Consider this reality: you're a high school math teacher. One hundred and sixty students cycle through your classroom every a day.
"How would you have any idea which students struggle with certain concepts?" asks Corey Thompson. "What we ask our teachers to do in that realm is not possible."
Thompson is co-founder and chief executive officer of Naiku, a local start-up offering an online education assessment platform that benefits both student and teacher, says Thompson.
Naiku ("teacher" in Lao) gives teachers a "classroom dashboard" that allows both summative assessment--what students know--as well as formative assessment--how they learned it. A formative assessment question might be: "What was the concept that this quiz tested you on?" offers Thompson.
The exercise in "meta-cognition" enriches the students' learning experience, he says. "It helps the students perform better, as well, because it makes them think about what they know and what they don't know."
Teachers can create assessments, share them with other teachers, and customize and organize the student data gathered.
A
two-minute video on Naiku's website gives a quick overview of how the platform works.
Naiku was born last fall and is already being used by thousands of students,
says Thomspon. In late February, Naiku announced a partnership with
Austin, Texas-based Instruction-Driven Measurement Center (IDMC) to
market and connect Naiku to more users. Thompson expects to add other
partnerships in the near future.
Thompson met co-founder and cognitive psychologist Adisack
Nhouyvanisvong while they were earning MBAs at the University of
Minnesota. (Both graduated last year.) Kevin Sampers, a third
co-founder, is Naiku's COO and VP of sales and marketing.
Naiku works in all major browsers and on all personal devices, Thompson says, including iPhone, iPod Touch, android, iPad and laptop.
Thompson sees schools embracing the use of personal devices more and more. He envisions that, in the near future, students will use their own devices, with subsidies for students that don't own devices, similar to free- and reduced-priced lunch.
"In the next year or two, it's all going to tip," says Thompson. "Student devices will be welcomed."
Source: Corey Thompson, Naiku
Writer: Jeremy Stratton