BirdBrain Education, an education technology company, has just launched an adaptive social studies tool for teachers that will help them close the literacy gap.
BirdBrain Education “Education is a technology start-up used by more than 70,000 students and teachers nationwide, that creates tools allowing every student to read, learn, and grow at their own independent reading level,” according to a press release. “The startup will be using Kickstarter to raise $30,000 by March 16th, to fund development for building a first-of-its-kind, adaptive History and Social Studies curriculum.”
"During my 7 years in the classroom in urban Los Angeles, I struggled to find ways to teach struggling students the required content and grow their independent reading level," said Brendan Finch, CEO and Founder in the release. "Students deserve a tool that teaches the rigorous content they need to learn and gives them the skills they need to succeed beyond the classroom. Teachers deserve a tool to help them reach every student in their classroom and to save them time on grading and making sure their text challenges both their most advanced and struggling students."
The release said that “according to the U.S. Dept of Ed, in 2013, 19 percent of high school graduates could not read.”
“Each year, students in middle and high school are outpaced further and further by their textbooks, with no way to catch up,” the release said. “If the financial goal is attained by March 16th, teachers and educators will have a tool in the classroom that will allow them to serve the same concepts to all students, at their independent reading level, and will automatically adapt the level they receive as they improve.”
According to the release, here is “how it works: Students and teachers access articles through an online learning platform or they can print them out. All levels of each article will contain the same essential concepts, but at varying levels of linguistic complexity. This enables all students in the classroom to participate in the same discussions. Teachers can now focus on planning lessons instead of wasting time scavenging for accessible text that is applicable to every individual student [an impossible feat]."
“BirdBrain's tools are currently the lowest cost adaptive curriculum tool on the market, at $4/student/year,” the release concluded.
Click here to learn about BirdBrain Science, and here for BirdBrain History.
Article by Kassondra Granata, Education World Contributor