EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
Brainscape | December 14, 2022
Brainscape, a leading web and mobile education app, is launching a new digital flashcard collection that offers a "free minimum viable education" in the basics every American should know about the world, but that they may not have learned in school or personal life experience.
"From history's greatest artists, authors, and leaders to the spices, wines, flags, and capital cities of the world, and more, we have consulted with dozens of students, educators, and experts to curate these general knowledge flashcards,"
Brainscape founder and CEO, Andrew Cohen.
And we have done this in fulfillment of a greater goal, which is to democratize access to the benefits of spaced repetition, and to educational opportunity in general, irrespective of socio-economic background. We're essentially providing a baseline education to the world, for free.
Leveling the playing field in education
Brainscape's success has long been credited to spaced repetition, a science-backed learning algorithm that delivers information to the brain in a way that optimizes its ability to retain that information. But over and above helping high school students pass their APs, or professional-level students pass the MCAT or bar exam, Brainscape has held central to its agenda to make the world's knowledge accessible, digestible, and available to all for free.Many people are not privileged enough to have grown up around a holistically educated culture or to have had the opportunity to really apply themselves in school, and we suffer greatly from it later in life," says Cohen, who believes that a well-rounded knowledge of the world helps people to forge connections with others, including potentially career-altering ones. After 5 years of consulting with experts and fierce back-and-forth, what we have arrived at is a collection of 4,000+ flashcards that provide a more convenient and condensed single stream of knowledge than has never been attempted in previous cultural literacy initiatives," concludes Cohen. "And we're only going to keep adding to it in the coming years.
Knowledge rehabilitation and cultural literacy for the 21st Century
The newly-released collection consists of three flashcard packs: Knowledge Rehab ("Everything you wish you'd learned in school" covering subjects like history, earth science, and literature); Street Smarts ("Everything you wish you'd learned in life" covering survival skills, basic home and car maintenance, and fundamental culinary knowledge); and Vocab Workout ("The words to express yourself better" covering more complex, yet useful English vocabulary). Together, these three packs of 4,000+ flashcards aim to bring users up to speed on the essentials of everything, and they come preloaded with every free Brainscape account.
About Brainscape
Brainscape is an adaptive study app that allows users to create, find, and share flashcards for hundreds of subjects. With an algorithm grounded in spaced repetition and other cognitive learning principles, the app empowers learners to absorb and retain knowledge more efficiently than with any other study method.
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EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
Skillshare | January 11, 2023
Skillshare, one of the biggest online learning communities for creatives, recently announced that Joy Cho, graphic designer, blogger, author, and entrepreneur, is launching an online course for the first time known as “Pitch Please: Attract Brands & Boost Your Creative Business," on their platform. The course will cover how Joy built her dream career through a creative and go-getter mentality and provide a framework for creating remarkable pitches that will drive business and develop collaborations. Joy's course is now available only on Skillshare, which also offers many other courses spanning various creative disciplines.
The Creative Director and Founder of Oh Joy!, a lifestyle brand, Joy Cho has authored seven books and consulted for hundreds of businesses worldwide. In addition, she has launched a line of licensed products that span home décor, travel, baby, pet, and furniture collections. Having the most followed Pinterest account with 15 million followers, Joy Cho was among Time's 30 Most Influential People on the Internet for two consecutive years.
Joy Cho states, "When I first launched my career as a creative, I was filled with doubt. But I focused on crafting meaningful pitches and created a list of brands I dreamed of working with so that people would begin to know who I was. Over time it's been remarkable to see how this simple process helped open so many doors throughout my career." She added, "I'm so excited to tap into Skillshare's community of creatives to help them pursue their dreams. From starting a side hustle to launching products or landing your dream collaboration, this course will help creatives at every level learn how to effectively communicate their craft to potential partners."
(Source: PR Newswire)
Joy Cho's course aims to offer a hands-on course to creatives of all levels, helping them craft impactful pitches for brands and potential partners. In addition to this course, Skillshare offers over 40,000 courses on various topics, including design, illustration, photography, and more, taught by working professionals and industry leaders.
About Skillshare
Founded in 2010, Skillshare is an e-learning provider specializing in curating coursees for creative individuals, with topics ranging from video, illustration, design, photography, freelancing, and more. On their platform, millions of users across the globe can find inspiration and move ahead in their creative journey. The company also offers team-based plans for organizations and the option to join as a teacher.
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EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
Spotivity | December 19, 2022
Spotivity, a Chicago-based tech startup has fully launched the industry’s first research-informed decision engine to help teens find meaningful afterschool engagement while also supporting program providers to lower liability, improve participant engagement, and drive recruitment. spotivity supports teens through its’ “Pocket Genie” the research-informed machine learning recommendation created in partnership with Utah State University under the guidance of Montana Butsch and Dr. Travis Dorsch.
Completed Pocket Genie launched The Genie is a patent-protected algorithm that utilizes key insights from the user to help identify meaningful non-prescriptive pathways for the user to pursue. In short – spotivity makes the unkowns known and peels back the curtain on pathway routes a teen can take. Specific information on the approach can be found in a recently published blog by Dr. Dorsch https://www.spotivity.com/blog/spotivity-a-research-approach-to-access/. As he clearly underscores, “Many children learn that some dream jobs are out of reach while others lack the functional knowledge to even know that some careers exist. In many cases, children don’t have knowledge of or access to the right preparation pathways to even start planning appropriately. The root problem seems to be that the process of finding a career is largely uninformed by evidence-based principles.”
About Montana
Montana is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, read Education Research at Oxford University, is an Executive Scholar at Northwestern University, and, most recently, an Executive MBA Graduate from Brown University. Upon concluding work at Oxford, he focused on pursuing social ventures in Chicago, which led to the founding of the Chicago Training Center ‘CTC’ in 2006.
About spotivity
spotivity was informed by Butsch’s experience as the founder of CTC. Recent media coverage has centered on the #micdropchallenge www.micdropchallenge.com spotivity is an 1871 member, portfolio company of the Founder Institute, and graduate of the UVI Accelerate Accelerator
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