Online Educational Software for Kids
Keeping kids interested in learning isn't easy, but this entrepreneur found a way to do itand parents are loving it.
By Devlin Smith
Linking education and technology just seemed to make sense to
Gary Kiliany, founder of Pittsburgh-based iKnowThat.com, a creator
of Web-based educational software for kids under 12. "We
wanted to fuse the best aspects of multimedia technology with
Internet communications so that kids [could] publish to the Web
education projects that they were interested in," says
Kiliany, who started his company in 1999. "We hoped to
motivate kids to maintain an interest, a curiosity, a passion for
learning."
All games are accessed at the company's site and can be
saved for viewing by family, teachers and friends. Parents pay a
$29 annual subscription fee for unlimited access to the activities
at iKnowThat.com. Once registered, kids can learn about dinosaurs
by creating their own sticker books, geography by completing
puzzles or art history through virtual painting. Other subjects
covered include math, reading, history and science.
Before launching iKnowThat.com, Kiliany founded Sentient
Systems, a developer of hardware and software solutions for
disabled children. That company was sold to Sunrise Medical Corp.
in 1998 for $40 million. Kiliany stayed on with Sentient for about
a year after its purchase before leaving to start
iKnowThat.com.
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As it turns out, starting Sentient had its advantages: "The
first company I started turned out to be very successful, so I had
a lot of credibility with the investment community," says
Kiliany. "When you're presenting any new idea to
investors, you're going to have more negative views than
positive ones, but you don't need 100 investors—you need
one or two. I was very fortunate to find some people who thought
the ideas we had were worth moving ahead with."
Kiliany's next idea is downloading, which would allow
subscribers to run iKnowThat.com software offline. He's certain
parents will appreciate the option as much as they do the site.
"It's about keeping kids interested in learning in a fun
way," he says. "It's just very natural for kids to
want to do things with these various electronic media."