thanks for a great week

This week at Studycat…announcements, thanks and paying it forward

It’s been a great week here at Studycat HQ and as Gertrude Stein said, “silent gratitude isn’t much to anyone” so we’d feel remiss if we didn’t share our thanks to those in our community who have made us smile this week!

First off, we’re over the moon to announce that we signed a memorandum of cooperation with Cambridge Assessment so that our apps can boost children’s language skills even further, and so that they can build the qualifications that will help them succeed! Working with one of the global brands of a university that’s often named the best in the world is the icing on the cake of this week for sure. Stay tuned for more on this soon…

Some great future forum guests and a hint at our next campaign…

We’re also delighted that Rob Grimshaw, CEO of Tes, the world’s leading education magazine, will join us on one of our popular forums, which bring experts together from all walks of education to discuss what the future will or should look like. Before becoming CEO of Tes, Rob was MD of the Financial Times – he really knows his stuff so we can’t wait to hear from him.

Another future forum guest is the wonderful Betsy Corcoran, founder of EdSurge, one of the world’s leading ‘innovation spotters’ who are searching the globe to find, highlight and support education innovations. Betsy will be joining us in a women’s leadership forum, which we’ll be kick-starting our newest initiative with – girls education.

Equality is vital if we want to overcome our recent challenges, and cope with whatever the future holds. Equality starts with education, and too many girls still aren’t able to access education. We want to help change that, stay tuned for more on this soon!

Quick side note – don’t forget to join us at our fourth forum on Tuesday 26th May to hear from one of the most informed edtech researchers in the world, University College London’s Alison Clark Wilson, National Geographic Learning’s Michael Cahill, an expert in engaging education, and the fantastic edtech expert Gavin McLean from global education brand Edmentum.

Now to the mums…

Our thanks also go to some of our wonderful mums in the Studycat community this week. Nothing makes us happier than knowing we’re helping kids learn, and we wanted to share the love with those who shared it first.

So in no particular order, we’d like to thank…

Rachel Day and her lovely daughter Savannah for the great things they said about Studycat. Check out Rachel’s awesome blog to read stories of the family’s travels – Morocco was a highlight for Savvy and since she’s been working so hard to build her language skills, we’ll be sending her a certificate soon. She’s a ‘language ninja’ for sure!

We also loved hearing that Nike director Lydia Maria Lauer’s son Mario is keeping his Spanish nice and Fresh with Fun Spanish. Her recent interview with MOTHER magazine gives a good insight into the life of a successful business woman and loving mum. From the pictures, it looks like Mario’s a fan of Monster Mash 😊

Meanwhile, Baobaolife.com is the fascinating blog from Christine, full time working mum to Baobao. Based in Singapore, Babobao is currently learning Mandarin and Spanish via Studycat’s apps. We love hearing about the ed-ventures of this beautiful little girl!

There are loads more of you to thank and we promise we won’t miss you out so come back for next week’s gratitude-fest.

Name-checked as unsung heroes and paying it forward

New friends to thank this week are iosignite.com, for naming us as an unsung hero of edtech during the COVID-19 pandemic. We donated our apps so that kids could keep learning, and it was our pleasure to do so! Thanks for the shout out guys.

We believe in paying it forward so we’d like to do a shout out to Yandex, a fantastic company that builds innovative products powered by machine learning. This side of technology is one of our favourite rabbit holes to fall down – the potential to innovate and drive change is staggering. We had great conversations after this years EdTechX – the future may be uncertain but when smart people put their minds together, it starts looking a lot brighter. Thanks for your time guys, we’re looking forward to talking some more.

And finally…

Thousands of children across the world joined in our live Facebook lessons with Teacher Jason this week and we saw some great learning gains being made. Kids learn best when they’re having fun so Jason’s great blend of humour, songs, fun activities and dialogue has helped kids from all over the world learn English with each other. Nice to see the social aspect of our lessons coming to life. Thanks kids!

What a week. We can’t wait for Monday 😊