ART-Math
A Student-centered crowdsourcing platform that embraces cultural inspirations, critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity in mathematical learning
Catalyst Prize
ART-Math is a research-based, AI-powered interactive learning and creative construction platform for 3-8th grade students to engage in a transformative mathematical learning process: Abstraction, Representation, Transformation (ART). ART-Math substitutes conventional math problems for culturally relevant, student-generated real-life stories involving mathematical ideas, resulting in a unique student-centered approach to math education. This approach empowers students to be creators, supporters and collaborators through the learning process.
Team Leads
Dr. Alora Li is currently working at Apple as a senior PM. She is interested in scalable technologies and innovative ways to support students' learning. Dr. Li has invented educational products and services adopted by large and small school districts in California and provided consultation to school and non-profit organization leaders on technology integration and educational innovation.
Dr. Wanli Xing is currently working at the University of Florida as an Assistant Professor of Educational Technology. His research interest is artificial intelligence and learning analytics to leverage computing and big data in education to promote STEM and online education. Dr. Xing's work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Institute of Educational Sciences, and private foundations.
Play. Connect. Learn
A mobile app to foster accelerated learning in early years via parental engagement
Mid-Scale/Large Prize
Top Parent App is a free mobile solution that helps young children at home minimize learning loss through parental engagement. It is especially designed to support parents from low-income communities to help prepare their children for ongoing success in school and life. A new version of the app will integrate multimedia content that includes educational videos for children, parent-facing videos to scaffold learning through play, gamified worksheets and monthly assessments that are mapped to an accelerated learning curriculum to take the child from emergent to foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN).
Team Leads
Sashwati Banerjee is a social development professional with over three decades of experience in organizational leadership, media, & communication for change. Incubated under the Entrepreneur in Residence program at Central Square Foundation, she has recently founded Nudged Trust & Humanitus Learning Solutions to provide an open source, free mobile app to help low income families support their young children’s development at home. Banerjee was responsible for establishing Sesame Workshop in India, and has led the organization as the Founding Managing Director since 2006.
Akshina Gupta is a 2013 graduate from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD) and has spent 8+ years in the space of EdTech products and strategy consulting. She comes with a deep passion for holistic early childhood education and is committed to using the power of technology to create scalable ECE solutions. In her current role as Chief Operating Officer at Top Parent, she works closely with product, data and marketing teams to rapidly expand Top Parent’s reach and build an impactful tech platform addressing the critical ECE needs of lower income segments in the country.
RightOn!
Mobile platform that inspires math learning by embracing mistakes
Catalyst Prize
RightOn! is a mobile platform that enables math educators to engage students in identifying and discussing misconceptions, in parallel with correct answers. The platform consists of three components: a student-facing mobile app, a database of distractors and explanations, and a teacher dashboard. RightOn! fosters a positive culture of error, improves student self-efficacy, and increases math proficiency.
Team Leads
Sinclair Wu’s work in education includes over 15 years of collaboration with classroom teachers, after-school program leaders, and diverse youth in underserved communities across the United States. In parallel, Wu also developed and honed skills in software product and program management, leading diverse teams at startups as well as global enterprises including Accenture and Google.
Dr. Allison Liu has over 10 years of cognitive and educational research experience in learning and motivation. She has led and contributed to many research projects involving large-scale educational math technologies, including ST Math and Graspable Math. Her research has been published in high-impact scholarly journals and presented at annual meetings of academic societies. Dr. Liu received her Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology (Cognitive Neuroscience concentration) and completed a postdoc in Educational Psychology.
Bright Start
A tool for bridging reading instruction gaps through the use of a speech technology-enabled autonomous reading tutor
Catalyst Prize
- University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona & St. Augustine
- CARiLIT
Bright Start is a fully functional automated reading tutor that will enable vulnerable young children to access personalized and culturally-relevant reading instruction across the Caribbean. The solution aims to increase the number of young children that are reading before the age of 10. The tutor will supplement current reading instruction and provide targeted attention and feedback to children who are underserved due to large class sizes and difficult socioeconomic circumstances.
Team Leads
Dr. Andre Coy has expertise in Speech and Language Technologies (SLT) with a focus on applications of SLT for education.
Dr. Phaedra S. Mohammed has expertise in Intelligent Learning Systems (ILS). Her current focus is cultural modelling in ILS.
Oko
An intelligent teaching assistant for small group learning in K-12 education
Catalyst Prize
Oko facilitates fun and rigorous games and puzzles for elementary math instruction through AI-enabled small group work. Small group learning is a powerful tool for differentiation, yet is out of reach for too many teachers due to a perfect storm of widening achievement gaps and severe staffing shortages. Oko solves these challenges using computer vision, natural language processing, and cognitive tutoring to make learning more fun, accessible, rigorous and equitable.
Team Leads
Matt Miller was previously CTO and VP of Labs at Amplify Education and Head of Product at Flatiron School. He is an active consultant, advisor, and mentor in the education space and serves as Technology Advisor at XQ Institute. He also co-founded Stories Bookshop and Storytelling Lab, a retail and creative education space in Brooklyn, NY. Earlier in his career, Miller co-founded CounterStorm, an AI-based intrusion detection and prevention company later acquired by Raytheon. Miller holds BS and MS degrees in Computer Science from Columbia University.
Laurence Holt is Entrepreneur in Residence at XQ Institute, and was previously Chief Product Officer of Amplify Education. Prior to that, Holt founded Quidnunc, a consulting firm with clients such as Apple, Sprint, the BBC, and Goldman Sachs. Previously a bond trader with Credit Suisse First Boston, Holt also created "multi-user calendar" software, which he later sold to Microsoft. Holt holds a First Class BSc(Eng) Hons in Computing Science from Imperial College London and a Masters in Neuroscience and Education from Columbia University.
ThinkZone
Leveraging low-cost technology for personalized at-home learning in vernacular language
Mid-Scale/Large Prize
ThinkZone's home-based learning solution uses free, low-cost technological solutions to engage parents regardless of their income in their children’s learning journey. Delivered in vernacular language via voice calls and messaging apps, the solution supports parents as they work towards developing their children's foundational educational skills. Parents receive structured and personalized activity-based learning content -- whose efficacy is backed by independent research -- which requires only a few minutes of daily engagement.
Team Leads
Binayak Acharya is a World Bank & CEMEX-TEC(Mexico) awarded social entrepreneur. Acharya, a Laureate Global Fellow and MassChallenge Israel Alumnus, has worked extensively in emerging markets for more than 10 years in multiple domains including implementing large-scale ICT4D and skills development programs, education technology products development, and deployment and early-grade education pedagogy. His background also includes working in Global Education Practice (World Bank), Impact Investment (Unitus), and technology products development (L&T Infotech).
Itishree Behera is an India Fellow Alumna with a Masters in Applied Psychology. Behera has multiple years of experience in pre-primary and primary educational content development, grassroots level training (Training of Trainers), community engagement modules development, and education program operations. She has also worked across domains like development communication, monitoring and evaluation, and stakeholder and government communication and partnerships.
Escritura+
Improving the Spanish-language writing skills of native and heritage speakers with adaptive games
Mid-Scale/Large Prize
Escritura+ is a set of games targeting specific Spanish-language writing skills for K-12 native and heritage speakers. Housed within a larger writing platform that BeeReaders is building, the tool will give students engaging ways to correct common writing errors and teachers data on student progress. Teaching and learning to write well takes time, and this tool eases the burden on teachers and empowers Spanish-speaking students to be confident, lucid writers in their home language.
Team Leads
Kristina Cordero holds a BA in Romance Languages from Harvard College and a PhD in Engineering from Universidad Católica de Chile, where she and a team created literacy apps for primary school students. She is the author of the children’s book Didi recorre Nueva York (2013), academic and non-academic articles, and a regular blog for BeeReaders. Her research interests include literacy and technology; biliteracy and bilingualism; libraries and library users. She has also translated over 25 books and teaches translation at Brooklyn College, in New York.
Rubén Arias has been an edtech entrepreneur for over 11 years. He grew up in Santiago, Chile in a low-income home, and was the first in his family to go to college, thanks to hard work and scholarships. After earning his degree in engineering, he chose to focus on education as a way of helping to drive change for students like him. To date, Arias has created edtech products that have served over half a million K-12 Spanish-speaking students in Latin America. His companies have raised over $6M in venture capital and generated over $5M in revenue.
