WASHINGTON, May 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, LearnZillion announced its partnership with the Lemann Foundation and Nova Escola, with support from Google.org, to create curricular resources based on Brazil's new National Learning Standards accessible to teachers throughout the country. The standards seek to define what is essential for students to learn at each stage of school life, and the partnership will work to build these standards into student-ready resources for teachers. Using LearnZillion's Curriculum-as-a-Service (CaaS) platform, the high-quality, teacher-created lessons will be fully available online to teachers across Brazil in 2019.

With an estimated 32 million school-aged youth, Brazil is educating the largest number of primary and secondary students in Latin America. Brazil represents LearnZillion's first opportunity to share its expertise in bringing teachers and technology together to improve classroom engagement outside of the United States.

"We need a unified set of standards so that students know what they have the right to learn and teachers and parents know what is expected of them each year," said Denis Mizne, CEO of the Lemann Foundation. "We're excited to use LearnZillion's methodology, of creating content by teachers for teachers, and CaaS platform to develop lesson plans that are easy to use and completely aligned with the new standards. By bringing these standards to life inside each classroom, our goal is to increase equity in education across Brazil."

This $2.2 million international partnership among the Lemann Foundation, Nova Escola, and LearnZillion is an investment in Brazil's youth that will use technology to remove the current gap between who has access to a quality education. Google.org is supporting this work with a grant to Nova Escola that will support both the creation of new curricular resources and the localization of LearnZillion's technology.

"What kids learn today will impact the world we live in tomorrow. That starts with ensuring students have access to the right tools and information to learn," said Google.org Program Manager Nick Cain. "Together, we are eliminating access barriers and ensuring quality resources are available to all."

The partnership seeks to build curricula that meet the diverse needs of teachers and students across the country, and one aspect of this is creating resources that are adaptable. Curriculum will be created in cycles starting this spring using LearnZillion's CaaS cloud-based platform, which provides tools and support to empower educators to create, personalize and collaborate in ways that adapt the resources to the needs of their students. Schools will start piloting the curriculum in early 2018.

"Brazil is a large country with many different regions, and we know that no two classrooms look exactly the same," said Leandro Beguoci, editorial and products director of Nova Escola. "And yet, it's our goal to ensure that students across Brazil are receiving the same high-quality education. One step toward this is equipping every classroom with the same rigorous, easy-to-use resources that support teachers and lead students to success." 

Each partner brings invaluable experience to this work. Nova Escola, supported by the Lemann Foundation since 2016, has decades of experience as trusted producer of content and supports for teachers in Brazil. LearnZillion has already done similar work creating usable curriculum to meet new standards. In partnership with the Louisiana Department of Education, LearnZillion created Guidebooks 2.0, which built the ELA Guidebooks into classroom-ready lessons for teachers.

"We understand that, for standards to influence student learning, teachers must be equipped with the tools to teach them in the classroom – and these tools must be accessible, easy-to-use, and provide thought-provoking opportunities," said Eric Westendorf, CEO and co-founder of LearnZillion. "But, more than anything, they need to be engaging for students. By coupling real teacher experience with CaaS to build these standards into strong, dynamic lessons, we are ensuring that students across Brazil will not only learn more content – they'll also be more engaged with it."

About LearnZillion:
LearnZillion combines the expertise of teachers with the power of technology to provide the curriculum and support needed to engage every student. As the first K-12 Curriculum-as-a-Service (CaaS) company, LearnZillion is changing the paradigm of curriculum from a static product to an adaptable, cloud-based service. LearnZillion's model equips school districts and their teachers with dynamic, easy-to-use content and software that support high-quality instruction. To learn more, visit www.learnzillion.com.

About Lemann Foundation:
The Lemann Foundation, a nonprofit family organization founded in 2002 by Jorge Paulo Lemann, works to ensure that all Brazilian children have quality public education and to create a network of talented people dedicated to solving the main Brazilian social problems. To achieve this goal, the Lemann Foundation develops programs that impact millions of public school students throughout Brazil and supports institutions of excellence that work for a fairer and more developed country.

About Nova Escola:
Nova Escola is the largest platform of content and services for teachers and school managers in Brazil. Its mission is to impact positively in public education through high quality resources for educators all over the country. With over 31 years of history, it has become a reference for teachers and administrators because of its ability to unite theory and practice and to offer these resources in simple and accessible language: lesson plans, reports, videos and podcasts.. Supported by the Lemann Foundation, Nova Escola has 2.5 million users per month, 1.3 followers in Facebook and 92,000 subscribers to its print magazine. In order to accomplish its mission, the organization has to reach out to 2 million teachers from all over the country in the next two years.

SOURCE LearnZillion

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