Scholastic Corporation is an American multinational publishing, education, and media company that publishes and distributes books, comics, and educational materials for schools, teachers, parents, children, and other educational institutions. Products are distributed via retail and online sales and through schools via reading clubs and book fairs. Clifford the Big Red Dog, a character created by Norman Bridwell in 1963, is the mascot of the company.
JumpStart was an educational media franchise created for children, primarily consisting of educational games. The franchise began with independent developer Fanfare Software's 1994 video game JumpStart Kindergarten. The series was expanded into other age groups and beyond games to include workbooks, direct-to-video films, mobile apps, and other media under the ownership of Knowledge Adventure, which later assumed the name JumpStart Games.
Kaplan, Inc. is an international educational services company that provides educational and training services to colleges, universities, businesses and individuals around the world. Founded in 1938 by Stanley Kaplan, the company offers a variety of test preparation, certifications, and student support services. The company is headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and was a wholly owned subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company from 1984 until 2018, when it was acquired by Purdue University Global.
BrainPop is a group of educational websites based in New York City. It hosts over 1,000 short animated movies for students in grades K–8, together with quizzes and related materials, covering the subjects of science, social studies, English, math, engineering and technology, health, arts and music. In 2022, Kirkbi A/S, the private investment and holding company that owns a controlling stake in Lego, acquired BrainPop.
Donkey Kong Jr. Math is an edutainment platform video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It is a spin-off of the 1982 arcade game Donkey Kong Jr. In the game, players control Donkey Kong Jr. as he solves math problems set up by his father Donkey Kong. It was released in Japan in 1983 for the Family Computer, and in North America and the PAL region in 1986.
Renaissance Learning, Inc. is a software as a service and learning analytics company that makes cloud-based, Pre-K–12 educational software and adaptive assessments. Renaissance employs about 1,000 employees in nine U.S. cities and subsidiaries in Canada, the United Kingdom, Korea, and Australia. Renaissance's solutions are used in one-third of U.S. schools and more than 90 countries around the world.
Reader Rabbit is an educational video game franchise created in 1984 by The Learning Company. The series is aimed at children from infancy to the age of nine. In 1998, a spiritual successor series called The ClueFinders was released for older students aged seven to twelve.
Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium", is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical (offline) goods that expand the functionality of the free version of the software. This business model has been used in the software industry since the 1980s. A subset of this model used by the video game industry is called free-to-play.
Fantage was a MMORPG involving a virtual world containing a range of online games and activities, developed by Fantage Inc. The game featured a customizable cartoon avatar, called a "Fantagian", that users can customize with items ranging from hair to clothing and accessories. Fantage was released to the general public on March 17, 2008, and had since expanded into a large online community— the game had over 16 million registered users by January 2012 and over 30 million by December 2014.
ABCmouse.com Early Learning Academy is a digital education program for children ages 2–8, created by the edtech company Age of Learning, Inc. The program offers educational games, videos, puzzles, printables, and a library of regular and “read-aloud” children’s books, covering subjects including reading and language arts, math, science, health, social studies, music, and art.
Duolingo, Inc., is an American educational technology company that produces learning apps and provides language certification. Duolingo offers courses on music, math, and 43 languages, ranging from English, French, and Spanish to less commonly studied languages such as Welsh, Irish, and Navajo. The learning method incorporates gamification to motivate users with points and rewards and interactive lessons featuring spaced repetition. The app promotes short, daily lessons for consistent-phased practice.
Jo Boaler is a British education author and Nomellini–Olivier Professor of mathematics education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Boaler is involved in promoting reform mathematics and equitable mathematics classrooms. She is the co-founder and faculty director of youcubed, a Stanford centre that offers mathematics education resources to teachers, students and parents. She is the author, co-author or editor of eighteen mathematics books, including Limitless Mind, Mathematical Mindsets, The Elephant in the Classroom, and What's Math Got To Do With It?.
McGraw Hill is an American publishing company for educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. It is one of the "big three" educational publishers along with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Pearson Education. McGraw Hill also publishes reference and trade publications for the medical, business, and engineering professions. Formerly a division of The McGraw Hill Companies, McGraw Hill Education was divested and acquired by Apollo Global Management in March 2013 for $2.4 billion in cash. McGraw Hill was sold in 2021 to Platinum Equity for $4.5 billion.
Kahoot! is a Norwegian online game-based learning platform. It has learning games, also known as "kahoots", which are user-generated multiple-choice quizzes that can be accessed via a web browser or the Kahoot! app.
Madeline is a series of educational point-and-click adventure video games which were developed during the mid-1990s for Windows and Mac systems. The games are an extension of the Madeline series of children's books by Ludwig Bemelmans, which describe the adventures of a young French girl. The video-game series was produced concurrently with a TV series of the same name, with characters and voice actors from the show.
Math Rabbit is a spin-off of the Reader Rabbit educational video game series. It was published by The Learning Company in 1986 for MS-DOS and Apple II. A Deluxe version was released in 1993 for MS-DOS, Mac, and Windows 3.x. In 1997, a remake was released for Windows and Mac as Reader Rabbit's Math 1. The final remake for Windows and Macintosh was published 1998 is Reader Rabbit's Math Ages 4-6, with a personalized version released in 1999.
Byju's is an Indian multinational educational technology company, headquartered in Bengaluru. It was founded in 2011 by Byju Raveendran and Divya Gokulnath. As of January 2024, Byju's made a valuation ask of $200 million, a sharp fall given its peak valuation of $22 billion in 2022. As of April 2023, the company claims to have over 150 million registered students.
As the Sonic the Hedgehog series of platform games has grown in popularity, its publisher Sega has expanded the franchise into multiple different genres. Among these are several educational video games designed to appeal to young children. The first attempt to create an educational Sonic game was Tiertex Design Studios' Sonic's Edusoft for the Master System in late 1991, which was canceled despite having been nearly finished. When Sega launched the Sega Pico in 1994, it released Sonic the Hedgehog's Gameworld and Tails and the Music Maker for it. Orion Interactive also developed the 1996 Sega PC game Sonic's Schoolhouse, which used a 3D game engine and had an exceptionally large marketing budget. In the mid-2000s, LeapFrog Enterprises released educational Sonic games for its Leapster and LeapFrog Didj.
Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning is a 2018 horror game developed and published by Micah McGonigal. Set in a schoolhouse, the player must locate seven notebooks which each consists of math problems without being caught by Baldi, his students and other school staff members, while also avoiding various obstacles. The game became popular for its difficulty, nostalgic gameplay and graphics and elements of absurdist humor and simplicity.
Prodigy Math or Prodigy Math Game is an educational fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Prodigy Education. The player takes the role of a wizard or witch, who, whilst undertaking quests to collect gems, must battle against the Puppet Master. These quests usually involve battling monsters in different areas of the in-game map. To participate in these quests, players must correctly answer math problems to cast spells. Prodigy Math was released in 2011.
