Last week, we were in Nashville for EdSurge’s Tennessee Tech for Schools Summit. For those who don’t know, EdSurge is an awesome news organization that covers education technology. They’re on the bleeding edge of what’s new and interesting in education, startups and technology and they’re a great one stop shop for anyone interested in ed tech startups and investing. They’ve been organizing and hosting Tech for Schools Summits around the country that bring together local K12 educators with some of the best ed tech startups from across the country. The latest was in Nashville. It drew teachers, librarians, IT decision makers, etc. from across Tennessee. Competition among startups hoping to participate was fierce. Many applied and only ~30 were invited. Local education experts judged the applicants to decide who made the cut. So, we were honored and excited to be invited! The scrible Team at the Summit consisted of Victor Karkar (our CEO), Andrew Biros and Cavan Klinsky. Andrew is Head of Instructional Technology, Lead Educator, Curriculum Designer and Program Manager at Kensington Creative & Performing Arts High School in Philly. Cavan is a sharp, driven and impressive Rails developer, debater, tech entrepreneur and junior at the Horace Mann School in New York City. Andrew and Cavan are fans of scrible and volunteered their time to come tell Volunteer State teachers all about scrible. 
(Photo credit: Tina Osborne)
We demo’d scrible and spoke with 74+ educators from 56+ schools across Tennessee. It was amazing. Teachers loved us. Their feedback validated our value to them and their schools. When asked, Would you use this product?, 84% said Yes.
- This product would be really easy for me to set up: 4.0
- This product is visually appealing: 4.1
- This product saves me tons of time: 4.0
- Overall impression of the product: 4.2
- If administrators were looking to purchase this product for their school, how strongly would you advocate for this product?: 4.0
- Overall impression of the product: 4.2
- “Annotation and highlight. Great product for common core. Great to prepare students for college writing.”
- “Kids would be excited to use it.”
- “This tool would be usable in our middle school as a research tool. I see it as usable in cross-curricular and Project Based Learning assignments. It seems to give students all the components to complete a research project in one place.I will be sharing this with my peers.“
- “It is a great tool for teaching research to students. They will learn to read, scan, take notes, summarize, create citation pages. Wow, it’s great!“
- “Great annotating tool, great for close reading and research. Simple and powerful.”
- “This would be helpful in organization, research, and collaborative projects. It also provides a tool for feedback from the teacher.”
- “I would recommend it for ease of use and completeness in giving students all the tools they need in one place.”
- “This is an amazing tool for students to be responsible online researchers! Students, young and old, can investigate, highlight, save and appropriately annotate work they have done with research. Students can also use this tool to take notes on required topics or learn about new topics of their own interest. In today’s tech world, students need to be able to use tools like this as they investigate. New state-wide assessments will require students to do online writing and research, so this tool will help them prepare.“
- “I would definitely see this beneficial for all of my classes. Citations are so crucial for our students and with our state tests.”
- “I would recommend it to the ELA, science and social studies teachers who are giving research assignments.”
This feedback has been incredibly valuable! We’ve shared it with a variety of partners and it’s made a great impression… Showing how valuable scrible is for students and teachers. We want to thank EdSurge not only for drawing a great, engaged group of educators for us to speak with, but also for having fantastic, structured mechanisms and incentives to have those educators provide meaningful feedback. So often, startups spend lots of time, money and effort to attend conferences and trade shows and they may even have good conversations with attendees, but it’s rare to walk away with detailed, actionable feedback. Thank you EdSurge!
