Emerging Learning Platform in over 100 school districts works to close the math gap for students by making it at once deeply relevant, and fun
SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Prisms VR, a learning platform pioneering a new paradigm for math education, raised $12.5 million in a Series A round from Andreessen Horowitz to accelerate math literacy throughout the U.S. Prisms launched in 2021 to bring problem-driven, tactile and visual learning to the math classroom and is the first educational technology platform to leverage virtual reality (VR) to accelerate math proficiencies in U.S. schools.
Learning math in VR is the best way for students to understand the “why” behind math, a question left unanswered for many. Already adopted by 100+ school districts across 26 states, Prisms is bringing meaningful, purpose-driven math teaching and learning to more than 80,000 students in districts large and small. From rural to large cities, students are being given the opportunity to learn abstract concepts they typically memorize, through tactile real world experiences that are at once inspiring and effective.
“Educational technology that is efficacious at scale is hard to find. We believe that Anurupa and her team have pioneered a novel approach – one that is able to leverage VR technology to teach students the way they learn best,” said Jeff Jordan, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “We’re excited to be a partner as Prisms not only continues to make a massive impact on students across the country, but also paves the way for the future of education.”
Anurupa Ganguly founded Prisms to address the huge dearth of relevant math learning solutions, which has led to the stubbornly low proficiency rates across the U.S. for decades. As a math and physics teacher in Boston, Ganguly found that the U.S. education system doesn’t enable students to utilize the multiple modalities through which human beings make sense, reason and deepen their understanding of the world around them.
“Technology has failed our students, especially where math is concerned. With new developments in immersive tech, we have the opportunity to make learning experiential and connected to students’ lives,” said Anurupa Ganguly, founder and CEO at Prisms. “Prisms is the first learning solution that empowers students to experience real-life problems with their bodies versus reading about them divorced from personal experience. They are then able to build up to shorthand abstractions from intuitive visual and tactile experiences that lead to enduring retention and deeper understanding.”
Prisms intends to use the funds from this latest round to accelerate growth and adoption of its product and team. The funds will also go to expanding programs to more schools across the U.S. and product development in higher education and other subjects.
“Though education is VR’s most powerful use case, we haven’t seen disruptive VR learning tools transforming formal classroom settings, until now. Math education is going to be the killer app for VR,” continued Ganguly.
Prisms’ VR math content module is available to parents, tutors and teachers with a 7-day free trial via the Meta Quest store and $24 USD via an annual subscription model.
To learn more about how Prisms is changing the way students learn math, click here.
To better understand the technology problem at the heart of America’s math gap, check out this report from Prisms.
About Prisms
Prisms, founded in 2020, is pioneering efficacious learning experiences in virtual reality. Backed by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, Prisms is the first spatial learning platform for K-12 STEM education, scaling a new way of learning core math and science that actualizes pedagogies that we know work best. To learn more about Prisms, visit www.prismsvr.com.
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