Earlier this month, Legends of Learning took home first prize at the Amazon Web Services EdStart “pitch day” in New York City. AWS brought in ten EdTech startups to present their products in front of over 100 industry leaders. Legends of Learning Founder Vadim Polikov and Co-Founder Josh Goldberg made the trip to Manhattan.

In a five minute presentation, Vadim and Josh showed attendees the look of the LoL platform and detailed our standards-based approach and commitment to equipping teachers with detailed data analysis. They fielded questions and took feedback from fellow EdTech experts, who submitted collective scores for each of the presenting companies. The audience was very impressed with the Legends pitch, ultimately awarding the company first place!

There were several other companies present. One company, Cell-Ed, presented their mobile software for teaching adults basic skills they need for the workforce, and won third place. Another, Learnmetrics, took second place when they showcased their powerful learning analytics tool designed to bring out the full potential of students and their schools.

Our team came back to Washington, DC with a few prizes and more than a few ideas for how to keep improving Legends of Learning for students and teachers. They were inspired by all of the bright minds around them, who share the goal of improving education for learners everywhere.

We would like to thank Amazon Web Services for hosting the AWS EdStart pitch day, and supporting Legends of Learning. You can read more about the event on their blog.

This blog is based on a press release issued earlier this morning.

Today, Legends of Learning and the University of Colorado Boulder’s PhET Interactive Simulations project announced a partnership that will bring educational games and simulations to middle school science students. Ten interactive simulations for middle school sciences will be hosted on the Legends of Learning platform this month with more to be added in the future.

Combined with Legends of Learning games, teachers now have a comprehensive library of engaging content and interactive exercises for their classrooms. Spanning Earth and Space, Life and Physical Sciences, Legends of Learning now offers thousands of games, simulations, and assessment items for middle school science classes.

“Partnering with PhET Interactive Simulations expands the opportunities we can provide to educators,” said Dr. Vadim Polikov, CEO of Legends of Learning. “With any new school year comes new possibilities. Simulations take Legends of Learning one step further.”

“The partnership with Legends of Learning is a wonderful opportunity to bring our simulations to more teachers and students,” said Dr. Kathy Perkins, director of PhET Interactive Simulations. “We are excited to provide teachers with an easy way to share both educational games and simulations in one place.”

Legends of Learning joining forces with PhET Interactive Simulations, a nonprofit science and math educational project at the University of Colorado Boulder, will provide educators with high-quality simulations that actively engage students in science practices and align with the subjects that educators teach. The simulations will be available on Legends of Learning later this month.

PhET was founded by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman in 2002 to advance scientific literacy, and today its interactive, research-based simulations are utilized more than 80 million times a year by students and teachers. The simulations are designed to be highly interactive and engaging and to build real-world connections for students. For example, students explore forces, energy, and motion as they engage in a tug-of-war, design their own skateboarding track, or shoot pianos out of a cannon.

Announced last week, PhET was awarded the 2017 WISE Award, recognizing and promoting innovative education initiatives around the world, by the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), a leading international initiative for innovation and collaboration in education.

“PhET is a fantastic resource,” said Teresa Cobble, an eighth-grade science teacher from Atlanta, Georgia. “After being in the classroom for almost a decade, I still find it difficult to find resources that work together, are appropriate for the content I am covering, and are engaging for the students. My students love Legends of Learning and the addition of PhET simulations will give them an even richer experience.”

Caitlin Unterman, a middle school science teacher in Forest, VA, is one of Legends of Learning’s most active teachers. Now you can hear how Caitlin uses Legends of Learning in her classroom during a special webinar on October 23rd at 4pm EST.

She has used the platform since day one, and hasn’t looked back. Caitlin will discuss deploying games in the classroom, building playlists, test preparation, and performance analytics. Participants will learn:

1) Implementing game based learning for topic reinforcement
2) Replacing study guides with game based resources
3) Assessing content mastery through gaming

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from one of our strongest ambassadors. Register for Caitlin’s webinar today!

About Caitlin Unterman

Caitlin Unterman was the VAST Earth Science RISE Award winner in 2016 and Lynchburg’s Teacher of the Year in 2015. She also loves horses and owns several of her own. She is an employee of Bedford County Public Schools.

Some teachers are asking how they can earn more coins for their game play. One way is to be an active ambassador in our Legends of Learning community (sign up or log-in).

To that end, we are happy to unveil our new incentives for the Legends of Learning Community for the 2017-18 school year. Coins earned through community actions are awarded at the end of each month. Here are the different ways you can earn coins.

In Community

• First 10 comments and replies during the 2017-8 school year = 100 coins. Another 100 coins for each successive 20 comments.
• Five original posts = 50 coins. Another 100 coins will be awarded for each successive 10 posts.

Social Sharing

In addition to the coins earned via in-product sharing, you can get more coins by linking to us in the following ways:

• Blog post about us, or an inbound link via a badge from a website you control: 500 coins
• Facebook share about Legends that tags our page on Facebook: 100 coins

Lesson Plans

We love lesson plans that include Legends of Learning games. Send us your lesson plan formatted like this, and once accepted (we peer review all student facing content), you will receive 100 coins. Send lesson plan submissions to aaron@legendsoflearning.com.

Special Missions

Game ratings: Legends of Learning is currently looking to have students rate specific games. For every game that you your class plays and rates, you will earn 60 coins. For a class of 30, that equates to two new games for playing one! If you are interested, email faye@legendsoflearning.com for a game assignment.

This week’s ambassador of the week is Richard White, a science teacher at Griffin Middle School in Cobb County, GA. He has been a prolific commenter in our Ambassador Community, offering fellow teachers and the Legends of Learning team insights on issues such as homework and grading.

We really appreciate everything he has done to make Legends of Learning better, and we know it is because of his passion for education. As part of our feature, we wanted to ask Richard what one of his most remarkable teaching experiences was.

“Last year I taught 6th grade advanced content Earth science students and I had a young lady who was really quiet and seemed shy,” said Richard. “I watched her as we started learning about rocks and minerals, and I noticed her face light up as we learned how different rocks and minerals formed.

“She was very excited when we had a local geologist come in and talk with the class, and I could see she was learning a great deal each day. I always wrap up the rock and mineral unit by having students make gem trees to take home, and we did this again for this class. She was very careful in how she put hers together and very proud when she finished.

“After that I noticed that she was not as shy and was willing to jump in when called upon. I got an email from her mother saying that she did not know what I did but all that they talked about at home now was science, and how much she loved her science class. I found out later that she had taken out her rock collection and started putting new pieces into it.”

“Seeing someone grow and knowing that what we did in class had a personal impact on her, that is why I love what I do,” closed Richard.

We love it, too. Thank you for this remarkable story, and all of the great suggestions and help you offer to us, and our larger community of teachers.

$9 Million Raise to Support Team Growth, Market Expansion

The following is a press release issued this morning about Legends of Learning’s seed round of fundraising.

Legends of Learning closed its seed round of fundraising with a total raise of $9 million. The fundraising round follows the successful launch of our initial game-based learning platform that has been met with praise from educators and recognition by influential media organizations. The company was featured in a recent USA Today article that explained how its platform can overcome a barrier to “getting high-quality learning games into K–12 classrooms.”

Legends of Learning, which is co-headquartered in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Md., will leverage the funds to execute its long-term strategic plan in the education sector. The investments will allow the company to meet demand by hiring additional team members and expanding its platform to new school grades and subjects.

The company was founded by Vadim Polikov, a research scientist who previously started Astrum Solar, a top 10 U.S. solar installer, and American Journal Experts, a large academic editing company serving the international scientific research community.

Joining Polikov as co-founders are Larry Cynkin, chief technology officer, who was formerly with Comcast and Honesty Online; Aryah Fradkin, manager, Teacher Outreach, who is a former Baltimore City, Md., teacher; Joshua Goldberg, chief strategy officer, and an Astrum Solar co-founder; Geoff Livingston, chief marketing officer, who is an award winning digital marketing entrepreneur; and Sandy Roskes, chief operating officer, and a former Astrum senior executive.

“This team brings vision and experience to the table. The successful closing of this seed round will let us accelerate our focus on helping more teachers reach students with research-driven, curriculum-based education games,” says Polikov.

Legends of Learning launched at the end of March with a first-to-market approach of 900 curriculum-based education games for middle school earth and space science, life sciences and physical science curricula. The games, created by over 300 game studios, are based on rigorous academic research conducted in partnership with Vanderbilt University.

Unique aspects of the Legends of Learning game-based learning platform include:

• Short games (5–25 minutes) that align to middle school science curriculum standards to ensure content engages and helps students succeed in their studies;
• An intuitive platform similar to Netflix and Amazon that makes games easy and natural to use in classrooms; and
• A dashboard that allows teachers to observe student comprehension in real time, create game playlists for classes and individual students, and assess content mastery.

The company will demonstrate its technology platform and games publicly at the International Society for Technology in Education Conference & Expo June 25–28 in San Antonio, Texas.