Alexia Tsotsis works for TechCrunch as a writer. She attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, majoring in Writing and Art, and moved to New York City shortly after graduation to work in the Media industry.
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The single screen product will also offer students lower priced digital textbooks as well as other interactive learning features such as the ability to collaborate, access and navigate course materials and text books by image as well as a write-on/touch screen for notes.
In its latest move, the company is attempting to crystalize the college learning tool niche by providing an all encompassing touch screen learning platform on a slimmed down 14.1 inch iPad-like single screen.
Kno is founded by Babur Habib and Osman Rashid, who also founded physical textbook rental company Chegg which just received $75 million in series D funding. Rashid’s cross platform commitment to the college textbook market is indisputable, whether it be print or digital, wanting to “give students different options in order to fundamentally shift the way students learn today.”
Says Rashid, “Even though the Kno pays for itself in 13 months, the smaller up front investment of the single screen version will allow more students to use our learning platform.”
As saving money is a key concern for budget-conscious students, the single screen, being cheaper to produce and sell than the double screen, will save them even more money, estimated ROI coming to the consumer at 7 months. Currently the double screen Kno is to be price pointed at under $1000 and the single screen is poised to be even less expensive.
The single screen tablet will join the double screen tablet in availibilty by the end of this year. Here’s the video of their demo; mockups and such are below.
We have 2 demos in a row. So is that gonna work okay? Okay . Up on stage with me is Osman Rashid and Babur Habib. Founder and CTO and CEO of Kno. And you were also also the founder of Chegg.
Right.
Which just raised 75 million dollars. W e'll talk about that later. Do you have a mic? Are you mic-ed up?
I am mic-ed up.
Okay. So go ahead. You've got 10 minutes to do your demo. What are you gonna show us today?
All right.
First of all. What is Kno?
Kno stands for knowledge. It is short for knowledge. But before we get into our announcement for the day, let me just take a quick minute to give a little bit of a background. So we started Kno with one clear mission to improve the way students l earn. In order to do that, we must first improve the learning experience that the students have today. And the first thing we introduce the Kno a few months ago. With the notion of doing just that to digitize the learning experience and to create a fusion between the national analog behavior, digital content and the learning experience.
Now to replace to improve experience, you know the first thing you have to do is really replaced what's inside his backpack as you know, this can weight a lot. And the Kno digitizes how you read, how you read, how you write, you do your research. Y ou collaborate with other students and organize your knowledge . We then wrapped that up into a learning platform to provide in context learning.
For example, if you're a biology student, and you're studying on a topic. This was from information from the knowledge platform based on all the thing you are learning on the topic. The entire notion is that when you combine this two together, you can fundamentally shift the way students learn today. Is this your existing product?
So, this is Kno that was announced a few months ago.
Digital textbook.
So in June we unveiled the Kno. A ground breaking dual display tablet textbook. Our aim was to mimic the analog behavior of student learning into the digital platform. And with 2 displays we can show a textbook alongside or a full browser all at the same time. Exactly like how students do right now. So our philosophy has always been that we are creating a learning platform in multiple devices. W e'll be able to access the platform and today we had taken the full step in the direction for. For the first time, we're very excited to announce a singles screen tablet textbook, and this 14.1 inch tablet text is fully integrated with o ur learning platform and allows the student to read, write, to collaborate, to organize your knowledge and research. A nd so this one is what we're gonna show for you today.
All right. Now for the demo. What I would like to talk today is the integrated experience that we want to provide students on our platform. Can everybody see that. So first all, and foremost for students is organization. Our desktop provides kinds of space which organizes students life. There's a dedicated section to apps. W e'll have a full support for third party app developers as well as a software develop ing kit that we will be announcing in the future.
One of the examples of an app maybe a white board where the student's chalked up what they need to do through out the day. The micro c-section i s where all your course material is organized for that particular semester. Now, in our previous announcement, what we showed you guys was how nicely a textbook is laid out on our device. Today, we wanna one step further and show you how the notebook is integrated into our platform. We want to provide students with a writing experience such that they forget the physical hand and paper.
Students have told us the designs of text book, taking class notes, doing home work annotating lecture notes is extremely important to them. Now you can say, well, why don't you give them a virtual keyboard and they can type away? Well, it turns out the research had shown that students retain a lot more when they write rather than when they type. A nd as you can see from this particular example of a class note page is not just about the text. It's about complex figures It's about even more complex figure say when you're doing a a homework problems, it's about equations. As we all know e quation editors are the most cumbersome piece of software that we know of.
Not only, it's about the equation but you know, at time, students have to relay the equation, or a particular figure to grasp what are they'e drawing. So here, let me do that as an example. So, as you can see we will provide a seamless integration of into our device as well which is very, very important to students. And this is s econd most important thing Integrating with our device now. Let's take this example a little bit further. The notebook is not only just a place for writing. But it's also for integrating information from other sources. In this particular case, it so happens that the student has imported a copy and pasted a figured from the textbook. So now when they are reviewing all of these material from their midterm exam. They come to the figure but, like yeah, you know what, there were a couple of other highlights that I did on that particular textbook. Let me go there.
And with a single touch, you're on the textbook now. Exactly the same figure with all the highlights. We'll have a full integrated internet browser by the way, we'll support flash as well as a HTML files. Students can link particular sections of the page of the textbook to their duplicate websites as an example over here the students has l inked it to their department website. Okay my files is slow. Well, this is to show you how it will actually be Integrated over the . I must be holding devise wrong. All right. Okay. Let me go back to the notebook and highlight a few other features of note taking. It is not only a note taker but a lot of students like engineering students as well as art students will use it for drawing. Here's an example and you know one of the most important things about writing for students' is how well doodle in class And, here is an example of what happened when we were when we were preparing for tech launch. I hope you recognize the face. You got a nice doodle there I wanna show the yeah. You can give him mustache and a little thing.
We 're running out of time.
So I'm just gonna put the summary page here and show you guys how we're integrating giving the students an integrated experience and bringing the analog world in which they live right now into the digital world. Do you have a booth or anything? Can people see this? If they wanna check it out or just grab you before you leave.
I don't believe you have booths right now.
Okay, well that was in, so you can look at the video. Just one quick question before you get off here. In the back stage we're talking about ,you know, you started with Chegg, which is physical books
Right.
It's sort of ,you know, you started with Chegg, which is physical books
Right.
It's sort of disrupting the textbook market, and that now obviously that this sort of really disrupting it potentially. Do you see a time in the future where you know these books are pay per download. Could this be the rentals? Sure absolutely. The whole notion is that we want to give students a choice in any medium physical or digital to get the book at a price or in the term that they want so they can buy the book completely or they can actually rent the book for short amount of time, it's a different options.
Right and so who do you think this has been appeal to, versus the double paying book. I mean it's it's a different or these targeted a different type of users. We believe that they will be target audiences for both of the the devices. There are some category of students that will be lighted to displays and would want to work with that and you know there are certain college students where they will feel that you know a cheaper device is what I want they will go for a device.
Is this gonna be gonna be cheaper.
Just will be absolutely cheaper than the dual screen and we will be anouncing pricing about 4 weeks. Okay. Terrific. Well everyone, please give him a round of applause. Thank you very much for filling up. And, we're gonna take a five minute break as we're running late and we got a jam-packed.
Kno has developed a digital learning environment for students to read textbooks, take notes, and share materials with friends and teachers. Students can access through multiple platforms and purpose-built textbook tablets. The company works with multiple textbook publishers to make tens of thousands of textbooks and supplementary materials available to their users. Kno is also developing a services platform to connect students globally through tutoring, collaboration, and education assessment tools.
Kno Inc, the company that recently received $ 46 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Silicon Valley Bank and TriplePoint Capital to build “the most powerful tablet anyone has ever made” announces at TC Disrupt that it will also be building a single screen tablet to supplement the dual screen tablet it announced in June.
