Company Origins

The company was founded by Julia Rivard Dexter and Leah Skerry who both experienced loved ones in their lives who struggled with reading and the loss of confidence that goes along with being a low reader. After learning that almost half of kids graduate high school with below expected reading levels, they set out to develop a better way to learn and one that kids would love.

The team spent months in classrooms with teachers and speaking to parents and kids about the problems faced in learning today that have led to aggressively declining literacy rates and here is what they found:

• Classrooms with diverse learners who need personalized instruction and teachers who don’t have the capacity to meet this need.
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• A gap in digital adaptive personalized technologies for literacy leaving educators with few options.
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• Kids have developed exceptionally high expectations for engaging content and traditional learning materials that are losing them.

Over the course of three years, they assembled a team that included some of the top experts in literacy, classroom teaching, gaming, development, psychology and machine learning to develop a solution that has never existed before – a literacy learning engine that would adapt the level of content to each learner based on their unique skill and interests and then present kids this content in self-led games they want to play.

Shoelace now supports millions of players using their free game and measurably improving their reading as they played. Shoelace has gone on to be recognized as the top innovative EdTech application by the Future of Education Technology Conference (FETC) and has now partnered with other EdTech players like Google and Clever to support the teachers throughout schools and districts who are determined to find a better way to support their students in learning.