TALENT DEVELOPMENT
Businesswire | April 10, 2023
Brightwheel, the leading all-in-one early education platform, today announced that it has acquired Experience Early Learning, a nationally recognized brand that produces a comprehensive research-based early education curriculum and assessment system. Through the acquisition, brightwheel is merging the best of physical and digital learning tools for the first time as it advances its mission to deliver high quality early education for every child.
“Young children need to learn in-person with physical materials that they can touch and feel,” said Dave Vasen, Founder and CEO of brightwheel. “The merging of physical and digital will save providers many hours each month, improve the classroom learning experience, and even extend it to the home, all through the brightwheel platform. I couldn’t be more excited to bring these two companies together and completely rethink what’s possible in early ed.”
Aligned with NAEYC, Common Core, Head Start, and all 50 states’ early learning standards, Experience Early Learning covers all areas of development including social-emotional, physical, language & literacy, math & reasoning, science, social studies, and creative arts, designed for infants through pre-K aged children. This leading program provides a monthly toolkit with everything a teacher needs to bring the curriculum to life in the classroom, including hands-on materials such as books, music, posters, art supplies, games, and workbooks, each tailored for specific ages.
Brightwheel allows preschool administrators and teachers to manage everything that happens day-to-day such as billing, enrollment, attendance, compliance, and communications all through the brightwheel app. Teachers can easily capture learning moments in real time through photos and videos, take notes, track child development, and conduct assessments. Brightwheel is the first and only platform where teachers can automatically share prewritten notes with parents that help to continue the learning at home.
Experience Curriculum is now live on brightwheel for Preschool and Toddler levels, with Baby coming in the future. Benefits of the newly integrated offering include:
• Elevated quality of learning during the most critical first five years of a child’s development with a professional, research-based curriculum aligned to all 50 state standards.
• Makes teachers’ jobs less time consuming and more rewarding, thereby improving staff retention at a time when turnover in the industry is at an all time high.
• Greater engagement from families in their child’s learning through automated sharing of progress, photos and updates in real-time.
As brightwheel invests in expanding its curriculum offering, it has appointed Julie DeLoyd as Head of brightwheel Education, responsible for leading and scaling the company’s education business. DeLoyd joins brightwheel from developmental toy company Melissa & Doug where she served as Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer.
“I have long admired brightwheel’s dedication to improving the early education experience for children, families, and teachers,” said DeLoyd, Head of brightwheel Education. “For the first time ever, there is a one-stop destination for everything education providers need, empowering them to focus on what they do best. I am proud to join this talented team as brightwheel scales its education offering and improves the quality of early learning.”
About Brightwheel
Brightwheel is the complete preschool and childcare platform providing everything educators need to easily run their program all in one place. Quick to set up and even easier to use, brightwheel’s #1 rated platform enables providers to save time, get paid faster, connect with families and staff, and support child development. Trusted by millions of educators and families across North America, brightwheel is committed to elevating the early learning experience for every child.
About Experience Early Learning
Experience Early Learning is a research-based early education program that fosters a joy for learning through sensory-based experiences. Since 1984, this nationally recognized curriculum system has supported children’s social-emotional, physical, and cognitive development. Monthly thematic kits with lesson plans and hands-on learning materials support teachers in and out of the classroom and encourage learning through play. Experience Early Learning is a community of educators with a mission to help children embrace their unique strengths, grow confidence, and love others.
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EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
PRnewswire | April 06, 2023
Learneo, Inc., an ambitious new platform of productivity and learning businesses and technologies, today announced its acquisition of German-founded LanguageTool, a multilingual writing platform for English, Spanish, and 30 other languages. This acquisition adds to Learneo's robust suite of writing solutions, while also advancing the company's larger international expansion strategy.
"We are committed to supporting builder-driven businesses that help people learn and do more, faster, better, and more affordably—wherever learning occurs," said Andrew Grauer, CEO of Learneo. "The LanguageTool business fits squarely in our investment thesis and accelerates our mission thanks to their values-aligned and ambitious co-founders, their broad customer reach of B2C and B2B clients across the globe, and their unique language and AI expertise."
Globally, most people communicate in more than one language today. Employers are increasingly expecting their employees to engage with colleagues, partners, and customers in multiple languages. In the U.S., for example, 9 out of 10 U.S. employers have reported that they rely on U.S.-based employees with language skills other than English.
Born out of an interest in helping professionals communicate in an increasingly global world, Daniel Naber started LanguageTool as a part of his diploma thesis while studying computational linguistics in 2003. Naber spent many years building LanguageTool in his free time, initially as an open-source project and later as a business when he joined forces with Christopher Blum. Blum had previously founded the spell checking platform, Spellboy, and the two decided to collaborate and unify their experience by co-founding LanguageTool as a business. Today, LanguageTool boasts over 60,000 paying subscribers, including professionals and enterprise clients, and millions more free users across Europe and Latin America.
"Having built LanguageTool over the course of the last 20 years, it has been exciting for us to find a partner so clearly aligned with our mission who also understands our advanced technology and can support our continued innovation in a moment of rapid technological evolution," said Naber. "Joining the Learneo team and having the ability to work alongside talent with phenomenal writing and AI expertise to accelerate our vision is a dream come true. We are deeply motivated by the possibilities that lie ahead!"
With this acquisition, Learneo now comprises seven distinct business lines: CliffsNotes, Course Hero, LanguageTool, LitCharts, QuillBot, Scribbr, and Symbolab. Individually, and together, Learneo's platform of businesses is pioneering advances in a wide range of applications for emergent technologies, including the use of AI to improve people's written communications, reading, and math skills, whether they are in school, a professional work environment, or simply navigating everyday life. Most recently, QuillBot announced the addition of an AI-augmented translator to its platform, allowing users to translate complex texts and better understand the nuances of sentence structure, word choice, and verb conjugation.
"In an ever-more-globalized, asynchronous work environment, accessible multilingual expertise for written communication is in high demand," said Rohan Gupta, CEO of QuillBot and head of Learneo's writing vertical. "Daniel, Christopher and the LanguageTool team have built something truly unique, and I am excited for us to build together, to evolve each of our product lines across Learneo's writing vertical, and to advance the international writing industry at large."
About Learneo
Learneo is pioneering a platform of productivity and learning businesses. The platform of businesses includes CliffsNotes, the original and iconic study guide company; Course Hero, an online learning platform of academic resources; LitCharts, a creator of literature resources; QuillBot, an AI-powered writing companion; Scribbr, a multilingual academic proofreading service, and Symbolab, an AI-based mathematics resource.
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TALENT DEVELOPMENT
PRnewswire | June 07, 2023
Savvas Learning Company, a K-12 next-generation learning solutions leader, today announced that its Experience Physics program has been named a 2023 SIIA CODiE Award Finalist in the "Best Science Instructional Solution for Grades 9-12" category.
Experience Physics © 2022 is a modern high school physics curriculum that implements an interactive learning model using the exploration of phenomena to drive student engagement. The program places students center stage as they make sense of phenomena with experiential learning routines that connect physics to the real world. Experience Physics also uniquely supports educators with comprehensive, editable resources and flexible teaching tools that allow them to adapt instruction to their students' diverse learning needs.
"We are honored that our Experience Physics program has been named a finalist in this year's CODiE Awards," said Bethlam Forsa, CEO of Savvas Learning Company.
"Experience Physics is revolutionizing physics education with its bold and innovative approach, delivering instructional flexibility to every teacher and exciting, phenomena-based content to every student. We're thrilled to see our Experience Physics curriculum recognized for being the outstanding science solution that it is."
The cutting-edge program features an all-new instructional model in which students first interact with phenomena through hands-on and virtual activities before completing readings and math practice in the interactive Student Experience Handbook. This active learning approach provides students real-world context for understanding physics and the background knowledge to tackle more elaborate activities, such as investigating new concepts and conducting "engineering-design challenges."
Providing a wealth of interactive content and assessment tools through the award-winning Savvas Realize learning management system, Experience Physics offers many exciting explorations into scientific inquiry, including:
• Hands-on inquiry labs available in four versions — guided, open-ended, short, and advanced — that provide more opportunities for educators to customize curriculum for any classroom situation.
• Virtual labs that give all students access to compelling phenomena and advanced scientific equipment.
• Claim-Evidence-Reasoning exercises that support student understanding of phenomena over time.
• PhET simulations that engage students in an intuitive, game-like environment and offer accompanying worksheets that connect simulations to the content.
• Boclips videos that present physics concepts in an easy-to-understand way.
• Process-focused math support with tutorial videos and sample problems that are broken down for clarity and process guidance.
"I wish I had something like this when I was in high school and college, as well as when I was in the classroom," said one of the CODiE judges who praised Experience Physics for its hands-on learning, remarking that the program's "experiences and ties to real life early in the lessons would be very valuable and get students interested."
Another judge who evaluated Experience Physics lauded the program for "giving teachers ways to incorporate the three dimensions of NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards)" along with "customizable digital assessments that offer teachers insights into student understanding."
The SIIA CODiE Awards is the only peer-reviewed program to showcase business and education technology's finest products and services. Award finalists, which are selected by expert reviewers, represent the most innovative and impactful products from education technology developers, online learning services and related learning-focused technologies. Winners will be announced at the CODiE Awards education technology celebration on June 22, 2023.
ABOUT SAVVAS LEARNING COMPANY
At Savvas, we believe learning should inspire. By combining new ideas, new ways of thinking, and new ways of interacting, we design next-generation learning solutions that help prepare students to become global citizens in a more interconnected, digital world. To learn more, visit Savvas Learning Company. Savvas Learning Company's products are available for sale in Canada through its subsidiary, Rubicon.
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