ActiveGrade names advisory board, co-founder confirms $200k raise

ActiveGrade, a startup established to help educators better track pupils’ development, has assembled a group of educators tasked with keeping a similarly watchful eye on the company’s own progress. Iowa City-based ActiveGrade last week unveiled a seven-member advisory board, which is made up of educators and teacher leaders from across the country. The group will…

ActiveGrade, a startup established to help educators better track pupils’ development, has assembled a group of educators tasked with keeping a similarly watchful eye on the company’s own progress. 

Iowa City-based ActiveGrade last week unveiled a seven-member advisory board, which is made up of educators and teacher leaders from across the country. The group will help advise and guide ActiveGrade in the ongoing development of its feature product, an online gradebook we reported on last month that organizes information based on concepts or skills students have mastered rather than assignments they have completed.

Also of note from the press release regarding the advisory board: ActiveGrade indicated it has previously taken on outside investment. Co-founder Michal Eynon-Lynch (left) said in an email today that the investment totaled $200,000 but declined to discuss other specifics of the funding. 

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The ActiveGrade team still stands at three — Eynon-Lynch is joined by her husband, Riley Eynon-Lynch and Dan Sweeney, who are both co-founders — but Michal Eynon-Lynch suggested hiring is on the horizon for the company.

“We are starting to keep our eyes open for more developers, sales, and support people,” she said. “We will have a ‘Job Opportunities’ page on our site in the next few days so interested people should come looking.”

ActiveGrade’s advisory board consists of Scott McLeod, founding director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE); Josh Stumpenhorst, a middle school teacher in Illinois and the 2012 Illinois Teacher of the Year; Bridgette Wagoner, the director of education services for the Waverly-Shellrock Community School District in Iowa; Sarah Harper-Smith, a middle school teacher in Washington; Scott Schaefer, a middle school teacher in Wisconsin; Shinae Park, a high school teacher in New Jersey; and Jason Buell, a middle school teacher in California.

Per the press release, ActiveGrade chose advisors that it believes have distinguished themselves both in the classroom and through online interaction as “passionate, caring educators dedicated to the idea that a mastery, or standards, based approach to education is more effective and empowering than traditional grading models.”

Similarly, the advisors express staunch belief in ActiveGrade’s leadership and its product.

“I am serving on the advisory board because I believe in Riley, Michal and Dan’s vision for a decision-driven gradebook,” Buell said in the release. “The team has been thoughtful about designing a program to help teachers and students make better decisions rather than basing it solely on traditional school practices.”

Said Park in the release: “Deciding to implement competency-based grading was a big step, but I didn’t know how to manage the bookkeeping until I found ActiveGrade. ActiveGrade is a great tool for teachers, and I’d love to help focus it to better suit our needs!”

 

Image credit: Photo of Michal Eynon-Lynch from activegrade.com.

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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