Israeli language AI startup “Storywizard.ai” won the Global Edtech Startup Awards (GESA) last Thursday in London, according to a recent press release on the event.
The largest ed-tech competition in the world with over 3,000 applicants, GESA was founded by Avi Varshavsky, the CEO of MindCET (of CET) to promote international ed-tech entrepreneurship, according to the release. The competition spans 134 countries and a community of more than 6,000 startups in the ed-tech field.
The winning AI startup, Storywizard, was founded and developed one year ago by Israelis Ofir Kerker and Nadav Yaron, both fathers of young children, as a means for parents and children to create bedtime stories themselves.
“Our product makes use of advanced artificial intelligence technologies, and thus, the children create, edit, and illustrate their own bedtime stories in their areas of interest,” explained Kerker.
GESA is the largest tech-ed competition in the world
However, Storywizard’s potential in the field of education became quickly apparent, Kerker and Yaron go on to explain. Teachers around the globe began to use the program to develop educational tools in the classroom. To date, the program is used in more than 1,500 schools worldwide.
“The platform allows the students to create complete stories in their areas of interest and in accordance with the educational framework defined by the teacher,” they stated.
The program has contributed significantly to student engagement, in large part because students can actively contribute to the formation of the material. The program also allows for progress monitoring and task adjustment on an individual level.
Despite its infancy, the startup has already won Israel’s Education Ministry’s digital content tender and has been integrated into hundreds of Israeli schools only since September 2023.
Two months ago, Ogden Morse, a US veteran EdTech entrepreneur and former teacher joined the startup’s ranks as CEO, with the goal of establishing the company in the US education market.
CET CEO Yossi Bidetz congratulated the winners, adding, “[we] are proud of the Israeli startup Storywizard.ai for winning first place in the innovation category.”
