LessonWriter

LessonWriter automatically turns any digital text into high-quality dynamic literacy lessons for print, web, and moblie.

Summary

In education, the greatest call to action is to improve literacy.  The crisis that leaves 2/3 of our kids behind revolves around insufficient materials, instruction, and planning time.  LessonWriter leverages the high-interest material available on the web into high-quality lessons. 

Our program makes it possible for every to teacher to support reading in every subject regardless of their training. And since we know US school budgets aren’t about to expand to allow teachers to have five times as many planning hours- equivalent to applauded educational systems of Singapore and Finland, LessonWriter found a way to make planning five times as fast! 

We have a product that addresses the most significant pain point in education on multiple planes and in a unique way.  Our product is fully-built, used by over 30,000 teachers around the world and generating revenue from premium school and individual sales.  Teachers of students in grades 4-12 as well as instructors in adult education and adult ESL programs comprise an overwhelming majority of our users. 

We are currently raising a seed round to support the promotional budget and sales staff needed to nurture rapid growth and additional reseller deals.

Website:  www.lessonwriter.com (Check out the short intro video on our website!)

CEO. Jennifer Applebaum is a former middle school teacher with experience in curriculum design and educational management. She is a key contributor to LessonWriter's product development, business model, pedagogical tools and trainings.  BA, Barnard College; MsED, City College of New York.

Chief Technology Officer. Ayan Babi Pal is a web developer, designer and programmer and guides LessonWriter's technology plans. BS, Columbia University.

Co-Founder/ Developer. Stephen Churchville is an experienced educator and founder of two previous web companies. Lessons from those ventures combined with his educational background led to the founding of LessonWriter. BA, Education, Fordham University.

LessonWriter, Inc. has three primary revenue streams: site license and professional development services to schools, development and promotions services for content providers, and premium features and apps for individual users.  A growing individual user base of engaged teachers is essential for the growth and success of all three revenue streams

Currently, LessonWriter has three products in the marketplace: TEACHER, a free literacy and lesson-planning tool with over 30,000 registered users; PREMIUM teacher, a subscription-based individual premium product sold online to individual teachers, and SCHOOL, a premium paid product which provides collaboration and online learning solutions currently being used by over 45 schools/ programs in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and California. Premium student consumer and adjacent market products are under development.

LessonWriter's go to market strategy is multi-pronged.  We connect with indvidual customers through social marketing, direct email campaigns, and presentations at confererences and universities.  We use a combination of in-house sales efforts and contracts with resellers to reach schools, programs and districts.

Our core competition is the status quo: Teachers still stay up late with piles of resources trying to plan the ideal lesson, and most of the time students enter classrooms where they are greeted by static textbooks, canned curricula and exhausted teachers. LessonWriter not only changes how we teach but also what we can teach.

Our proprietary expert-system linguistic analysis program saves teachers hours of analyzing a text to meet the literacy needs of students and guides them to a superior end-product.  Nationally teachers are so overburdened that half flee the classroom in the first five years, which costs schools $7.3 billion a year.  65% of teachers leaving cite lack of planning time and workload as a central reason, so a time-saving tool like LessonWriter directly addresses one of their core problems.