Two Years In, Quill.org Reaches 100,000 Students Milestone
Quill.org, a non-profit that builds educational tools to help students become better writers, has just reached over 100,000 students using their resources. They have also just been accepted into the Edwin Gould Foundation Accelerator in New York City's Financial District.
New York, NY, January 20, 2016 (Newswire.com) - In the past two years, over 100,000 middle and high school students attending over 1,500 schools across the United States have used a free online literacy tool called Quill to improve their writing, grammar, and vocabulary skills.
Quill’s innovative model of open-source content creation has brought together a community of over a hundred literacy educators and developers who have created 154 (and counting) personalized activities that cover 42 Common Core topics.
Writing with clarity and precision is one of those skills, yet too many students struggle to put their ideas down on paper. We believe Quill has the potential to be part of the solution to this intractable problem.
Elliot Mandel, Director of Partnerships
Every day, students complete over 3,000 activities on Quill.org including editing sentences, proofreading passages, and collaboratively writing stories. On average, they master eight grammatical concepts over the course of an hour spent on the site. Teachers save time with instantaneous grading, and the in-depth reporting shows them which concepts should be revisited.
Quill recently caught the attention of The Edwin Gould Foundation. For the past ten years, the foundation has invited a carefully selected group of social entrepreneurs focused on improving educational outcomes for low-income students into its EGF Accelerator, and has just admitted Quill. In addition to office and event space in New York City’s Financial District, Quill can receive financial assistance as well as strategic consulting.
“Supporting Quill is part of our ongoing effort to invest in innovative approaches that help low-income students get academically prepared for college,” said Cynthia Rivera Weissblum, CEO of the Edwin Gould Foundation. “Writing with clarity and precision is one of those skills, yet too many students struggle to put their ideas down on paper. We believe Quill has the potential to be part of the solution to this intractable problem. We look forward to watching them grow.”
Over the next two and a half years at the Accelerator, Quill will expand beyond sentence writing and editing with a new initiative called Logic Check. This program develops logical reasoning and critical thinking skills by teaching students how to use over 200 reasoning words (such as although, because, and consequently) to connect ideas together.
Quill has been previously supported by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Fast Forward, AT&T Aspire, Google.org, and others.