This time, we share something about ourselves…
We have been interacting with our public since June 2017, sending newsletters and writing blog articles but we have never officially or fully told the story of who we are and why we do what we do. Hence this time we wanted to share more about ourselves and also to share with you our achievements and future plans.
Lucilla and Carmelo are the two co-founders of our Italian startup company, who decided in late 2017 to start building an educational technology tool that could have ambitiously helped University students to have a more effective and accessible online learning experience. Founding an educational technology (EdTech) startup in Italy is a quite singular experience since there are not lots of initiatives, specific groups, hubs, or incubators for these type of companies. You may get to know or to connect with someone in the field by chance or while networking in some other type of events.
In our startup there are 5 of us including Stefano, Valentina and Carlotta and altogether, with different roles and responsibilities, we have been working hard and extensively on building Edulai as a tool that can help students in developing their 21st century skills.
Edulai is a fully Italian Educational product in which we put lots of our time, efforts, reflections, resources, experience, love and passion. We wanted to build something with an international audience in mind but with a strong pedagogical foundation behind it.
“Why we do what we do?”
Several of us have matured experience in university environment either as lecturer, researcher, student or like ex Alumni and we found that the synergy brought by our background could have been big if pulled altogether.
One of our co-founder learnt as an online lecturer that the technology is not always of real help to university students, since it very often leaves them frustrated and alone on their learning journey.
This is especially true when students have to develop skills such as critical thinking, team work or leadership because they feel the barriers to achieve their goals are too big and technology emphasizes all of them even more.
Hence we wanted to create something that could provide easy access to learning, that could facilitate the online experience of students, help them to become responsible learners and to develop the skills required by the marketplace.
“How we do what we do?”
With Edulai we wanted to build something new, that did not exist before, that could have really improved the students’ online learning experience based on 3 key pedagogical principles. We believe that 21st century skills can be learnt while students apply some tasks into practice through experiential learning . We also think that the most experienced peer or tutor can help other students reaching the next developmental level as the theory of the zone of proximal development teaches and for Edulai also technology can help.
Finally, we also believe in the power of feedback especially in their formative value aimed at guiding students on how to improve, so we worked on Edulai with that purpose in mind.
“What are our achievements so far and where are we going ?”
After two years of intense work and life as a startup, we have celebrated our success and milestones but also faced lots of challenges. We have met lots of wonderful people and mentors and we actually continue our journey with even more excitement and passion than before and celebrate any of our success big or small it might be. For example, among our achievements there are: the exhibition at Educause conference in Philadelphia and being backed by the Local Chamber of Commerce. We have networked with some national and international universities, pitched to investors, participated in competitions and in March this year we have built Beta version of Edulai.
We have also been cited as a case study and project exemplar in 2019 both in the Educ-AI-tion Rebooted NESTA Report (UK) and in the Educause Horizon Report (US). We have presented Edulai to IBicocca University students and interviewed by them.
In August 2018 we joined the StartEd NYU Steindhart incubator where we networked with other startups and experts from US and where we attended several trainings on the US Schools market, EdTech product development, selling and marketing. We also found very benecifical attending a series of webinars on fundings opportunities and on the US educational market run by Catalyst@PennGSE with key stakeholders, experts, startups and investors from the field.
Our main goals for 2019 are to connect with more national and international universities and to pilot our project with them. We are designing these projects through which enriching our tool with more users feedback and through which creating strong relationships with potential customers.
If you want to meet us in “person” just visit our booth at FutureEdTech Conference in London next 11–12 June where we will be exhibiting Edulai! We will be happy to have a chat together and to connect with you!
