Better Minds Education

FLIPPED CLASSROOM; KENYA

PROVEN INTERVENTION TO BE DISTRIBUTED

Flipped classroom. 

Learn more about the Flipped Classroom Challenge and why new education models, like flipping the classroom or deskilling a class curriculum, offer a solution to the vast teacher shortages in the developing world.

DISTRIBUTION MODEL INNOVATION

Better Minds Education is dedicated to improving student learning outcomes throughout rural Africa through a scalable digital tutoring model.

Better Minds distributes proven digital tutoring content to high-need students in rural Africa. The pilot digital learning center in Kakamega, Kenya leverages low-cost tablets and self-paced learning software to teach students at their right level of learning through school-based partnerships and holiday learning camps.

Better Minds was founded in 2019 by Siler Bryan, with Grace Waweru as the first Digital Learning Center Manager.

PILOT AND SCALING GOALS

• Provide tutoring to 500 students within 3 months

• Launch partnerships with 6 schools and hold 1 holiday camp to reach 500 students in 3 months

• Raise $50,000 from new donors within 3 months

• Scale to serve 2,000 students by end of year 1 and 10,000 by year 2

FOUNDING TEAM

Siler Bryan - Director

Edkasa

FLIPPED CLASSROOM CHALLENGE; PAKISTAN

PROVEN INTERVENTION TO BE DISTRIBUTED

The Edupreneur program which will make top quality teachers available across the country. 

Learn more about the Flipped Classroom Challenge and why new education models, like flipping the classroom or deskilling a class curriculum, offer a solution to the vast teacher shortages in the developing world.

 

DISTRIBUTION MODEL INNOVATION

Teachers will deliver live lessons at EDKASA's central facility in Lahore which will then be streamed to a network of low-cost centers that will be operated by Edupreneurs. These Edupreneurs will screen the live teaching web-streams at their physical locations, providing access to students in their communities for a low monthly cost. 

The Edupreneur program strategy is based on providing three core elements: 

1. Provide top quality teachers, live. Live, interactive learning is critical for success in the after-school education sphere in Pakistan. 

2. Reach students from low income households. The target user for the Edupreneur program is a secondary student from a low-income household. EDKASA first goal is to achieve a price point of $10 per month per student for after-school secondary education with the aim to reduce it to $5 once the programs scale up. 

3. Be financially sustainable. EDKASA wants to provide a solution that is financially sustainable for everyone involved. 

PILOT AND SCALING GOALS

• Work with 10 entrepreneurs during the pilot phase
• Reach 200 students during the pilot phase 
• Work with 250 Edupreneurs and reach 5,000 students by the end of year 1 
• Work with 500 Edupreneurs and reach 20,000 students by the end of year 2

FOUNDING TEAM

Fahad Tanveer - Director

Sohail Ali - Strategy Lead

Annum Sadiq - Education Lead

Bakhtawar Ali - Marketing Lead 

Muneeb Ali - Tech Lead 

ThinkZone

FLIPPED CLASSROOM CHALLENGE

PROVEN INTERVENTION TO BE DISTRIBUTED

‘School-in-a-box’.

Learn more about the Flipped Classroom Challenge and why new education models, like flipping the classroom or deskilling a class curriculum, offer a solution to the vast teacher shortages in the developing world.

DISTRIBUTION MODEL INNOVATION

ThinkZone empowers parents and educators to develop foundational skills of children by leveraging accessible tech solutions and community-led interventions. We enable community educators, childcare workers, and school teachers to deliver quality early-grade education programs via data-driven mobile and voice/SMS based technology, low-cost learning resources, and class management tools.

PILOT AND SCALING GOALS

• 15 women entrepreneurs onboarded during the pilot phase

• 450 students enrolled during the pilot phase

FOUNDING TEAM

Binayak Acharya - Founder

Soch

FLIPPED CLASSROOM CHALLENGE; PAKISTAN

PROVEN INTERVENTION TO BE DISTRIBUTED

De-skilled educational curriculum.

Learn more about the Flipped Classroom Challenge and why new education models, like flipping the classroom or deskilling a class curriculum, offer a solution to the vast teacher shortages in the developing world.

DISTRIBUTION MODEL INNOVATION

Soch works with Edtech companies and educational content producers to power flipped classrooms with continuous assessments which enable Teaching at the right level (TaRL) to help improve literacy and education quality in resource-limited classrooms.

Soch designs, implements and supervises these programs, which are then independently managed by instructors and schools.

PILOT AND SCALING GOALS

• 250 students reached during the pilot phase

• 12,000 students reached by the end of year 2

FOUNDING TEAM

Syed Anzar Ahmad - Founder

Access to Education

FLIPPED CLASSROOM CHALLENGE

PROVEN INTERVENTION TO BE DISTRIBUTED

Flipped classroom. 

Learn more about the Flipped Classroom Challenge and why new education models, like flipping the classroom or deskilling a class curriculum, offer a solution to the vast teacher shortages in the developing world.

DISTRIBUTION MODEL INNOVATION

Access to Education (A2e) is an online educational platform that ensures remote areas students access to quality instructive videos and live classes, complementary to their academic curriculum that is facilitated by trained instructors through a multimedia classroom set up in each partner school. It is working to create a bridge between privileged and deprived students where former one will be able to share their learning experience with later one and synergize the power of education to break all barriers.

 

FOUNDING TEAM

Ayesha Meem - Co-Founder

Mostofa Sadab - Co-Founder

Samiha Nusrat - Co-Founder

1Room

FLIPPED CLASSROOM CHALLENGE; KENYA

PROVEN INTERVENTION TO BE DISTRIBUTED

A self-directed, digital learning program. 

Learn more about the Flipped Classroom Challenge and why new education models, like flipping the classroom or deskilling a class curriculum, offer a solution to the vast teacher shortages in the developing world.

DISTRIBUTION MODEL INNOVATION

1Room will operate modular learning pods where students pursue individual study plans using tablet PCs and other media, under the guidance of a pod leader. 1Room's pods will be albe to operate in rural and remote environments with limited infrastructur and at half the cost of regular high schools. 

1Room's approach is guided by departures from traditional education: 1. students will study at a content level and pace that is right for them; 2. student activities and responses to questions will be recorded digitally and inform educational decision-making at an individual and institutional level through cutting-edge data analytics; 3. staff decisions on scheduling access to study resources, scheduling one-on-one time, and assigning study content will be supported by data-rich models and optimization methods accessible with a few clicks on a smart phone; 4. staff compensation will be linked to objective measures of effort and effectiveness. 

We will curate our content library and eventually develop original content in close partnership with two research labs in India which are pioneering table and phone-based education for students in developing countries. Pod Leaders will help students set goals, form study plans, offer remedial teaching when students hit difficulties, and deliver certain content not covered sufficiently by othe rresources. Geographically proximate clusters of 8-12 pods or classrooms with students using our tech enabled education at various levels, will be supervised by a cluster manager. 

 

PILOT AND SCALING GOALS

• Reach 400 students during pilot phase 
• Scale to more than 450 students after year 1 
• Reach 50,000 students by year 4 

FOUNDING TEAM

Michael Beeler - Founder and Director

Julius Tapper - Strategy and Business Design 

Sadia Rafiquddin - Resource Development 

vChalk

FLIPPED CLASSROOM; INDIA

PROVEN INTERVENTION TO BE DISTRIBUTED

Remedial education and progress tracking. 

Learn more about the Flipped Classroom Challenge and why new education models, like flipping the classroom or deskilling a class curriculum, offer a solution to the vast teacher shortages in the developing world.

DISTRIBUTION MODEL INNOVATION

vChalk offers remedial educaiton and progress tracking services to affordable private schools in semi- and per-urban India. The problem is the inability to support all children in India with diverse learning needs in keeping up with the formal curriculum and in preventing them from falling behind.  This inefficiency translates into poor learning outcomes for millions of young learners in India, many of them first generation, who are enrolled in primary school but have not achieved the minimum benchmarks for learning. 

Remedial programs that help students catch up have been, for years, directed only toward government schools. As affordable private schools spread to meet the growing demand for education in India, vChalk fills an important learning gap by distributing the proven Balsakhi (now called Read India) remedial education model to these schools. We help mitigate their problem by offering a bundle of two services: in-school remedial programs start and support (targeted at children who do not master basic numeracy and literacy skills) and learning progress tracking service (targeted at children who are subscribed to the remedial class). 

The remedial program would look like this: a female Community Instructor who has completed at least 12th grade and who is motivated to work with children (ideally from the parents' community) works with lower perfornace students in 3rd and 4th grade for two hours each day. The instructor goes through a two week training program before teaching and receives further on the job training during the year from vChalk's Monitoring Manager. The intervention runs for two years at the school. vChalk's tracking system of children's learning progress is a focus of the project and makes longitudinal data available for each student. 

PILOT AND SCALING GOALS

• 30 active schools during the pilot phase
• 360 total students in remedial classes during pilot phase
• 160 active schools at the end of year 1 
• 3,220 students in remedial classes at the end of year 1
• 360 active schools at the end of year 2 
• 7,620 students in remedial classes at the end of year 2

FOUNDING TEAM

Daniela Gheorghe - Team Lead

Anil Bishnoi - Chief Technical Officer 

Jody Tian - Management Consultant 

Suma Nagaraj - Product Development Consultant 

REACH

FLIPPED CLASSROOM CHALLENGE; UGANDA

PROVEN INTERVENTION TO BE DISTRIBUTED

Flip the classroom intervention, providing schools with low-cost and sustainable learning materials and innovative instruction methods. 

Learn more about the Flipped Classroom Challenge and why new education models, like flipping the classroom or deskilling a class curriculum, offer a solution to the vast teacher shortages in the developing world. 

 

DISTRIBUTION MODEL INNOVATION

1. Provide students with government-approved textbooks with which they learn the lesson materials before coming to class each day. 

2. Train teachers on how to facilitate engaging activities that use low-cost and easily accessible materials in order to further students' understanding of the topics studied at home. These materials are drawn from Bridge International's hands-on primary education tools. 

For the pilot, the team identified Grade 6 as a critical year for intervening in the classroom and maintaining students' interest in school with the potential to significantly improve their learning outcomes and increase primary school completion rates. By focusing on Mathematics, they aim to enable all students to develop the quantitative skills required for them to succeed at Primary Leaving Examinations (Grade 7) and complete primary school. REACH will work in collaboration with education officers and schools in Uganda to create strategic partnerships to expand and strengthen the model. 

Books donated during the implementation will be kept by each school and can be used by new student cohorts the following years. The team will build on the expertise of current teachers - who remain in one school for an average of 10 years - to ensure the quality and continuity of the project. The team will work closely with education officers and Center Coordinating Tutors to help supervise and scale the program. Teachers who have gone through the training and program will be able to join the REACH Fellowship Network. 

 

PILOT AND SCALING GOALS

• Target 30 out of 256 public primary schools in Wakiso, the largest district in Uganda based on population. 
• Benefit 15 teachers 
• Reach between 1,500 and 1,800 students 
• 2017: train an additional 120 teachers 
• 2018: train an additional 300 teachers, reach 56,550 students 

 

FOUNDING TEAM

Clara Bicalho- Operations Manager

David Kafambe- Training and External Relations Manager

Eduardo Campillo - M&E Manager 

Angelina Micha Djaja- Finance and Logistics Manager

sharEd

FLIPPED CLASSROOM CHALLENGE; INDIA

PROVEN INTERVENTION TO BE DISTRIBUTED

High-quality educational curricula and resources. 

Learn more about the Flipped Classroom Challenge and why new education models, like flipping the classroom or deskilling a class curriculum, offer a solution to the vast teacher shortages in the developing world. 

 

DISTRIBUTION MODEL INNOVATION

In low-income preschools across the globe, teachers stand in front of classrooms of 3 and 4-year-olds without any training in early childhood education (ECE) and without any materials to aid in play-based learning. Furthermore, low-income schools in countries like India and Bangladesh can't afford expensive, privately published curricula or the games and toys needed for age-appropriate instruction, so teachers make up lessons as they go. By lowering the cost of these materials through a subscription-based sharing model, sharEd operates as a solution provider to the affordable preschool market in India, helping schools to deliver quality education at a fraction of the cost. 

Research has shown that quality preschool curricula, like Creative Curriculum, with structured step-by-step instructions can be an effective intervention even when run by an untrained teacher or facilitator. However, these products are too expensive for most schools. We realized that preschools using these products only use a fraction of their physical materials at any given time, while the rest sit on the shelf. With sharEd, instead of paying thousands of dollars to buy materials, schools can access quality resources immediately by renting one new learning unit each month for as low as $10. When schools subscribe, they get access to monthly themed lesson plans with structured activities, quality story books, and all the play materials they need for that unit. 

Schools that subscribe to sharEd become part of a community of local teachers who meet every month. At monthly meetings, sharEd teachers return their materials, get a new themed lesson plan, and receive training in early education best practices and classroom management. 

In order to reach customers, sharEd will leverage a two-pronged approach.

1. A top-down approach, targeting large groups of schools which are run through a public-private partnership with other non-profits and NGOs and the Indian government. These schools will pay no fee. 

2. A bottom-up approach, targeting the fragmented private school market through a grassroots movement. The strategy will leverage sharEd's local teacher trainers to identify and sign up schools for a minimal monthly fee. 

sharEd will operate in local markets by contracting experienced, trained teachers to rent out the materials and run monthly training sessions. These employees will be recruited by the Regional Program Director and paid a competitive rate to run training sessions. 

 

PILOT AND SCALING GOALS

• Onboard 20 preschools and reach approximately 600 children

• 2016-2017 school year will collect valuable feedback from pilot schools to improve the product and onboard 60 additional schools for the next school year

• In 2017, scale to 80 classrooms and provide quality early education to another 2,400 children

• In two years, provide quality early education to over 12,000 children and empower teachers wtih 3,300 total hours of training

• In 2018, scale to 300 schools

 

FOUNDING TEAM

Bobby Powers - Chief Executive Officer 

Nihar Shah - Chief Financial Officer 

Kate Geremia - Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Procurement Officer 

Derrick Wolbert - Chief Information Officer