How Educational Technology Start-ups can affect learning & produce significant
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Creative Minds – Powerful Impact with Enormous Benefits – The Next “Bubble”?How Educational Technology Start-ups can affect learning and produce significant opportunity!
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6:30 - 9:30 PM
Location: Emerging Center at Foley Hoag the Bay Colony Corporate Center, Waltham, MA
The innovative use of technology to serve the education market is virtually unbounded. Entrepreneurs are excited with new startups forming every day and non profits serve a special place in this market.
Is this market building to become the next “bubble”? Consider: Providence Equity Partners agreed to acquire Blackboard for $1.23 billion. They also acquired Study Group for $570 million. Plato Learning Inc. which was just acquired last year for $143 million is now offering to buy Renaissance Learning Inc., for $496 million.
If your idea can transform learning at any stage, fix a broken school system, and help struggling students might it be a game changer? Does providing online school curriculums and computers to students in the poorest areas of the world contribute to this impact? When starting a business in educational technology, understanding current trends, financing and realistic market potential as well as how to launch and deliver successful market strategies are essential.
The next EntreTech Forum will explore the world of educational technology and the potential for entrepreneurs. This will be an interactive discussion with our panelists and audience. The panel will draw from leaders in industry, academic and government fields. The goal is to help startups and businesses in educational technology benefit from their experience in launching businesses, identifying major changes in technology and contribute to positive learning solutions. Please join us for this informative and interactive discussion.
Panel:
http://entretechforum.org/images/zanchi.jpgChristine Zanchi is an Executive Producer in WGBH’s Children’s Media Group, leading the development and production of a number of award-winning children’s Web sites for PBS, including Martha Speaks, Arthur and the Web-only Meet The Greens program. Her sites reach millions of children every month. Ms. Zanchi’s work on digital platforms includes iPhone and iPad apps for kids and interactive whiteboard activities for classroom use, with an emphasis on transmedia production that integrates narrative and pedagogy from WGBH’s children’s series across broadcast and digital. Christine is currently leading production a three-year, NSF-funded grant to explore preschool math learning through a blend of hands-on activities and digital gaming, all supported by an innovative interactive teacher’s guide. Prior to WGBH, Christine was a classroom teacher at the elementary and middle school levels. Before teaching, Christine worked as a management consultant in technology and marketing. Christine received a M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she studied in the Human Development and Technology, Innovation and Education programs. Christine lives in the suburbs of Boston with her husband and twin one-year-old boys.
http://entretechforum.org/images/pickering.pngMelissa Pickering, founder of iCreate, is a former Imagineer for the Walt Disney Company, and most recently managed operations of the nonprofit Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO), focused on bringing engineering into K-12 education. Gaining experience in commercializing educational technologies at the CEEO, Melissa spun-out iCreate to address the need of giving students an opportunity to express, engage, and be excited about learning. In March of 2011 Melissa was honored by Mass High Tech as a Woman to Watch, an award given to female leaders of the New England technology and innovation community. She was also one of the 23 founders selected for the Kauffman Education Venture Program in the Spring of 2011, of which 1000 applicants applied.
http://entretechforum.org/images/abrams.pngArchie Abrams is the founder of Amplify Teaching. Amplify Teaching is leveraging tablet technology to create the first 'heads-up' display for teaching that gives teachers access to all the data, tools and administrative supports they need to effectively manage and teach their classes. Additionally, Amplify has worked with major publishers, like Wireless Generation, to help them create interactive lessons plans for their award-winning content. Prior to Amplify, Archie was a strategy consultant and a graduate of Bowdoin College.
http://entretechforum.org/images/rogers.pngDr. Chris Rogers
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
CEEO Director
Chris got all three of his degrees at Stanford Univ., where he worked with John Eaton on his thesis looking at particle motion in a boundary layer flow. From Stanford, he went to Tufts as a faculty member, where he has been for the last million years, with a few exceptions (a local kindergarten, Harvard Univ, ETH in Switzerland, Princeton Univ, and Lincoln Univ in New Zealand). Chris is involved in several different research areas: particle-laden flows, telerobotics and controls, slurry flows in chemical-mechanical planarization, the engineering of musical instruments, measuring flame shapes of couch fires, measuring fruit-fly locomotion, and in elementary school engineering education. He has helped bring a number of products to market, including LEGO Mindstorms for Schools, and has helped one startup get started.
Chris also has a strong commitment to teaching at Tufts, where he is currently the director of the Center for Engineering Education and Outreach. His teaching work extends to the elementary school, where he talks with over 1000 teachers around the world every year on ways of bringing engineering to kids.
Most importantly, he has three kids - all brilliant - who are responsible for most of his research interests and efforts.
http://entretechforum.org/images/lowman.pngMarissa Lowman, Founder
Marissa founded EdTechup in March 2011 to bring together education technology entrepreneurs in the Boston area. Marissa has extensive experience in education, both as a teacher and at educational non-profits. She has worked at Teach For America and The Steppingstone Foundation, where she helped grow the National Partnership for Educational Access (NPEA). In addition, Marissa taught English in Germany on a Fulbright Fellowship and 5th grade in Honduras. She currently works at technology startup AisleBuyer. Marissa received a BA from Johns Hopkins University. You can follow her on Twitter at @marissalowman.
Moderator:
http://entretechforum.org/images/lennox.jpgDuncan LennoxCo-founder & CEO
Duncan is the co-founder and CEO of Qstream, a Harvard spin-off that is focused on transforming learning to make it effective, efficient and fun using a new learning model developed and proven at Harvard Medical School.
Duncan has been building learning technology solutions for 16 years. He was co-founder and CTO at elearning software vendor WBT Systems where he created the original version of TopClass, a Learning Management System used by over 3 million learners in higher education and corporate learning.
He is an information junkie, an unabashed Apple bigot, an on-and-off again practitioner of Aikido ("origami with people instead of paper"), and a private pilot. He somehow managed to obtain a B.Sc. (Honors) in Computer Science from University College Dublin, Ireland.
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Meeting Cost:
$25 public, $10 students
and active military; Promotional Registrations (http://entretechforum.org/specregs.htm)
Map and Directions (http://entretechforum.org/7_contact.htm)