Having been a teacher at various Youngstown area schools for several years, Elijah Stambaugh remembers the countless hours he spent just grading student tests.
“Teachers can spend up to a third of their time just grading papers,” he said. “To me, this is a fundamental flaw in the education process.”
Having identified what he perceived to be a problem, Stambaugh set about solving it. What he came up with is an idea for a test-scoring software application that he says is “a real game changer for teachers.”
With assistance from the Youngstown Business Incubator, Stambaugh worked with a team of programmers and engineers to develop a web-based application that enables teachers to create, print, score and analyze their own tests and quizzes.
He launched his company--The Learning Egg--in June 2010 and named his software “Lightning Grader.”
“Lightning Grader lets teachers create a test on our website, print it out for their students and then scan all the completed tests on a copy machine to grade them,” he explains. “And it’s fast--grading up to 30 pages a minute.”
Automating the arduous task of grading is just for starters, however. The software provides several different reports on each student, which enables teachers to more accurately assess each student.
“Our reporting engine has analytics that give teachers a snapshot of each student’s strengths and weaknesses,” Stambaugh said. “This information lets teachers be proactive rather than reactive in their lesson planning. They can spend more time working with students’ areas of weakness, which benefits their students.”
The Learning Egg recently received a $25,000 grant from Great Lakes Innovation Development Enterprise. Stambaugh pre-tested Lightning Grader in three schools in April 2011 and is planning to officially launch the software in February 2012.
By Lynne Meyer
Source: Elijah Stambaugh