Educational Entrepreneurship: Assessment, Technology, and Business

Larry Berger, CEO and co-founder, Wireless Generation

Monday, April 17, 2006

Larry Berger urged HGSE students to make a real impact on the world of education through the for-profit sector. As the CEO and co-founder of a six year-old company that survived the dot-com bust, Berger shared some of the experiences that have fueled his enthusiasm for developing and marketing new educational products and services.

Wireless Generation's "handheld-to-Web" technology helps reading and math teachers assess the abilities of young children from kindergarten through third grade. As the teacher works with a student, she enters responses directly into a Palm Pilot computer. The software stores and tallies responses – but more importantly, it continuously branches to new questions, based on the student's responses. This enables the teacher to probe in an individualized way, to assess the student's level of understanding more insightfully, and to begin the diagnostic process that leads to more appropriate instructional strategies.

The Wireless Generation system is currently in use in 2000 school districts across the country. “Make sure you have a business model that supports scale,” was Berger's advice. After several years working in non-profit settings, Berger has concluded that for-profit businesses can scale up innovation much more successfully. The biggest need school systems have, Berger has learned, is trained personnel who can interpret assessment data and help devise informed responses.

-- Maribel Florez, TIE '06