Press Release

Dallas, Texas — Sept. 24, 2010 —Shmuel Meitar, founder and principal of Time To Know, the developer of the first Digital Teaching Platform, will participate in the NBC News special event Education Nation, a nationally broadcast in-depth conversation about improving education in America debuting on September 26th. Meitar will join some of the world’s leading minds in education innovation to share insights about education technology in Israel, where technology is helping to drive education success.

 

Meitar will serve as a panelist in the “Lessons from Abroad” panel session scheduled for Tuesday, September 28th from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. and moderated by Andrea Mitchell. Meitar and educators and policymakers from around the world will illustrate what U.S. schools can learn from other countries that are winning the education race. Meitar plans to share how the successful use of Time To Know in Israel became a major driver in that country’s decision to develop a multi-year national plan for rebuilding its education system for the 21st century. 

 

“Teachers are irreplaceable but they need better tools,” said Meitar. “The core place where learning is conducted is still the classroom, and education cannot be accomplished without teachers, but we have not adequately equipped them to do their jobs in the 21st century. A number of our education challenges are universal across many countries—from overcrowded classrooms to lack of pay-for-performance standards. When it comes to education reform, good lessons learned from abroad can be applied here in the U.S.”

 

The panel discussion is part of the National Education Summit, the centerpiece of the inaugural Education Nation event scheduled for September 27th and 28th in New York City. High-level decision makers from government, business, academia, and technology will gather to discuss, debate, and offer solutions for remedying the educational system. Sessions from the Summit will be featured and broadcast across NBC shows and channels as well as digital and mobile platforms.

 

Empowering Teachers; Engaging and Inspiring Students

               

Through its Digital Teaching Platform, Time To Know is transforming teaching and learning, and improving student performance. Independent studies in the United States and Israel have demonstrated that students who use Time To Know achieve higher gains in mathematics and reading/language arts than students in comparable schools using traditional teaching methods and curriculum. The Time To Know classrooms in both countries also show improved teaching quality, an improved learning environment with fewer disruptions, and an increase in student confidence, motivation, and enjoyment of math and reading/language arts.

 

After the first year of implementation, students in Texas’s Grand Prairie Independent School District who used Time To Know outscored students in control classrooms on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). In mathematics, 93% of the Time To Know students reached the “Met The Standard” and “Commended” performance levels and achieved proficiency on the TAKS, compared to 66% of the control students. In reading, 90% of the Time To Know students achieved proficiency, compared to 69% of the control students. And in writing, 98% of the Time To Know students achieved proficiency, compared to 92% of the control students.

 

In 2010, Time To Know was chosen by New York City Schools to be implemented in 26 elementary schools participating in the lauded Innovation Zone (iZone) project, and has since been added to additional schools in the city as well.

 

“With Time To Know, we’re seeing our students more engaged and more excited to learn,” said Dr. Susan Hull, superintendent of Grand Prairie Independent School District, the first U.S. school district to launch Time To Know. “Attendance has improved, discipline issues have decreased, and our teachers are able to focus on what they do best—mentoring and teaching.”

 

About Shmuel Meitar

 

A lifelong education advocate, Meitar began Time To Know as a philanthropic endeavor in Israel, in response to challenges facing schools worldwide and the lack of meaningful change in education practices. Meitar is well-known for his visionary work in building successful companies that develop and apply cutting-edge technologies to create major paradigm shifts in how industries do business. He was co-founder and principal of the Aurec Group, an international investment firm, and likewise founded Amdocs Ltd., the world’s market leader in customer care and billing software systems. 

 

About Time To Know

 

Introduced in Israel in 2007 and launched in the United States in 2009, Time To Know is a complete, interactive core curriculum system with a digital teaching platform designed specifically for today’s one-to-one computing classrooms. By creating a new educational product category, the Digital Teaching Platform, Time To Know is helping school districts improve the quality of teaching and learning, while fully realizing the vision of one-to-one computing.

 

The Digital Teaching Platform is a new educational product category in K-12 education. The web-based platform functions as the primary instructional environment in a one-to-one computing classroom, where every student and teacher has access to a personal portable computer in a wireless environment. The platform includes a digital core curriculum and tools that empower the teacher to manage instruction, learning and assessment. Unlike supplemental software, the digital teaching platform operates in a teacher-led classroom as the primary carrier of core curriculum content. Using this platform, teachers can seamlessly blend digital and traditional instructional activities to deeply engage 21st century learners, address diverse teaching and learning styles, and improve student performance. For more information, please visit www.timetoknow.com or call 888-559-6560. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

 

Media contact information:

Robinson Lerer & Montgomery

Daniel Delson, SVP

646-805-2036 or ddelson@rlmnet.com