To realize the promise of learner-centered education, we must create pathways by which sound, innovative, technology-based products and services can evolve, mature and get to market at lower costs. Startl™ is a new social enterprise dedicated to supporting the innovation of effective, affordable, and accessible learning products. Startl’s focus is creating the conditions for success that let innovators create and capitalize products that truly help learners learn.
Startl believes technology can help people learn — all people — and that it can do so in formal educational settings and beyond. We want to see learning technologies deployed widely, not only in schools but everywhere learners spend their time. The innovative talent to build these products is out there; the infrastructure to get them to learners isn’t. What’s needed is the vision to guide these innovators and the capital to invest in them and their promising products, so they reach their intended audience and achieve their intended impact.
Startl is a new social enterprise dedicated to bringing digital media and learning innovations to market. We are an engine of change, catalyzing the development of a new generation of talent and learning products that will help shape a growing and highly dynamic market. To do this, we engage in the following activities, creating the support necessary for promising new digital media and learning tools to find their way to market quickly and affordably:
- Developing a set of criteria for high-quality digital media and learning products
- Scouting talent and launching emerging innovators through our Design Boost program, intensive week-long workshops on learning-rich, user-centered product design, prototyping, and marketing
- Identifying and mentoring the most promising innovators for our Start-Up Accelerator, a summer-long residency program for seed-stage companies
- Connecting innovators with the seed capital and strategic partners they need to go to market and get to users
- Evaluating the learning associated with products that emerge from Startl programs and sharing those results with the larger community. Read more ……
As one of three co-founders of Startl , a nonprofit organization funded primarily by several U.S.-based philanthropies that helps educational technology businesses get off the ground, Laurie Racine has been the group’s source of expertise on entrepreneurial theory. Ms. Racine is a self-proclaimed addict to startup culture, according to the website of the New York City-based group, and she has wide-ranging experience as a founder and fundraiser for new businesses herself. But Ms. Racine concedes she is still learning the nuances of the education market, and still feels very little is known about what business ventures in educational technology will prove most successful.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Lumina Foundation, all supporters of Startl, also provide grant support for Education Week. Read more ……
How Startl Is Hacking Education From the Outside In
Startl is entirely focused on educational entrepreneurs. Co-founder and Managing director Phoenix Wang, formerly of Accenture Consulting, iVillage, and then the Hewlett Foundation, is holding the organization’s first five-day “bootcamp” for ideas in mobile learning from March 15-19. Fast Company caught up with Wang to learn more and find out what’s coming next. Read more……