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Poised as a digital alternative to paper-based homework and in-class assignments, Classkick is an app that allows teachers and students to collaborate via their iPads. The Chicago-based startup announced a $1.7 million seed round this week to continue the growth of its team and platform. Kapor Capital, Lightbank, Yammer founder Adam Pisoni, and Great Oaks Venture Capital all contibuted to the round.
Teachers can create assignments for their students, whose work they can view in real time, both during and after school hours. Based on the students’ progress, teachers can provide comments and direction for their problem-solving efforts.
Though it offers an alternative to the tedium of printing and distributing paper assignments, Classkick aims to correct a few problems that stretch beyond mere inconvenience.
According to Rowland, many students in the U.S. lack adequate feedback from their teachers, a force he said is the “number one driver that increases learning in the school day.” Teachers managing a classroom of 20 to 30 students might not have time during the course of a class or session to attend to the needs of each individual, let alone those reluctant to ask a question in front of the class.
Classkick, however, enables students to virtually raise their hands with a tap of the screen, which Rowland contends not only alerts teachers to students struggling with an assignment, but also gives more reticent students a chance to discreetly and nonverbally express their need for clarification.
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Rowland also extols the virtues of peer-to-peer support when it comes to student learning. Students who collaborate with each other, he said, are more likely to learn efficiently (one might speculate that they feel more at ease among their friends and contemporaries than they would among authority figures such as teachers; with that reduced pressure might come a greater willingness and ability to retain).
The app also allows students to request help from their classmates anonymously, knowing who’s on the other end. Teachers can monitor and intervene in these interactions and they can also activate or deactivate the peer-to-peer tutoring function.
But if everything’s conducted through an app, won’t that isolate students and schools who can’t afford iPads? For now, the answer is a bleak yes. But Rowland doesn’t view it that way; instead, he envisions a future in which every classroom is equipped with the technology required to use Classkick.
“In an effort to skate to where the puck will be, rather than where it is, we are working on creating a great experience for the classroom environment that we believe will be ubiquitous in the near future,” he said. “With the roots of our company coming from urban teaching, we have plans for leveling the playing field as much as possible. For example, we will be releasing a version of Classkick that will work on all devices, not just iPads.”
Though he declined to reveal the startup’s revenue model (the app is free), Rowland said Classkick has accumulated enough funding to sustain it for the next two years. While he said the app has gained “solid organic traction,” he seeks “to improve the experience much more to make it easier and more effective for all our teachers and students.”
“Ultimately, we want to demonstrably increase student learning and open up the potential in every student,” he said. “We are doing this by connecting stakeholders in each student’s education, [meaning] their parents, teachers, and peers, to that student’s work, making sure they get the right help immediately when they need it.”
