Ticmas

Ticmas allows the transformation of teaching and learning experiences by serving students, teachers and schools with a modular solution that integrates content and technology to enable new ways of learning and to help solve the current skills gap and crisis in Latin America’s obsolete education system.

Our purpose is to promote equal opportunities for students by delivering world class education at an affordable price.

TICMAS is a comprehensive learning and teaching platform that provides learning tools, engaging proprietary content, analytics and teacher training.

TICMAS ensures an engaging learning experience:

-Hypermedia and interactive curricular content created by experts.

-Tools that allow a personalized follow-up of each student and create personalized pedagogical journeys.

-Technology that guarantees teaching and learning in physical classrooms or remote and hybrid settings.

-Online and offline functionality for areas with low connectivity.

-Specific modules that address project-based learning, 21st century skills, reading comprehension, programming.

-Training  programs for teachers.

We want to help overcome the dramatic education gaps and exclusion produced by Latin America’s current obsolete education system. Students in Latin America are significantly lagging behind in academic performance (Table 1), become frustrated and end up not engaging in learning and producing high school dropout rates (Table 2), and are not acquiring  skills required by the labour market (aTable 3).

Table 1: Latin American grades underperform OECD grades:

 Table 2. Obsolete methods contribute to school dropouts:

Source: (2) IDB -The Future is Now: Transversal Skills in Latin America and the Caribbean in  21st Century

Table 3. Students aren´t acquiring skills demanded by labour market:

Source: (3) ECLAC (2020e) – Tracking the Digital Footprint in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In Latin America, disengaged students struggle to learn due to:

• Unappealing content and outdated curriculum discourage  engagement. 

• Uniform and rigid education processes don´t adapt to student’s talents and interests, and at the same time they  are not acquiring the  skills required by the market and the jobs of the future. 

• Teachers rely on outdated teaching methods and lack tools to engage students.

• Poor training  for teachers in new technologies and teaching methods.

• Lack of tools to efficiently track student’s performance.

TICMAS is an innovative solution that serves students, teachers and schools with a platform that integrates content and technology and positively transforms the teaching and learning experience. TICMAS is a comprehensive solution that provides:

• A digital  learning platform that supports personalized education experiences, including a student app and teacher tools.

• Online and offline functionality to secure continued learning and user engagement.

• High quality digital curricular content for middle and high school that meets schools and government curricula requirements.

• Proprietary digital content and modules that can be customized by teachers to accommodate diverse teaching plans and preferences. 

• 21st century skills modules and project-based learning.

• Class planning tools and custom tests for teachers that enable significant efficiency and time savings.

• Teacher training center to support teachers in new pedagogical methodologies, new technologies and tools.

• Relevant and real-time data, metrics and dashboards for teachers, schools and parents, that enable progress measurement, immediate intervention and support.

• A full range of professional services to support schools in their digital transformation journey and initiatives.

• Integration with other platforms schools may use, such as Google For Education and Moodle.

Our solution serves all stakeholders in the learning process: students, teachers and schools.

Our solution can help students:

-Re-engage and enjoy learning with appealing and entertaining content.

-Improve grades and academic performance.

-Continue their learning activities offline and re-engage online anytime to accommodate diverse connectivity environments.

-Acquire relevant knowledge and the new skills that are required by the labour market.

Our solution can help teachers:

-Access tools that facilitate course and class planning, content preparation, customization and delivery, and fluid interaction with students.

-Benefit from teacher training programs, materials and dedicated support in new technologies and pedagogical methods.

-Access tools for custom test design and data that enable tracking of class and student’s performance and progress.

-Save time and focus efforts on teaching and supporting students.

Our solution can help schools:

-Access tools that enable to plan and manage content updates and teacher’s progress.

-Access data and metrics that allow tracking of class progress, and student and teacher engagement and performance. 

-Demonstrate value to parents with metrics and app available to parents that can facilitate their assessment of their children's progress.

Our learning solution aims at resolving the inequalities produced by the current crisis of Latin America’s obsolete education model, by providing a flexible tech-based solution that can be used online and offline, to enable continued uninterrupted quality learning to all students, teachers and primary and secondary private and public schools, thus aligning our solution and the population we serve with the Equitable Classrooms Challenge.   

Our purpose is to reach and serve all teachers and students of primary and secondary schools (both private and public) in Latin America, especially vulnerable and underserved communities, with relevant, up-to-date and personalized content and tools that can be accessed anywhere, anytime through our tech-based learning solution.

We created high quality personalizable curricular content, including digital didactic units featuring all compulsory contents of the elementary and middle school curriculum, as well as project-based learning modules. These didactic sequences are interactive, dynamic and engaging.  All content is designed to promote and develop 21st century skills to help students acquire the skills required by the labour market.

We also developed a simple, user-friendly and intuitive platform for students and teachers. Our platform enables teachers to simplify their class preparation and teaching, and to save time that can be dedicated to focus on teaching and students. Students can access our learning solution from a variety of devices, such as smartphones, tablets, computers and low-tech devices. 

Students can engage in learning anytime and anywhere, as they can download all contents to their mobile devices and learn without internet connection. The platform  tracks all interactions between the students and the content even though they are not connected. Once the device is connected, the platform will deliver all the information and interactions tracked to the teacher.

Teachers can prepare their classes and tests with our solution and save time to focus on teaching and students’ learning and improvements, as teachers can track all the students' interactions with the platform and create metrics that measure progress, usage time, activities completed, etc. Teachers can therefore carry out personalized monitoring of each student, and identify their strengths and weaknesses, in order to assign different tasks and reinforcement activities for each student.

In order to support teachers in their digital transformation journey, we developed special training programs, mentorships, workshops and events, and we also have dedicated teacher support representatives in each school to secure a high level of customer service and engagement.

In the last two-three years we’ve concentrated on developing the product, content and the technology platform and rolled it out commercially in our home country, Argentina.

As we have proven the platform’s value and achieved considerable school adoption in Argentina with our world-class solution, the Company is ready to scale internationally by placing the solution throughout Latin America.

 

Our solution is innovative because it’s an integrated one-stop shop learning solution that resolves the problems of all key stakeholders in the learning process and serves students, teachers and schools by integrating (i) a simple, user-friendly tech-based platform that can be used anytime, anywhere, online and offline, with (ii) high quality, up-to-date, personalizable content that engages learners and prepares them for the 21st century skills required by the labour market.

 

Our integrated solution serves students, teachers and schools:

- Students are encouraged to engage and learn with appealing, entertaining, relevant content that makes learning fun, with a solution that is adaptable to each student’s talents and interests, that can be used online and offline without interrupting the learning calendar, and that enables students to develop the skills required by the labour market and the jobs of the future.

- Teachers can access tools that facilitate class and tests preparation, content delivery, better interaction with students and tools to track students’ progress, saving time to focus their efforts on teaching and student progress, and they also have access to training programs in new technologies and pedagogic methods, workshops, teacher interactive communities, teaching materials and dedicated teacher support representatives.

- Schools can access tools that enable them to plan and manage content updates and teacher’s progress, and can also access metrics, data and dashboards that allow tracking of class, student and teacher engagement and performance, while also allowing parents to access the information regarding their children’s progress.

We currently serve 149,992 students, 53,160 teachers and 962 schools principals.

In one year, we project to serve 300,000 students, 100,000 teachers and 2,000 schools principals.

In five years, we project to serve 3.2 mm students,  1 mm teachers and  17,000 schools principals.

We are currently measuring our progress toward achieving our impact goals with:

-Weekly tracking of the number of students, teachers and schools we attract

-Weekly tracking of student and teacher engagement 

-Constantly tracking school leadership feedback to secure impact is achieved in students and teachers 

- Hours of continuous teacher training through workshops, self-attended courses, webinars and conferences

-Hours of mentoring provided by disciplinary areas to accompany teachers who use the platform

-% Growth in views of educational content on the YouTube channel.

Additionally, from the second semester of 2021 we will begin to measure the progress of student learning based on the type of pedagogical activity proposed.

 

150 full-time employees and 30 contractors.

Our team is diverse and multidisciplinary, it is led by founder & CEO Viviana Zocco, and has the following key areas: Technology, Content, Customer Success, Commercial, Marketing and Finance.

The technology area ( 60 people ) is  responsible for the  development of our digital platforms. Its members have vast training and professional experience in IT and provide secure, user-friendly, and scalable environments. This team features the following roles: Product Owner, Technical Leaders, Functional Analyst, QA, Web and Mobile Developers, UX / UI, DevOps, Data Engineers and Data Analysts.

The content area  (40 people),includes expert teachers who have studied and deepened in each of the educational disciplines. Together with instructional designers, they  develop and curate content to provide a pedagogical aproach that allows the construction of knowledge, the development of skills, and facilitates the teacher's task of planning, and teaching activity. Also, the audiovisual team includes editors, scriptwriters and producers.

The customer success area  provides support and advice to teachers, principals, families and students. In this team, teachers are specially trained to provide excellent support to all users of our platform. The objective of this team is to accompany the onboarding, adoption and success in the use of TICMAS .

In Ticmas we consider diversity as a process of continuous improvement and constant focus. All employees of the organization contribute to build a path towards diversity. Values such as community, equity, belonging, openness, integrity and mutual respect constantly fly over the work environment within the company and are constantly empowered from the management areas. Ticmas offers a policy of total equality, where aspects such as sexual orientation, religion, race, color, disability, gender identity, age, nationality, will not be considered under any point of view to when analyzing the income of a collaborator.

We are applying to Solve because we want to join its community of impact-oriented leaders, and fortify our business model and management by interacting and partnering with world-class professionals that are part of the Solve network and are driven by social impact. 

As part of the Solve community, we could get help on resolving the following challenges and barriers:

-Regional market entry in our target markets in Latin America

-Generating new customer relationships in private and public schools 

-Accessing quality service providers in markets we are not currently present but that we are targeting to enter

-Adapting our content and solutions to local customer needs and tastes

-Hiring the right people and building the teams to execute our regional expansion plan

-Fundraising the capital we need to execute our regional expansion plan

We may need more partnerships in:

-Service distribution: to expand client base in the new countries and communities we intend to reach in our regional expansion plan

-Specialized content: to add potential third-party specialty and “edutainment” content to complement our proprietary content portfolio

-Technology: to fortify our technology infrastructure and data management capabilities as we scale our business regionally