KIRKLAND, Wash. — Boom Learning has certainly seen a boom of popularity during the pandemic.
The unique, online educational support tool was created by Kirkland parents Eric and Mary Oemig.
Boom Learning is an online platform that allows teachers to create and assign digital learning resources called Boom Cards. Boom Cards can be a number of things like flash cards, task cards, quizzes, interactive lessons and more.
Boom Learning has grown by 25 times during the pandemic. It's now used in 12 of the 15 biggest school districts in the country.
Eric said he never envisioned a time when remote learning would be so vital to schools. He was a Washington state senator from 2007 to 2011 and his main focus during his legislative career was helping public schools.
Eric said his experience working with administrators and teachers prepared him to make a tangible difference for teachers and students alike.
“I was the vice-chair of the K-12 committee when I served in the state senate," he said. "I spent a lot of time on how schools were funded, what schools needed, etc.”
Mary Oemig is the CEO and President of Boom Learning. Previously, she founded a non-profit private home-schooling program that highlighted the unique learning needs of children who are developing asynchronously.
She said that having parents in public education inspired them to create an innovative platform to support teachers. The duo are also parents of students themselves and say the genesis behind their idea was simple.
"We decided we wanted to leverage and improve schooling. We wanted to disrupt the education industry. The Promise of Boom Learning is a self-paced, self-grading tool that saves teachers time and supports the kids,” Mary said.
The couple are Microsoft alumni and say they focused on playing to their strengths: building the technology platform so teachers can create the content.
Teachers can create, trade and even sell their Boom Cards to other educators.
“Some teachers are making more money from Boom cards than they do teaching. It’s amazing to see so many teacher-preneurs,” Eric said.
Social media validates the popularity of Boom Cards as Instagram alone has over 24 thousand posts from teachers and students who used the hashtag #boomcards.
In 2020 Boom Learning decided to offer their platform for free to teachers who were scrambling to adjust to remote learning.
Mary said the time is right to make the platform more accessible again.
“We are doing it again. With Omicron here we wanted to offer free access while schools are short-staffed and many will need to be remote again.”
A 60-day free trial offer is available at Boom Learning's website.