LANSING—A Lapeer-based developer of affordable, hands-on STEM education kits for students earned the $10,000 first place prize in Michigan Virtual’s Michigan EdTech Innovation Pitch Contest July 18.
MindWired Labs provides kits that lets learners build and program fun projects like alarm sensors and vending machines, developing knowledge of embedded systems and other technologies along the way.
“As this contest has entered its third year, I’m heartened and inspired by the submission ideas we continue to see from Michiganders with a desire to say, ‘I wish there was an app for that’ in an educational setting,” said Jamey Fitzpatrick, President and CEO at Michigan Virtual. “This contest was another great opportunity for Michigan educators to directly impact classrooms by turning their dreams into reality. Our five finalists were great and extremely innovative.”
Michigan educators and innovators must have submitted a written pitch by July 7 to be selected for the July 18 contest. The second through fifth place winners were:
* Second place: CommunityConnect in Ann Arbor. CommunityConnect is an online platform that helps K-12 teachers find and connect with community partners to design more authentic and engaging class projects.
* Third place: NoteClear in Taylor. NoteClear is an AI-powered tool that helps students get more value from their classroom notes. By generating practice problems and summaries of past notes, students can easily review for quizzes and exams.
* Fourth place: NexLevel Tech Solutions in Detroit. NexLevel provides educational services on digital safety for children and parents and tools to help parents monitor their child’s online activity and safety.
Fifth place: Paraillel in Southfield. Paraillel is an AI-driven platform to help educators streamline curriculum development, student assessments and data analysis, automating time consuming tasks to allow educators more time for impactful teaching and instruction with students.
The Michigan EdTech Innovation Pitch Contest is the result of a partnership between Michigan Virtual, MSU Research Foundation, Michigan State’s Burgess Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Michigan SBDC. The first-place winner will receive $10,000 in business startup grant funding. The second-place winner will receive $6,000 in business startup grant funding. The third-place winner will receive $4,000 in business startup grant funding. The fourth and fifth place finalists will each receive $1,000.
Start-up legal and marketing consultations for the top three winners are being donated by Michigan Creative and Foster Swift. All monetary prizes will be made available in the form of grants from Michigan Virtual to the winners.
To learn more about the contest, visit www.michiganvirtual.org/pitch.
Michigan Virtual is a nonprofit educational organization offering research-based, quality online learning options for students and professional development for educators, original research, testing of learning innovation, and consulting.
