Reed Hastings, the founder and chief
executive of Netflix, used the Web to make it easier for us to rent
movies. Now Mr. Hastings, who is also a former high school math teacher,
is using the Web for a less entertaining, more educational cause —
teaching math to children. Jason Kempin/Getty Images, for Sunshine Sachs Reed Hastings says he thinks the spread of netbooks in schools will create huge opportunities for online learning software.On Tuesday, Mr. Hastings will announce that he has financed the acquisition of DreamBox Learning, a start-up that uses online games to teach math, by Charter School Growth Fund, a nonprofit investment fund for charter schools. Mr. Hastings says netbooks will be ubiquitous in schools in a few
years, creating huge opportunities for online learning software.
“I think we’re on the edge of a real inflection point where the
hardware becomes so cheap that Web learning is really throughout the
schools,” he said. “But what I noticed is there’s really not that many
people working on the software.” DreamBox was started last year — I wrote about it
at the time — and creates personalized lesson plans, hidden in games,
based on which concepts children understand or need to work on.“What makes their product so impressive is it adapts to each
student’s learning, and that’s the Holy Grail of this field,” Mr.
Hastings said. He donated the the money to buy the company to Charter School Growth
Fund. The acquisition price was not disclosed. He also invested $10
million in DreamBox to expand to more schools and subjects beyond math.
He will become chairman of the DreamBox board, while continuing his role
at Netflix, and DreamBox’s co-founder and chief executive, Lou Gray,
will leave the company. Mr. Hastings, who taught high school math in Swaziland
with the Peace Corps after college, has been an education
philanthropist and charter school advocate since his first company, Pure
Software, went public in 1995. He has also served as president of the
California State Board of Education.
Email Id:-deepa.singh@soarlogic.com
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