Lingua.ly wins the Israeli competition for startups in the EdTech field

Lingua.ly, CodeMonkey, Symbolab and Cloudents will take part in an international competition with the final to be held in September. In October, the third intake into MindCET’s accelerator program will begin.

Lingua.ly is the winner of the competition for startups in the EdTech field – this was announced recently (Wednesday, July 9) at an event marking the final of the Israeli competition for the Global EdTech Startups Awards (G.E.S. Awards), held in Tel Aviv. Lingua.ly allows web users to learn a new language while surfing the web, based on their individual areas of interest.

Second place in the competition was taken by CodeMonkey, which teaches the fundamentals of programming to elementary school children through games, while in third place came Symbolab, whose search engine for mathematical and scientific equations makes scientific content universally accessible. Cloudents, which creates shared study communities, won the “Audience Choice” prize. The winning company, Lingua.ly, will receive three days of intensive support at MindCET’s accelerator facility, where it will enjoy support and training from specialists and industry leaders in a number of areas. The four winning companies automatically move to the semifinals of the international competition, in which they will compete against 26 other companies from around the world.

30 Israeli companies entered the Israeli competition, from which 10 were selected to make presentations to the audience and the judging panel. The other six companies participating in the final were Wikibrains, Immersia, Wikibi, LerGo, Scrolar and Learnia.

The competition’s final was held in parallel with announcement of the third intake to MindCET’s accelerator program, which hosts startup companies developing technologies to advance the fields of education, teaching and training. The third intake, which is expected to include 10-12 companies, will commence in October 2014 and end in March 2015, during which the companies will be hosted at MindCET’s campuses in Yeruham and Tel Aviv, will be given a cash investment, and will enjoy support from leading specialists in the fields of education and  the Israeli hi-tech industry.

The G.E.S. Awards are an initiative of MindCET, the Center for Innovation and Technological Development in Education, founded by the Center for Educational Technology (CET). The purpose of the competition is to identify and single out promising EdTech enterprises that show potential for generating substantive change in the world of learning solutions.

In addition to MindCET, the following incubators, active in the field of education, are partners in the competition: EdTech Incubator, London; Socratic Labs, New York; P.A.U. Education, Barcelona; Inncubated, from Bogota; and the European Union’s Open Education Challenge. The competition is being run under the auspices of CET and publishing giant Pearson.

300 companies have entered the international competition, and next month the regional finals – similar to that held recently in Tel Aviv – will be held in Barcelona and Bogota, in order to put together the list of the 30 companies that will participate in the semi-final stage (15 companies from the local events, and a further 15 companies from throughout the world). Following that, the ten finalists for the international competition will be selected. The final, to take place in September, will select the winning entry, two runners-up, and another company that will be selected by the audience, through sharing of the companies’ pages on the competition website.

The winning companies in the international competition will be awarded four months’ hosting at the five accelerators/incubators, where each company will be given the use of office space and the resources that it needs, and access to senior industry figures and mentors in various fields.