This week’s ambassador of the week is Richard White, a science teacher at Griffin Middle School in Cobb County, GA. He has been a prolific commenter in our Ambassador Community, offering fellow teachers and the Legends of Learning team insights on issues such as homework and grading.

We really appreciate everything he has done to make Legends of Learning better, and we know it is because of his passion for education. As part of our feature, we wanted to ask Richard what one of his most remarkable teaching experiences was.

“Last year I taught 6th grade advanced content Earth science students and I had a young lady who was really quiet and seemed shy,” said Richard. “I watched her as we started learning about rocks and minerals, and I noticed her face light up as we learned how different rocks and minerals formed.

“She was very excited when we had a local geologist come in and talk with the class, and I could see she was learning a great deal each day. I always wrap up the rock and mineral unit by having students make gem trees to take home, and we did this again for this class. She was very careful in how she put hers together and very proud when she finished.

“After that I noticed that she was not as shy and was willing to jump in when called upon. I got an email from her mother saying that she did not know what I did but all that they talked about at home now was science, and how much she loved her science class. I found out later that she had taken out her rock collection and started putting new pieces into it.”

“Seeing someone grow and knowing that what we did in class had a personal impact on her, that is why I love what I do,” closed Richard.

We love it, too. Thank you for this remarkable story, and all of the great suggestions and help you offer to us, and our larger community of teachers.

$9 Million Raise to Support Team Growth, Market Expansion

The following is a press release issued this morning about Legends of Learning’s seed round of fundraising.

Legends of Learning closed its seed round of fundraising with a total raise of $9 million. The fundraising round follows the successful launch of our initial game-based learning platform that has been met with praise from educators and recognition by influential media organizations. The company was featured in a recent USA Today article that explained how its platform can overcome a barrier to “getting high-quality learning games into K–12 classrooms.”

Legends of Learning, which is co-headquartered in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Md., will leverage the funds to execute its long-term strategic plan in the education sector. The investments will allow the company to meet demand by hiring additional team members and expanding its platform to new school grades and subjects.

The company was founded by Vadim Polikov, a research scientist who previously started Astrum Solar, a top 10 U.S. solar installer, and American Journal Experts, a large academic editing company serving the international scientific research community.

Joining Polikov as co-founders are Larry Cynkin, chief technology officer, who was formerly with Comcast and Honesty Online; Aryah Fradkin, manager, Teacher Outreach, who is a former Baltimore City, Md., teacher; Joshua Goldberg, chief strategy officer, and an Astrum Solar co-founder; Geoff Livingston, chief marketing officer, who is an award winning digital marketing entrepreneur; and Sandy Roskes, chief operating officer, and a former Astrum senior executive.

“This team brings vision and experience to the table. The successful closing of this seed round will let us accelerate our focus on helping more teachers reach students with research-driven, curriculum-based education games,” says Polikov.

Legends of Learning launched at the end of March with a first-to-market approach of 900 curriculum-based education games for middle school earth and space science, life sciences and physical science curricula. The games, created by over 300 game studios, are based on rigorous academic research conducted in partnership with Vanderbilt University.

Unique aspects of the Legends of Learning game-based learning platform include:

• Short games (5–25 minutes) that align to middle school science curriculum standards to ensure content engages and helps students succeed in their studies;
• An intuitive platform similar to Netflix and Amazon that makes games easy and natural to use in classrooms; and
• A dashboard that allows teachers to observe student comprehension in real time, create game playlists for classes and individual students, and assess content mastery.

The company will demonstrate its technology platform and games publicly at the International Society for Technology in Education Conference & Expo June 25–28 in San Antonio, Texas.