Peekapak receives prestigious NewSchools Venture Fund award behind launch of new digital game

TORONTO - Nov. 14, 2017 - PRLog -- Peekapak Inc. is an award-winning Social-Emotional Learning platform teaching young children skills like perseverance, gratitude and empathy, announces funding from NewSchools Venture Fund to launch their first digital game, myPeekavilleTM. myPeekaville uses story-based learning, exciting games, engaging narration, and beautiful visuals to bring learning to life. The learning elements in myPeekaville were  designed using Peekapak's research-based and education expert-created learning platform and curriculum, currently used in classrooms and homes across the globe.

In myPeekaville, children ages 3 to 10 design their own avatar and explore the interactive world of Peekaville, where they will make new friends with the Peekapak Pals; learn how to identify their feelings; practice new character skills, like respect, kindness and teamwork; help their new friends complete targeted quests; play mini-games; read and interact with storybooks; collect berries (Peekaville's currency) to redeem prizes; and create their own original content. In a unique feature to myPeekaville, students 'check-in' daily by selecting how they're feeling, providing teachers with a heatmap of student sentiment. Behind-the-scenes, teachers receive real-time data showing a student's comprehension, progress and emotional state. myPeekaville is filled with diverse characters representing a variety of cultures, talents and socio-economic backgrounds, which offer relatable role-models for all students.

myPeekaville's vivid graphics and easy-to-use controls provide young children with a fun and engaging play experience, while teaching important skills.

Key Features Include:

• Peekapak's original storybooks and learning games to teach Social-Emotional Learning topics, like self-regulation and respect
• Data provided to teachers and districts on student learning and sentiment
• Audio narration for younger students

This fall, over 750 classrooms (13k+ students) will start using myPeekaville in a limited early release, including districts such as the Elizabeth Public Schools District and the Denver Public Schools District.

Based on the early traction behind myPeekaville, Peekapak was selected as a member of the Fall 2017 Ignite cohort at NewSchools Venture Fund. Peekapak is one of 15 edtech companies awarded funding through the NewSchools Ignite Early Learning Challenge. Each cohort member is committed to create or expand an innovative ed tech product to help millions of students across the country in Pre-K-2nd grade. In addition to the funding, NewSchools will provide management assistance and create a community of practice for the cohort members.

Says Tonika Cheek Clayton, managing partner at NewSchools Venture Fund: "We heard from both educators and ed tech developers about the lack of high-quality tools to support academic and social development for young students. They also emphasized the importance of limiting the hours spent on devices and promoting interaction with parents and teachers. Given the importance of these early years, NewSchools Ignite is thrilled to invest in Peekapak to develop engaging tools to reimagine early learning."

About Peekapak

Peekapak (http://www.peekapak.com) is an award-winning education technology company teaching young students social and emotional skills like gratitude, empathy, respect and teamwork in the classroom and at home. Housed on an easy-to-use online platform, Peekapak engages and empowers over 12,000 educators in 90 countries to reach over 150,000 students. To learn more, watch this short 1 min video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtnacVZXP0k



Peekapak is backed by; Silicon Valley based accelerator, Imagine K12, the Edtech vertical of Y Combinator (Fast Company called YC "the world's most powerful start-up incubator"), JOLT (a Canadian accelerator within Toronto's MaRS Discovery District), Uncharted (formerly Unreasonable Institute, a Denver, Colorado-based incubator for companies focused on social impact), NewSchools Venture Fund and Voqal Education. Learn more at www.peekapak.com.

About NewSchools

NewSchools Venture Fund is a national nonprofit that finds, funds and supports promising and innovative education entrepreneurs, teams of educators and education leaders. We help them accomplish their missions to achieve outstanding results for the schools, students and educators they serve. We are committed to helping students graduate high school prepared and inspired to achieve their most ambitious dreams and plans. Through our investing, management assistance, network building, and thought leadership, NewSchools helps to reimagine K–12 education.