EDTECH NEWS ARCHIVE - July 30, 2018
July 30, 2018
Raising money, Shauntel Garvey admits, is not her favorite activity. It’s usually more fun to be on the other side of the table, reviewing pitches—rather than pitching.
On the bright side, that experience “helps you build empathy for entrepreneurs,” says the co-founder and general partner at Reach Capital, and “what it feels like when investors ignore you, when they lead you on.”
July 27, 2018
The University of Pennsylvania has offered MOOCs on Coursera for several years, but now, it’s giving the online learning platform its first Ivy League degree. The two have partnered to offer a fully-online Master’s degree in Computer and Information Technology.
July 26, 2018
Edtech companies continue to expand around the world and India is no exception. With India’s large population of people under 35 and estimated 500 million Internet users, it is no surprise that edtech is a growth industry. Last week, one of India’s major edtech players, Bangalore-based Unacademy, announced that it had just closed a $21 million Series C funding round. This round, Unacademy gained buy-in from Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, and Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from Blume Ventures. Earlier this year, Unacademy raised $11.5 million in its Series B round of funding, which was also led by Sequoia India.
July 25, 2018
The University of Pennsylvania has offered MOOCs on Coursera for several years, but now, it’s giving the online learning platform its first Ivy League degree. The two have partnered to offer a fully-online Master’s degree in Computer and Information Technology.
July 25, 2018
The cliché is true: education is highly valued in fast-growing Asian countries. The issue is how to provide quality education for the millions who now demand it, in settings from big cities like Bangkok and Hanoi to remote rural areas. While various nations push to improve their school systems, new waves of education technology (EdTech) firms are entering the scene as well—and they’re starting to offer solutions that could transform how learning is done.
July 23, 2018
VILLAGE ENTREPRENEURS: Village Capital’s ongoing social entrepreneurship programs is like a friendlier—and perhaps more impactful—version of cable TV game-show competitions. Twelve startups partake in a four-month program where they participate in workshops and meet with mentors, all while ranking one another and ultimately selecting two of their peers to win $125,000 in seed funding. This year, Educational Testing Service will be contributing to this prize money, alongside VilCap Investments (Village Capital’s affiliated fund).
July 25, 2018
Can a “Netflix”-like subscription model really work for online education platforms? Investors who are fond of analogies and comparisons to consumer technology successes are betting on one New York City-based company to find out.
Skillshare has raised $28 million in a Series C round led by Union Square Ventures. Burda Principal Investments, along with existing investors Amasia and Spero Ventures, also chipped in. Of that amount, $8 million was raised as debt (and the rest was equity funding).
July 25, 2018
What if a fast-food gig could help you complete a bachelor’s or master’s degree?
It’s a quiet trend that’s sweeping some of the country’s major employers. Walmart, Lowe’s, Discover and Lyft are just a few of the companies that have signed on to offer employees education-as-a-benefit, meaning these companies help students pay for—or completely cover—the cost of tuition for education programs.
July 23, 2018
By James Paterson
The consulting firm Jones Lang LaSalle has developed a list of 10 tips for universities, businesses and surrounding communities to develop innovation labs cooperatively. The company reports that in both rural and urban areas such centers can provide a “valuable gateway between university talent and resources and the private sector.” “With thoughtful planning, they bring together students, researchers, administrators, facilities and equipment…to commercialize new technologies and breakthrough ideas emerging from your campus community,” the introduction to the list says.
EDTECH NEWS ARCHIVE - Week of July 23, 2018
July 20, 2018
VICTORIA ANTONELLI
Despite being relatively new to the digital learning landscape, Volute is making a bold entrance.
The Providence-based company’s focus is corporate training however, the team has also launched a variety of learning solutions for business schools, universities and communities. Volute works with universities to improve engagement for online and hybrid programs, focusing initially on executive education to better align themselves for large scale rollouts with fortune companies’ employee training.
July 20, 2018
In July 1998, a merger of CAUSE and Educom created EDUCAUSE, an organization that tasked itself with the mission of advancing higher education “by promoting the intelligent use of information technology,” according to the EDUCAUSE anniversary page.
To celebrate 20 years of empowering university administrators and IT teams to improve institutions’ use of technology, EDUCAUSE asked the higher education IT community to reflect on the most significant moments of the past, the most promising trends of the future and everything in between.
July 18, 2018
When coding bootcamps first arrived on the (predominantly coastal) scene, they pitched themselves as alternatives to the college experience. But a series of closures have raised questions about whether these short-term skills-training programs are can be financially sustainable—or deliver results for students and investors.
July 19, 2018
In this era of budget constraints, school districts want to make sure that they are stretching their dollar by only spending monies on edtech products that give them the most bang for their buck, and have been proven to work. Edtech has been around for over three decades, and school districts are pros at differentiating good products from bad ones. Because of this, edtech companies that are looking to sell to schools must be on their “A” games.
July 18, 2018
Caroline Hill is a firecracker. She keynoted the Blended Learning Conference in Rhode Island and iNACOL in Florida. At both events, she asked educators to challenge their notions of the use of technology in the classrooms and their conversations around equity.
Hill has been a DC educator for years, but she is now embarking on a new venture, creating an accelerator with the goal of scaling equity. She hopes to combine the start-up mentality of the edtech world with social justice issues in a unique way.
July 17, 2018
Public-private partnerships are a growing interest for institutions looking to encourage student exploration into the latest technological innovations but do not have the budget to reach their goals.
While endowments, loans or donations can be a good way to overcome financial obstacles, some universities are partnering with city governments to establish innovative campuses for the technologically curious.
July 17, 2018
Do your school’s students submit their school assignments by uploading PDFs or other files within a learning management system? If so, a new tool from Google is looking to upend that practice—by connecting the LMS directly to Google Drive.
Called Course Kit, the new tool, announced today, lets students upload their work by tapping into their Google Drive account. Instructors can then use Drive and Google Docs to grade assignments and share course materials. As of now it integrates with many learning management systems, specifically, ones that support the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard, such as Blackboard.
EDTECH NEWS ARCHIVE - Week of July 16, 2018
July 16, 2018
So far, there have been fewer home-run funding deals than last year. But for the U.S. edtech industry, that’s no big deal: In the first six months of 2018, 62 companies raised $739 million in venture capital.
This year’s first-half funding total marks a lull from the same period in 2017, which totaled $887 million spread across 58 deals. That number was fueled largely by three gargantuan deals—EverFi ($190 million), Hero K12 ($150 million) and Grammarly ($110 million)—that accounted for more than half of that total. (The full-year tally for 2017 reached $1.2 billion.)
July 16, 2018
Bengaluru-based edtech startup Unacademy has raised $21 Mn in Series C funding from Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, and Nexus Venture Partners. Existing investors such as Blume Ventures also participated in this round. Unacademy is an online learning platform that empowers educators to create courses on various subjects.
July 16, 2018
Schools need to look at recent studies that suggest ways to gain the best return on investment for their technology choices, as the cost of implementation of ineffective ed tech can be as high as $220 per student, according to Ed Tech: Focus on K-12.
July 16, 2018
With the growing use of educational applications and online classroom software, student deviceshave become a ubiquitous tool for learning.
Online courses are becoming a popular supplement to — and in some cases a replacement for — traditional on-campus education.
With nearly half of undergraduate online students and 70 percent of graduate online studentsworking full time, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, it is not surprising that they’d prefer to take their education on-the-go.
July 16, 2018
Educational tech startup Pi-Top has landed $16 million for expansion, including at its U.S. headquarters in Austin.
The lead investors in the deal were Hambro Perks and Committed Capital. The investment brings Pi-Top’s total funding to $22.5 million to date.
Pi-Top was co-founded three years ago by entrepreneur Jesse Lozano with the goal of making coding and experimenting with electronics fun for kids and affordable for schools.