Comments on: TC50: Grockit, The Multiplayer Learning Game That’s Better Than Any Practice Test

By: Interesting Links on Games and Learning - Venture Sprout

Interesting Links on Games and Learning - Venture Sprout — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:10:50 +0000

[...] We have an investment in one interesting company that is borrowing part of its model from Megastudy, and part of the MMORPG world. its a collaborative learning web site called Grockit. Here is the TechCrunch review. [...]

By: Alumni Appearance at TechCrunch 50 | MBA Admissions dot org

Alumni Appearance at TechCrunch 50 | MBA Admissions dot org — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:10:50 +0000

[...] were invited back to the TechCrunch 50 Conference to show our progress since our launch at last year’s event. The conference provides a platform for early-stage companies to launch [...]

By: Alumni Appearance at TechCrunch 50 « Grockit Blog

Alumni Appearance at TechCrunch 50 « Grockit Blog — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:48:33 +0000

[...] were invited back to the TechCrunch 50 Conference to show our progress since our launch at last year’s event. The conference provides a platform for early-stage companies to launch [...]

By: Grockit Wins Jury Selection Award At Techcrunch50 « Grockit Blog

Grockit Wins Jury Selection Award At Techcrunch50 « Grockit Blog — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:51:25 +0000

[...] We’ve spent a lot of time and energy getting ready for this event and it’s great to see that it connected with foiks judging the event as well as some of the press. [...]

By: A Really Interesting Online Education Company in Korea: Megastudy « abovethecrowd.com

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:56:04 +0000

By: Sandy

Sandy — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:32:30 +0000

The grockit site is broken. I tried to sign up 3 times. How did they raise so much money if they can’t even make a site that lets you log in? Its a catchy idea I guess.

By: J Choi

J Choi — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:32:14 +0000

I emailed my cousin about this a while back and told her to check it out and they sent her an NDA to sign up for the beta. Not only that the NDA was for potential employees. You’d think you could at least hire a lawyer who can give you two versions when you raise millions of dollars.

Regardless, it’s pretty sad that you have to sign an NDA to do their beta. I told my cousin to go get a tutor. This site looks pretty disappointing. Too much hype.

By: Idiotic

Idiotic — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:41:37 +0000

$10M to do nothing? License data from Kaplan for what a quiz app? Hype.

By: What a bomb

What a bomb — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:15:54 +0000

Almost a month later and still no product. Good work Benchmark. This is a bomb.

By: Ahmed

Ahmed — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 06:27:07 +0000

It’s 9 days since TC50 and these guys still haven’t launched. WTF?

By: Grockit Wins Jury Selection Award At Techcrunch50 « Learning 2.0

Grockit Wins Jury Selection Award At Techcrunch50 « Learning 2.0 — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 22:21:06 +0000

[...] We’ve spent a lot of time and energy getting ready for this event and it’s great to see that it connected with foiks judging the event as well as some of the press. [...]

By: Introducing Grockit, the SAT Study MMORPG « Educational Games Research

Introducing Grockit, the SAT Study MMORPG « Educational Games Research — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:48:42 +0000

[...] Grockit, the SAT Study MMORPG Jason Kincaid over on TechCrunch recently wrote about Grockit, a startup developing a MMORPG designed to help students study for [...]

By: Rule Violation

Rule Violation — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 19:01:46 +0000

Funny, Grockit violated the rules of your contest at http://www.tech...blog/the-rules/

They still haven’t launched. I guess when you’ve raised $10.7 MM, TC will bend the rules for you.

By: 2008 September 12 | Tween Girls On Line Magazine

2008 September 12 | Tween Girls On Line Magazine — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:16:43 +0000

[...] Causecast launches (yet another Gen Y oriented activism site to know. And this new multi-player game makes learning fun – thanks Andrea!) (Tech [...]

By: AO Anita

AO Anita — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:53:51 +0000

That already exists and many sites have been featured on TC – tutorvista, prepme, and others come to mind

By: Grokit, Social Learning Game « It is Time to Tweak eLearning

Grokit, Social Learning Game « It is Time to Tweak eLearning — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:27:55 +0000

[...] website was covered on TechCrunch50 this [...]

By: Blake Spiers

Blake Spiers — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:52:32 +0000

I believe we have for high school students trying to learn more about college: http://www.AskAboutCollege.com.

By: John Philip Green

John Philip Green — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:39:47 +0000

This looks very similar to the free GMAT question bank on LearnHub. It includes thousands of user-created questions, with solutions, ratings, and comments. Users can compete to get the highest scores, and can time themselves. Isn't Grockit more of a feature than a product? This is just one of the dozens of features that are included in complete social learning sites like LearnHub.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:35:09 +0000

So I am assuming that Grockit is gonna support all the other big tests too in the future? (GMAT, GRE, MCAT, LSAT etc.)

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 07:04:24 +0000

I met Farb earlier this year to discuss partnership opportunities with Grockit and my online community, beatthegmat.com. I was really impressed by Farb’s intellectual horsepower and it seems like he had a really great team behind him.

This is definitely a radical approach to learning, and I hope that it succeeds. I’m a big fan of ‘learning by play’, and I think it’s an approach that will be more widely studied/deployed in the future. Looking forward to seeing where Grockit heads in the future!

By: Joseph

Joseph — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 05:51:52 +0000

I, too, was unimpressed by what Grockit turns out to have developed after all the hype and secrecy.

Could someone please explain to me what they could possibly consider to be secret in their app? And why does it take $10M to build such an app?

By: Harley

Harley — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 03:19:38 +0000

I am pretty bummed that a product with so much potential turned out to be such a simplified online quizzing tool with a social feature. I wrote to this team long ago and wrote about them in my blog but of course they did not respond to me. Can anyone tell me if anyone plans to bring k-12 education online with entertaining content, social aspects, knowledge tracking and constant flow of new content? There are so many good ideas and technologies that could be used to fundamentally change how fun learning can be. This sadly, is not even close. However, the attention and the fact that someone was willing to invest in it is at least good.

By: Frank

Frank — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 01:50:23 +0000

Is there more to it than private classrooms and multiple choice quizzing?

Is there a notion of instructor led learning to supplement the quizzing or what is the mechanism that individuals learn the material for which they are being tested?

Given some of the quality open source options out there such as eFront (http://www.efrontlearning.com) or Moodle, I’m wondering what differentiates Grockit that justifies 2 years of development and 10 million dollars?

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 01:12:03 +0000

I work in an office/call-center with a bunch of middle-aged women who play Bejewelled all day between calls. They’re far from tech-savvy, but forward stuff to each other all the time. The viralty of Grockit will kick in when they get beyond test prep and start offering this sort of casual gamer the opportunity to learn social stuff, like chili recipes and gossipy “facts” (believe me).

As far as making money, they should sell “design-your-own course” stuff to businesses where they can teach each other stuff they need to know, like customer-service stuff. Do you have any idea how many questions call-center reps ask each other all day? I’d love to be able to grockit all.

I thought the judges were unduly unimpressed.

By: Um, yeah

Um, yeah — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 23:52:19 +0000

The fact that the panelists even mention books as the main competition suggests that there is a great market here. We (and especially Scoble, of all people) know that *everything* is better on the Internet. If books are currently the primary way of doing this task, no doubt the Internet can make it better!

If books (which are 100% non-viral) can build a successful business, then I’m sure this can too. However, one could debate whether this sort of publishing can make for the easy 2-years-to-$500 million exit and 30x return that a VC might want.