup Weekend EDU Orlando, taking first, second, and third places. It comes as no surprise to many that the 4.0 Lab Cohort alums walked away with as winners. As many have noted, New Orleans is the, “only place for an ed tech startup” (see video below).
The winning were CampusCompass in third, Square 2 in second, and ScholarSort in first place. Katie Beck, Director of People and Idea Development at 4.0 Schools, blogged about Startup Weekend’s winning teams. See below as she describes what each company does to solve the various challenges faced in education.
- ScholarSort Jin-Soo, a high school math teacher, uses data to understand his students’ progress academically and behaviorally, but realized it could be used to form smarter personalized learning groups within his class. ScholarSort lets teachers make academic and social groupings both quickly and effectively, using data they already have on their students.
- Square 2 Nicole, a high school teacher, was frustrated by how hard it is for teachers to find good interventions for students who need different types of help. Square2 puts research-based interventions into the hands of teachers so they can quickly determine what interventions will work for a given student.
- CampusCompass For Kelly, a 7th grade Special Ed teacher, her students’ lack of exposure to opportunities outside of their rural parish inspired her to leverage their frequent use of smartphones to connect them with universities. Her team’s mobile app, CampusCompass, is like Padmapper for college, and lets students easily sort based on location and academic programs to follow the social media traffic of colleges that interest them.
“This weekend stressed the importance of just doing something,” said Jin-Soo Huh, Founder of ScholarSort. “I tend to over think things and want to make sure every detail has been considered. I found times when I was leading my team into just having discussions, but the times when we were most productive was when we were talking to educators, our users, and getting their thoughts on our mindset and hearing what they wanted.”
Want to get in on the action? Join 4.0 at Startup Weekend this spring in San Francisco, New York or New Orleans.