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

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

Erick Schonfeld is the Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. He oversees the editorial content of the site, helps to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produces TCTV shows, and writes daily for the blog. He is also the father of three adorable children. He joined TechCrunch as Co-Editor in 2007, and helped take it from a popular... → Learn More

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” that features simple whiteboard-style lessons similar to those on Khan Academy. But instead of just one teacher, ShowMe has thousands of teachers creating and sharing lessons on a wide variety of topics. To make it easier for teachers to create content, ShowMe has developed a remarkably simple iPad app, which allows for easy recording of whiteboard video lessons with voiceover, which can then be uploaded and shared through ShowMe.com.

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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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