Bookneto

I told you that I know ambitious people. Our very own E has launched Bookneto, a web-based peer learning platform. In English, it's like facebook mixed with Dropbox for school nonsense. Students can upload academic material and share with that peers. I just wish this came out when I was a freshman because I can't count the number of times I've tried looking for equivalent classes in other schools because my professor sucked.

Press release below,

Waterloo, ON. uWaterloo undergraduate students launch online peer learning platform that enables students from colleges all  over the world  to interact with each other on the pages of academic material in which they share a common interest.

It is an open secret that the current education system is a failed one and there is a concerted global effort to fix it championed by heavy weights of all walks of life; from Bill Gates to Michelle Rhee. Nevertheless, as if the space for innovative and sustainable solutions to the problems of the education system was not saturated enough, two students of the University of Waterloo, in the heart of Canada’s famed technology triangle have thrown their hopeful hats into this crowded ring.

For Bookneto founders, 19 year old Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and 21 year old Pierre Arys, the problems of the education system need a student centered response - and they have one.  According to Chief Executive Officer, Iyinoluwa, “education today is an industry that serves everyone but students. With the increasing cost of education publishers and educational institutions smile to the bank while students are left crackling under the pressure of debts they cannot pay and skills they cannot utilise. Bookneto is all about changing that through an open peer learning platform.”

With Bookneto, students from all over the world can upload and tag academic material in any format and have it displayed in a specially designed reader so any other student on the platform can add more knowledge and context to it by highlighting sections of the text and starting a discussion thread on it.  “We think this is peer learning at its best” said Chief Operating Officer, Pierre Arys. “College students are often limited to their Professor’s understanding of course content and now we can broaden their perspective by providing a forum for them to meaningfully interact with their colleagues from different schools.”

And they are not stopping there. With a little bit of time, traction and funding, they have concrete plans to add on other features and tools that will further integrate valuable educational and social experiences with high quality academic content with a view to making lectures redundant. “We think with time, anyone interested in a subject will come to our online platform, read the necessary academic material and gain useful context and clarifications by participating in open knowledge sharing across the ivory towers academic institutions often unconsciously build” said Iyinoluwa. “Professors will be better able to concentrate on developing and delivering quality academic content when they can save time on ineffective information transfer functions.”

When we asked the team what Bookneto’s long term vision was, Pierre told us, “Bookneto’s long term vision is to improve education by making learning fun, engaging and addictive. Especially because we are students, we have exactly what it takes to make that happen.”

Pierre Arys studies Computer Science at the University of Waterloo while Iyinoluwa Aboyeji studies Legal Studies at the same school. Before founding Bookneto, Iyinoluwa served as President of Imprint Publications, a leading Canadian student publications company while Pierre worked in California’s Silicon Valley with a very successful financial solutions start-up firm.

They are currently soliciting signups for beta invites which will be released in the first week of the New Year. Interested students, potential investors, publishers and professors looking to receive beta invites can sign up at www.bookneto.com. 

For more information about Bookneto and the team behind it or to get an early preview of the web application, contact CEO, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji by email at e@bookneto.com 

Go sign up for beta testing. This is huge. It could take collaborative learning to unknown heights and I'm not saying it because E is a friend.