Developer(s) NoRedInk Corporation Platform Web application License Commercial software | Development status Active Type Language-learning | |
Written in Ruby (programming language), Elm (programming language), CoffeeScript | ||
NoRedInk (stylized as noredink) is an online web-based language-learning platform designed to help students in grades 4-12 improve their grammar and writing skills. The lessons are aligned to meet the Common Core State Standards Initiative and the curriculum students see is personalized according to their interests.
History
NoRedInk was founded by Jeff Scheur, a high school English teacher at Whitney Young Magnet High School in Chicago, after grading 15,000 papers. After documenting years of misconceptions that popped up in his students' writing and developing a taxonomy to address them over several years, Scheur posted an advertisement to Craigslist asking for an engineer to help him build an educational platform. Scheur's students voted on the name "NoRedInk" over "Grammar Ninja" and “Writing Beast."
In February 2012, Scheur shared the first version of NoRedInk with some colleagues at a local Illinois conference. The application quickly grew in popularity: in a month there were 1,500 users on the site. In another month, there were 15,000 registered users. The site continues to grow, and in September 2012, NoRedInk won the Citi Innovation Challenge, hosted by NBC, netting the company $75,000 in prize money. In January, 2013, NoRedInk raised $2 million from a series of investors, including Google Ventures. In February 2015, NoRedInk announced that it had raised $6 million from True Ventures, ReThink Education, and existing investors.
As of 2016, NoRedInk is used in 1 of 3 school districts in the United States.