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  • The ShowMe Teaching Technology Behind The New Princeton Review SAT iPad App (TCTV)

    Erick Schonfeld

    Erick Schonfeld is a technology journalist and the executive producer of DEMO. He is also a partner at bMuse, a product incubator in New York City. Schonfeld is the former Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily... → Learn More

    Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

    The Princeton Review launched a slick new iPad app today called SAT Score Quest. Each question comes with a whiteboard video tutorial with a voiceover from an instructor explaining the solution. The ShowMe whiteboard technology is licensed from Easel Learning, a bootstrapped NYC startup, which is also developing its own app and a corresponding ShowMe website where tutors and teachers of all stripes can show off their teaching skills, share lessons with students, and get rated by the community.

    Easel CEO San Kim recently showed me both the Princeton Review app and the ShowMe app which is still in development (watch the video above). The demo was at General Assembly, the co-working space in Manhattan where Easel set up shop a couple months ago. He hopes that ShowMe can become a “Flickr for teachers,” which isn’t exactly the way I’d describe it—more like a YouTube for lessons.

    But what is exciting here is Easel is showing a glimpse of how the iPad can completely change the way people learn. Any teacher can simply record their lessons and their students would need nothing more than an iPad to learn. Add some realtime chat and maybe some video, and it is not too difficult to see how this kind of technology can turn the iPad into a classroom.

    Company: ShowMe
    Website: showme.com
    Launch Date: August 1, 2009
    Funding: $840k

    ShowMe is an open learning community you can learn or teach anything. Over 1.5 million lessons have been created using the ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard iPad app, ranging from algebra to calculus to cooking. There are millions of great teachers out there; ShowMe empowers them to share their knowledge and teach the world.

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    Company: Princeton Review
    Launch Date: 1981
    IPO: NASDAQ:REVU

    The Princeton Review, Inc. provides integrated classroom-based, print and online products and services that address the needs of students, parents, educators and educational institutions. They also provide test preparation courses for post-secondary and graduate admissions tests.

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