Venture: Socrative
Socrative is an online polling software designed to make classrooms more interactive and engaging. Socrative allows educators to instantly connect with students as learning happens. “Through the use of real time questioning, auto-correction, instant result aggregation and visualization, teachers can accurately gauge the whole class’ current level of understanding.” Socrative allows educators to quickly assess students and then make informed decisions about how to best use the subsequent minutes of class. After the activities, educators receive detailed reports saving time on grading and assisting in the development of personalized learning. Socrative can run on any device with internet access (tablet, laptop, cellphone etc.). There is also a Socrative App available for iOS or Android phones.
To find out more about Socrative (or download a free trial): http://www.socrative.com/index.php
Founder: Benjamin Berte (Founder/CEO)
Benjamin Berte is the Co-Founder and CEO of Socrative. Benjamin’s background is in both business and education. He studied Economics at Vanderbilt University and then went to work as a Project Manager with Capital One for four year. After which, he dedicated the next ten years of his life to education working are an ESL Instructor in Prague, a Curriculum Designer in Virginia, and a Technology Project Manager and ESL Instructor is Santiago. Benjamin then obtain a Masters of Education, Technology and Innovation from Harvard University. Shortly thereafter he co-founded Socrative. His top rated skills on LinkedIn are curriculum design, teaching, E-Learning, educational technology, and instructional design (verified by 40+ users). I believe Benjamin’s business acumen, teaching background, and knowledge of E-Learning/educational technology contributed greatly to the success of Socrative. Further, the Socrative team (though small) encompasses highly skilled and experienced individuals like co-founder and CTO Michael West and advisors Joe Caruso and Amit Maimon.
Reflections
I think Benjamin’s experience is a perfect example of how anyone can become an entrepreneur. I cannot say for certain without asking him, but I don’t think Benjamin planned on becoming an entrepreneur. He was interested in business and then education and somewhere along the line came up with a great learning venture. He was fortunate to have the skills and resources to bring his vision to life (unlike many other entrepreneurs). I don’t see myself becoming an entrepreneur anytime soon but it is great to see that fellow educators are pushing the boundaries and creating innovative new ways to teach. In terms of the product, I think Socrative is great. I heard about it at a conference a few years ago and thought it sounded like a useful tool for corporate learning (e.g. do opinion polls during presentations). I do wonder what differentiates it from it’s competitors. We use Poll Everywhere at the Firm and it sounds very similar to Socrative. I would be interested in trying out Socrative to see how it compares.
