Winning edtech tools expect to improve education and student engagement for over 24 million worldwide
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Tools Competition—the world’s largest edtech competition—has announced more than $8 million in awards to teams developing or expanding learning tools and platforms that promise to transform education and enhance student engagement worldwide.
The Tools Competition is a multi-million dollar funding opportunity for edtech innovation that leverages digital technology, big data, and learning science to meet the urgent needs of learners worldwide. In all, 50 winners from 18 countries will receive more than $8 million in funding to reach an estimated 24 million learners around the globe.
Winning ideas range from AI-powered simulators for teachers-in-training to support chatbots that help prevent student dropouts to expanded data sets for researchers studying what works in education. Notable ideas receiving awards today include:
- Yiya AirScience (Uganda), an edtech solution that promotes problem-solving and creativity skills in under-resourced Ugandan youth by leveraging keypad phones to teach STEM content.
- Handwritten Math Benchmark for LLMs (Massachusetts, USA), a dataset that will use multimodal visual LLMs to diagnose and provide feedback on handwritten student math work, ultimately improving the capabilities of multimodal models.
- Bookbot: Reading Coach for Early Grades (Australia), a reading instructional platform that uses real-time conversational features to nurture children’s critical thinking, social, emotional, and communication skills.
- Wingspans: Experience Translator (Rhode Island, USA), an inclusive, AI-powered career navigation platform that leverages storytelling to empower adult learners to succeed in work that is better paid and more highly valued.
- FIND-C (California, USA), a video coaching platform that supports educators by reinforcing responsive interactions with their students, thereby improving children’s outcomes in language development, social emotional development, and literacy.
- HVAC Hero (California, USA), an adaptive, simulation-based platform aimed at widening access to high-quality skilled trades by training and expanding pathways into the HVAC workforce.
A complete list of winners can be found here.
Additionally, the Tools Competition partnered with OpenAI to offer the OpenAI Learning Impact Prize for teams using the power of AI to accelerate educational progress, particularly in underserved communities. The KOBI team (Slovenia) was named the winner of this prize and will receive an additional $100,000 in funds to enhance reading skills for children with dyslexia, as well as API credits and technical guidance from the OpenAI team. Yiya Airscience, Learning Equality, and The Portal by New Visions were named as runners-up for the Prize, receiving $25,000 in API credits to help advance their work.
According to a recent survey, more than 70 percent of teachers have used ChatGPT—up 23% since last year—to plan lessons, provide feedback, and differentiate for student needs. Among students, Black and Hispanic learners use chatbots at the highest rates, turning to them to help with concepts they struggle with and to help them study for tests and quizzes.
“Winning tools stand out in their potential to both transform educational outcomes and build the field of learning engineering,” said Kumar Garg, President at Renaissance Philanthropy and a founding sponsor of the Tools Competition. “They are demonstrating the power of advanced technology to accelerate learning and are working with researchers to scale their impact for the benefit of the field at large.”
“By supporting exceptional teams and innovative technology, the Tools Competition is opening new doors for learners around the world,” said Julia Quinn, Director of Philanthropy at Citadel and Griffin Catalyst. “These winners are helping unlock the transformative power of education and enabling current and future generations to achieve their potential. We’re proud to recognize their incredible work.”
The 2023-24 competition included awards in six tracks:
- Accelerating & Assessing Learning
- Building an Adaptive and Competitive Workforce
- Engaging Adult Learners in Higher Education
- Facilitating Learning Science Research
- Instructional Coaching for Early Childhood Education
- Preparing for the 21st Century World
This year’s competition generated nearly 2,000 submissions from 92 countries, with the winners hailing from institutions and organizations across all continents. This is the fourth cycle of the Tools Competition. To date, the competition has awarded $17.5 million to 130 edtech innovators.
The next cycle will launch in September 2024. To learn more, join the mailing list here.
Background
The Tools Competition is the largest edtech competition in the world. It spurs edtech innovation leveraging digital technology, big data, and learning science to meet the urgent needs of learners worldwide.
The 2023-24 Tools Competition was run with support from: Renaissance Philanthropy, Griffin Catalyst, Walton Family Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Siegel Family Endowment, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Ballmer Group, Calbright College, Axim Collaborative, Jacobs Foundation, Endless Network, and OpenAI.
The competition is administered by The Learning Agency and Georgia State University.
