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Launch nears for Youngstown teacher’s new app for grading tests
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From left, Elijah Stambaugh, founder of The Learning Egg LLC; Bob Adduci, COO; and Ken Corbett, lead software engineer, are preparing for the launch of their product, Lightning Grader.
By Karl Henkel
YOUNGSTOWN
Elijah Stambaugh wasn’t a teacher for long before he realized a fundamental flaw in the education process.
“Students in some classes score very low, and others score very high,” the former Stambaugh Academy seventh- and eighth-grade math teacher said. “I was looking for tools to better analyze students’ strengths and weaknesses.”
So Stambaugh came up with an idea for a test-scoring software application to help teachers better organize and analyze their teaching tendencies.
His idea led to a meeting with Jim Cossler, the Youngstown Business Incubator’s chief executive officer, and he teamed up with Bob Adduci, founder of BizVeo (now via680), another YBI company.
The rest is history.
Now, Stambaugh’s company, The Learning Egg LLC, is getting ready for the official launch of its first product, the Lightning Grader.
Lightning Grader is a software that allows teachers to create and print their own tests and quizzes.
Those tests can then be scanned and, in the case of multiple-choice questions, can be graded electronically in mere seconds.
By mere seconds, Stambaugh says, means 30 pages per minute.
It even simplifies the grading process of fill-in-the-blank questions. Instead of teacherslooking at 20 or 30 separate answers over the course of an hour or two, they can flip through all of the scanned answers for a specific question — on the computer — and grade all of those responses at one time.
Stambaugh first had the idea for the software after grading his own classes’ assessments. For multiple-choice bubble questions, he would hole-punch the correct answers on a sample test and place a student’s paper beneath it.
“I thought, why can’t a software application do that for me?” he said.
The cost of the software is $2.50 per student or $96 annually per teacher.
Stambaugh said the minimal cost is quickly overshadowed by the time a teacher will save grading papers. He says it will also allow teachers to determine how many students understand a certain subject or topic.
If a majority of a class understands one question more than another, the teacher won’t have to spend as much time covering that subject matter.
“You’re able to get a deeper level of analysis,” Stambaugh said.
The company’s first “alpha” product launched in April and is already in some local school districts such as Girard, Canfield and Newton Falls.
Since the launch, The Learning Egg staff has listened to those districts to find ways to make the software easier to use, a process Stambaugh calls “customer development.”
Adduci said the company is exploring ways to make the entire grading process computerized, and Stambaugh said the final product will allow teachers to share tests and quizzes and “follow” fellow instructors, similar to the social-media website Twitter.
“We can only get better,” he said. “That’s the great thing about software.”
The Learning Egg is planning an official launch in February, when it hopes to add schools throughout the nation to its roster.
“It’s finally turning into something now,” said Ken Corbett, lead software engineer. “It’s turning into something awesome.”