If you’ve had a bad experience with school either as a teacher or a student, you might want to check out Kiddom.
Besides the rise of online courses and “Nanodegrees”, for the bigger part of the history of education, schooling hasn’t changed much. A solitary teacher stands in front of a classroom and speaks in the hopes that everyone is following, then puts everyone through tests that are meant to accurately measure performance.
Don’t understand differential equations? Too bad, we have a quiz on it tomorrow. Already went through chemical bonds? Good for you, we’re spending two more classes on it.
In fact, a study by Scholastic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has shown that generally, once a class exceeds 27 people, effective learning becomes a significant challenge.
Kiddom is a company to combat that.
A New Way for Teachers and Students to Work Together
Kiddom, a digital platform that allows teachers and learners to work together, is among a wave of ed-tech startups poised to change the face of schooling. Ahsan Rizvi, its founder, believes that teachers are set up for failure from the start of each school year. Besides planning a year’s worth of curriculum without knowing much about their incoming students, teachers also need to somehow cater to each student’s learning needs.
Kiddom 2.0’s platform
Besides allowing students to submit assignments and get timely feedback in a centralized way, Kiddom provides a one-stop platform for teachers to actively monitor student’s performance. Teachers will be able to track every measured metric - test grades, assignment scores, participation rates, and any customizable standard - for whole classes or individual students on an intuitive online platform.
More specifically, Kiddom’s new platform also tracks “Class Standards Mastery” - a stacked line graph that displays how each student compares in terms of their mastery of specific concepts. Via Kiddom’s periodic reports. Teachers can know exactly where each student lies at the end of each week or month, and continually iterate or pivot on their teaching approaches. Students can also track their own progress and know exactly where they fall short as well.
To the frustrated student and burnt-out teacher, Kiddom represents a much-needed paradigm shift - and schools have been responding very well. Since its inception in 2015, the Kiddom platform has grown rapidly, and grew over 30% month-over-month in 2016 and 2017 through strong word-of-mouth referral. Teacher adoption in hundreds of schools grew rapidly to 95% on average within six months after just a few teachers began to use the product in each school as well.
Currently, Kiddom is targeting K-12 classrooms with the launch of their new 2.0 platform after raising $6.5 million in total financing, led by Khosla Ventures investment partner Keith Rabois.
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This piece was originally published on Breaking Hoops, a blog about tech and social impact. Receive a monthly newsletter and never miss out on the latest in impact tech!