The original idea of Blinklearning has its roots in our earlier experience with an internet-based business.  In 2000, my co-founder Joao Menano and I founded a social networking site, which we subsequently re-launched as an e-learning platform. Then the internet bubble collapsed. Our single source of revenue—advertising—dried up and we were forced to return to our original careers. Joao joined Telefonica in Madrid and I moved to London where I worked for several years in the banking sector. We also took time off to do an MBA.

Two years ago we reviewed how the internet market had evolved since we left it and came up with several conclusions. The main insight was that the education sector—and especially schools—had only marginally taken advantage of new internet-based technologies.  Obviously there is plenty of content available on the web, but very little of it is of real educational use. Most of the content available is simply text with a few interactive features and it doesn’t have any structure to truly help students learn. 

 

We realized we were onto something, so we started interviewing teachers to see how they made use of the web. Many teachers clearly rely on the web to source material for presentations but most were actually pretty frustrated; it was simply too difficult to find quality content for educational purposes. We also found that the more experienced teachers who relied more on their own traditional classroom material lacked an easy method to apply online content or add interactive features.

 

Our idea for Blinklearning was to develop a tool to solve those problems. We have developed an extremely easy to use tool whereby teachers can create content for use both in the classroom and at home for homework. For students, it is an interactive educational tool that allows content to be tailored to their needs and capabilities. And for teachers, it is an efficient way to both develop content and track their students’ progress, for example - by automated corrections. We also realized that we needed to get parents on board, so the tool also allows them to track their child’s progress.  Finally, there is a social component to it where teachers can share their material online and thereby tap into a much larger pool of quality content.

In a way, we are trying to ‘personalise’ education. It is our view that education must be adapted to the needs of each individual student. It does not make sense that all students in a classroom are taught the same content at the same pace, when their capabilities vary substantially. This results in the best students not being challenged enough while the struggling students do not receive enough support. Today it is possible, via technology, to efficiently track the individual performance of every student and subsequently provide those students with tailor-made content and exercises.

 

The quality of educational material is also of pivotal importance to learning. Children have short attention spans and thus require educational material that quickly captures their interest and imagination. The best people to develop those materials are teachers; but they need the tools and time to do so. Most teachers, however, are swamped with routine and time-consuming tasks like correcting homework. Technology could make a positive difference to teachers’ lives. There is a tremendous opportunity today in leveraging technology to make education more efficient and effective.