EDTECH NEWS ARCHIVE - November 26, 2018
November 24, 2018
There are currently more refugees, migrants, and displaced people than the world has seen since the fallout of World War II. Migrants face uncountable challenges. Securing proper education—especially for young people—would be somewhere near the top of the list. The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) proposes an incredibly ambitious response: “Leave no one behind.” Those words begin their latest Global Education Monitoring Report 2019.
As the authors state in their Executive Summary, “Migration and displacement interact with education in many ways.” In some countries, like Canada, migrants are encouraged to attend public school alongside their non-migrant peers. Elsewhere, migrants are educated separately from learners who were born there. Many cases lie somewhere in between.
November 24, 2018
Bengaluru-based online tutoring startup Vedantu has raised $11 Mn in a Series B funding round led by philanthropic investment firm Omidyar Network, with participation from existing investor venture capital firm Accel Partners.
Vedantu plans to use the funding for further technology development to create a more personalised LIVE learning experience for students and to develop its Student App.
November 23, 2018
As technology affects every one of our industries and our daily lives, the education sector has not been an exception. Education Technology, or EdTech as it is also known, is a term that refers to the deployment of technology in order to impart education. For 15 years now, entrepreneurs have been developing major, technology-based solutions to problems in the education industry. In the coming decades, we are sure to see innumerable attempts at realizing the potential of EdTech. Anyone who is interested in being one of those entrepreneurs would do well to remember the following points…
November 22, 2018
Around this time of the school year, it’s not uncommon to see sleep-deprived students slumped over library desks studying late hours in preparation for final exams.
As wellness and anti-stress campaigns become more popular on college campuses, some institutions are responding by giving students a more comfortable place to catch some z’s: in space age-looking sleep pods.
November 22, 2018
Here’s an idea for revolutionizing a college campus: run a zipline from one prominent building to another. That would help keep pathways less crowded and could be opened to the public on weekends to generate new revenue.
That was one of about 24,000 suggestions sent in last week during a two-day online discussion asking students, faculty, staff, alumni and anyone else to make suggestions for what Long Beach State University should look like in the year 2030.
November 22, 2018
December’s largest edtech event used to be New York City’s EdTech Week hosted by StartEd. With New York’s EdTech Week now scheduled for June, there is a new destination for edtech founders, researchers, and investors in December. While it may be dark most of the day and extremely cold, the hottest place to be in December is now Helsinki, Finland where the annual edtech event, XcitED, is scheduled to take place. This year’s event take place on December 4.
November 20, 2018
FAST FACTS
Solution: ready-to-run K-12 lessons delivered through an interactive learning platform
Founders: Guido Kovalskys, Emiliano Abramzon, Felipe Sommer
Past Honors: Inc 500 (#297), The EdTech Awards Best Content Provider Solution 2018
Location: Aventura, FL USA
Investors: Insight Venture Partners, Reach Capital, Krillion Ventures, Storm Ventures, Stanford University StartX, GSV Acceleration, Knight Foundation, AGP Miami.
Notable numbers: 6,500 ready-to-run lessons, 500 VR accessible lessons; 3 out of 5 U.S. school districts use Nearpod
User-leader nickname: “PioNears”
Employees: 50+
November 20, 2018
To enter into the EdTech Landscape, every entrepreneur takes hold of some new goals other than the prior ones. Indeed, being an entrepreneur, stepping into the EdTech Industry isn’t easy. There come across many stages in the way where prospects of the education sector, customers’ selection, and marketplace transform and grant the learning opportunities for Entrepreneurs for the future. Here are a few aspects that make EdTech, the next Big Sector of Business & Education—
November 20, 2018
Associated Press
BEIJING--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 20, 2018--At the Shanghai International Children’s Book Fair, VIPKid, one of the world’s largest edtech companies, and Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education, and media company, announced a strategic partnership which will allow thousands of Scholastic titles to be accessible to VIPKid’s learners in China. The stories from Scholastic will be added to VIPKid’s growing library collection and used to support the edtech company’s proprietary curriculum.
IN EDTECH NEWS - November 19, 2018
November 19, 2018
CAPITAL EDUCATION GROUP, a provider of schools and programs tailored to learners with autism and specialized learning needs, has been acquired by Catapult Learning. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Originally founded in 1976, Catapult offers instructional and special-education programs, along with family support and professional development services. More details in the press release.
November 19, 2018
Students have always looked for ways to access tutoring and course materials from peers, whether that’s through an academic center on campus or a Facebook group around a particular course.
A handful of tutoring startups have tried to smoothen out the process for students looking for extra support. One of those companies, Knack, today announced it has raised $1.5 million in seed funding to go beyond helping students study or earn extra cash—by helping the tutors get hired full-time.
November 14, 2018
Beijing—China is a different world when it comes to education and tech. Teachers are revered, most families spend about a third of their income on their children’s education, and most students spend at least an hour a day on some kind of online learning.
To try to better understand this dynamic and fast-changing environment, thousands of entrepreneurs and education leaders from 34 countries gathered here this week for the Global Education Technology Summit.
November 14, 2018
EDUCATIVE, a Seattle-based online learning tool for software developers, has raised $2.3 million in a seed funding round from SK Ventures, Trilogy Equity Partners and other angel investors.
Launched in March 2016, Educative offers courses on topics ranging from JavaScript to Amazon Web Services to how to interview for coding positions. Programmers are also able to create their own courses on the company’s website. Courses on Educative cost anywhere from free to nearly $80.
November 14, 2018
UNICAF, an online higher education provider based in Larnaca, Cyprus and largely serving students in African countries, has raised $28 million in a Series B financing round led by Goldman Sachs. Existing investors including University Ventures, EDEX and CDC Group, the UK Government’s development finance institution, also participated in the round.
November 14, 2018
An experiment to create an inexpensive pathway for students to attend prestigious, four-year universities ended up costing one company a lot of money. As a result, it has pivoted from its original mission and has been sold—at a fraction of the venture capital it raised.
November 14, 2018
An experiment to create an inexpensive pathway for students to attend prestigious, four-year universities ended up costing one company a lot of money. As a result, it has pivoted from its original mission and has been sold—at a fraction of the venture capital it raised.
EDTECH NEWS ARCHIVE - November 12, 2018
November 12, 2018
Edmentum partners with over 330 schools in Dallas-Fort Worth and has 170 employees based in its Richardson, TX co-headquarters alone. With Jamie Candee leading this education technology company, it’s easy to see why it’s making such an impact in Texasand beyond.
November 07, 2018
The mobile internet is now the primary knowledge platform across the world, and that means educators and administrators must evolve their pedagogy along with it, Apple Education executive Jon Landis said this week.
Speaking at the State Education Technology Directors Association 2018 conference, Landis implored a room of state education officials and technology vendors to adopt what he called the new “knowledge economy,” a world of mobile application-based learning.
November 07, 2018
Edtech startup incubators? That’s so 2010.
That’s the conclusion reached by Barbara (“Bobbi”) Kurshan, a long-time veteran of the education technology world.
Kurshan, a Senior Fellow and Innovation Advisor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, has spent decades building edtech enterprises—both for-profit and nonprofit ones. She knows that early stage-stage innovators need support. But she no longer believes that “incubators,” typically 3- to 6-month long programs that aim to launch edtech entrepreneurs, are the most effective way to help these self-starters. Instead, Kurshan is architecting a new type of program—one she hopes will not only help entrepreneurs spark ideas but enable them to grow robust organizations.
November 07, 2018
General Assembly, a bootcamp, will help you master new skills in design, marketing, technology and data—and offer to help you get a job.
Udacity, an online-learning platform, helps you learn the latest in deep learning, machine learning, and web development—and promises it will help you qualify for your dream career.
November 06, 2018
DOUBLE THE UNICORN: Yuanfudao, an online tutoring platform based in Beijing, has raised $250 million from Chinese internet conglomerate Tencent in a deal that values the education company at $2.8 billion. Tencent also participated in for Yuanfandao’s $120 million fundraise last year.
Founded in 2012, Yuanfudao currently offers live tutoring services covering K-12 school subjects and courses for adult learners. According to The Information, the company earned an estimated 700 million yuan (approximately US $101 million) last year.
November 06, 2018
STAY IN SCHOOL: Kinvolved, a New York-based startup that aims to improve student attendance and reduce chronic absenteeism, has raised $1.54 million in a Seed-2 round led by the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation. Other investors include the Twilio.org Impact Fund, New York Ventures, Excell Technology Ventures, GingerBread Capital and u2i.
November 06, 2018
Japan has earned a reputation for exporting successful products and services from different industries. In technology, Sony and Nintendo are among the most internationally recognized brands. In education, the tutoring center Kumon has franchises across the world.
But when it comes to the education technology industry, few people outside the country can name Japanese companies off the top of their heads. And for Norihisa Wada, an education investor who treks the globe in search of promising edtech startups, that lack of exposure is one of the biggest challenges currently facing Japan’s education technology industry.
November 06, 2018
“Lifelong learning” may be the latest buzzword in education. But for Masako Wakamiya, it’s much more than lip service. Three years ago, at the ripe age of 80, Wakamiya decided to learn how to code. Last year, she developed and published an app to the Apple’s app store, making her one of the oldest app developers in the world.
November 06, 2018
The average school will have a difficult time keeping track of student information and data simply because of the sheer volume of students enrolled. Keeping up with old-fashioned grade books, attendance logs, and report cards is a tedious chore that leaves a lot of room for error. Educators and administrators are constantly searching for a better way to manage the influx of data they deal with each week. Student information systems are designed to help make good use of all this data with just a few clicks of the mouse. With the right system, you could revolutionize your school’s ability to keep up with the statistics.
EDTECH NEWS ARCHIVE- November 5, 2018
November 05, 2018
Edtech companies face a fierce amount of competition when it comes to convincing schools to use their products. They must have an airtight sales pitch and a unique product that is actually useful to educators and school districts. In order to become successful in the marketplace, every edtech company needs to be able to answer the same questions. Here are the top five questions that your company should be asking itself as you develop new products.
November 05, 2018
Some of the world’s most beloved inventions—from Cup Noodles and Nintendo to emojis and digital Tamagotchi pets—trace back to savvy Japanese entrepreneurs, who bring fantastical ideas to life, in our pockets and on our store shelves. What happens when that creativity is applied to the classroom?
That overlap between futurism, exuberance and education was on display this week at the Edvation x Summit in Tokyo, where education technology entrepreneurs, educators, students and members of Japan’s Ministry of Education shared their vision of what the future of education might look like in the country that brought us everything from the first camera phone to Hello Kitty.
November 05, 2018
SAN FRANCISCO & TAMPA, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Golden Gate Capital, a leading private equity investment firm, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Vector Solutions (“Vector”) from Providence Equity Partners (“Providence”), a premier global private equity firm. CEO Jeff Gordon and the current management team will continue to lead Vector, which will remain headquartered in Tampa, FL. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
November 02, 2018
With the contentious Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh still weighing on many Americans’ minds and a closely-watched midterm election just days away, now seems as good a time as any for educators to teach their students some civics.
But “now” is always the right time to promote civics education, according to Sandra Day O’Connor. The former Supreme Court Justice—and the first woman to serve on the country’s highest court—devoted herself to advocating for higher quality and higher priority civics education after she retired from the Court in 2006.
November 01, 2018
Students at Dan D. Rogers Elementary School in Texas get an unusual introduction to technology. As they transition from first grade, to second, to third, their classroom devices change, too. One year they’ll use an iPad. The next, they’ll try a Kindle. After that, a Surface device, then a Chromebook.
This isn’t the result of a tech director’s indecision. Personalized learning is core to the model at Rogers Elementary, and Kristen Watkins, director of the personalized learning program at Dallas Independent School District, says that exposing students to multiple devices is an intentional part of the school’s approach.
October 31, 2018
“Lifelong learning” may be the latest buzzword in education. But for Masako Wakamiya, it’s much more than lip service. Three years ago, at the ripe age of 80, Wakamiya decided to learn how to code. Last year, she developed and published an app to the Apple’s app store, making her one of the oldest app developers in the world.