Big news this week from ClassIn, a leader in blended, hybrid, and remote learning solutions, who announced what they describe as a first-of-its-kind platform—bringing curriculum and content discovery, management, editing, and distribution into its planning and instructional platform. Since TeacherIn’s beta went live at the beginning of the year, it has gained over 110,000 users globally, and more than 25,000 courses have been created.
The platform’s new content discovery marketplace will also manage and distribute licenses and offer copyright protection for publishers by using in-house developed audio-visual encoders to prevent infringement. I had the chance to chat with Ted Mo Chen, Vice President of globalization at ClassIn, before the announcement about the particulars. Click below to listen and scroll down for more details about the service from the company along with a few other takeaways from the conversation:
Highlights from the conversation:
- Collaboration and Efficiency: TeacherIn encourages educators to collaborate, share, and modify course materials, fostering a sense of community among teachers to improve content quality and customization.
- The Death of the Textbook—This time it’s for real!: Ted discussed the evolving landscape of education, emphasizing the shift away from traditional textbooks in favor of more dynamic, multimedia, and interactive teaching materials.
- AI in Education: While the platform is not AI-focused at launch, the company plans to incorporate artificial intelligence in the future to help teachers recommend pedagogical strategies and enhance the delivery of educational content.
- Adapting to the Educational Ecosystem: The company’s platform is designed to cater to the specific needs of teachers and educators, aiming to address the limitations of generic video conferencing and note-taking platforms in the education sector.
More details from the release:
Built with collaborative curriculum and open publishing in mind, TeacherIn helps courseware creators collaborate to create high-quality materials by building upon each other’s curriculum in the cloud. While traditional document editors function on standalone files, courseware creators can now build an entire curriculum in ClassIn.
Over the past several years, educators and content providers have emphasized the benefits of digital curriculum over traditional instruction – citing flexibility, instruction personalization, better integration into LMS, the ability to measure curriculum usage, and cost savings. Yet, educators lack a platform to discover and manage their digital curriculum effectively. None of the many tools and platforms available to educators allowed them to complete simple functions, such as tracking versions, collaborating on edits, and clear visibility into updates.
“ClassIn’s powerful platform manages so many elements of the teaching and learning process – from course planning to lesson planning to the delivery of engaging instruction to student assessment and class analytics, it made sense to add a platform for curriculum discovery and management,” said Sara Gu, Co-Founder, and COO at ClassIn. “Now educators, publishers, and instructional designers have a platform to create and manage all their digital curriculum that integrates seamlessly with the rest of ClassIn’s comprehensive suite of capabilities.”
In an increasingly resource-constrained system, TeacherIn:
- Provides a consolidated curriculum and content discovery platform for educators
- Allows for easy course creation by district leaders and teachers
- Makes managing digital curriculum seamless—from licenses to edits to pushing the most updated versions to teachers—TeacherIn provides curriculum management that is cloud-based, collaborative, and easy for educators
- Provides publishers with valuable usage analytics and makes it easy to manage access licenses – ensuring no copyright issue
- Provides monetization opportunities for educators and content creators who make their materials available for discovery and purchase
- Meet the Winners—Dr. Kellie Wilks, Chief Technology Officer, of Ector County Independent School District, TX (ECISD) - April 12, 2024
- Meet the Winners—Prince William County Public Schools (PWCS) in Manassas, Virginia wins the 2024 Community Leadership Award for Digital Equity. - April 12, 2024
- #CoSN2024 Conversation – Tom Ryan Co-Founder K-12 Strategic Technology Advisor Group (NM) - April 10, 2024