The AWS EdStart Pitch Day Winners

AWS EdStart recently held two pitch days, one in San Francisco and one in New York City. These events showcased 22 EdTech startups from the accelerator to potential customers and investors. These events provided opportunities for companies to receive direct feedback on their products, identify areas for collaboration with other industry members, and network with subject matter experts and industry leaders.

During the event, attendees provided the pitching companies with direct real-time feedback on their offerings and pitches. According to Jessica Rothenberg-Aalami, CEO & Co-Founder of Cell-Ed, “When you’re speaking at AWS Pitch Days, people are voting and asking questions in real-time, which makes for a highly-engaging experience for everyone.” At the end of the night, first, second, and third place prizes were awarded based on the collective audience scoring. Winners received prize packages including AWS Promotional Credits, complimentary tickets to NY EdTech Week, a copy of The Global Silicon Valley Handbook, and much more.

These events resulted in over 100 direct connections between startups and potential customers, investors, and partners. Congratulations to the winners. Check out how they use the cloud and the support from AWS EdStart to deliver technology to the classroom below.

Learn more about the San Francisco Winners:

First Place: codeSpark: codeSpark is an EdTech company, based out of California, that gets kids excited about computer science by turning programming into play. In three years, over 20 million kids in 196 countries have used codeSpark Academy. codeSpark Academy is committed to accessibility and equity. codeSpark Academy is free for public schools and comes with a curriculum and other supporting materials for teachers.

Second Place: Edpuzzle: Edpuzzle, created by Quim Sabria, a former math teacher, enables teachers to turn any video into a lesson. While the students learn at their own pace through the video, the teacher holds them accountable through questions embedded in the video.

Third Place: Sown to Grow: In Sown To Grow, students set learning goals, track their own progress, and write reflections on the strategies that work best for them. Teachers set expectations, monitor growth, and provide feedback on student reflections. The platform provides scaffolding with learning strategies and insights for teachers to better reach struggling students. The result? Students care more, focus on growth, and become better, empowered learners.

Learn more about the New York Winners:

First Place: Legends of Learning: American children need new education heroes; teachers dedicated to using new, engaging methods to teach curriculum. Legends of Learning helps educators make their classrooms fun, engaging, and productive learning environments through research-driven, curriculum-based games. Their learning game platform offers a range of lessons for stronger subject mastery and classroom engagement. Teachers can don their capes with Legends of Learning here.

Second Place: Learnmetrics Inc: Learnmetrics is a smart data company that aggregates, analyzes, and activates learning data to reveal information that’s hard to find, understand, standardize, or work with. The tools uncover these hidden insights, giving educators valuable clues about how best to ignite the potential of each and every student, and to refine the efficacy of learning organizations at-large. They take all of their tools and data sources and transform them from disparate, opaque, and inadequate to connected, transparent, and workflow-oriented insights.

Third Place: Cell-Ed: Cell-Ed creates real-world, relevant content for adult learners based on national standards. One in four adults in the US is lacking the basic skills in reading, writing, math or English-language proficiency to find and keep stable, well-paying jobs. Because many are trying to raise children, hold down more than one job, and juggle ever-changing shift schedules, these time-strapped adults are often unable to take the classes they need to get ahead. Cell-Ed brings what they need to the device they carry with them everywhere – a cell phone – so they can learn in short bursts any time of the day or night and gain the skills to advance in the workplace.

According to Julian Miller, CEO and Founder of Learnmetrics, “As a 5+ year old company, we’ve been involved in many EdTech events from pitches to programs and back, but there are three things that make Amazon’s EdStart program stand out for us. First, they have genuine curiosity about how they can move the needle for strong technologies in education. Second, they bring their considerable expertise to the table and ask how they can support and complement our work. And third, they combine the first two with considerable resources from AWS’s toolbox, which means we can deploy innovation at Amazon pace and scale. For us, Amazon Web Services is an ideal partner and we look forward to continuing the relationship.”

In 2018, we will be expanding to include more cities. Stay tuned for the 2018 lineup of AWS EdStart Pitch Days.