Collaboration between Silicon Valley executives and education experts will improve access to and quality of free academic resources
SAN FRANCISCO – With a growing demand of more than 1 million users combined, Activate Instruction and Gooru, two nonprofits, are teaming up in an unprecedented effort to improve access to as well as increase the quality of free online education resources. This collaboration will bring together much of Activate’s teacher-curated content with Gooru’s easy-to-use website, a free tool that will be available to all nationwide.
“Working with Gooru brings together education and technology experts who are focused on empowering teachers,” said Michele Hansen, President and CEO of Activate Instruction. “This is a significant step toward expanding teachers’ professional networks as well as enabling educators to personalize learning for their students.”
“For online learning to work, teachers need to see it as a convenient and helpful instructional method, worthy of their time and energy,” said Gooru CEO and founder Prasad Ram. “We see the true value of technology as being an opportunity for educators to connect with one another, share resources and gather information to successfully support students.”
Activate partners with high-performing public charter schools and networks, including Summit Public Schools, KIPP LA Schools, PUC Schools, High Tech High, Da Vinci Innovation Academy, and enables teachers to share quality content and resources to use in the classroom. Gooru works closely with large public school districts, such as Riverside, Santa Ana and Val Verde unified school districts to personalize learning for students. These partners are part of the 1 million teachers, students and individuals who have already accessed Activate and Gooru.
As a result of the two nonprofits’ collaboration, Activate’s vetting process will continue to improve the quality of the millions of education resources available online to Gooru users. Gooru’s user-friendly website, already utilized in 60 public school districts, will give Activate’s users the opportunity to collaborate and teach with the resources from Gooru’s community of educators.
KIPP LA Schools has worked with Activate to create customized resources tailored to students’ individual learning needs. “Through this new partnership, it will be even easier for our students to access additional resources as they prepare for college,” said Matthew A. Peskay, Chief of Innovation and Technology for KIPP LA Schools.
Over the past few years, instructional design teams, education specialists and high-performing classroom teachers from the Santa Ana Unified School District used Gooru to digitize their Common Core-aligned K-12 curriculum that includes units of study specifically addressing English Learners, students in dual immersion and students with special needs. Digital resources were also developed to compile a professional learning library, which provides teachers with access to professional development opportunities that are aligned with their individualized needs and interests and available 24/7.
“Gooru has enabled learners of all ages to pursue, provide evidence of, and share their new understandings as they work through assigned playlists,” said David Haglund, Deputy Superintendent of the Santa Ana Unified School District. “This new collaboration will give our lifelong learners additional, quality resources to continue their educational pursuits.”
These two nonprofits working together will also benefit the broader education community. By this fall, school systems that use learning management and assessment tools from companies such as Illuminate Education, LinkIt!, Renaissance Learning and Haiku Learning will be able to close the feedback loop and support personalized learning with data analytics.
About Activate Instruction
Activate Instruction is a free, open website funded and managed by the nonprofit Girard Education Foundation. Through providing teachers and schools with high-quality educational resources tailored to individual student needs, the foundation hopes to enable every student to have a personally enriching learning experience that prepares him or her to succeed in life. To learn more about Activate Instruction, read Frequently Asked Questions and visit: Activate Instruction.
About Gooru
Gooru (www.goorulearning.org) is building an open and collaborative online community of educators, learners, partners, and developers to facilitate personalized learning for every student. To empower educators everywhere, Gooru develops a free web-based platform for teachers to find, remix, and share collections of web resources on any K-12 topic. Gooru provides tools to discover standards-aligned content, customize content, and track student progress through data analytics to adapt the learning experience for each student. Founded as a 501(c)(3) non-profit in January 2011, Gooru has and always will be a mission-focused organization whose products are free of cost and ads.
