Two student groups have each been awarded $50,000 in a competition that emphasized methods for schools to obtain funding and use innovative methods to improve the state of K-12 education.

Pennies 4 Progress and TeacherLoop emerged victorious in the SECU Emerging Issues Prize for Innovation at N.C. State’s Institute for Emerging Issues’ annual forum held from Feb. 10 to Feb. 11 at the Raleigh Convention Center. The competition was jointly held with the State Employees Credit Union.

According to Ryan O’ Donnell, chief executive of Pennies 4 Progress and junior in business administration, both teams entered the competition after working with the IEI through a lecture series hosted by the Caldwell Fellows program.

 O’Donnell said the forum of this year’s theme “Teachers And The Great Economic Debate,” forced his team and others to consider how they were going to effectively deal with problems educators face despite being college students.

“College students have great ideas, and you don’t have to have a Ph.D. in educational policy to make a significant impact in education,” O’ Donnell said. 

Pennies 4 Progress

O’Donnell said he and his team wanted to implement an easier donation method, and after a year in which public education lost more than $500 million in funding in North Carolina, his team decided to enter the economy category to find a way in which private businesses and nonprofits could be helpful in increasing revenue for public education.

The team consisted of O’Donnell, Shreye Saxena, a junior in electrical and computer engineering, Joseph Moo-Young, a junior in chemical engineering and Brandon Narybouth, a junior in economics. 

“The basics of it would be for local people to fund local schools, and we want to do that with local businesses,” O’Donnell said.

According to O’Donnell, P4P will serve as a catalyst in the region by securely accepting donations from consumers when they make a purchase at a restaurant or other type of business.

O’Donnell said P4P is in the process of partnering with 22 businesses in the Triangle, and it hopes to raise more than $110,000 by the end of the year. 

The SECU foundation will provide $25,000 to the groups initially and observe how that money is invested before providing the other half of the sum.

P4P will use the first $25,000 award to purchase iPads and other IOS based tablets and software. It will provide this technology to businesses so each business will take part in the process.

When a consumer makes a purchase by swiping his or her credit card, he or she can choose to round up the bill by a few pennies and choose a charity or cause to donate the excess change to, according to O’Donnell.

Despite the award, O’Donnell said he is aware P4P won’t outweigh the lack of funding schools in North Carolina now face. 

According to O’Donnell, an average teacher in North Carolina spends about $356 of his or her own money on school supplies or curricular activities, according to a 2013 study conducted by the Horace Mann Advisor Panel.

“There’s a big gap in what we could provide in North Carolina and what the government has cut,” O’Donnell said. “How do we retain teachers? How do we keep high-quality education in this state? People are really frustrated with their government and how it has taken a lot of money out of education. Pennies 4 Progress isn’t the solution for everything. It isn’t going to solve all our problems, but there is a gap we feel like we can address.”

TeacherLoop

TeacherLoop is a team pushing the use of open-source educational resources in North Carolina public schools, according to Sean Kramer, a junior in computer science, and Shrey Satpathy, a sophomore in nuclear engineering.

In addition to Kramer and Satpathy, the team also consists of William VanderVeen, a junior in graphic design, and David Nacouzi, a sophomore in physics.

“We believe in open-source education. That’s our manifest goal,” Satpathy said. “Education must be open-source just like software.”

According to Satpathy and Kramer, TeacherLoop will be a source for teachers to upload and distribute course modules consisting of lesson plans, tests and class exercises.

In coming up with the idea, Satpathy said that the team consulted with more than 100 teachers in gathering feedback for what educators felt was lacking.

 “We had teachers in mind when developing every step of the way,” Kramer said.

Satpathy and Kramer said they are currently working with The Science House, which includes a group of teachers working to improve STEM education at the University.

Satpathy said TeacherLoop plans to launch its alpha product in May, and group members will plan to work together with about 1,200 teachers in North Carolina to test the product.

TeacherLoop could have a significant effect in the way teachers interact with one another, according to Satpathy and Kramer, as all similar platforms that currently exist have monthly or yearly fees to educators.

“There hasn’t been a lot of work done in the open-source arena,” Kramer said. “‘Sharemylesson,’ a relatively popular site among educators with a similar function has a cost of $70 a year for a teacher to sign up.”

According to Satpathy and Kramer, the team will use the initial $25,000 investment to purchase a domain name, pay for server costs and establish an effective web presence.

 “We’re planning on targeting county governments, which will pay a flat fee to use and download tools off the website,” Kramer said.

According to Kramer and Satpathy, one stipulation is that teachers will never be responsible for funding when using TeacherLoop.

“Teachers can never pay us,” Kramer said. “We will never accept payments from them to sustain the site.”

According to Kramer and Satpathy, the members of TeacherLoop don’t want to limit their reach to schools in North Carolina only. 

“We want to expand our product to schools in all 50 states,” Kramer said.