startup Archives - LearnJam

Agile publishing: a case study

March 25, 2021May 30, 2019 by Laurie Harrison

Since 2013, ELTjam has evolved from a blog to a learning agency, but what got us fired up to start in the first place was our interest in tech, startup culture and new ways of working, and how these could be brought into ELT. One example is Agile – the standard way of running software projects and developing tech products – but in our experience still not used much in ELT materials development when done at a large scale. This post is about how we recently used Agile in a large ELT course development project.

Using Typeform in ELT

February 11, 2020December 18, 2018 by Tim Gifford

Can disruptive technology bring an edge to your ELT academy marketing? Can you bring a service aimed at startups into your classroom and make things even more engaging for your students?

Let’s explore how language schools, publishers and teachers can improve their services, classes and get better feedback with Typeform.

ELT Entrepreneurs – John Pettigrew of Futureproofs

January 30, 2020April 8, 2015 by Blog Editor

John Pettigrew has gone from working for publishers to bring his expertise to his own company, Futureproofs, a web-based platform that helps teams of authors, editors and designers to make sure that the books they work on are correct before they’re published.

ELT Entrepreneurs – Marcos Benevides

January 30, 2020November 3, 2014 by Blog Editor

We’ve been watching Marcos Benevides and his team at Atama-ii Books for over a year as their series of Choose Your Own Adventure Graded Readers went from an idea to a crowdfunding success to an actual out-now-and-buyable books. This is the first in what we hope to be a series of posts looking at what happens behind the scenes to ELT Entrepreneurs during their journey.

The Sirius Programme

January 30, 2020June 19, 2014 by Tim Gifford

We’ve looked at a few publisher-backed incubators and accelerators on the blog, but this is the first time we’ve encountered one that is backed by the UK Government itself.

Perfect pitch: Cambridge EdTech Startup Weekend

January 30, 2020May 29, 2014 by Tim Gifford

The Cambridge EdTech Startup Weekend reached its denouement on Sunday afternoon with the teams presenting their ideas to a panel of judges. The ELTjam team was there all weekend as co-organisers, and to cover the event.

Introducing Voxy: Learning from the real world

January 30, 2020May 19, 2014 by Tim Gifford

Meet the company that is making some serious waves in EdTech …

Cambridge EdTech Startup Weekend

January 30, 2020April 23, 2014 by Tim Gifford

ELTjam is collaborating with Accelerate Cambridge in organising the first ever Cambridge EdTech Startup Weekend

EdTech Accelerator Series: McGraw-Hill

January 30, 2020March 6, 2014 by Tim Gifford

Following on from our previous posts on Pearson’s Catalyst incubator and Kaplan’s joint initiative with TechStars, this week we’re taking a look at another publisher-turned-accelerator sponsor.

EdTech Accelerator Series: Kaplan

January 30, 2020February 7, 2014 by Tim Gifford

Following from our look at the first cohorts of Pearson’s EdTech incubator, we’d like to turn our attention to Kaplan’s EdTech accelerator to get a sense of what their inaugural Class of 2013 looked like.

Startup Stories: the EdTech Journey of ClassWired part 2/2

January 30, 2020December 17, 2013 by Lindsay Rattray

The problem is not just how to get content to the students, the problem is getting their content to me.

Accelerating Education Companies

February 13, 2020December 2, 2013 by Laurie Harrison

At eltjam, we’ve mentioned EdTech accelerators a few times recently. But what exactly are they, and how do they work? If you’ve got a great EdTech business idea, how could an accelerator help? Stephen Parkes of Go Enrol is immersed in the EdTech startup scene and has first-hand experience of working with accelerators. In this guest post, he gives us an overview.

Startup Stories: The EdTech Journey of ClassWired Pt.1/2

January 30, 2020November 29, 2013 by Lindsay Rattray

The problem was that no technology connected what I did in class to the rest of my life.

Startup Stories: Shaunie Shammass from SpeakingPal

January 30, 2020November 27, 2013 by Tim Gifford

Dr Shaunie Shammass, VP Linguistic Innovation at SpeakingPal, talks to us about her work in bringing speech recognition tech up to speed with the needs of English language learners.

For ELT publishing people, which path to choose?

January 30, 2020October 7, 2013 by Nick Robinson

Last week, Karen White from ELTTeacher2Writer shared a great article from Digiday, in which they asked digital and print media editors to share the best career advice they’d ever received. One item that jumped out at me was this, from Scott Stossel, editor of The Atlantic magazine: the best general career advice I’ve heard — but have … Read more

Startup Stories: Vocabla’s CEO, Michal Dyrda

January 30, 2020September 30, 2013 by Tim Gifford

Following on from our post on LangApp’s Vocabla platform earlier this month, we thought we’d get a few words from the company’s CEO to learn more about how the company operates. Michal Dyrda is the CEO and founder of Vocabla. He is an entrepreneur with eight years experience in online business and management and focuses primarily … Read more

When Opportunity Knocks: The TurksLearnEnglish.com Story Pt. 2/2

January 30, 2020August 22, 2013 by Tim Gifford

We understood that our role was to provide good teaching and uplift motivation, within the bounds of a Turk’s experience, understanding and expectation.

When Opportunity Knocks: The TurksLearnEnglish.com Story Pt.1/2

January 30, 2020August 20, 2013 by Tim Gifford

Our idea was simple: the goal of almost any adult student over the age of 25 was to be able to speak English effectively. We decided to build a product to address that need and that need alone.

Lost in the crowd? Crowdfunding in ELT

January 30, 2020June 25, 2013 by Laurie Harrison

Now that web 2.0 is passé, and we’ve all got used to the concept of crowd-sourcing and the ‘wisdom of the crowd’, one of the hot crowd-related trends of the last couple of years has been crowdfunding. You may have heard tales of people raising huge sums of money in weeks on sites like Kickstarter. So, could crowdfunding have an impact on ELT? Well, why not.

See you later, incubator: Pearson invests in Edtech startups

January 30, 2020April 23, 2013 by Tim Gifford

Educational publishing behemoth Pearson is putting its dollar into the Edtech startup sector in order to help propel the company further into the 21st century and away from its long-established yet out-dated business models. This move follows hot on the heels of Kaplan linking up with TechStars to offer an edtech accelerator program in New York City. Pearson Catalyst is a new … Read more