Microsoft Partners Chalkup to make learning more collaborative
Microsoft has partnered with classroom collaboration startup Chalkup to drive better learning experiences for students globally. Microsoft has also hired Chalkup Co-founder Justin Chando to work on Microsoft's Teams product.
At Microsoft, Chando will be a product manager on its education team, focusing on helping Chalkup’s existing users migrate to Microsoft Teams. Some of Chalkup’s features, including its rubrics system for grading, will be added to Microsoft Teams, according to a blog post from Microsoft.
CEO Justin Chando founded Chalkup in 2015 to build a more compelling digital classroom experience for all students. As a class collaboration platform, Chalkup keeps students, teachers and parents connected.
Chalkup claims users in 1 in 5 high schools, and 1 in 3 universities, in the United States. The product aims to help improve the assignment workflow in the classroom, by allowing students to ask questions, leave comments and submit digital assignments. Teachers can also share resources with students, allocate assignments, hold discussions, and much more.
In an interview with EdSurge, Chando said his company had been engaged in conversations with several education companies and received multiple acquisition offers. Early this year, he decided to go with Microsoft.
He says Microsoft Teams for education is aligned with Chalkup’s original vision as a “class collaboration solution that was built on the idea that classes need to discuss and work together to get their questions answered and share more collaboratively.”
Microsoft began rolling out its Teams for Education collaboration service in March 2017. Microsoft Teams is a free add-on to Office 365 Education for users with an Education, Education Plus, Education E3 and/or an Education E5 suite plan.
Like Chalkup, Microsoft Teams shares many of the same principles for collaborative learning and includes seamless class discussions, chat, and integrated assignments and grading functionality. These are free tools that implement proven techniques to improve reading and writing for students regardless of their age or ability.
"In spending time with the amazing people at Microsoft, it was clear that we were completely aligned in our mission for connecting classrooms, sparking student collaboration, and finding new and innovative ways to work together," Chando said. "We knew Microsoft would be a great fit and we're thrilled for what the future holds for our customers," said Chando, in the official announcement.
As the two products compete in the same space – collaboration software for educators and students, both Microsoft and Chalkup realized they may join forces to continue their shared mission of helping every student and educator on the planet.
Chalkup will be ending its services on June 30, 2018. The existing customers of Chalkup will be able to continue to run their courses until the school year ends in June. It will also soon add the ability for users to export their course information and move to Microsoft Teams.
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