With a group of high school classmates in 2009, social entrepreneur Simon Köhl built a Wikipedia-inspired collaborative learning platform: Serlo. It’s now used by over a million students in Germany every month, and in late 2022, was awarded federal funding to integrate into Germany’s national digital learning infrastructure. Ashoka’s Sascha Haselmayer caught up with Köhl in Berlin to learn more about why students love Serlo and what’s ahead.
Sascha Haselmayer: Simon, your digital platform is becoming an official part of the education system in Germany. Tell us why you created it.
Simon Köhl: Personally, I was only able to keep up in school because my parents paid