Jun 30, 2022

News provided by Share this article Share this article CHICAGO, June 28, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- ThinkCERCA today was named one of the top winners in the Learning Engineering Tools Competition , a search for promising new education ideas, technologies, and platforms. ThinkCERCA will receive $250,000 to further develop a tool that provides authentic feedback on argumentative writing in real-time. "Teachers need a tool to support their students in real-time as they strive to think and write more effectively." The competition is supported by Schmidt Futures, Citadel Founder and CEO Ken Griffin, Walton Family Foundation, Siegel Family Endowment, Overdeck Family Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The competition was administered by Georgia State University and The Learning Agency. "We have been leading the way in student literacy growth for nearly a decade, but the need for accelerated learning paired with teacher shortages challenged us to find new ways to provide authentic feedback," said Eileen Murphy, ThinkCERCA's Founder and CEO. "Teachers who serve hundreds of students each day simply need a tool to support their students in real-time as they strive to think and write more effectively." Winning teams include entrepreneurs, learning scientists, educators, and researchers from around the world. The educational tools developed by the teams have the potential to impact over 4 million students by the end of 2022. "By leveraging key advances in computation, this group of winners will help solve some of our nation's biggest education problems," said Kumar Garg, the Vice President of Partnerships at Schmidt Futures. "It is energizing to work with organizations, which have the potential to dramatically improve outcomes for so many students at scale." For more details on ThinkCERCA please visit https://www.thinkcerca.com/ . A complete list of winners can be found here . About ThinkCERCA ThinkCERCA's personalized literacy platform helps educators teach critical thinking skills through close reading and academic writing across subjects. With a research-based framework that teaches students how to construct a cohesive argument, studies show they can achieve an average of two years of reading growth in a single school year. Tools Competition Background The Learning Engineering Tools Competition 2021 consisted of three rounds of proposal evaluations and pitches before a panel of judges that included philanthropists, education technologists, teachers, and researchers. The goal of the tools competition is to spur the development and deployment of technologies to maximize learning over time. SOURCE ThinkCERCA