As a part of the 2011 Education Nation Summit, NBC News, Citi and NewSchools Venture Fund launched the "Education Nation Innovation Challenge" to shine a spotlight on the role that education innovation can play in creating solutions and improving education opportunities for students across the country.
The inaugural Education Nation Innovation Challenge featured three teams of young early-stage entrepreneurs, dedicated to using their imagination and technological savvy to help educators. The Innovation Challenge pitted the teams against each other through a series of competitions, and included development sessions with teachers, students, and some of the biggest players in innovation and venture capital. The Challenge culminated in a pitch competition on September 27th on the Main Stage of the Education Nation Summit in Rockefeller Plaza, in front of hundreds of education thought-leaders and guests.
In the end, the team from Class Dojo was awarded the $75,000 Citi Innovation in Education Prize to help make their innovation a reality. The prize also included one year of ongoing technical assistance from Citi and NewSchools Venture Fund in order to help the team grow their business. Kickboard, in third place, was awarded $10,000, and TruantToday was awarded $15,000 as the second place winner.
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The Teams
ClassDojo uses real-time feedback to improve behavior in class, and automatically generates actionable behavioral data for teachers, administrators and parents. ClassDojo’s big vision is for us to fix 'the other half' of education: going beyond just building test scores, to applying comparable rigor to actually building great character rather than expecting it to just 'happen'.
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Kickboard is intuitive software that puts detailed student information right at the teachers’ and administrators’ fingertips. With Kickboard, teachers and administrators can collect and analyze academic and behavioral performance efficiently and in real time so that they can make appropriate interventions. Users can measure student progress, manage classroom workflow, and ensure consistency in school culture.
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Right now, schools lose $30-50 per student per day in state and federal funding when students skip class. TruantToday allows schools to instantly contact parents the minute that a student skips class, so that parents can work with the school to bring the student - and the funding - back to the classroom.
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