We welcomed three rookie Knerds in the past few weeks. We’re psyched to have them, and thought we’d share a few fun facts about each new member of our team. Nikos Michalakis is the newest engineer on our Platform team. Originally from Athens, Greece, Nikos graduated from MIT and worked previously as a Senior Engineer at Adserving at Adconion Media Group. In his free time, Nikos writes and illustrates stories that teach kids about computer science… Read more

That’s right: Knewton is moving! Our team has more than doubled since we moved into our current office 2+ years ago, and we’re more than ready for a space upgrade. In the past few years, Union Square has become a hub for tech startups; when we began our search, we knew we didn’t want to leave the heart of Silicon Alley behind. We were lucky enough to find a great place just an avenue west from… Read more

What do German board games have to do with the gamification of education? As it turns out, quite a lot. Check out this Knewton brownbag talk by our very own James Boo — self-declared board game geek and founder of the long-standing German Board Game Night at Knewton HQ — for a fun, informative look at what German board games can teach us about student engagement, agency, and more.

February may be the shortest month, but we’ve still managed to find time to welcome a whole bunch of new employees to Knewton. Here’s a bit of background on each new member of our team: Lauren North joins Knewton as the HR and Operations Associate. Originally from Southhampton, England, Lauren received her BSc Psychology from Loughborough University and her MSc Organizational Psychology from Goldsmiths University, London. Before coming to Knewton, she worked for the electrical engineering company… Read more

If you haven’t read Jose’s blog post about reverse-engineering Levain’s bakery famous cookies, check it out before reading on! Yesterday, our CEO Jose brought in a big batch of homemade semisweet chocolate peanut butter chip cookies. Meanwhile, our VP of Finance Patricia toted a box of dark chocolate peanut butter chip cookies in from Levain Bakery’s Upper Wide Side location. What happened next? A blind taste test, of course — or as Jose referred it… Read more

Twenty-eight million people harvest their crops on FarmVille, every day. Five million people play an average of forty-five hours a week worth of games. That’s more than an average workweek. It’s clear that the world is in love with gaming, but school? Not so much. Every year, 1.2 million students in the U.S. alone fail to graduate from high school. Of those who do graduate, a large percentage don’t have the skills they need for… Read more

Knewton Knerds are abuzz with excitement after hearing the news that Fast Company included us on their list of the world’s 50 most innovative companies. People are tweeting and “facebooking” how cool it is that we’re on a list with such greats as Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon and more. Some Knerds even decided to write little blurbs about the other companies on the list. Check it out! Dropbox: “When I’m not working at Knewton, I’m… Read more

We welcomed two new team members in the first month of 2012 — Yair Tygiel and Franc Camps-Febrar. We’re psyched to have them here, and made sure to grill them with a few introductory questions before they got too settled. Here’s what we learned: Yair joins Knewton as the Executive Assistant. When I asked him how he would describe his new role to his grandmother, Yair said, “I’m the right hand man to a few great… Read more