Education startup turns to 'crowdsourcing'

Former teacher Alex Grodd is betting on social media to solve a big problem in education: how to tap other teachers’ hands-on experience for what works in the classroom.

BetterLesson.com added to ensure all readers know we’re talking about online resources, rather than a brick-n-mortar learning center, his start-up, is leveraging the popular information-sharing model known as “crowdsourcing.” It provides a platform for teachers in the K-12 grades to share their best lesson plans with other educators across the country.

“I really struggled each night to figure out what I was going to teach and how I was going to teach it,” said Grodd, who taught with the national teacher corps Teach for America and in charter schools.

Grodd, who launched BetterLesson in 2009, is part of a new crop of online entrepreneurs trying to shake up the entrenched U.S. education products and services market. Their foray comes amid trying times for schools, with nationwide slides in student performance, teacher attrition, cash-strapped budgets and ongoing economic uncertainty.

In September, BetterLesson received $1.6 million in venture backing, and it is signing up new teachers at a rate of more than 250 a day, Grodd said.

The business uses a “freemium” model, offering the service at no fee to educators, while charging school districts for premium features such as custom analytics.

“We’re trying to disrupt the industry by creating a crowd-sourced, teacher-curated platform,” said the Boston-area entrepreneur.

Pioneers such as Grodd are leveraging the popularity of social media and advances in cloud-based computing to do everything from giving teachers more control over their classrooms to providing students with money-saving alternatives to costly supplies.

These ventures now appear to be gaining ground. Among the best known is Edmodo, a social learning network for teachers, students and parents that allows grades and homework to be assigned and submitted online.
And ClassroomWindow is a Boston start-up designed to offer teachers a dedicated channel to review the products and services they regularly use.

Launched in 2008, Edmodo now has 4.8 million users and in December secured a second round of funding totaling $15 million.

“Education is a tough market,” said Frank Bonsal, general partner with the VC firm New Markets Venture Partners, which invested in BetterLesson. “But I do think you’re going to see more and more of this, because the need is there.”