One interesting element of Google I/O this year were the sensors laid out everywhere around Moscone tracking environmental data throughout the event. Those types of sensors are now all around us, including in our phones and in various smart home devices, and now a new Kickstarter project from ManyLabs wants to help kids get familiar with them very early on. → Read More
Google I/O, the company’s sixth annual developer conference, got officially underway in San Francisco on Wednesday, and it was an eventful day. It took the company every minute of its epic three-hour keynote to unfurl a laundry list of announcements and updates, seemingly across every product category in its arsenal — from Android, Chrome and Search to Maps, Google+ and Hangouts — each with a… → Read More
If there was any question as to Sebastian Thrun and Udacity’s resolve to re-imagine higher education in a more affordable, accessible virtual classroom — or their ability to actually make any real headway among the Ivory Towers of academia — we should probably just go ahead and put that to bed. This morning, Udacity continues to push forward with its plans to bring higher education online — and… → Read More
Desire2Learn is a 10-plus year old Canadian company that makes learning software — a learning management system to be precise — and here’s why, in spite of that description, it shouldn’t bore you to sleep. In a space that’s traditionally been controlled by bigs like Blackboard and Moodle, Desire2Learn has quietly managed to carve out its own growing share of the market. → Read More
Top Hat Monocle, the Toronto-based provider of mobile-based classroom response systems, has decided to get Lasik and has dropped the ‘monocle’ from its name and logo. Top Hat, as the company will now be known, is celebrating this move with the launch of a redesigned corporate site at TopHat.com and, more importantly, it also switching to a freemium model where classes with fewer than 30… → Read More
With the growing demand for video-based online education, Curious.com is joining the crowd today with a marketplace that aims help students and teachers connect around a range of subjects, from pipe soldering and salsa dancing to jewelry making and knife sharpening. → Read More
While some institutions of higher learning have grown skeptical of the MOOC phenomenon spreading through its ranks (and the startups responsible), you have to give Coursera credit for keeping its foot on the gas. In less than six months, the MOOC startup has taken meaningful steps towards monetization and toward becoming a legitimate MOOC university, adding career services, verified certificates… → Read More
The resume is going the way of the dinosaur. In the not-so-distant future, it’s easy to foresee a time when a one-sheet becomes a interactive, multimedia portfolio of your skills and greatest hits. And when we say the “not-so-distant future,” really, it’s already happening. LinkedIn brought the resume online, and, today, startups have begun to “vertical-ize” the online CV, helping to turn it into… → Read More
The steady rise of tuition rates, class sizes and student debt combined with the decline in the number of teaching assistants, courses and programs has pushed education into the spotlight over the past year. Many schools have begun to turn to technology for answers, and higher ed institutions are now moving online at a breakneck pace to meet changing student behavior. → Read More
College recruiting is becoming increasingly competitive. Companies have begun to realize that top graduates not only bring a lot of talent and energy to the table, but they also tend to cost less than more experienced prospects. But in order to successfully woo those fortunate enough to have their pick, businesses need to begin the recruiting process earlier. If they’re going to stand a chance… → Read More
Children are known for how much they love to play make-believe, and StoryKid, an app introduced today during the Disrupt Hackathon in New York, takes this and gives it a new twist by offering a series of pictures as visual cues for a child to tell a story based around them. StoryKid is aimed at children aged 2 to 5 who are already talking but may either be too young or are just starting to write. → Read More
Last July, a group of veteran executives from eToys, eBay, Sesame Street, Discovery and Disney unveiled their ambitious plan to create a souped-up Khan Academy for kids. But rather than a straightforward port, the learning platform, called Wonderville, aimed to expand on Khan’s approach to the “flipped classroom” by aggregating educational content from a variety of third-party sources. → Read More
Matygo emerged out of Vancouver’s GrowLab accelerator in late 2011 to take advantage of the growing popularity of the “flipped classroom” philosophy in education, which, as Knewton describes it, seeks to invert traditional methods of teaching by delivering instruction online (through videos, etc.) outside of class, while moving homework into the classroom. Khan Academy is one of many examples of… → Read More
TinyTap, a Tel Aviv-based platform that allows children to create their own mobile games and “playable” books, is now expanding from the iPad to the iPhone, as it also launches its own social marketplace for apps. Here, users can sell their TinyTap creations to others, or just share them for free. The move comes roughly six months after the company announced its half a million dollar seed round… → Read More
According to Y Combinator’s estimates, today, there are more than 100 startup accelerators in the U.S., which is almost awe-inspiring considering that there were only four as recently as 2007. While the number of accelerators and incubators continues to rise, popping up in nearly every vertical, Education has been slower to get the memo. → Read More
Educational publishing giant, Pearson, has lately been making a push to snatch up (and incubate) promising young EdTech startups and concepts to help it compete in an increasingly tech-influenced educational landscape. Last May, Pearson acquired Certiport, the maker and marketer of IT and digital literacy products, for $140 million, followed by the acquisition of online learning services provider… → Read More
Seelio, an Ann Arbor-based startup that allows students to set up an online portfolio to showcase their work in advance of having real-world job experience, has raised $900,000 in seed funding. The company had first targeted students with a .edu email address when it launched last summer, but is now expanding its platform in order to sell directly to educational institutions through a new product… → Read More
It’s a tough job market out there for college job applicants, and students are looking for any way that can help them stand out from the crowd. While an increasing number of students look to apply to jobs online, the information that might give students at improving their candidacy and landing a job isn’t something they want to share publicly, it’s confidential. As a result, most of this… → Read More
What is it with Stanford professors and Massive Open Online Courses (a.k.a. MOOCs)? For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, two of the three most popular MOOCs — Udacity and Coursera — were both founded by Stanford professors. Then there’s Class2Go, an open-source MOOC platform created by a team of Stanford engineers and professors, which recently “merged” with edX (the third member… → Read More
In an effort to improve the quality of K-12 public education, schools across the country have begun to adopt the Common Core State Standards, which are designed to align the diversity of state curricula under one consistent, standardized guidebook of what students are expected to learn — and teachers are expected to teach. Formally adopted by 46 states, which will be making the transition over… → Read More
Appolicious, the app search and discovery portal which helps users find new mobile applications for iPhone, iPad, and Android, is today launching a new service today aimed at parents, teachers and others in search of the best educational apps for children: appoLearning. This new resource is Appolicious’ attempt solving the inherent problems with app search today, starting with a focus on apps… → Read More
With the passage of the JOBS Act, the Crowdfunding Era began and since then these fund-raising platforms have been sprouting in every vertical — even education. Just two weeks ago, we announced the launch of AlumniFunder, which “gives alumni a platform by which they can invest in innovative projects created by students at their alma mater.” Today, we have another entry into the… → Read More
Props are owed to companies like Blackboard and Moodle for being early movers in the educational software space, particularly in helping catalyze innovation in learning management systems (LMS). The problem is, of course, they got their start over a decade ago, and haven’t always elicited raving reviews from students and schools. → Read More
Mountain View-based startup Tynker is launching a new platform aimed at helping kids of all ages learn to program. Unlike traditional development environments, this introductory step into the world of programming is more about teaching kids how to think like a programmer, than it is about writing out long lines of code The company has been piloting its curriculum in around 40+ elementary and… → Read More
If you’re not familiar with hiring platform, HireArt, they’re the startup that inspired this memorable headline, courtesy of my colleague Sarah Perez. Yes, the Y Combinator-incubated startup launched in March last year to provide a new solution to an age-old problem experienced by every employer during the hiring process: Resumes are bullshit. → Read More
Editor’s note: Derek Andersen is the founder of Startup Grind, a 40-city community bringing the global startup world together while educating, inspiring, and connecting entrepreneurs. There are few people whose impact on entrepreneurs and business in general you hear about as frequently as Clayton Christensen. Clay’s body of work includes co-founding a publicly traded company, being… → Read More
When it comes to office supplies, companies like Office Depot, OfficeMax and Staples have long owned the majority of mind-share and brand recognition in the market. But, with the recession, the rise of eCommerce and the growing ubiquity of devices like the iPad, business has been in steady decline for many big-box chains, forcing them to make big cuts to brick-and-mortar operations. → Read More
As new models of digital learning sweep across higher education, colleges and universities across the globe are scrambling to get on board and make their course catalogs available to a wider audience via the Web. Of these new models, few have seen more attention than massive open online courses (a.k.a. “MOOCs”), which, starting with Khan Academy, promise to offer access to quality, affordable… → Read More
Since emerging on the scene in early 2012, the Boston-based Boundless has been on a mission to give students of all ages a free, open-source digital alternative to the pricey world of hard-copy textbooks. But when you try to rock the boat, the powers-that-be will likely have something to say about it — especially when thousands of beta testers across 2,000 universities are using free, open… → Read More
AlumniFunder launched in beta this week with a simple mission: Help create a deeper relationship between current students and alumni, while supporting collegiate entrepreneurship and creativity. To do that, AlumniFunder wants to give alumni a platform by which they can invest in innovative projects created by students at their alma mater. Whether it be for a new science lab, natural language… → Read More
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