Infini-D Learning is a collaboration-based tool that allows teachers to choose from STEM missions that transport students into outer space, the human body, back in time, and more.
“We take a science standard, we build a dramatic story around it. Something that's really exciting and fun. Something that's going to be like Magic School Bus meets an escape room on steroids,” says Brooks Heder, co-founder of Infini-D Learning.
While missions focus on STEM concepts currently, Infini-D Learning plans to expand missions into other subject areas.
In the meantime, Infini-D Learning is already garnering accolades. The State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) recently named Infini-D Learning to its Emerging Partners program, and of this year’s emerging partners, it was both the judges and people’s choice award winner.
What is Infini-D Learning?
Infini-D Learning lets teachers choose from standards-aligned missions that provide students with an interactive and fun learning experience, utilizing existing classroom technology – screen displays and standard-issue student devices. The missions are designed to be the culmination of a lesson or unit. Preparing for one provides students with a goal and can help them understand why they have to learn abstract-seeming science concepts.
“We're not just talking about the water cycle, we're talking about the water cycle because we have a mission at the end of this week,” Heder says. The experience will also help the lesson stick in the minds of students.
For instance, when they use unit conversion on a mission, they’ll remember, “Oh, yeah, when those asteroids were falling toward the planet, and we had to save the planet by using our knowledge of unit conversion,” Heder says.
How Was Infini-D Learning Founded?
“We were a group of founders who didn't find complete fulfillment with the education system as it was,” Heder explains.
As an elementary school student, Heder had been inspired by an extraordinary math teacher who made learning come alive with group simulations. “He started with a boombox and overhead slides and hiding behind his desk and doing different characters, and sending his kids on these elaborate missions," he says. "That transitioned into this full kind of Disneyland-like set where kids would field trip and have this amazing group experience.”
Infini-D Learning started with the goal of recreating these kinds of experiences. Initially, they focused on field trips and missions that took place on elaborate sets. Those became an incredible success and they wanted to be able to offer the experiences to more students.
“It was like a movie set, you'd have cool lights, and spacey stuff, and steps and platforms and all these things, and that was so fun,” Heder says. He and his cofounders asked themselves if they could recreate that experience using tech that teachers and students already had access to.
Ultimately, they developed a haptic hands-on experience with a combination of classroom screens, speakers, student devices, pre-recorded music, and characters.
“We found we could get a very similar result to the set,” Heder says. “The set is really cool for the first few minutes, and then they get into the mission. What we saw with our current [offering] is that it can still reach those same levels of excitement, yet you get the scalability and the ability for teachers to implement it in an easy, simple way.”
How Much Does Infini-D Learning Cost?
The average price for Infini-D Learning ranges between $10 and $14 per student depending on group size.
School-wide and district-level subscriptions can bring that price down further, Heder says. Free missions are also available that do not require any credit card information to be shared, which teachers can use with their students to get a sense of the program’s impact.
What Else Should You Know About Infini-D Learning?
As a company, Infini-D Learning is dedicated to fighting boredom, busy work, and student isolation in education, and the missions are designed with those goals expressly in mind, Heder says. He believes the best way for teachers to learn about Infini-D Learning is to try one of the free missions with students as that will give them a full sense of its appeal.
“We built it with kids in mind,” he says. “We are really passionate about making sure the kids come first, not building a solution that the kids aren't into, that happens way too often in education. So we spent a lot of time in the classroom watching and observing and building something that the kids are crazy about.”
Tech & Learning will be hosting an event for innovative startups like Infini-D Learning on September 6-8, 2023 at the Chateau Winery & Resort in Atlanta. The EdExec Summit will focus exclusively on the business of education, from funding to policy to sales and marketing advice. Find more details and the link to register here.
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