EXPLR Education Streaming Service from Kari Byron and Jenny Buccos Promises to Reinvent TV for Teens and Tweens

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–As families around the world gather to celebrate Mother’s Day 2021, many educators, parents, and students are struggling to adapt to the most significant disruption to education in a generation. Even as classrooms begin to welcome back students, changes to how education is delivered are here to stay.

That’s why I chose to be a backer of the EXPLR Kickstarter campaign (which recently raised it’s funding target after a successful start). EXPLR is a new, ad-free, subscription-based education streaming service from Jenny Buccos and Kari Byron targeted at tweens and teens. You can think of EXPLR as Netflix for high quality educational video content.

When I was a growing up I, like many children, benefited from programming targeted at young children – programming like Sesame Street and The Electric Company; but as I got older there was an educational programming gap. That’s the problem EXPLR is aiming to solve, with the help of a Kickstarter campaign that runs until June 3. Like many Kickstarters, the EXPLR crowdfunding campaign provides backers the first opportunity to experience (or gift) the EXPLR education streaming service experience (along with many cool perks courtesy of Kari Byron and her friends including author Neil Gaiman and science communicator Emily Calandrelli).

“For nearly two decades, I’ve dedicated my life to helping kids better understand their world, and have used my platform to provide young people information and tools they can use to work toward a more peaceful, sustainable, and just world.”

EXPLR creator Jenny Buccos,

The EXPLR Kickstarter campaign, which hit its initial target in 3 hours and has since more than doubled its target. Kickstarter funding will be used to launch EXPLR in June 2021 with 150+ episodes, to create weekly discussion guides, activities and experiments in support of home learning, and to provide captions and Spanish subtitles to make the content accessible. Funding above the initial target will help EXPLR accelerate the creation of lesson plans to accompany the video content.

Kari Byron hosts EXPLR’s flagship series Crash Test World which features Kari (pre-pandemic) traveling the world and bringing the audience with her.

“I’ve learned one thing: if I really enjoy something and I’m really passionate about it, my daughter will be as well! In each Crash Test World story if there is something I’m really really interested in, and want to know more about, I know that my daughter will want to know more too. My daughter is the target audience.”

Kari Byron, host of EXPLR’s Crash Test World

As is the case with most Kickstarter campaigns, the EXPLR Kickstarter campaign features a wide range of backer perks starting at $10. Most perks include one (or more) 6-month subscriptions to EXPLR and several one-of-a-kind perks are offered including a picnic in Golden Gate Park with Kari Byron, signed limited edition prints of Kari’s unique black powder art, and even a behind-the-scenes “Producer” perk (at the time of this writing only one of those remains).

I’ve had a sneak peek at what EXPLR has to offer and it’s going to reinvent educational programming for teens and tweens, filling the programming gap between what’s available for very young children and what’s available as students enter college.

If you’ve read this far, take a moment to explore and consider backing the EXPLR Kickstarter Campaign.