SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Kno, Inc., www.kno.com, a pioneer in education software, announced that the company is broadening its focus to include educators to help bridge the gap between students and teachers. In support of this initiative, Kno is announcing upcoming updates to its iPad app to include instructional and social capabilities, an Educator Advisory Board to address the needs of the academic community, and free textbooks for instructors using Kno in the classroom.
“We were overwhelmed by the number of requests from professors who presented different types of education related problems that they believed Kno could help resolve through our technology and rapid development process,” said Osman Rashid, CEO and co-Founder and Babur Habib, Chief Technology Officer and co-Founder of Kno. “Kno can create products that are mutually beneficial and effective for students and educators to help address the types of requests we have been receiving. With our newly formed Educator Advisory Board, we can tap into the great minds of academia to help guide us during the product development process.”
New Features
In support of bridging educators and students with technology, Kno is launching several new features for the iPad app, one of which provides instructors with the ability to teach directly from a Kno textbook and to use pen and multi-media notes to enhance the classroom experience.
The new Pen Notes feature enables instructors and their students to take notes with their finger or an iPad compatible stylus directly on any page of their textbook or journal. Meanwhile, the Multi-Media Notes feature allows educators and students to add information that expands learning opportunities, such as live links from the web, and attach them as a note to any highlight in a book. The company also initiated plans to enable the sharing of journals amongst instructors and students.
Educator Advisory Board
The Educator Advisory Board is made up of top educators including Roy Pea, Professor of Educating & Learning Science at Stanford University and Sal Khan, Founder of Khan Academy. The aim of the new board is to get feedback about how technology can enhance learning in the classroom and foster better communication between educators and their students.
“I love Kno’s focus on the student and adding the instructor to their mix is critical to create a strong impact and more powerful technology-enhanced learning environments as well as improve the teacher student relationship,” said Roy Pea. “I’m delighted to join Kno’s new Educator Advisory Board to collaborate on improving the ways educators guide students build knowledge.”
Free Textbooks
Lastly, to expand Kno’s commitment to the educator community, the company is now offering free textbooks to instructors which will allow them to present directly from a Kno textbook and the Journal in the classroom. Kno has the largest library of eTextbooks available with more than 100,000 titles that include free chapter previews. Instructors can request a free book by visiting: http://www.kno.com/education#mod=education&act=faculty.
About KNO
Kno, Inc. is an education software company on a mission to make learning engaging, effective, and social for students. Osman Rashid, the co-founder of Chegg, and Babur Habib, a consumer electronics veteran, founded Kno, Inc. in May 2009. The company has received funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Intel Capital, Goldman Sachs, Advanced Publications, FLOODGATE, GSV Capital, First Round Capital, and is based in Santa Clara, California. For more information, go to www.kno.com, or follow Kno at http://facebook.com/GoodtoKno and http://twitter.com/GoodtoKNO.