ED ELEMENTS: $2.1 million, San Francisco: Education Elements, founded by Anthony Kim, took on investors including NewSchools Venture Fund, Tugboat Ventures, venture capitalist Wally Hawley, and Imagine K12's three cofounders. Kim is one of America's top consultants in setting up blending learning programs at schools. Here's the nail-biting truth about the most sophisticated learning programs: each one has its own, carefully designed "data dashboard." That provokes air traffic-controller-like nightmares for teachers who try to use, say, three different programs to teach math, language arts and science. EdElements' solution is what Kim has dubbed the "Hybrid Learning Management System,"--basically one dashboard to rule them all. For now, there's plenty of code-wiring going on under the covers to make such a dashboard work: EdElement currently has about 15 software partners. Such uber-dashboards are rare: charter program Rocketship Education has been growing its own, supported by the Gates Foundation which is also fostering the development of common APIs. New York City's school district has worked with Desire2Learn to build a similar dashboard. (Know of other such programs--beta or otherwise--let us know.) Message from Kim to content-rich startups: If you'd rather spending time building your content instead of your dashboard, drop him a note.
