WowMind

The printing press, electricity and fountain pens are innovations that helped children learn in the past. Now, schools were closed in more than 160 countries during Covid, affecting over 1 billion students. Video resources dedicated to education are not enough to cover children's pedagogical needs. WowMind is a micro video sharing e-learning platform perfectly adapted to the digital generation that offers a learning journey that connects formal and non-formal learning. How the user interacts with the platform makes the application adapt its interface to the user’s needs. Anyone with a professional degree can upload micro-video educational content on WowMind platform after passing a KYC verification that makes the creator responsible for the uploaded content. Our hybrid profit-non profit venture creates an ecosystem around WowMind that empowers teachers and entrepreneurs to create quality educational micro-video content for children. 

Our organization is based in Eastern Europe but tailored for the global learning crisis. Teacher's global shortage and digital learning are problems that reach all educational systems and are threatening the social status of the human kind. The barrier we set to overcome is educators' reluctance for the camera and digital transformation, both reflected in low interest for creating educational digital content. 

The micro-video curriculums uploaded on an interactive platform takes pressure off from teachers and their lack of time. Some educational content is uploaded on YouTube, which is not tailored for educational purposes and does not offer progress feedback.

The Media Literacy Index 2021 correlates lack of trust in science with low levels of media literacy. The school systems generally are linear and do not interconnect education with practicality, to show a perspective on the future jobs or creation of opportunities. 

Dropout rates in Ro in 2017 was 300k children while in 2020, 450k children are not attending school. In the pandemic, fewer parents worldwide could afford private lessons to compensate for the public educational problems, so the rates skyrocketed, 1.5 bln children worldwide did not have access to a functional school system for more than a year.

WowMind is an educational micro-video sharing mobile and web application for children, that offers content on formal and non formal curriculums of learning. The platform offers a choose-your-own-adventure architecture, the profile and choices of the user shape in the form of a mind-map, offering personalised learning experiences using Artificial Intelligence.The application has two interfaces, one for children and one for educators. 

Educational content creators are verified by ID and have to upload a professional certificate to prove that they are qualified to upload content on the platform. On the creators interface they will validate and approve content, depending on their qualifications. For the learner interface we create 2D design with a mind-map architecture based on palettes of colors: mathematics-red, science-green. 

Our objective is to keep the user engaged by offering personalised learning experiences in the form of gamified “fidget-spinner” motion, in order to provide interconnected learning: mathematics connects with finance, ICT or geography creating a video learning journey. To grow the number of video educational creators we offer teachers and entrepreneurs support in the production journey with courses on video production, post production of videos, studios and a collection of AR educational elements. 

Lack of education keeps children captive in poverty and the intergenerational cycle of social exclusion. Psychology talks about reaching a state of beneficial creativity in the life of a human, only after basic needs are covered. Today's human basic needs also include education, along with shelter, food and health. More so, we cannot expect environmental or social awareness from them without providing them efficient tools for knowledge and creativity. After intensive research on educational needs, we looked for the best partners that can reach any social category. 

Education is currently underserved for most of societal categories after Covid 19 and many parents can't afford private tutoring anymore. In most of CEE, children depend on private lessons to shorten the gap of educational inequalities. The romanian public system is currently producing 60% functional illiterate young adults and CEE are struggling with the same issues. With weak public systems, parents have to spend extra budgets to support their children in learning, especially for STEM subjects, but the Covid crisis left many of them unemployed. 

We want children to become adult solvers and not just consumers. Knowledge brings awareness and today’s children will have a big challenge to live, if we think about future social and environmental consequences in 10-20 years from now. WowMind is dedicated for children between 7-14 years, especially those who struggle with hybrid learning, average income parents and teachers that do not possess digital skills. 

The online teaching methods have left most teachers frustrated and tired. WowMind is considering these and more factors when developing a video sharing platform where educators can upload micro-video content for their specialities, receive help in creating and promoting them, and provide available knowledge for children and parents, 2 clicks away. We help educators by providing a multilingual video production course tailored for teachers and created by a Netflix experienced producer. This way we are changing their mind about camera exposure and about media literacy and the students' passion for digital content. As for parents, they will grow the confidence on online learning platforms and on the children's time spent online. 

Feedback is a big part of our platform, because we want teachers, children and parents to communicate on their needs and habits. 

The MVP, Alpha and Beta developments are milestones based on users feedback, so they are a constant resource in our creation. Being a hybrid of for-profit and nonprofit type of organization, we have an ecosystem based on teachers, NGO’s and educational institutions that help us in the development of the technical solution and the video content that comes with it.    

With WowMind, a parent can pay around 80 euro/ year for private lessons and have access to an ecosystem of upskilled teachers and multiple collections of high quality educational materials based on formal and non-formal curriculum. 

One of the success factors of video education is repetition. During class, either online or offline, students are shy in asking for extra explanations because they would hold other students behind. By having access to quality video resources for their tasks, they can rewatch the lesson until they understand. Another long term success is the media literacy skills gained by all 3 parties involved. With trained teachers, children can learn how to safely navigate the internet and develop critical thinking to help them analyze and decide better outcomes for them and their environment.

WowMind e-learning platform provides collections of educational micro-video content in mother language dedicated to school aged children. This way they and their ecosystem benefit from a low-cost/ high quality solution that can substitute the need for private lessons. Educators become interested in creating educational video content that attracts children to knowledge, compensating for the existing teacher shortage. 

The interface of the platform offers a personalized learning experience based on the children's interest, level and language. Because of the mind-map architecture the experience is gamified and offers the big picture of education interconnecting subjects of learning. 

We are at the PROTOTYPE stage of development where we have two incorporated companies, private and non-profit. The NGO has in its ecosystem 150 teachers in Romania, 50 teachers in Greece and 200 teachers in Turkey and their students. Each teacher has at least two classrooms of 20+ students. In this early stage the company created the MVP that was tested and validated with the described ecosystem. This way we choose colors, video production styles and a team that deeply understands the needs of children. With the help of Erasmus collaborations we expanded our ecosystem outside of the country ensuring a fast take-of of our solution. 

WowMind is an innovative platform that creates an attractive and safe learning environment for the young. The technology that the platform uses is creating a learning journey that interconnects formal and non-formal curricula providing the bigger picture of education. Eg: in the form of mind-map biology will be linked to ecology creating a connection to chemistry. The platform offers 20 minutes video sessions based on the interests and progress of the user. Pop quizzes will test the students attention rate and will be available during the videos, one or two depending on the clip’s length.

Reports will be sent to parents and tutors. They will be the only ones to access the data on the children’s interactions with the platform (views, time spent on the platform, navigation choices). The data will be also used to personalize the learning experience of the user. 

In order to populate the platform our approach is to help educators in the creation of micro videos (3-10 min), for free. We work with Netflix producers to create training dedicated to video production in education and offer financial rewards to educational content creators, supporting their work and at the same time growing our ecosystem. The workflow is that educators create their own videos and the WowMind video production team will edit them adding intro, outro, sound and motion graphics. 

Between Q2 2021 and the end of 2022 we plan to have in our ecosystem 350 specialists educated in video production. 
Teachers reach a minimum of 16.000 children only from their own classrooms and we estimate to bring 20.000 users, gymnasial students, on the platform by late 2022, paying and non-paying users.  
As our NGO is conducting transnational projects with Erasmus, local projects with Norvegian grants, we can offer free video production courses for interested educational creators. The course is in multiple languages and will continuously be translated in order to expand the creators network. Together with EDUMI, a local NGO partner, we’ve organized webinars reaching between 4000 and 12k teaching staff, where they’ve learned introductory notions on video production, easy to apply in class principles and how to make online classes more interactive and engaging.
Our goal is to train more than 1000 teachers and educators by 2025, bringing added value in the pedagogical act in more than 2000 classes.
By 2025 we estimate to gather 150.000 users on WowMind platform, 1000 video production skilled teachers and educators, more than 150 WowMind content creators and 3500 micro-videos on the platform.
All our teachers' ecosystem will work as promoters for the platform, recommending their students to spend time in watching their videos to consolidate the information received in the classroom. 

Our indicators are offered by teachers, students and parents. 100 teachers that participated in our video production course grew their digital skills and their students saw immediate benefits. Because we are still in a hybrid scenario in Romania we saw an improvement in their students' attention because teachers applied the new video methodologies learned as concept, efficient lesson planning, lights, sound, framing. Teachers created questionnaires to measure the satisfaction level of students before and after participating in the training. Students appreciated that their teachers made the effort to upgrade their online practices. 30% of the teachers are also interested in producing micro-video content and to continue the partnership. 

With the Erasmus+ program we grew our network of educational institutions and NGOs from Greece, Slovakia, Croatia, Spain, Portugal, Macedonia, Cyprus, Turkey. Measuring their interest in our solutions we strongly believe that WowMind fits students and teachers from Eastern Europe and can also scale globally. 

As “The UN wants everyone to have access to inclusive, equitable quality education” we strongly believe that by helping educators create quality educational video content it can be spread among any societal layer easing access to quality tutoring.

The WowMind platform price is calculated to be accessible for even minimum income families. Though, where there is interest and very low income we will offer it for free. An important part of the content uploaded on the platform will cover environmental subjects, directing children to think and act on solutions to the actual problems. 

Full time - 2 people

Part-time - 6

Affiliate teachers - 10

Contractors: tech development team

We started tech for social good projects in 2018 with the EU program Horizon 2020 with a project named “Go transparent with Blockchain in Education”. This was the first project where Anna, the founder of WowMind worked with the technical development team. Petesso (www.petesso.de) is a mid-size German IT company building apps with millions of users worldwide. They developed Dash Radio, Joinr, BPM Supreme, Enmacc. They understand the importance of quality solutions in education and support us with discounts.

WowMind pivoted after this project because of the market’s needs. As a solution oriented team we understood that we need to use our skills in creating an attractive learning experience using 21st century tech.

We are techies, entrepreneurs, activists, teaching staff and affiliate partners representing educational institutions, NGOs with experience in transnational collaborations, management and international youth programes. 

Our video specialists are Netflix cinematographers and brand video creators, production wizards that create the video collections and train future creators to produce quality materials, making children attracted to knowledge gain. They worked with vloggers, brands like Samsung, Lidl, BMW, Unicef, Orange and many others. Our solution is ongoing tested on a continuously expanding ecosystem of parents, students and teachers. The children’s input on videos and the platform makes us upgrade and shape WowMind. This way we have a better understanding of what their needs are and how we can address them creating a gamified, attractive learning experience. 

The team is coming from diverse backgrounds and experiences. Our values are built on individual qualities, such as trainability and creativity or the power of dedication and less on gender, color or physical challenges. Becoming an international organisation, diversity, equity, and inclusion are mandatory conditions in our strategy. One example is our founder, Anna Mera who found passion in the tech world and became an inspiration for other women to do the same. The WowMind video producing trainer is the only film director with disability from Romania and he knows exactly what schools needs are in this matter. Another example is our Greek partner, Kinitro NGO, who is an international organisation developing awareness programes on vulnerable categories and will train our ecosystem in good practices and alternative pedagogical approaches for students in these categories. Since our strategy is to create available video resources for children everywhere, we run specific projects for children in minoritar categories, refugees and replicate them in partner countries, integrate Roma, Maghiar, Chzech educators as WowMind ambassadors and work closely with them to reach the communities of children that don't attend school. 

Becoming a Solver is an important step for our organization because through the program we get access to trusted support groups. We are at the stage where we need mentoring and strategic advice from the MIT network. 

MIT is the most respected Technology Institute and becoming a Solver will be a great opportunity for us to work with professionals and receive your support. 

Raising funds in the EdTech industry is a challenge and until recently we were self funding with time and resources the organization. 

Our solution is dedicated to children, a very sensible target group. We need MIT’s help to help us 

To become financially sustainable we need to attract private funds in the start-up. For this we need to be educated in the direction of venture capital, fundraising and others. We believe that our participation in the Solve can help us in overcoming financial barriers. 

Even though we are working for two years on this project, we still need to clarify aspects regarding equity, financial strategy, go to market and international scaling.

As we are still in the beginning, we need to gain exposure and given MIT's reputation, we can validate the solution and become more relevant in the edtech industry.

We are a young ambitious organization. The WowMind project is complex and needs new partners to continue its development. 
This is why we selected all categories of support or partners. To become sustainable we need to attract new investments in our business. We need new financial partners since our business is ready for a pre-seed round.
Our solution is dedicated to children and education, both very sensitive markets and we need support in  Legal or Regulatory Matters, Product / Service Distribution and Human Capital. Although the technology is developed by an experienced team as the most reputable Technology Institute, MIT we would always appreciate you as partners or support.