Meritful Wants To Help Students Showcase Their Wit Online
Students and teachers could rarely be friends on Facebook and no student would want their Physics or Math teacher telling them to study thoroughly for their term paper, but things change and so do we.
Ann Arbor SPARK Accelerated
A new startup Meritful, out of Michigan Univeristy and accelerated and funded through Ann Arbor SPARK has launched into public beta to unite both students and mentors or even teachers.
Meritful is a professional network for students and mentors. Meritful helps students share their professional portfolio from projects and activities they have done so as their peers and mentors and give them feedback.
Students Professional Network
On its blog, Meritful says,”If you are a student, Meritful helps you build a professional network, and an online resume to impress colleges and employers. If you are a teacher or mentor, Meritful helps you run projects and engage with students. Meritful is like LinkedIn for high school – with showcases and mentors.”
The Ann Arbor startup was founded by Azarias Reda, Jack Shultz and John Cunningham.
Who isn’t Online?
The founders say on average, teens in the United States spend upwards of two hours online every day and end up creating profiles on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. But their profile’s tend to be unwitting, unprofessional and often unflattering but the founders say the students just don’t want to be left out as social media is becoming increasingly important.
Online Evaluation For Placement
They says that a 2012 study found that over 90% of corporate recruiters use information they find online about candidates to evaluate them and even an increasing number of college admissions offices are turning to their applicants’ online presence in making their decisions.
They add yet another study.
That a survey of 359 college admissions offices by Kaplan revealed that over 24% of respondents use a student’s online presence as they research an application therefore Meritful is a professional platform squarely focused on high school students.
Meritful wants to help the students document and showcase their accomplishments, activities and projects and as well get feedback on their projects from their peers, teachers and mentors.
Highlighting Student’s Accomplishments
Their goal is to help students highlighting their accomplishments, activities and projects which can help them access placements for colleges, scholarships, internships and even jobs true to what Associate Dean Alec Galimore, University of Michigan said in the release,“Meritful is connecting high school students to their future” .
Now students can make friends with their teachers peacefully!
