A former Google executive has developed a multimillion-dollar learning venture to help educators and students cope with the challenges in modern classrooms.
Max Ventilla founded AltSchool, a $133 million school startup that aims to personalize education from children in pre-K through eighth-grade school. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are among the venture's high-profile investors.
Speaking with CNN, Ventilla said a team of 50 engineers will handle a custom software that will serve students a "play list"—a series of activities, called cards, peering into a student's Google Chromebook.
The teacher is responsible for uploading cards designed to improve students' learning, but students are given the freedom to choose the activities they want to work on.
"We build a dashboard for educators called learning progression where each teacher can kind of see for every child in that classroom, what's the frontier of learning for that kid? Where are they struggling? Where are they ahead? That kind of technology gives educators the information to make good decisions that no amount of pen and paper and dedication could provide," Ventilla said.
The idea came to the Silicon Valley expert when he was researching private schools in San Francisco for his preschool-age daughter and found limited opportunities that "would really prepare her for a lifetime of change."
According to AltSchool's website, the program is still accepting applications for limited Lower and Middle School spots in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York for fall 2016. Ventilla's target by 2017 is to make AltSchool available to at least 400 students across nine locations in San Francisco, Palo Alto and New York.
The use of technology in the classroom is an emerging trend in the U.S. A recent conference of the American Educational Research revealed education technology's potential to change the opportunity limits for success of less fortunate American students.
