Diane Janknegt
Motivated by the alarming findings of an EU-funded Academic Research Project relating to online learning, Diane Janknegt and Theo Huibers founded Wizenoze in 2013. Their mission, to identify relevant educational content, and deliver information appropriate to a learner’s reading ability by using the latest AI technology, couldn’t be more relevant today.
Diane, you started Wizenoze seven years before the global pandemic and the accelerated use of online learning. What has changed for you in the past year?
There was a rapid increase in usage of our solution when Covid caused many countries to go into lockdown and schools had to shift to remote learning instantly. Many of our partners reacted and gave schools access to their online platforms to support setting up remote learning in a very short time. The result was a significant increase in usage of our solutions which are part of the platforms. We adapt our products based on real user feedback. You can imagine that the increase in usage also meant more data to work with. As a result, we have been able to increase the number of curricula we have in our portfolio and have significantly improved the learning experience. It also enabled us to increase our number of employees and we have welcomed quite a number of new recruits, which is a fantastic way forward. On top of all that we were able to close and double an investment round. We are now really and very ably set for exciting growth, with the opening of our India Office as a result.
Can you explain in a few words what Wizenoze does?
We give learners access to the best educational information on the internet that matches their curriculum, age and reading level. Wizenoze is a vast, searchable digital library curated to be expansive, diverse, reliable, and safe. Our products are easily integrated into schools’ learning platforms and are hugely increasing the learning experience and outcomes. Wizenoze has gained recognition from Disrupt 100, Forbes, and Google. But nothing, of course, compares to knowing that we are having a genuine impact on global education standards and helping improve the lives of real people in the real world. Wizenoze operates internationally and has offices in Amsterdam, London and New Delhi.
The way we learn is changing. Learning happens everywhere and anytime. Is online learning here to stay?
We believe remote learning is here to stay in different styles and manners. Online platforms with school and education-specific apps and content have now proven to be very effective. Simultaneously, the pandemic has also proven the non-replaceable role of a teacher in front of the classroom. Therefore we believe that a hybrid model will remain after the pandemic.
The pandemic has accelerated progress in online learning and the usage of online material in the classroom. Teachers see the value of being able to easily monitor the progress of their students by using online tools and are much better equipped to automatically adapt the educational material for their students based on their personal progress. This type of personalisation cannot be done without innovative digital Edtech solutions. The pandemic showed the value of these solutions to a much broader audience than just the early adopters in education that were open to such innovation before the pandemic.
The use of Edtech also makes it possible to reach many more students, it opens up education for those who would otherwise need to do without, especially when you see that countries are heavily investing in the roll-out of internet and devices, despite going back to school again. Teaching will become a mix of online and in-classroom learning.
Edtech is no longer seen as something “scary” but has become a lifeline for many students. Our technology goes further than most apps, we actually bring the content to the student, instead of just providing a tool to monitor or set a task. The pandemic has only underlined the importance of solutions like ours.
What is next for Wizenoze?
We’re transforming our organic search solution (Web for Classrooms) to a curriculum solution (Wizeup). From now on, students can not only search for reliable educational information themselves, but we’re also pre-selecting highly relevant and suitable information for each curriculum topic at each learning stage. In that way, teachers that are addressing a certain curriculum topic in their lesson, can ‘push’ this pre-selected material to their students. Or students can browse the curriculum topics themselves to explore relevant information from the internet, matched to the curriculum. Students don’t need to formulate queries, search and select results themselves, but can save all their energy for the real task; learning about a specific curriculum topic. We are very interested in being connected to teachers who want to see our solution and test it out.
Find out more about Diane’s work and Wizenoze: www.wizenoze.com
