A lot of what we learn, we learn from others.  Often from people we interact with by chance or on an unstructured basis.  Whether it be reading a blog, receiving instructions from a colleague, discussing a topic after a game or even attending a meet up – more and more learning is occurring informally. A number of companies are embracing this trend by offering tools and services specifically geared towards informal education. During tonights session, we will hear (and learn) from five influential companies in the space.

PANELISTS:

Pearson : Executive Editor Digital Publishing – Chalon Bridges

Pearson is the worlds leading learning company. Pearson’s education imprints combine 150 years of experience with online support for every learner. Pearson help people learn whatever, wherever and however they choose.

 Sifteo : Co-Founder – David Merrill
Sifteo cubes are a new hands-on game system of little wireless displays that sense their motion and each other, and display rich graphics to provide an innovative approach to Intelligent Play™. Neighbor, tilt, flip, and shake Sifteo cubes to get your brain and hands moving!

David Merrill is President and co-founder of Sifteo. Dave is an expert in cutting-edge human-computer interaction, and his work has been featured at TED, MoMA, the Discovery Channel and Wired.

 Junyo : Co-Founder – Steve Schoettler
Junyo provides visualization, intelligent insights, and recommendations that enable schools, teachers, and online education providers to use data to improve student outcomes.

Steve is also the co-founder of Zynga, and board member of Full Circle fund. Prior to that Steve was the manager of solution architect at Kontiki where he was  responsible for customizations of Kontiki products and integrations into customer and partner environments.

GoGoMongo : CEO – Ahmed Siddiqui 
Go Go Mongo! is an ios app designed to teach children the names of different foods and also teach your children healthy eating habits. ★ Ranked Top 25 Educational Games ★ iTunes App Store – New & Noteworthy ★ Readers’ Choice BEST 10 KIDS APPS FOR 2011

Ahmed Siddiqui is the founder of Go Go Mongo!, originally launched at Startup Weekend 2010 as an English language game, and currently one of the leading kids healthy eating-focused brands in the mobile marketplace. He is also the organizer of Startup Weekend San Francisco, including Startup Weekend Education.

Udemy : Co-Founder – Gagan Biyani
Udemy is a website that enables anyone to teach and learn online. Udemy tries to democratize online education by making it fast, easy and free to create online courses.

Gagan Biyani is President and Co-Founder of Udemy, a website that enables anyone to teach and learn online. In its first year, instructors made over $1 million on the Udemy platform. Udemy raised $4 million in funding from investors such as Lightbank (co-founders of Groupon), Keith Rabois (investor in YouTube, LinkedIn), Dave McClure (investor in Mint), Rick Thompson (investor in Playdom) and Jeremy Stoppelman (CEO of Yelp).

MODERATOR:

EdSurge: Leonard Medlock
EdSurge is a community of educators, developers, innovators, and edtech fans. Its a place where everyone can learn about and share the latest and greatest tools and practices in edtech.

Leonard is co-founder of Inner City Educational Technologies, where he designs casual learning games geared towards urban youth. He is currently working on RAPGA.ME, a Twitter application that fuses Hip-Hop battle tradition with Twitter to spur creative writing. He began working on the game as part of his Master’s project,barup.mobi, completed at Stanford’s Learning, Design, and Technology program. Leonard previously was a Senior Consultant/road warrior with  IBM where he designed and implemented enterprise-level IT solutions across multiple industries. In his free time, you can find him chasing his youth on the basketball court or mastering the dark arts of the whiteboard ninja.