SXSWedu : Announces 2015 LAUNCHedu® Program

AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 28, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- The SXSWedu Conference and Festival announced the complete line-up for the fourth annual LAUNCHedu startup competition, taking place March 9-12 in Austin, Texas at the 2015 event.

Driven by the innovative community of education stakeholders at SXSWedu, LAUNCHedu serves as an unparalleled platform for early-stage startups to compete as they showcase and exhibit new products and services in the education space.

"The opportunity to participate in LAUNCHedu was absolutely life changing," said Daniel Fountenberry, Founder of Books That Grow (2014 LAUNCHedu Finalist). "The relationships I developed in Austin at the event remain the driving force behind our business."

This year's ten finalists were selected from more than 100 applications from around the world through an extensive review process by the LAUNCHedu Advisory Board. The finalists represent a wide range of products and services that drive the increasingly international scope of educational technology.

The LAUNCHedu competition is comprised of two rounds of presentation and judging, as well as coaching sessions with business leaders. The judging panels provide insight from educators, entrepreneurs and investors, and include Jennie Magiera (Academy for Urban School Leadership), Jeff Livingston (McGraw-Hill Education), Jack Lynch (Renaissance Learning), Stacey Childress (New Schools Venture Fund), Bob Metcalfe (The University of Texas at Austin) and Dan Carroll (Clever). The 2015 competition will be emceed by Mandela Schumacher-Hodge (UP Global) and Mike Kleba (North Shore Schools).

"The LAUNCHedu competition represents the collaborative spirit that epitomizes the SXSWedu community by celebrating entrepreneurs and educators working together," said Greg Rosenbaum, SXSWedu Producer. "These groups share much in common, and LAUNCHedu harnesses the power of classroom insight in developing innovative ideas for educational technology."

The 2015 LAUNCHedu finalists are:

Binder
New York, NY
Binder is where students and recent graduates can explore their career options, discover interesting companies, improve their skills and land their dream job by competing in fun questions and challenges that showcase their real-world abilities.

Chalk.com
Ontario, CANADA
Chalk.com is a suite of productivity apps for K-12 teachers. Used in over 20,000 schools worldwide, Chalk.com solves the problems of lesson planning, assessment and collaboration, all designed with the teacher in mind. Tying these all together is a powerful predictive analytics engine that helps to drive student success.

CodeMonkey Studios
Tel Aviv, ISRAEL
CodeMonkey is a new way for children to learn how to code: an engaging online game for ages 9-16 that teaches a real-world programming language. Within only 7 months from launching in May 2014, over 250,000 children learned to code by playing CodeMonkey at home and in thousands of classrooms.

Ideas Box
Paris, FRANCE
Ideas Box is a portable multimedia center, with internet and its own energy source, for access to Education, Information and Culture anywhere in the world. With 20 tablets, a built-in cinema and many educational resources, it provides communities with the tools and space to play, learn, connect and create.

Language Zen
Stamford, CT
Language Zen is a language learning web app that adapts to learning styles and interests of every user. We use data-mining, TV and music to create useful, engaging content that fits with every individual user's personal strengths and weaknesses.

Lea(R)n, Inc
Raleigh, NC
Lea(R)n, an education innovation firm, enables states, schools and districts to know which technology products are best for their classrooms. Lea(R)n's online platform, LearnTrials.com, combines teacher expertise on classroom technology with other available data to give educators the insights and capacity to continuously improve their EdTech investments and instructional decisions.

Pear Deck
Iowa City, IA
Pear Deck makes it easy for teachers to engage 100% of their students. We know rich, active teaching leads to better learning outcomes, and we help teachers do it every single day. With Pear Deck, teachers can make any lesson interactive and gain real insight into student understanding.

Raise.me
San Francisco, CA
Raise.me is reinventing the way students access billions of dollars in college scholarships. Most scholarships today are awarded at the end of high school - far too late to influence students' college ambitions or application decisions. On Raise.me, students can earn "Micro-Scholarships" towards college automatically throughout high school based on their individual progress.

Sterio.me
Santiago, CHILE
Sterio.me is homework on your mobile phone, without needing the internet! It saves teachers time creating, marking and distributing homework and engages students out of the classroom by reinforcing concepts using SMS and Voice interactions. It's simple, affordable and effective.

Zaption
San Francisco, CA
Zaption transforms video-based learning with interactive content and tools that engage learners, deepen understanding and track progress. Teachers and trainers use Zaption to quickly add images, text and questions to existing online videos. With Zaption's Analytics, instructors get immediate feedback on how students interact with content and understand key concepts.

For more information on LAUNCHedu, please visit http://sxswedu.com/launch-edu.

About SXSWedu
The SXSWedu Conference & Festival fosters innovation in learning by hosting a diverse and energetic community of stakeholders across a variety of backgrounds in education. The four-day event affords registrants open access to engaging sessions, interactive workshops, hands on learning experiences, film screenings, early stage startups and a host of networking opportunities. By providing a platform for collaboration, SXSWedu works to promote creativity and social change.

SXSWedu is a component of the South by Southwest family of conferences and festivals that includes SXSW Music, Film and Interactive; SXSW Eco and SXSW V2V. Internationally recognized as the convergence gathering for the creative arts, SXSWedu extends SXSW's support for the art of engagement beyond musicians, filmmakers and new media innovators to include society's true rock stars: educators.

Join the passionate and innovative community at SXSWedu, March 9-12, 2015 in Austin, Texas. For more information, please visit http://sxswedu.com.

Press Credentials: If you are a member of the press and interested in attending, media registration for SXSWedu 2015 is now open through February 11, 2015. Please visit http://sxswedu.com/press for more information.

Contact:
Julia Shatilo
SXSWedu Press & Publicity
[e-mail]

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SOURCE SXSWedu