TailorED

Making personalized class instruction more feasible, accessible and affordable.

Today, more than ever, overwhelmed and time-crunched educators are struggling to reach and connect with their students. As classrooms become more and more diverse, over 50% of students today require personal approaches to tend to their social, emotional and cognitive needs.  But, having this kind of personal approach in a 40 student classroom  is for all sakes and purposes - impossible. A teacher’s only alternatives are either manually developing individual lessons or buying an expensive personalized-learning software that doesn't necessarily foster creativity, teamwork, problem-solving, or critical thinking.

TailorED is an AI-based differentiated instruction platform that creates personalized lesson plans tailored to the holistic needs of the 21st century K-12 students. TailorEd lesson plans are feasible in every classroom - no matter if they have a 1:1 device program or a single overhead projector. 

Teachers use TailorED to send quick surveys to students to check for understanding of the lesson and ask them about their social, emotional and cognitive needs. Based on this data, TailorED generates the ultimate lesson plan that includes the most effective classroom grouping for a specific subject, as well as the best activities suited to the needs of each group. Our recommended activities are curated from all over and combine individual, collaborative and blended learning activities which are based on research-based instructional strategies targeted to the needs of each group. 

At TailorED, we want to enable teachers to provide the most engaging and effective learning experiences for their unique classrooms. As educators use TailorED, and even add activities of their own - our AI-powered technology can learn over time what are the most effective instructional strategies and activities for each student. Our efficacy-based recommendation engine will drive instructional decision-making to be student-centered and to scaffold successful student learning.

We are able to provide schools and districts a personalized learning experience at one tenth the cost other solutions. Our business model doesn’t stop at schools and districts, because we curate our activities from all over, can provide a much needed rev-share model for the long tail of small to medium supplemental content providers (even teachers themselves!).

Our vision is to help teachers reach every student by making personalized instruction feasible in the every-day classroom. We will do this by increasing the quality of accessible education through the use of multiple of instructional strategies for students who don't have access to expensive technologies, increasing student engagement through creative and collaborative learning, and helping make students visible by personalizing class instruction to their holistic needs. 

TailorED's innovative solution makes personalized instruction feasible and accessible in every K-12 classroom without increasing technical infrastructure costs. In contrast to other solutions, we leverage new technologies to simplify the complex tasks a teacher needs to complete in order to personalize their instruction to the social, emotional and cognitive needs of their classroom. This is done by dynamically grouping students by their holistic needs, building differentiated lesson plans for each group and sending quick surveys to inform instruction for the next lesson. To support this process, TailorED developed a unique AI-powered efficacy-based recommendation engine and Smart grouping algorithm.

Our core technology does the heavy lifting needed so that teachers can focus on what is most important - reaching every student. This is done through two core algorithms: (1) AI-powered efficacy-based recommendation engine that recommends the most effective instructional-strategies and activity for each student profile (2) Smart grouping algorithm that dynamically creates heterogenous and homogenous groups based on proficiency, social-emotional and cognitive factors of student profiles.

Our top three objectives for the next year are: (1) Test For Efficacy (2) Validate Product/Market Fit (3) User Growth.  In light of our vision of an efficacy-based ecosystem, we plan to test the efficacy of our solution through a year long pilot in six schools in rural Israel. The efficacy of the pilot will be tested by an NYU research team through the Israel PIE Challenge. In parallel, we plan to validate our product/market fit through implementing at least 10 school pilots based internationally as well as grow our teacher user base to over 50K.

TailorED’s vision is that each student receives the most engaging and effective learning experience tailored to their unique needs. We can achieve this by powering an innovative, evolving, efficacy-driven learning ecosystem. We believe that putting power in educators hands to make efficacy-based instructional decisions will help drive efficacy to be a key market driver. The more educators use and add content to TailorED, the more students will receive effective and engaging learning experiences. We plan to achieve this through Teacher Growth, District/Schools Sales and Supplemental Content Provider Partnerships.

TailorED is a SaaS-based web app tool that enables any teacher with a desktop/mobile device to sign-up and create personalized lessons for their class at any time. Our solution is cloud-based and new updates are deployed continuously through a cloud-based infrastructure (i.e. aws). Teachers hear about us through our teacher communities focusing on personalized instruction. As our communities grow, we plan on partnering with teacher professional development providers to leverage TailorED as a platform for PD on personalized instruction. Lastly, TailorED will power Activity Creation Challenges, encouraging teachers to create/share their most effective activities and instructional strategies.

TailorED was piloted in four schools with over 100 students in upper elementary and middle school. The pilots classes were diverse thirty student classrooms with little to no access to technology. Based on our student surveys, we observed a significant increase in proficiency, student engagement, motivation and confidence. Teachers interviewed described an increase in instructional strategies used per student and number of conversations around students confidence and motivation. In August, we are launching TailorED to wider audiences and commencing on a year long 6 school pilot in partnership with a research team from NYU to evaluate efficacy.

Within 12 months, we project to be serving over 20K math teachers and 600K students in upper elementary and middle schools in Israel, US, Australia and South Africa. These classrooms will include bother urban and rural classes that may or may not have access to technology in their classroom. Based on our pilots, we expect to see an increase in student engagement, motivation and success after using TailorED just once in two weeks. In three years time, we aim to reach 500K teachers and more than 100 schools of elementary and middle schools in English speaking countries.  

The founding team at TailorED combines the domain expertise in pedagogy, technology and product needed to succeed in making personalized instruction more accessible and affordable. With professional experience in classroom instruction (STEM Middle School), instructional design (Smart Sparrow) and academic rigor (Stanford M.Ed), our team has the expertise needed to build a strong pedagogy foundation. Yael Cohen, CTO, is a learning analytics specialist with a background in data science, learning design and software development (Google, Kidaptive). CEO, Maayan Yavne holds a Stanford MBA/M.Ed and has over 5 years experience in bring educational products to market (Edmodo, BloomBoard).

TailorED’s solution is independent of technology and provides schools a personalized learning experience at one tenth the cost of other alternatives. We serve all markets who need personalized instruction but lack the technical infrastructure or budget for existing solutions. TailorED has a three tiered subscription model. (1) Free trial version for teachers to build differentiated lessons with OER resources. (2)  Teacher subscription which will include Classroom Analytics and Paid Publisher resources. (3) Premium subscription for large educational organizations such as schools and districts include district-level analytics, efficacy-based recommendations based on custom content and professional development training.  

TailorED’s mission is to make personalized instruction more accessible, feasible and affordable which directly aligns with Solve’s challenge to provide accessible, personalized, and creative learning experiences for all. We hope to leverage the Solve community of mentors, investors and cross-section leaders to help grow TailorED’s exposure and build partnerships to position us for significant growth within schools in the upcoming year. As we continue to find product/market fit, we hope to take advantage of Solve’s collaborative workshops and events to receive strategic advice and connections on how to setup our product for success and constantly validate our impact.

As an early-stage startup, one of the key barriers to providing students with diverse and creative learning experiences is building the credibility and brand awareness needed to partner with high profile K-12 supplemental curriculum and assessment providers. Through the Solve community, we hope to connect with market leaders who share our vision for helping make efficacy a key market driver. Another key barrier is finding the right opportunities and partnerships with personalized-learning advocacy groups, professional development providers and districts in order to build sustainable support systems for teachers looking to personalize their instruction using TailorED.