Sure the latest initiatives from the Teslas, Apples and Googles of the industry tend to dominate the tech news space — and with good reason. Still, the tech titans aren’t the only ones bringing innovation to the sector.
In an effort to highlight up-and-coming tech companies, Built In launched The Future 5 across seven major U.S. tech hubs. Each quarter, we will feature five early-stage tech companies, nonprofits or entrepreneurs in each of these hubs who just might be working on the next big thing. Read our round-up of Austin’s rising companies from last quarter here.
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The idea of a metaverse brings about the thought of high-tech gadgets like VR headsets, haptic controllers and supercharged computers to power everything. The metaverse, at times, feels like an expensive and out-of-reach technology for people not invested in the space. Austin-based StudentVerse, however, is making the tech more accessible by developing a metaverse for students.
Edtech startup StudentVerse has been operating in semi-stealth mode since its founding last year. The startup is creating a learning environment set in a metaverse that is optimized to run on school-provided computers. The metaverse is still in development.
“I taught here in Austin and Las Vegas for 10 years and saw the huge potential that the platform had for engaging students in a whole new way,” Racheal Gallegos, StudentVerse co-founder, told Built In. “Students are obsessed with Meta and Quest and Oculus and all of these new technologies, so we really wanted to take students’ interest in those new technologies and make it educational.”
When development is complete and StudentVerse is made available to school districts, Gallegos said the learning environment will offer gamified curriculum that rewards students with coins for participation, good grades on quizzes and other activities. Students will also be able to use their coins to upgrade their avatars.
We want students to take away the skills they’ll need to not only succeed in the grade level they’re in but to become future citizens of the country and to be productive citizens.”
In addition to conducting coursework, Gallegos said the metaverse is a great place to teach students about real-life situations, such as public safety or how to cross a street, as those types of skills can’t be learned with books.
“We also know that gamifying instruction provides more positive engagement, which leads to better learning outcomes. So it made sense for us to provide a game-based learning platform within the metaverse for students,” Gallegos said. “We want students to take away the skills they’ll need to not only succeed in the grade level they’re in but to become future citizens of the country and to be productive citizens.”
The school-centric metaverse will be used in physical classrooms, from home when a student is absent from class or as an alternative for remote learning.
StudentVerse is developing a go-to-market plan for its platform and is currently meeting with various schools and districts to learn how the metaverse would be used in their classrooms. Since curriculum varies from district to district, StudentVerse’s platform is being built in a customizable way where school districts can tailor the metaverse to fit their learning needs and goals.
“We know that the needs of school districts are still very different. We want to understand what the school or district is looking for, how many people they want to offer this to and how they want to use it so that we can provide a tailored solution,” Gallegos said.
StudentVerse is looking to raise its first seed funding round in the spring, according to Gallegos. In the meantime, the startup is participating in the Startup Village at South by Southwest to showcase its technology to new people.
