Take a gander at Startl. From their own site:
To realize the promise of learner-centered education, we must create pathways by which sound, innovative, technology-based products and services can evolve, mature and get to market at lower costs. Startl™ is a new social enterprise dedicated to supporting the innovation of effective, affordable, and accessible learning products. Startl’s focus is creating the conditions for success that let innovators create and capitalize products that truly help learners learn.
They are having their first Design Boost:
Design Boost is a five day bootcamp for prototyping digital learning products.
We’re looking for promising young innovators, to bring learning into the 21st century, to create digital products that excite and engage kids in meaningful learning. In partnership with IDEO, Startl is offering a multi-day immersion for designers and creators, hackers and coders, builders and entrepreneurs.
Boost isn’t about sitting around dreaming up pie-in-the-sky ideas. Its an intense whirlwind of activity, with lots of hands-on, real-world involvement in the design and product development process. You’ll be taking the seed of an idea and seeing whether you can grow it into an effective and marketable learning product. Along the way, you’ll be steeped in how to create user-centered, learning-rich and market-smart designs and learn the tricks that seasoned entrepreneurs use to generate new products quickly and cheaply. But you won’t be doing this on your own. You’ll be surrounded by inspiring peers and collaborating with them to amp up your creativity and rigor.
Startl’s first series of Design Boost will focus on the design of mobile applications for learning, targeting these primary platforms: Android, iPhone, Symbian and BlackBerry. We’re making this the focus because there’s a serious lack of high-quality mobile applications for learning and education on the market, so there’s a massive opportunity to make a difference and make your mark.
Here is a link to the Design Boost website: http://startl.org/programs-2/design-boost/
Gordon Carlson is a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is pursuing a PhD in New Media Communication. His work focuses on the role of technology in communication. Gordon's dissertation work looks at improving edutainment across various media. 