Trying to teach a gang of unruly kids can be trying at the best of times – but it could soon become a little easier thanks to meinUnterricht. The latest product from educational starutp K.lab, meinUnterricht provides a wealth of resources and has been dubbed the Spotify for teachers.
Using cloud technology, teachers can source learning materials and plan lessons from a database of 26,000 available worksheets; searching for what they want then dragging and dropping them onto ‘desks’ for upcoming lessons.
MeinUnterricht was founded a year ago by Stefan Appelhans, Benjamin Wüstenhagen, and David Klett, and has attracted investment from international publishing giant Klett, which supplies the raw materials. It has also partnered with Microsoft to provide the cloud expertise.
Stefan believes meinUnterricht is a step towards a more comprehensive digitalisation of learning. He says: “I think in the future we will see teachers using cloud software to delegate tasks to students completing work on computers.”
It’s an interesting proposition – but despite being billed as the “revolution of preparation,” meinUnterricht still faces challenges before it can really take off. The resources are limited to those provided by Klett, and an individual teacher’s own tried and tested materials can’t easily be uploaded.
In addition, the PDF files can’t currently be edited by users while the subjects are limited to German, history, maths, biology and physics.
Overcoming the ingrained habits of older teachers may also be a problem – but the potential is certainly there to improve organisation in the classroom.
At the moment K.lab are focusing on sales to individual teachers with an introductory rate of €9.90 a month for a year’s subscription. So far, 50 have been sold since the launch a fortnight ago, including to an entire school.
The team now plans to increase the range of subjects offered to help meinUnterricht appeal to a wider market with a view to eventually launching an English-language version.