With a wall-sized video projector and PowerPoint clicker at his disposal, Elijah Mayfield instead chose a letter from a New York City school teacher in the Bronx to help introduce his company, LightSide Labs, to the audience Wednesday at Alpha Lab’s Demo Day and Technology Preview.

The typed note sent last month after the teacher’s students received laptops through a grant award discussed the challenge of giving 25 children the personal attention required to help them excel as writers. The teacher contacted LightSide to see if the company’s digital writing assessment platform could help to transform students just learning to operate computers into budding linguists.

Read more in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.