The National Education Policy Center has called for more effective educational software through “partnerships among developers, educational researchers and teachers.” Our answer is School Shaped. We incubate teams of engineers and designers, as they design, build and distribute better edtech as partners in school communities. School Shaped places each “Build Team” in a K-12 school for a year. We p
rovide mentorship while each team works with students, teachers and staff to design and prototype new tools. Successes and failures are documented, and effective apps are widely distributed, for free, through School Shaped’s app platform. The platform enables continued development by providing identity management, usage data, bug reports and feature requests. The school receives practical benefit from the new software, as well as the empowering experience of designing their own tools. The Build Team becomes an experienced design and software engineering team, ready to pursue any of their ideas as a startup. After graduating, they remain part of the School Shaped community. We make it easier for them to find funding, through partnerships with incubators and VCs, and easier to sell their software through our trusted app platform. At first we will be targeting low income schools with this program. These schools, serving nearly 50% of students in America, cannot afford to purchase unproven technology, or the extensive training most products require. However, research shows that these schools stand to benefit the most from effective technology. The proven, intuitive solutions produced by School Shaped will be able to make a real difference.
