The Launch Pad: What it is & Why it's Important

The Launch Pad (#LaunchPad)

Sloan-C MERLOT Emerging Technologies Symposium for Online Learning

April 9-11, 2014 in Dallas, TX

As emerging technologies continue to open new opportunities for improving education around the world, increasing the interaction and learning between educators and edtech entrepreneurs becomes more essential.  The gap between the minds that conceptualize and create the tools and the minds who facilitate teaching and learning must be minimized to increase the quality of emerging technologies moving forward.  If constant efforts are not made to bridge this gap, edtech startups will well, in the finessed words of Reynol Junco, "suck."

In the past several years, there have been an array of new "spaces" that have brought startups and educators closer together including Educause's Start Up Alley, SXSW LAUNCHedu, and the no fluff, no frills (meant in a good way) events put together by the dynamic community at EdSurge which includes the upcoming K12 EdSurge Tech for Schools Summit in Silicon Valley scheduled for November 2nd.  Each of these events acknowledge that we are all learners.  Entrepreneurs are business people with a quest to be successful and, yes, be profitable but to do so with the goal of developing a product that meets the needs and interests of real teachers and students.  Educators are continuously learning about the newest tools available to them and seeking to identify how they may improve the learning environments they have cultivated for their students.

Last year, the Sloan-C MERLOT International Symposium for Emerging Technologies for Online Learning (@ET4Online) stepped into the learning space, as well by crafting the Launch Pad.  It was a new, refreshing change for the conference and one that we are continuing again this year.

The 2nd Annual Launch Pad is now open.  Early startups in the edtech space are invited to attend the conference and, this year, learn with top online educators and Michael Staton, of Learn Capital.  If you are an early startup with a product focused on improving online learning, consider applying for the Launch Pad.

Applying is free.  Those who are selected will receive a deeply discounted rate to attend and a fabulous array of benefits (see site for details).

The Launch Pad application period closes on January 31, 2014. 

Launch Pad Participants Revealed for #ET4Online!

Next week, innovative online educators will comingle with some of the hottest entrepreneurial minds in educational technology to foster an additional bridge between the world of business and formalized education.  Fostering more formative feedback loops between these frequently silo'd sectors of society is becoming more and more critical as technology continues to present compelling solutions to old teaching and learning problems and paint exciting visions for the future.  Ensuring today's entrepreneurs are in dialogue with today's educators is critical to the success of teaching and learning.  And that is the objective of the Launch Pad, the brand new program included in next week's Sloan-C/MERLOT ET4Online Conference in Las Vegas, which I have had the honor of chairing this year.

Eight outstanding startups have been selected to participate in this year's inaugural Launch Pad. They are listed below.  A representative group of the participants will participate in a plenary panel at the conference on Thursday, moderated by EdSurge's Tony Wan.  If you are attending the conference, please be sure to come by the Launch Pad, explore the creative genius of these products, converse with the creators themselves, share your feedback about their products, and attend the plenary on Thursday morning which will commence immediately following a stimulating presentation by James Byers, co-founder of Wikispaces!

• BuzzMath: a mathematical mission that leads middle school students to proficiency through supported practice. The student-centered and user-inspired design makes BuzzMath practical and motivational for students and teachers.

• Ginkgotree: puts the power of curriculum curation back in the hands of the faculty who teach it, to lower students’ costs and improve their learning outcomes. The platform allows instructors to assemble online curricula from any resource, complete with automated copyright clearance and digital content sourcing.

• HireArt: HireArt is a new type of jobs marketplace that uses online challenge-based interviews to vet job applicants. HireArt screens and sources candidates through work samples and video interviews that simulate what a candidate would do at the real job. 
  
  
• The Predictive Analytics Reporting Framework: a multi-institutional data-mining project, managed by WCET. It brings together 2 year, 4 year, public, proprietary, traditional, and progressive institutions to collaborate on identifying points of student loss and to find effective practices that improve student retention in U.S. higher education.
  
  
• scrible: a tool that lives in your browser that allows a user to seamlessly annotate and comment directly on webpages and save, share and manage them with others. Scrible makes online information usable and manageable.
  
  
• Skyepack: a content-focused educational software environment that is designed to facilitate the delivery of learn-anywhere mobile content as an alternative to texts, course packs, and class handouts. Skyepack enables instructors to easily build mobile-ready learning content from a variety of media and resources, delivering video, audio, documents, self-assessments, and HTML5 applications.
  
  
• STEMscopes: a K-12 comprehensive online science curriculum housed in Rice University's Center for Digital Learning and Scholarship. STEMscopes provides hands-on inquiry activities, assessments, problem-based-learning, intervention tools, acceleration materials, and teacher support resources. Our program is 100% aligned to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and meets the rigor and depth of both the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR™) and high school End-of-Course (EOC) assessments.
  
  
• ValuePulse: Social learning platform that harnesses the power of social media to provides one-click access to a credible, curated news library to fuel discussions in a course.  Empowers students to achieve learning objectives by engaging current industry news as opposed to textbooks and understand how to effectively apply social media to their professional lives.