Amplify, Oct 5, 2016.
“For millions of children in the U.S., this is their only shot at 4th grade. We have to make it count.”
– John Mullin, Enlearn CEO
When we look inside the K-12 classroom today, we see a teacher, students, textbooks, computers and an ever-widening achievement gap. Much like classrooms of 100 years ago, what we still can’t see is exactly what may be contributing to a specific student’s ability to learn well or struggle academically. Even after decades of extensive educational research, we still have no way of knowing what works best for each student in each situation every day. What we do know is that what works for one student in one class at one school may not work for the child sitting right next to him.
When Zoran Popović, Founder of Enlearn and Director of the Center for Game Science at the University of Washington, looks inside the classroom, he sees a system with many interdependent yet unconnected parts that can and should work together to improve student learning. He sees the opportunity to create an environment where each dynamic element, be it the teacher, the content, or even another student, informs the other and provides everyone with real-time insights and support. Zoran envisions a classroom ecosystem where all children can learn to their full potential, because he says, “…There are millions of children who are brilliant and elastic and capable and they don’t even know it.”
In 2012 Zoran founded our nonprofit organization, Enlearn to make this vision a reality. He sought to build a groundbreaking learning platform that closes the achievement gap and engages students by making the entire classroom ecosystem adaptive. The Enlearn platform, which combines classroom data and machine learning, empowers publishers, school districts, and teachers to work together to to optimize content, provide actionable next steps, and deliver personalized learning to each student in real time.
