Previously Funded
Projects
1Room
Names of collaborators:
Jeremy Bhatia, Michael Beeler, Saket Kashyap Adhikarla, Natalia Coachman
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HKS, MIT-Sloan, MIT-Engineering, MIT-Architecture
Through a blended model, 1Room delivers a country’s secondary curriculum in one room with one teacher.
3D Virtual Global Classroom
Names of collaborators:
Hui Ding, Shicheng Rao
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
DCE, External
This project combines innovation and education. The purpose of this project is to develop a 3D Virtual Global Classroom software to make online courses more interesting and interactive between students and instructors. Advanced technology will be used to develop this 3D Virtual Classroom project. By using 3D Virtual Classroom software, universities will be able to attract more students from different countries to register for online courses.
ACE: Accelerating Civic Engagement
Names of collaborators:
Jerren Chang, Harshini Jayaram, Caleb Bradford, Brian Mongeau
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3, 4
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HBS/HKS
ACE seeks to reignite civic engagement nationally by empowering individuals to learn about, participate in, and lead their local communities. An app-based civic engagement platform, ACE creates a seamless way for individuals to learn about and engage with their communities. ACE crowdsources civic learning modules about pertinent local issues from local governments, non-profits, and civic organizations and then connects users to relevant, crowdsourced volunteer opportunities. Individuals receive badges for completing modules and volunteering, which, in turn, will signal civic mindedness to schools and employers and qualify top users to meet with local decision makers.
ADITUM
Names of collaborators:
Eric Yamga, Andrew Marshall, Kara Sheppard-Jones
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HMS
ADITUM is a medical e-learning platform. It provides health experts with an easy and simple way to create and share interactive medical cases with the medical community.
Active Parenting
Names of collaborators:
Yiran Bowman, Kunlei He, Yuanbo Liu, Gerald Hao, Zhuo Feng
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, MIT-Sloan, MIT-Engineering
All-in-One Parenting enables parents to put education knowledge into daily action. We provide subscribed app content and monthly delivered educational products, suchas parenting tools and educational toys, particularly focusing on 0-6 years old children's social emotional skills. All the content and physical products are research-based and customized to children's developmental stage.
Aman
Names of collaborators:
Aditi Nangia, Ghazi Taimoor Mirza
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2, 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Our project aims to tackle hatred and bigotry in India and Pakistan through developing curriculum, guidelines and training for teachers. We want to build skills in teachers andstudents to empathize with people who are different from them, tolerate opposing viewpoints, have difficult conversations and accept diversity.
Arts in a Circle
Names of collaborators:
Yi Chen, Jean Zhai, Junyi Li, Xinchen Guan
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Our team wants to design an affordable one-stop art education online platform for Chinese families. We want to educate the public about the broad definition of art education and design a series of online courses for families with children aged 5-12. To achieve the first goal, we will host online round-table discussion with art education professionals every week. This series of panel discussion is free and open to the public. To address the second goal, we aim to build online learning modules with the emphasis on reflection, communication, and connection.
Axiom
Names of collaborators:
Jay Bills, Ann Zhang
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Bonsai
Names of collaborators:
Harrison Grussmark, Rishabh Agarwal
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HBS
Bonsai is a personalized and adaptive solution that develops SEL skills in middle school students by encouraging them to engage in microlearning activities. The platform motivates students to authentically and consistently engage by offering intangible and tangible incentives for achieving critical milestones. Furthermore, Bonsai utilizes real-time data to monitor student progress and provide stakeholders with early warning indicators to help them intervene.
Brown Art Ink
Names of collaborators:
Amanda Figueroa, Ravon Ruffin
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2, 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
GSAS, External
Our goal is to provide tangible, actionable, and effective professional development education for emerging artists, particularly artists of color and artists who are women or gender minorities. Through hands-on workshops in the DC area, we plan to develop and implement a curriculum of professional development designed to help these artists receive more opportunities and greater support for their work.
Build Opportunity Lead Discovery
Names of collaborators:
Rukaiya Sharmi, Anna Pacheco
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
College, External
BundA+
Names of collaborators:
Nadhira, Nuraini Afifa, Pasha Laksamana Putra
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HSPH, External
Having high prevalence of both underweight and overweight/obese children, Indonesia is one of the countries facing double burden of malnutrition. Despite always being associated to poverty or poor income, the root causes of the problem is, in fact, the poor knowledge of mothers on providing nutritious meal. BundA+ educates mothers on nutritious meal options and helps to connect mothers with baby meal providers, where they can purchase calories-adequate baby meal plan delivered to their doorsteps.
C2B: Classroom to Boardroom - Workforce Training Program for Youths in Indonesia
Names of collaborators:
Ketty Lie, Viria Vichit-Vadakan
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HBS/HKS, HBS, HGSE
A widening skills gap in Indonesia for start-ups and innovative companies stems from insufficient youth job training. C2B seeks to solve this gap by providing an immersive training program designed in close collaboration with rapidly growing industries (i.e. tech-focused companies). Graduates of the program will be better equipped to take on challenging roles in various institutions having been equipped with key managerial and analytical skills. Our training approach will emphasize on experiential learning, critical thinking and integrative knowledge. Our focus for the next 3 months is to assess in-demand skills with big hiring gaps by doing deep-dive interviews with start-ups founders, corporate hiring managers, local college graduates, and training organizations as well as run training pilot programs in the field.
Catalyst
Names of collaborators:
Peter Gumulia, Nimisha Ganesh, Suneil Raghvan, Sela Kasepa,
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
FAS, HBS
Catalyst is an online educational platform focusing on English for the K-6 segment in Indonesia. In Indonesia, English has transitioned from an aspirational skill to a requirement to succeed in secondary/higher education and, eventually, the job market. However, Indonesia continues to lag behind other developing countries in terms of English proficiency. Current solutions offered in the market are done offline in brick-and-mortar learning centers. They are expensive and, consequently, exclusive to those at the top of the socioeconomic ladder. Catalyst aspires to provide a cheaper alternative through automated content and individualized online learning, unlocking access to students and parents of lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
Code for Hope
Names of collaborators:
Balaji Alwar, Dhruv Kamath
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, External
Code <For> Hope aims at improving the academic outcomes of students in public schools by building 21st-century skills such as critical thinking and a logical approach to problem-solving. We develop a program that focuses on building skills for educators who work in public school systems to teach computational thinking and coding through workshops, resources (lesson plans, assessments) and interactive projects which compel the students to apply their skills towards a meaningful goal.
Collab-O
Names of collaborators:
I Made Subagiarta, Mohd Lutfi Fadil Bin Lokman, Renato Errea
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HMS, HSPH, HMS
Rarely a week goes by without a single headline about an emerging or re-emerging infectious disease somewhere in the world. Globalization has tied together all peoples and nations in an interdependent, interrelated and interconnected global health space. Collab-O,virtual One Health classroom, is proposed to fulfill the need of future leaders who are conversant with the problems, have global networks and comprehensive understanding to find solutions in a collaborative One Health approach.
CollabReality
Names of collaborators:
Robson Beaudry, Brian Ramirez, Pablo Villalobos
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, MIT-Engineering
CollabReality is a tool to assess and improve 21st century skills. We utilize collaborative VR simulations to collect quantitative, actionable data for users, and provoke meaningful self reflection.
College Armor
Names of collaborators:
Madeleine Mortimore, Hannah Boston
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Student-athletes tend to have a lack of engagement in non-athletic activities. College Armor is building an online platform that seeks to incentivize and guide student-athletes to engage in non-athletic activities through a fun, interactive game.
ColorFULL
Names of collaborators:
Yasmene Mumby, Bonnie Lo, Charisse Taylor
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Youth of color all over the nation do not have access to equitable opportunities for culturally affirming learning where their stories and voices can be amplified in creative ways. Educators also lack the supports to build and grow in their capacity to create, collect, and collaborate to strengthen culturally affirming teaching and learning. We collaborate with educators and their students to create culturally affirming literary, audio, & visual content and curriculum.
Conversational
Names of collaborators:
Lauren Aitken, Ben Green
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, HBS
Conversational creates fun, immersive environments for socializing in other languages. Our digital platform connects language communities globally. Conversational is committed to expanding language education opportunities that celebrate multilingualism and multiculturalism.
Convo
Names of collaborators:
Ben Green, Lauren Aitken, Sherien Sobhy
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, HBS
Cultivate
Names of collaborators:
Michele Rudy, Rodrigo Dorador
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 4
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, HKS/HBS
In Arizona, the graduation rate for English language learners is 18%, the lowest graduation in the entire country. The current school system is simply not designed to meet these students’ needs. Cultivate is a school designed for the unique needs and assets of immigrant and migrant students. From evidence based instructional practices for English language learning, to culturally affirming pedagogy, to a lifeworthy curriculum, to trauma-informed teaching, every aspect of this school is designed to create the conditions for migrant students to thrive.
DEEP Career
Names of collaborators:
Danni Zheng, Han Jin
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2, 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HLS, GSD
DEEP Career strives to “Deliver Equal and Endless Possibilities” for young professionals’ career development in China, where accredited career opportunities are concentrated in Beijing and Shanghai, but young talents elsewhere are excluded. To address this educational inequality, DEEP Career will develop a for-profit digital product to ensure that young talents in different regions enjoy equal access to transparent opportunities. Meanwhile, based on its non-profit platform with 40,000 subscribers on WeChat, DEEP Career will sponsor cross-regional internships and career-related events, and continue its efforts on publication and career talks.
Debate Spaces
Names of collaborators:
Matt Summers, Tessa Holtzman, Courtney Foster, and Maya Benziger
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HLS, External
Debate Spaces uses a unique, scalable, debate-centered curriculum to equip middle school students to be civically-engaged, active, and connected members of their local communities. We emphasize three critical components in our curriculum: quick critical thinking that relies on hard evidence and research, speaking persuasively and civilly, and working collaboratively with partners to be able to argue both sides of any issue or subject. Through programming run and taught by world-class competitive college students and alumni, Debate Spaces offers middle school students extracurricular programming during the school year that is high-quality, low-cost, and accessible to students from disparate communities and diverse backgrounds. Debate Spaces believes that if young students are taught how to critically examine and effectively communicate about issues important to them in a diverse and collaborative environment, they will be more civically engaged citizens throughout their lives.
Designed Learning
Names of collaborators:
Peter Simms, Joey Adams
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, DCE
Designed Learning is a learning experience firm focused on adult learning. We believe that learners deserve quality learning experiences after they have left formal learning institutions.
Dia Health
Names of collaborators:
Jane Rho, Judith Rho, Julian Lee, Olivia Brisbane
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
College, HSPH, External
Dia Health is building an automated newborn care coach that supports parents through the postpartum period with validated education and outreach for both the newborn and mother. Our product answers specific questions with providers and automates the delivery of our content/support, without crowdsourcing content.
ELEVATE
Names of collaborators:
Jessica Ball, Ralph Johnson Jr.
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, HBS
We seek to create an online learning platform that leverages adaptive teaching to scale effective, personalized professional development in large, urban districts. Our team's hunch is that if we want teachers to create rigorous classrooms, they must first have a deep understanding of the content and have opportunities to practice their understanding of the content before they teach students. The problem, however, is that there are not enough hours in the day for teachers to deepen their personal knowledge base and prepare to lead students through the content. Thus, our team seeks to create an online learning platform that uses adaptive technology to accelerate and deepen teacher's personal knowledge so that they may offer rigorous lessons to students.
Easy Shoulder
Names of collaborators:
Takahisa Ogawa, Takatomo Inoue, Soichiro Chiba
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HSPH, HBS, External
A smartphone app “Easy Shoulder”. As the name of our app indicates, Easy Shoulder teaches home-exercise to easily improve shoulder pain and stiffness. This app enables users to understand how and why home-exercise is important to protect your joints and keep everyone continuing home-exercise with fascinating gaming features. Everyone can enjoy Easy Shoulder and forget your shoulder-neck pain!
EmpathyCore
Names of collaborators:
Adam Gavarkovs, Kidist Tesfaye, Tania Lee
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HSPH, HGSE
Through innovative educational experiences leveraging immersive virtual reality, we aim to provide healthcare students and professionals with the opportunity to foster better relationships with patients who are often stigmatized within the healthcare system.
Engaging Education for Everyone
Names of collaborators:
Jiaming Liu, Angel Yinlin Guo, Yangwen Pu Sun, Zhiqiang Lu
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, HKS
Students’ hesitation toward passive learning generally persists from observations. Our project hopes to create a software that allows Chinese students to learn academic concepts through rewarding interactions with animated instructions. Out product match students with tasks of proximal level of difficulty. Feeling accomplished from completing tasks, students will take on more academic challenges and adopt a self-motivated learning cycle.
Ethos
Names of collaborators:
Sarah Buksa, Rose Sagun, Angela Hernandez
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Our project, Ethos, aims to end sexual violence and harassment using a three-pronged, three-S approach that is designed to: simplify training to maximize learning, sustain impact through engaging a company’s ethos, and synergize efforts for global scale. We deliver engaging and effective step-by-step content, through customized pedagogies, based on each company’s needs and work culture so that the learner can genuinely and effectively engage with the content. Additionally, Ethos acts as a “culture champion” for a company’s overall corporate well-being, sense of inclusion, and level of productivity. Through a 1-to-1 matching model, for every corporate client that we engage in, a parallel “sister” intervention program is happening in developing countries that expands community-based capacity to prevent and respond to sexual violence through education.
FEEd - Finance and Economics Education
Names of collaborators:
Trang Luong, Tue Tran
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 4
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, HLS
Description coming soon.
FieldFit
Names of collaborators:
Madeleine Mortimore, Marcus Forbes
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Student-athletes tend to have a lack of engagement in non-athletic activities. College Armor is building an online platform that seeks to incentivize and guide student-athletes to engage in non-athletic activities through a fun, interactive game.
First Graid
Names of collaborators:
Vanessa Trinh, Anthony Trinh, Amy Villasenor, Keith Tura, Julia Klein
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HBS, External
First GrAID is a digital platform where children can learn about health and safety in a gamified manner that is both fun for them and convenient for their parents. It aims to address the fact that the leading cause of death for children aged 1-14 is unintentional / preventable injuries, with the average household incurring up to $10k a year in associated medical costs. Despite the recent rise of digital learning, no interactive learning tool exists to teach children basic health and safety habits. Our goal is to engage children and help them develop healthy habits through adolescence.
Food Futures
Names of collaborators:
Preksha Singh, Nilima Abrams
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Food Futures is a game-based food and sustainability curriculum for high school students. It takes a combined approach of design thinking and systems thinking to explore how our everyday food consumption interacts with the wider domains of food production, national policy, water consumption, greenhouse emission, and animal welfare. Through project-based challenges, students first learn information about food systems and then use that information to enact policy decisions about causal relationship; moreover, they see how their actions as consumers, producers, Industrialists and other stakeholders have an impact globally.
For All
Names of collaborators:
Kristina Colton, Shakti Shaligram, Rebecca Chen
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
FAS, MIT-Engineering
For All Technology is designing a device to revolutionize the way low-vision students access the chalkboard/whiteboard
GenUnity
Names of collaborators:
Jerren Chang, Nimisha Ganesh, Flo Schalliol, and Casey McGinley
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HBS, HKS
GenUnity is a civic leadership experience that empowers individuals to affect real, systemic change in their community. By activating civic engagement at scale through the next generation of community leaders, GenUnity seeks to strengthen communities and the foundations of our democracy.
GrowUS
Names of collaborators:
Jeremy Bhatia, Maxwell Bigman
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HKS, HGSE
Through training in soft and hard skills, we prepare students to work on projects in a summer internship. We partner with organizations, and companies to team our group of students with a volunteer mentor from their organization to work through a project. Our organization trains the students, guides them through this project and facilitates the learning in an offsite learning center. Through completion of the project our goal is to expose students to models of success, improve college acceptance, and in school learning outcomes.
GuruBaik.id
Names of collaborators:
Indah Shafira Zata Dini, Ajie Nikicio, Durgesh Rajandaran, Stephanie Hardjo
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, MIT-Sloan, MIT-Engineering
Gurubaik.id aims to change the conventional teachers’ mindset and make it easier for teachers to implement a variety of active learning activities in the classroom by providing necessary resources. Gurubaik.id hopes to support teachers by providing: curated learning materials (lesson plans), classroom management tricks, and community & mentorship platform.
Hackademic
Names of collaborators:
Sajeev Popat and Ian Davenport
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HKS, FAS
Hackademic is a software platform that helps PhD students in academia prepare for and start full-time data science careers in industry. We’re developing a sell guided training platform that takes academics from research to industry without internships, bootcamps, or MOOCs.
Heard
Names of collaborators:
Chew Chia Shao Yuan, Reuben Ng, Guadalupe Jacobson-Peregrino, Xin-Rui Lee, Rachel Koh, Shao Min Chew Chia, Bernadette Clara Yeo, Wei En Goh, Jia Yuan Loke, Chua Jiahao
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
FAS, External
Heard is an application for parents to use with their children to hold in-person conversations on topics from friendship and school, to divorce and mental health. It facilitates structured conversations through a turn-taking game that is built to be fun, as well as incorporate clinically proven communication techniques.
How to improve the learning experiences in core clerkships at Harvard Medical School?
Names of collaborators:
Tzu-Hung Liu, Fan-Yun Lan
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HMS, HGSE
Our project focuses on medical students’ core clerkship experiences. We have just conducted the interviews with 15 medical students. These interviews contain topics related to learning and teaching strategies which should be applied in the workplace as well as measures that promote engagement and psychological safety of the training environment. In the following two months, we would transcribe the interviews transcribed and use qualitative research software to analyze them. Based on the themes identified, we can come up with a series of strategic actions for medical school trainees and trainers.
Humaine
Names of collaborators:
Ammar Waraich, Houssam Kherraz, Zeshan Hussain
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HMS, MIT-Engineering
Humaine is an online conversational AI platform that provides virtual patients for the deliberate practice of medical students and trainees. It offers students deliberate, individual practice that is completely safe, and offers access to rare and difficult cases, while providing instant feedback. All of this leads to much improved learning and a greater diagnostic cognitive skill-set.
Hustl
Names of collaborators:
Mohini Bishnoi, Sachin Paranjape
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HKS, External
InCompass.ed
Names of collaborators:
Niharika Sanyal, Anna Glusker, Krishna Daulat
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, External
InCompass.ed offers transformational leadership programs for young people to develop authentic purpose. To meet the pain of the world and create a more conscious and just society, we need radical mindset shifts. We believe that mobilizing young people to be empathetic changemakers is the need of the hour. At the same time, we believe this would also address worsening mental health conditions among youth, as research has long shown that those who act with a purpose beyond the self are happier in life.
Inlara
Names of collaborators:
Michel Mosse, Nicolas Sanguinetti
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
MIT-Sloan, External
Inlara aims to become an Income Sharing Agreement 'As a Service' platform for vocational schools, aiming to solve the financing burden that students face while helping industries find talented and certified workers that can take on blue collar roles. While there is a growing labor shortage in the US around certain occupations, STEM related degrees are no longer the largest one. Employers are having a harder time filling blue-collar positions than professional positions that require a college education. This shift is happening because more and more Americans are going to college and taking professional jobs, while working-class baby boomers are retiring en masse.
Innovate for Africa
Names of collaborators:
Quadri Oguntade, Franck Ouattaraa,
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
MIT-Sloan, External
Innovate for Africa (IFA) is a nonprofit organization that provides graduating STEAM students in Nigeria 1-month training on entrepreneurial and labour-demanded skills as well as support throughout a subsequent 11-month placement at an innovation driven start-up. Our mission is to decrease unemployment and bolster economic development through our robust educational and network-building experience that will not only build employable graduates, but foster entrepreneurship leadership so that more jobs will be created. Thus, our vision is to contribute to an innovation ecosystem in Nigeria by instilling a sense of hope, agency, and empowerment in the Nigerian youth.
IntraPaths
Names of collaborators:
Serene Yu, Liana Bishop, Felipe Estrada-Prada
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
KidCollab
Names of collaborators:
Dalia Abbas, Jennifer Wang, Laura Parody, Dana Britt
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Our project attempts to aid students and teachers in dealing with collaborative projects in the classroom. We envision that this experience will take the form of a “quest,” in which students will work together to solve a problem. To address the challenges of organization, accountability, and good communication in group projects, we aim to host these quests on a platform geared at optimizing collaboration. Our hope is that the platform will be agnostic and can be used with a variety of learners.
KinderStories
Names of collaborators:
Jaclyn Horowitz, Ellie Hoban, Justin Kaplan, Apittha Unahalekhaka
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, HSPH, HGSE
KinderStories is a school readiness program that prepares incoming kindergartners for the social and emotional learning (SEL) expectations of the classroom. Using a research-based SEL curriculum, highly transferable narratives and storylines, and integrating emotion-recognition software, our tablet and smartphone-based app will educate, entertain, and evaluate learners, while simultaneously providing critical data that teachers can use to optimize their in-class SEL instruction come fall.
Knot.
Names of collaborators:
Kyle Wu, Robert Crum, Heather Lyu, Gavin Ovsak, Alexander Yang, David Rubins, Antuan Tran
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HMS, HBS/HMS, FAS
Case logging, which is required for all procedures, is completely manual and consequently time-consuming, inaccurate, and costly. Knot automates this process and enhances the case log to contain all of the knowledge gained from a procedure, and give residents back their time so that they may instead learn, study, perform research or learn surgeries to better serve their patients.
KolaboraSIM
Names of collaborators:
Candrika Khairani, Nanda Lucky Prasetya, Monica Nirmala
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HMS, HSPH
Each year interprofessional teams are sent to rural Indonesia to improve the quality of primary health care delivery and public health service. Current pre-departure training is not adequate in teaching interprofessional collaborative practice due to a lack of simulation. We want to provide an immersive virtual reality simulation using 360-degree videos to place participants in a representation of a complex teamwork situation.
Launching Literacy
Names of collaborators:
Lennon Audrain, Heather Carroll
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Launching Literacy is rethinking how we train paraeducators in developing the skills, knowledge, and dispositions that they need to be effective literacy support in our classrooms. We design micro-learning experiences that impart high-leverage instructional practices that can be integrated immediately into their current role, building both paraeducator efficacy and their instructional repertoire.
Learn to Blank
Names of collaborators:
Jason Lavender, Krikor Kirorov
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
MIT-Sloan
Learn to Blank is a marketplace for in person learning experiences that people rave about. Delivered at corporate offices, our highly curated trainings fit the need of the modern workforce. Courses include “Learn to Negotiate from an FBI Hostage Negotiator” and “Learn to Write from a Presidential Speech Writer.” We make learning and development memorable.
Life Bonus
Names of collaborators:
Muhammad Khisal Ahmed, Eric Gonzalez, Prasanth Nori, Tianchun Xia, Echo Ya Ting, Ivona Zgrabljic',
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, External
We work on developing early literacy, situational empathy and self-efficacy through parent-child interaction. In phase 1, we would like to create structured parent-child interactions through a children’s book. The book will contain material like vocabulary-building sentences and games, empathy-building exercises and serve-and-return conversational questions. It will also be supplemented by a training video for parents to help them learn the process of going through the book. In later phases, we plan to introduce other supplementary material like games and videos on an online platform.
Living Labs
Names of collaborators:
Chloe Zelkha, Viria Vichit-Vadakan, Michelle Foley, Aleiya Evison
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, HBS, GSD
Lovely Books
Names of collaborators:
David Maher, Padaree Utsahajit
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HBS
Children’s picture books are facing increased competition from digital devices and have been largely unchanged for 50+ years. Awardees plan to bring technology and research (e.g. customization of morals by parents, illustrating children directly into books to increase engagement etc) to improve the learning outcomes generated by children’s picture books. Awardees have conducted customer research and are working on a prototype of a book that features deep customization to improve engagement and vocabulary development/learning from the reading experience.
M Power Learning
Names of collaborators:
Steven Chambers, Michele Rudy, Thomas Milaschewski
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 4, Year 2 Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
M Power Learning recruits, trains, and places African-American and Latino college graduates into schools where high populations of African-American and Latino students exist. Coaches will likely be paid school district staff members who provide social-emotional support for students during the school day in 1-on-1 and whole group structures. Coaches will also work closing with classroom teachers and school administration to co-construct curriculum.
Meet
Names of collaborators:
Vish Srivastava, Chris Turillo
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
GSD/SEAS, External
The job market in India is opaque and inefficient, especially for youth in tier II/III cities. Youth are unable to find the jobs they are qualified for and unable to get the information they need to make an informed decision on where to work. Meet is a crowdsourced platform for job-seekers to share and access trusted and relevant information about employers in their local area.
MentorMEd (Mentoring in Medical Education): A tinder for your academic sake
Names of collaborators:
Nanda Lucky Prasetya, Candrika Dini, Stephanie Hardjo, Jane Tjahjono
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HMS, HGSE, HKS
MentorMEd is a phone app for mentorship combining mutual ‘like’ feature and matching tags percentage. It is hard to find mentors or collaborators for projects in Indonesia. This platform hopes to catalyze the research through real passion and curiosity for the medical community. Users will be asked for their expectations and commitment in mentorship. Computer will calculate how many tags are matched for those two parties. Users also will be given choices about prospective mentors/mentee, which they can choose to like or dislike. If both parties like each other, they will match and be able to converse without identifying information to reduce bias.
Modular Pre-Schools
Names of collaborators:
Christopher Gyngell, Zina Noel, Codi Caton, Sarah Osborne
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
We would like to design and develop a prototype for a modular preschool. Children in emergencies and in developing countries often fall behind their peers due to a lack of access to quality early education. We would like to develop a low-cost, highly-mobile solution which would communities to recover from hardships or expand their educational capacity to children who may not have been able to access education before.
Mopi
Names of collaborators:
Elisa Mansur, Maria Rodrigues, Angela Hernandez
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HKS, HGSE, MIT-Sloan
In Brazil, 2 million children up to five years old are not enrolled in public daycare centers because centers don't have enough vacancies or are too far. mopi fills this gap by empowering women entrepreneurs with pedagogical and managerial training and resources to run their own childcare centers. Thus, children can develop and get ready for school while their parents join the workforce and increase household income.
Mosaic - First Gen Grad School Coaching
Names of collaborators:
Erick Diaz, Sasha Pellerin, Joshua Baltodano
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
GSD, HGSE, HKS
Mosaic supports first-generation college students applying to graduate school through a comprehensive and individualized coaching model. Our coaches, who are first-gen themselves, walk applicants through the key aspects of an application (e.g., resumes, personal statements, and selecting recommendors) and provide detailed feedback on application materials.
MuRealities
Names of collaborators:
Angel Rodriguez, James Bowie-Wilson
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
GSAS, MIT
The purpose of the project is to place Diego Rivera’s Gloriosa Victora in a digital context to assess the narrative of the mural and the historical experience that produced it. The media experiment project aims to workshop digital surveys that explore these main research questions: how does this mural serve as an “interactive” map for storytelling and navigating narratives? What aspects of Rivera’s visual language in his artwork informs new ways to understand social relationships and change over time? By experimenting with new mediums, not new methods, we seek to broaden our base of source material for education in social history
Music Go Global
Names of collaborators:
Anita Lee, Arushi Mittal
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Music Go Global is an online platform that aims to provide music learning opportunities to children around the world who are limited in musical resources due to the aftereffect of natural disasters or disadvantaged conditions. Our vision is to create equitable access to quality music education in these regions despite the constraints, which not only gives the children an experience to explore the musical landscape but also an alternative way to express themselves and to be connected to the world through the universal language of music. We are currently focusing on music schools in Japan, Nepal, Taiwan, and Indonesia where children have experienced earthquake in the recent years.
My Dental Key
Names of collaborators:
Emily Van Doren, Jennifer Lee, Leela Breitman, Eliana Cohen, Karen He
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HSDM, HBS
Dental Key is an online learning tool for clinical dental education. Dental Key is composed of video demonstrations, illustrations, and step-by-step, best-practice instructions for basic dental procedures. Our tools are created by our team of dental students, reviewed by dental professionals to ensure accuracy, and hosted on an easy-to-use, online platform for accessibility. Our overarching goal is to integrate technology into the dental classroom to enhance dental learning.
MyDev: Bridging the Gap in Professional Development
Names of collaborators:
Merry Chin, Adrija Navarro
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, GSAS
To tackle the problem of millennial employee turnover, we are working on a web-based application that focuses on professional learning development through monthly one-on-one conversations between an employee and their manager. Our web application software will encourage employee agency and autonomy in one’s growth by prompting thoughtful questions and conversation starters between employees and managers both online and offline. We are currently in the research and development stage. Through questionnaires and prototype studies, we are seeking to understand what people lacked and what they appreciated most about their learning and development in past/current work experiences.
MythOS
Names of collaborators:
Tristan Helms, Gregory Dachner
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HBS, Brown University
MythOS is addressing the growing gap in social and emotional skills among adolescents who are not being served by traditional social activities (sports, theater, etc.) but are instead consumed by digital entertainment. MythOS is using games that resonate with digitally-focused adolescents to drive home social and emotional skills.
NeuroSmart
Names of collaborators:
JIngyu Tong, Tianchun Xia, Mengxi Tan, Yang Yuan, Erqian Xu
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, GSD, HMS
New Teachers Thriving
Names of collaborators:
Tyler Hester, Dana Britt, Merry Chin
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
New Teachers Thriving seeks to train new teachers to achieve personal well-being, enabling them to work better with students and leave the profession at a lower rate. Tyler is writing a book entitled Don’t Be Miserable in October that outlines the five pitfalls that lead new teachers into misery and clarifies solutions. Additionally, we will provide in-person training for teachers at schools and districts around the country. This year, we’re piloting our training series for over 60 teachers in partnership with Boston Public Schools and the Boston Teachers Union. We hope to offer online courses and develop an app that will enable us to provide the support that new teachers need.
OCULIS
Names of collaborators:
Mikal Lewis, Peggy Mativo Ochola
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HBS
Oculis is a platform to address the lack of financial literacy in the classroom. Currently there are many programs, but few focus on the user (the student). Oculis seeks to engage the user through gamification of simple financial concepts.
Oklahoma Science Project
Names of collaborators:
Kayla Davis, Rebecca Fine, Kate Lachance, Noah Bloch, Jane Huang, Emily Kerr
Awarded cycle:
Year 1 Pilot Fund Round 2, 3, 4. Year 2 Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2019, 2020
Schools represented on team:
GSAS, HGSE
The Oklahoma Science Project is an online resource with the goal of improving access to and promoting STEM education in Oklahoma. The project combats strained educational funding by providing students and educators with free computational science lessons that aim to teach students how to use programming to solve science problems while introducing them to the fundamentals of the python coding language and teaching them fundamental principles of science. We combat the shortage of STEM professionals in the state by exposing students to the stories of successful Oklahomans holding STEM degrees and positions on a blog. The Oklahoma Science Project plans to network STEM professionals from Oklahoma to respond to anti-science and anti-education legislation being written in Oklahoma
OnBoard: Governing for Equity
Names of collaborators:
Danila Crespin, Erica Jordan Thomas
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Preparing School Boards to Govern for Equity
Open Minds
Names of collaborators:
Eliza Harris, Jenny Muniz, Alba Avila
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, External
Our solution is to create open education resources (OER) so that all teachers have access to free, K-12 TEKs-aligned curricula designed through research-based culturally, community responsive and anti-bias frameworks. Created by current and former educators, our OER curricula — which spans individual lessons to carefully sequenced units — has an essential focus on rigor, multicultural, and bilingual literature. Additionally, we will offer adult learning sessions to support teachers and administrators in districts in using our resources as well as understand the mindset and instructional shift required to systematically change the educational trajectory of our underserved students.
Our Voices Matter
Names of collaborators:
Shawon Jackson, Keturah Gadson
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HKS, FAS
The purpose of this project is to teach public speaking and advocacy skills to low-income middle school students of color. We hope that by doing so, we can improve their educational outcomes; and more importantly, we believe this program will help students become critical, compassionate, and socially conscious leaders with the confidence and skills needed to promote social change.
Pillow Fort
Names of collaborators:
David Maher, Padaree (Now) Utsahajit
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HBS
At Pillow Fort we believe in the power of personalization to deeply engage children in reading. We are developing personalized books that solve problems for parents looking to create teachable moments on difficult topics and improve vocabulary retention, and solve problems for gift givers who want a gift that they know the kid they are buying for will love.
Pines/木森
Names of collaborators:
Mengyu Duan, Yunwei Zheng
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
We are creating an online emotional and professional support group for first-generation college students, especially students from rural China. We think they face unique psychological and professional challenges compared to other college students when they move to big cities to study for college. So we want to create an online platform so that those students can have a safe space to talk about the challenges they face and get support from each other. We will also do online seminars to help students learn about different industries and career paths, and build their network.
Primer
Names of collaborators:
Phil Larochelle, Michael Connolly
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
MIT-Sloan
Primer is a new way of navigating knowledge harnessing the latest emerging digital collaboration and intelligence tools. The company will deploy a software platform connecting content-creators, teachers and students in novel and effective ways, enabling anyone to learn anything.
ProcedReal: Enroll
Names of collaborators:
Eric Gonzalez, Yating Xu
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, External
Enroll allows you to practice the college application process safely on your device. By failing, practice, and learning you will be more equipped to succeed when it’s time for your real college application!
ProjectBeta.id
Names of collaborators:
I Made Subagiarta, Nadhira Nuraini Afifa, Nadia Amalia
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HMS, HSPH, MIT-Sloan
Mental health remains a complex problem in Indonesia. Besides still considered taboo, limited access to mental health services has worsened the problem. ProjectBeta is a platform that aims to improve mental health literacy among parents in Indonesia by providing mental health curriculum made by experts in the form of articles and practical videos to help recognize, manage, and prevent mental illness in children; it is also giving instant access to the clinician. Our idea is inspired by the integrated health care delivery model, which emphasizes on promotive, preventive, and curative actions.
RankED
Names of collaborators:
Kiera O'Brien, Ben Sorkin, Alexis Mealey
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
FAS
We are in the process of creating a platform reminiscent of HackerRank, aimed at high school students applying to colleges. The goal of our platform is expanding the reach of recruiting from top-tier and prestigious universities to underrepresented populations. Broadly, a platform of this sort would include competitions hosted by university partners and other resources designed to engage and assess students who would else wise be unlikely to experience the recruiting process.
ReImagine African Schools: Schools for the 21st century - and for all children
Names of collaborators:
Bahia El Oddi, Prasanth Nori, Miriam Hammond, Aneeqa Rana, Mariam Dahbi
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HBS, GSAS, HGSE
This project envisions the creation of a pan African affordable private K12 schools network (i.e. ReImagine Schools). These schools would provide a lower cost alternative for low-middle income populations to access quality education, drawing on curriculum, operational, and technical insights to lower costs and increase both cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes. ReImagine Schools is an affordable and adaptable 21st century school model anchored in an integrated student led learning and teachers training platform empowered by Artificial Intelligence. We think indeed that there is a need for a AI integrated learning and teaching platform which will be integrated into an exhaustive school model (a kind of “school in a box” or “school at your fingerprints”) that could be delivered though a franchise model to achieve further scale. We would also differentiate ourselves by continuously refining the model leveraging the expertise of Harvard and MIT graduates and faculty.
Read to Me
Names of collaborators:
Drew Madson, Achuth "Krish" Sreedevi,
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Read to Me is a platform that listens to students read books aloud. It coaches students and provides critical data for teachers and parents about student text completion, fluency, and comprehension.
Resilient
Names of collaborators:
Lin Johnson, Brian Stockton
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, External
Resilient is a project that will restore wellness, love and dignity to black boys and young men by creating an online, culturally affirming community of black males who share videos of life advice, stories and encouragement. Resilient is a project where black boys and young men can be present, have themselves and their diverse differences affirmed, build relationships with other black males, receive care and love that uplift their dignity, and nurture their social, emotional and mental wellness.
Right to Sight
Names of collaborators:
Varshini Odayar, Siona Prasad
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
FAS
"We believe that education is a powerful tool to expand the reach of eye-care in rural, underprivileged areas India. Our project is two fold: 1. We aim to create resources and materials in order to eliminate the fear of seeking treatment among the patient population. 2. We hope to expand training for nurses in order to increase literacy in technology and help leverage technology to improve the efficiency of patient care."
Rise: the membership
Names of collaborators:
Julia Starr, Stephanie Hardjo
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Rise: the membership is an online community and learning platform for soon-to-be and recent female college grads interested in learning life skills partnered with an awareness for spiritual and personal growth. Our current focus is testing the user experience of our membership platform and investing in key features as well as developing customer personas.
S.A.F.E
Names of collaborators:
Annapurna Ayyappan, Marisa Fear, Dhwani Shah
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Teachers serving preschoolers in low-income and marginalized communities across the world, are struggling with issues that are affecting their ability to do their work. SAFE will be an online and mobile application platform that will give teachers access to developmentally appropriate resources to provide solutions to problems facing in their classroom, access to professional development opportunities, and the opportunity to form sub-groups of educators or educator communities connected by a similar challenge or a shared interest.
SEEK
Names of collaborators:
Jessica Huang, Reuben Muzungu, Roger Tessier
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HSPH, External
SEEK works to improve access to learning and employment opportunities among adult refugees in Kenya, in collaboration with the refugee-led community-based organization (CBO), Samaritan Association. By using an innovative asset-based model, SEEK is able to leverage existing resources (such as primary school facilities that remain unused in the evenings and weekends) to resourcefully provide accessible adult educational programming in a refugee camp. SEEK focuses on adults based on community input about current gaps in the learning ecosystem for adults, since many humanitarian organizations working in education in Kakuma focus on youth. The livelihoods of adult refugees have important implications for the rest of the family because by investing in skills development for the main breadwinners, their income can potentially be increased and consequently also their ability to provide more education, health care and stability to youth - helping to break the cycle of poverty by setting the next generation up for better livelihood opportunities as well.
SESEWA Academy
Names of collaborators:
Adekunbi Adeoye, Debo Odunlami, Promise Lawal, Bisi Erinosho
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, External
"The SESEWA Academy platform is a work readiness focused online platform designed to equip young people with the skills for the world of work. The platform is driven by the market-driven SESEWA Internship Training (SIT) curriculum, and is an effort to bring SESEWA's Training Academy closer to the end users (young people), and overcome barriers such as distance in delivering learning."
STEMtelling
Names of collaborators:
Jenny Norman, Andrew Segal
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, HDS
Science isn’t just a set of subjects to study; we all live science every day. Yet most students imagine themselves to be separate from it. STEMtelling can change this. STEMtelling is a set of interactive diagnostic tools designed for secondary students that promote the individualized discovery and learning of STEM, based on each student’s own life, experiences, and relationships.
Science Bytes
Names of collaborators:
Ragini Lall and Aditi Kumar
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, MIT-Sloan
Sikaun Learning Center (SLC)
Names of collaborators:
Supriya Tamang, Izzy Rubin, Hitesh Sharma
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, External
SLC is a community-based learning center in Nepal that provides opportunities to engage in learning outside of school by providing learning resources and project-based learning experiences. The learning experiences will teach a wide range of content that emphasizes the 4Cs – communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity – skills that all learners need for success in school, work, and life. We will be offering our first learning experience -- Ganitplus (Mathplus)-- in January 2020. Ganitplus will be a weeklong learning experience that will encourage students to learn math through activities that promote problem-solving and collaborative learning.
Sprout SEL
Names of collaborators:
Jiayun Guo, Zilin Ma, Minyi Yu
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, GSAS
Sprout SEL is a project designed for parents from low-income families in the urban areas in China. Centering socio-emotional learning in early childhood, the project is designed to deliver a message that parents can create a lifelong positive impact on children's development through early intervention. We will incorporate both online interactive games and on-site workshops to the parents. They will learn simple steps each time to improve their interaction with their children and promote children's wellbeing.
StEP (student-educator partnerships)
Names of collaborators:
Natalie Owen, Kathleen Jarman
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
In order to leverage the strengths of small school communities, we want to bring together teachers and students for conversation around how classroom practices can be relevant and engaging for all students. The funding we receive in this round will sponsor teachers in rural spaces to host lunch for a small group of students. We will support teachers with resources on productive student-teacher partnerships, including norm-setting for productive collaboration around classroom possibilities and including diverse student identities in the conversation.
StemFINDER
Names of collaborators:
Isaiah Baldissera, Debo Odunlami
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
The lack of students moving from an interest in STEM to a STEM career is problematic. We plan to curate the best free STEM learning resources for students (videos, tutorials, MOOCS, documentaries, career profiles) in one place, and connect them in a way that encourages exploration.
StoryPlay
Names of collaborators:
Keya Lamba, Seonghyun Nam, Rebekah Woo, Natasha Sakraney
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, GSD, HKS, External
Research shows that oral development and language skills are highly predictive of later literacy development and school success. However, barriers exist that make oral development challenging to practice, particularly in low-resource areas. StoryPlay is a fun storytelling game that promotes children’s oral development, creativity and imagination and makes oral development skills practice accessible to students both in formal pre-primary education and in informal settings. The game is easily distributed and scalable, with potential to provide joy, developmental benefit, and increased literacy to children across the globe.
T3alMENA
Names of collaborators:
Dina Masri, Haneen Abdo
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Through storytelling and mentorship, we are connecting Arab youth with leaders they look up to by hearing relatable stories and receiving guidance in Arabic. This will not be translated content, rather content from Arabs in their native language. We are also in discussing the possibility of focusing on women in the MENA.
TPock - Digital High School Education in Bangladesh
Names of collaborators:
Nuheen Khan, Nazneen Imam,
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HKS, External
Tpock's goal is to digitalize high school education in Bangladesh to improve the quality of education in the country. The education content generated will cover the entire curriculum of the Bangla and English medium board exams at the high school level. Teachers can use the material as supplements to classroom teaching, whereas students can also access the content from home in their smartphones or computers for learning purposes. The organization will be for-profit in nature, but it will explore possible non-profit collaboration with the government.
Teacher Employment Fund: Curriculum Refinement
Names of collaborators:
Peggy Walenda Mativo, Rachel Luo,
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HBS, MIT-Architecture
Teacher Impact Collaborative
Names of collaborators:
Tauheedah Baker, Crystel Harris
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 4
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Teacher Impact Collaborative is a capacity building organization that partners with districts to increase quantity, quality, and retention of teachers from diverse backgrounds.
Teacher's Data Coach
Names of collaborators:
Luis Duarte, Nadine Rubinstein
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Teachers and administrators in public schools are under significant pressure to use student-level data (test scores, interim assessments, etc.) to modify their teaching methods. Time is being wasted while educators compile and analyze the data. Our project addresses this through a free, easy-to-understand website or software that educators could use to consolidate their data, analyze their data, and move quickly from analysis to action-planning.
Teaching Artists International, Inc.
Names of collaborators:
Gabrielle Molina, Amber Hansen, Pricila Chavez Lara
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, External
Teaching Artists International is a 501(c)(3) that develops the next generation of global citizen musicians through artistic and cultural exchanges that support music education around the world.
Teaching for Tomorrow
Names of collaborators:
Margaret Wang, Natasha Japanwala
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Pakistan is failing to prepare its population for the future: approximately two-thirds of the population is under the age of 30, and the country must generate nearly a million jobs every year for the next 30 years, without interruption, in order to even maintain unemployment at the current levels. Couple this with poor learning outcomes (less than half of third graders are able to read a sentence in Urdu nationwide) and it is immediately clear that there is a huge gap when it comes to equipping the next generation for the 21st century. As a result, our project aims to find a scalable solution on how we can support teachers in Pakistan in teaching 21st century skills in the classroom. We will be testing whether an online platform that will provide both a curriculum and teacher training is valuable and implementable.
The Dual Capacity Project
Names of collaborators:
Marissa Alberty, Eyal Bergman
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 4
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Dual Capacity Project is a multimedia website aimed at supporting district leaders in building their beliefs and skills in Family and Community Engagement (FACE) work. This tool is designed to showcase the Dual-Capacity Building Framework, and bring it to life by using: An introductory video from Dr. Mapp that presents the revised version of the Dual-Capacity, Building Framework to be unveiled in July 2019, Exemplar videos, artifacts, and case studies from districts around the country in order to highlight each element of the Framework, Testimonials from current leaders on ways to leverage funding for systemic FACE work, Structural & policy recommendations for districts to build capacity in FACE, and a detailed map of district leaders so that colleagues can connect with each other more easily.
The Growing Book
Names of collaborators:
Jingwen Xie, Jiayi Hu
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
The Growing Book is an app aimed at cultivating children’s active learning and socioemotional development through gamified storytelling.
The Infinity Project
Names of collaborators:
Natasha Japanwala, Abdullah Ali Khan, Zeerak Ahmed, Natasha Sakraney
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, External
The Lab
Names of collaborators:
Charli Kemp, Alpachino Hogue, April Finlayson
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
The Lab is the brainchild of three Ed.L.D. candidates with a passion for equity, inclusion, access and innovative solutions to education. We look to reimagine summer programming for youth in various parts of the world by developing a model that meets the unique needs of students and teachers during summer. Our project seeks to develop a six-week summer program that is designed to create access and address the significant challenges which exacerbate the education achievement and opportunity gaps between high income and low-income students. We are planning to build a summer program designed to create experiential programming through a suite of impactful indoor and outdoor workshops and modules designed to increase student academic rigor, social-emotional learning (SEL), culturally responsive teaching, and self-awareness skills.
Third Room Labs
Names of collaborators:
Yefei Jin, Jaclyn Eichenberger, Matt Zitello, Stevin Smith
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, External
We investigate distance learning technology and training to connect teachers to kids in geographically isolated communities. Through our research, we help schools engage children regardless of their zip code.
Thrively Health
Names of collaborators:
Allicen Dichara, Aleksandra Kozera, Shiyi Zan
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HKS, HGSE, HSPH
The postpartum period is a key window of opportunity for health education and behavior change. At Thrively Health, our mission is to democratize health by empowering women in making better care decisions for themselves and their family. Our current project informs the development of a digital platform that seeks to establish new norms for user engagement with health and supportive services from maternity onwards to impact health and life outcomes throughout the human lifecycle for underserved and marginalized populations in SE Asia.
Todaydream
Names of collaborators:
Chika Okafor, Keturah Gadson
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
GSAS, FAS
Students still do not see enough examples of young, college-educated, talented minorities. This situation erodes students’ belief in the power of their own dreams, putting a ceiling on their potential. Phase one of TodayDream consists of a dynamic web portal to connect schools/orgs with nearby talented minorities, mobile app for participating speakers and other talented minorities to build community & foster alliances among themselves, and partnerships with corporations, nonprofits, and government agencies to provide speakers to join our community, as well as access our repository of minority talent to promote diversity in hiring.
UDLiterature
Names of collaborators:
Lauren Boulanger, Sofya Zeylikman
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
UDLiterature is an online literature platform created to solve the problem of student demotivation and disengagement while reading complex texts like Shakespeare. Rather than spoon-feeding them the “right answers,” it provides students with the tools to do their own critical thinking as they work to decipher difficult works of literature. Consequently, students can experience the joy of tackling an intellectual challenge—and cultivate their grit and confidence in the process.
University-Wide Human Rights Curriculum
Names of collaborators:
Inkyu Kim, Delphine Rodrik, Amina Rahimi, Catherine Wu, Austin Herbst, Austin Davis
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 4
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HMS, HLS
We seek to bring together the brilliant minds of the different Harvard Schools to create a space for knowledge sharing and discussion regarding human rights issues around the world. We will hold a lecture/discussion session to facilitate inter-disciplinary collaboration and promote both a richer learning environment and generation of more robust solutions.
Usmosis
Names of collaborators:
Joshua Boyd, Michele Rudy
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
DCE, HGSE
Usmosis solves weak student engagement for distant learning communities creating connectivity through sincere peer engagement and virtual worlds.
Utopia
Names of collaborators:
Swan Lu, Shenglan Tan, Hailun He, Zoe Zhu
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HBS, HGSE
The vision of Utopia is to provide the high quality curated content for early childhood development – we differentiate by taking a holistic educational approach – one focuses on all important stakeholders – parents, teachers, kindergarten and children themselves. Our current curriculum includes Museum learning and English Theatre, and currently piloting in China.
VRsatality
Names of collaborators:
Kevin Bryant, Hassan Brown
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3, 4, Year 2 Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, GSAS
VRsatility is a simulation lab that harnesses the power of virtual reality to engage teachers in immersive and realistic mock simulations. At VRsatility, we provide pre-service teachers with an immersive virtual space to practice and improve interpersonal and pedagogical skills prior to initial engagement with students to minimize potentially harmful interactions and ineffective practices.
Village
Names of collaborators:
Aleksandra Kozera, Nicole Ivey, Maciej Andrzejewski
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, HBS, External
Village supports and educates parents and teachers to create local communities for creative, joyful, compassionate young learners who use curiosity and innovative thinking to build a healthy, just and sustainable world. We do so by igniting micro-entrepreneurship of early education teachers to start home-based early education centers. Village provides them with Reggio Emilia inspired professional development, mentoring, business and marketing support, IT platform as well as access to community of village chefs. It takes a village to raise a child – welcome to ours!
