Innovation

Kiddom offers digital curriculum from high-quality publishers in an all-in-one platform with integrated communication tools, so educators can set up rich teaching and learning environments, online or in-person. By operating as the academic system of choice for entire school districts, Kiddom’s platform meets several important needs.

First, Kiddom improves access to high-quality instructional materials. Their dynamic technology allows teachers and students to utilize best-in-class materials from a wide variety of publishers. But Kiddom is intentional about which curriculum they carry – most are third-party rated for rigor, accessibility, and engagement. Kiddom curates these curricula for all learners, including built-in resources for English language learners, students with high needs, and culturally responsive content.

Second, Kiddom empowers teachers. According to Chief Academic Officer Abbas Manjee, “We help teachers deliver high-quality content without sacrificing their teaching style.” The platform provides teachers the flexibility to customize learning experiences. Abbas continues, “Kiddom wants to make sure teachers can unlock that ‘aha moment’ when they know what’s happening with each student and can customize the content as if interacting 1:1.” This visibility into the progress of learners is key to teachers and administrators. So Kiddom is careful to ensure interoperability of devices and content so educators have data to help students succeed.

Ultimately, Kiddom believes that their dynamic digital platform allowing teachers to decide which content they provide to students is both disruptive in an industry dominated by large publishers who are slow to innovate and scalable for a whole new generation of digital natives.

Inspiration

Years after graduation, education brought two college roommates back together when Ahsan, an engineer bootstrapping an iOS math game, and Abbas, a teacher building his own gradebook and learning management system, began connecting frequently to discuss their problems of practice. Through their discussions, it became clear many of the issues educators faced stemmed from one underlying problem: innovation in schools and districts was being hindered by tool fragmentation and a lack of having one unified approach to curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

Chief Academic Officer Abbas Manjee describes his experience with these challenges,

“As a teacher at an alternative charter school serving at-risk youth in the Bronx, I realized we did not have the systems and data to serve students as best we could. So I created my own tools to track how the class was performing, which students needed support, or to be pushed. Leveraging these tools for six years became a crucial but time-consuming project. And this happens at the school district level with ‘data days.’ Kiddom wants to make sure every day can be data day without taking time away from direct interaction with students.”

Meanwhile, Chief Executive Officer Ahsan Rizvi was completing his master’s degree in education policy and creating a math education app. He realized that parents needed a centralized place to understand how students were progressing. That led Ahsan to focus on the interoperability of educational tools. He began engaging his friend and college roommate Abbas for feedback.

After many conversations and shared prototypes, Kiddom was born in 2015 as a class toolkit for teachers. Kiddom Classroom (the free app for teachers), Kiddom for Schools and Districts (the paid enterprise plan), and strategic partnerships with curriculum publishers quickly followed. By 2020 Kiddom launched a plethora of distance learning features to become the premier teaching and learning platform on the market.

Overall impact

Kiddom’s impact is spreading as school districts in different regions of the US adopt the platform. Demand was already driven by technological change and the need for teachers to have the right curriculum and tools in one user-friendly digital environment. Obviously, the COVID-19 pandemic increased Kiddom’s opportunity for impact.

Consider two success stories:

First, Ooltewah Elementary in Hamilton County TN. Several teachers in one school were in their first year of implementing a highly rigorous ELA curriculum. Kiddom provided access to that curriculum before classes went entirely virtual due to COVID-19. This school had the highest benchmark score in their district (by up to 15.9% improvement) because they had access to the right digital content throughout the pandemic. Now the entire school district is rolling out Kiddom and students continue to make gains in ELA proficiency.

There’s also ECO Charter School in Camden, NJ. As part of this school’s plan to go paperless, Kiddom provided access to math and other curricula. For the teachers and administrators, Kiddom’s platform has three key advantages: (1) everything is housed in one place (2) real-time data is available and easy to work with (3) there are ways to provide quick feedback. Students, being natural digital natives, adapted easily and even enjoyed the change, as they found the platform engaging and easy to use.

The needs of teachers and learners will continue to evolve. So Kiddom is all about continuous feedback and improvement for our product. This evolution is the key to facilitating good outcomes for learners.

Kiddom also cultivates a company culture of continuous learning by promoting candid dialogue at all levels, encouraging and testing new ideas, and prioritizing the well-being and development of staff. Chief Academic Officer Abbas Manjee embodies these values by striving to incorporate new information and test his own assumptions at all times.

Business benefit

Kiddom was launched from the shared experience of the challenges in education. They set out to digitize high-quality instructional materials and help teachers deliver them in a customizable manner. The result has been a 5-year learning and growth journey for our company. Kiddom began as a class toolkit for teachers, added tools for administrators, forged partnerships for content, and became a market leader in distance learning features.

Ultimately, school districts need a dynamic digital platform to deploy high-quality instructional materials and teaching models. As a start-up, Kiddom is well-positioned to deliver. They are nimble and responsive to students and teachers. Kiddom's Efficacy Advisor conducts interviews with end-users and school districts to make sure Kiddom is delivering on its promise.

Looking ahead, it’s still about learning what users need from Kiddom. The company will be answering new questions such as; how does Kiddom make sure learners exit the primary system with ownership over their materials? Maybe they create “learner profiles” which can transfer to new school systems or institutions. Maybe this tool helps employers locate talent they otherwise would not.

Plus, there’s still a dearth of high-quality digital content in the market. Kiddom hopes to cultivate and partner with content authors to compete with big publishers, many of whom are still pushing out print materials. There are so many interoperability challenges with Learning Management Systems (LMS's) in the market. Kiddom wants to resolve these inefficiencies for the benefit of teachers and learners.

Social and environmental benefit

Kiddom’s mission is to build technology that unlocks potential for ALL teachers and learners. They see this mission in direct service of at least three of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SGS): Quality Education, Gender Equality, and Reduced Inequalities.

According to Chief Academic Officer Abbas Manjee,

“Kiddom’s ‘All Learners’ message means equity. It means meeting students with special needs, higher needs, language barriers, and varying device access. It means allowing students to take control of their learning. The best teacher understands each student's unique learning modality and challenges them to grow accordingly. They serve up the instructional materials each student needs while also challenging them. Only teachers who are unburdened by administrative activity can truly focus on their students’ learning modalities – be it listening, visual, tactile. This is the learning environment Kiddom aims to create.”

Kiddom’s belief is that progress on other UN SGS will follow from better education. Climate Action, Responsible Consumption, and Peace are all advanced as there are more people in the world with great critical thinking skills, greater empathy, and better foundational education. That’s how these problems get solved faster and with longer-term solutions. Kiddom is helping cultivate the learners who will be prepared to go solve these problems.

Interview

Abbas Manjee, Chief Academic Officer