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Spiral
Tax relief
Spiral is an innovative mobile learning platform which facilitates active learning and collaboration in classrooms around the world. 2,800 schools and 18,000 users over 100 countries have registered in the first 4 months.
About Spiral
The Social Learning Network (TSLN) is building a world-class education technology company, providing innovative well-researched collaborative apps to help teachers make the most of mobile learning that is being rolled out to students in schools around the world. TSLN’s founders have spent two years in field research, identifying the key issues faced by teachers and students as they adopt technology into their day-to-day practice.
The outcome is Spiral - a suite of individual apps that mirror common learning activities used in schools all over the world; empowering teachers and providing unique real-time data to support assessment and school-wide monitoring. A brief video introducmg Spiral can be viewed here.
Spiral’s first two apps – Quickfire and Discuss - were launched in July 2015 with over 2,800 schools and 18,000 users registering in the first 4 months. This November, an average of over 57 new schools have signed up every day and registration figures are growing exponentially month-on-month. http://spiral.ac.
Spiral is used by primary age to university students, in all subjects, from over 100 countries across the world.
What is the offer and how will Spiral use the funds?
TSLN is seeking to raise £400,000 of investment (£85,000 already raised) in exchange for 22.2% equity (17.5% available to CrowdBnk investors), to match-fund its remaining £130,000 SMART grant from Innovate UK and proposed Horizon 2020 grant-funding to continue growing Spiral as a global mobile learning brand, with the intention of acquisition from a global education service provider by 2019.
Why now?
With investment in mobile learning across education growing at 36.3%[1] CAGR to 2020, the directors believe that the market is now ready for Spiral and Spiral is ready for the market.
The last five years have seen exponential growth in the use of personal devices in the classrooms and lecture halls across the world [2]. Global education sector technology spending is forecast to exceed $67.8 billion in 2015 [3]. The majority of education IT spend is on class technologies such as projectors, Wi-Fi, tablets and other securely connected personal devices [4]. The education software market is divided into companies supplying content (Massive open online courses, MOOCs) [5] (e.g. the Khan academy), Games (e.g. Mathletics) and social community apps; the latter providing the highest growth sector with 41% CAGR [6]. Apps in this sector, such as Edmodo, have gained over 60 million members since their launch in 2008 [7]. In their first two years, over 500,000 users signed up from 10,000 schools [8]. Another in-class app, Explain Everything, sells to teachers at £2.99 from the App Store [9], now has 2 million teachers using the app [10] and raised $2 million investment in May 2015 [11]. Both of these examples demonstrate that innovation in the education sector is now being driven from the ground up, with many teachers using their own choice of apps for mobile learning. Spiral is aiming to ride on this disruptive wave of mobile learning and teacher-led innovation.
[1] http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mobile-learning-market-growing-at-363-cagr-to-2020---na-expected-to-be-on-top-in-terms-of-industry-size-500629901.html and http://mckinseyonsociety.com/transforming-learning-through-meducation/
[2] http://www.edudemic.com/classroom-technology/
[3] http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2994417
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course
[6] http://www.slideshare.net/marklittlewood/e-learning-global-market-overview-and-detailed-data-on-sector-ibis-capital
[7] https://www.edmodo.com/about
[8] https://blog.edmodo.com/2010/09/02/edmodo-celebrates-turning-2-years-old-with-500000-users/
[9] https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/explain-everything-interactive/id431493086?mt=8
[10] http://explaineverything.com/news/press-release-explain-everything-secures-2m-series-financing-led-credo-ventures-expansion-k-12/
[11] https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-05-14-explain-everything-raises-2m-for-mobile-screencasting
What sets Spiral apart?
- Experienced Management Team.
- Co-designing software with schools and UCL.
- Unique 3-way collaborative classroom experience.
- Simple and intuitive apps that build into a school-wide platform.
- Timeline of learning that adds value and encourages extended use of Spiral as a core teaching tool.
- Real-time learning assessment data and analytics.
Experienced Management Team
The Management team has a proven track record in building businesses within the education enterprise IT sector. Hamish Kennedy started the Sony Education business in 2008, which the directors believe to be one of Sony’s most successful Business to Business (B2B) verticals for 10 years.
Rachel Tilden Walker has 20 years of experience in teaching, learning and the effective use of IT in all phases of education. Rachel is a key change management advisor to schools, local authorities and major UK Education IT companies such as RM and Civica.
Co-designing software with schools and UCL
The key strength of TSLN is co-designing software in close collaboration with schools and the Institute of Learning, UCL. This approach in co-design and efficacy in development of Spiral with users is based on the founders’ experience in customer marketing and education application of IT. This means that Spiral founders have developed Spiral with human interaction inbuilt. In the directors’ opinion, this is unlike most software that replicates administrative processes or apps that only can be used as a separate one-off activity.
The company has successfully applied and project managed a £250K SMART grant from Innovate UK, with excellent reports from their Monitoring Officer. A combination of their market segment, previous success in funding applications and evidence of strong project management is believed to make TSLN highly likely to succeed in future UK and EU grant applications
Rewards
| Amount | Offering | Availability |
|---|---|---|
| £300 | Free Spiral Bronze for a year to a UK school of your choice. | 1000 |
| £1000 | Free Spiral presentation from a member of staff to teachers and Spiral Bronze for a year to a UK school of your choice. | 300 |
| £5000 | Free Spiral presentation from a member of staff to teachers and Spiral Bronze for a year to a UK school of your choice. Plus a Spiral set-up and operation of your company conference interactive software with data evidence managed by a Spiral account manager. | 60 |
Investors should not consider investing so as to obtain a "reward" unless the size of the investment is suitable for them
| Raised | £85,000.00 |
| Hours to go | 4 |
| Target | £399,959.72 |
| Min. Investment | £226 |
| Equity on Offer | 22.22% |
| Investors (1) | |
Business Contact
Innovation Warehouse
1 East Poultry Avenue
London
EC1A 9PT
www.spiral.ac [email protected] 07539364700
