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
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
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
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
One of the most important roles that technology can play in transforming education revolves around data. Whether that’s by implementing APIs to make student data more transportable (a la Clever and LearnSprout) or creating integrated, cloud-based analytics platforms that give educators more insight into student performance through realtime metrics, finding better ways to make data more accessible… → Read More
[Note: This is a weekly series. If your company is doing something amazing to help a charitable cause or doing some good in your community, please reach out.] Sometimes, the right people are in the right place at the right time. For DonorsChoose.org, all of this came true. In 2003, Oprah Winfrey mentioned the non-profit on her show, calling it a “revolutionary charity”, and her viewers… → Read More
Julian Miller taught high school for four years, and like many teachers, he cared about his students’ learning outcomes — about getting them across the finish line. Unfortunately, current educational software and systems don’t make that easy. Teachers that want to follow student progress and understand which tools or methods are working and why are routinely forced to log into six to eight… → Read More
As the influence of technology grows in education, many have started to predict the coming obsolescence of classroom fixtures like textbooks, chalkboards, standardized testing — and even teachers. While technology will no doubt transform and replace some familiar pieces of education (for the better), the ideal outcome is not one in which teachers are replaced or marginalized, but one that… → Read More
In what is the most-watched TED Talk to date, Sir Ken Robinson makes a convincing case for why the educational system in the U.S. needs to be torn down and rebuilt: It stifles creativity. Robinson is not alone in his belief that the current system revolves around inflexible curricula and churning out standardized test-taking drones, rather than free-thinking individuals. It’s for this reason that… → Read More
Online video education is a hot space right now, thanks to the likes of Khan Academy, Coursera, Udacity, StraighterLine, Lynda.com, CreativeLIVE (and many more), which are collectively on a mission to democratize education and bring affordable, online learning tools and courses to a global audience.
While the rising tide of video-based learning has lifted all boats, it’s also led to some… → Read More
Thanks to the rise of in-classroom technology, the focus in education tends to be on student engagement and how to improve learning. It becomes easy to forget the importance of great teachers. Startups, entrepreneurs, businesses (and the rest) need to remember that technology doesn’t have to put teachers in jeopardy; it can help them lead the education evolution, even if their traditional role in… → Read More
If you happened to pass through AOL’s offices in Palo Alto last November or December, you might have had your first run-in with the elusive creature “founder squatter.” Say what? Following in the grand boot-strapping, couch-surfing tradition, last winter, Eric Simons spent two months squatting at AOL’s office, sleeping on couches and pilfering Ramen noodles and other snacks left out for employees. → Read More
With social networking having permeated the way we look for jobs, share photos and music, and discover news, a startup named Lore is on a mission to do the same for higher education, and potentially re-shape the way teachers and students communicate. Formerly known as CourseKit, the Thiel and Founder’s Fund-backed startup is doing that with a platform that is part Facebook and part Blackboard … → Read More
MediaCore, a company which launched a year ago with the mission of allowing any business to roll out its own private YouTube, is refocusing its efforts on the education market, and has raised an additional $1 million in funding to achieve those goals. The funding, which comes from private angel investors in the U.S. and U.K. including Alex Khein and Pierre Andurand, brings the startup’s total… → Read More
On the whole, teacher compensation in the U.S. is embarrassing. To pick on marketers, some might see the fact that the average marketing manager makes twice the average salary of just about every type of teacher as just a wee bit backwards.
Luckily, there are a number of startups that are starting to change that, thanks to the Web and the growing popularity of open, online educational… → Read More
Edmodo is one of the startups whose name pops up a lot when you talk about “edtech.” Founded in 2007, the company is almost old school, yet, in spite of the influx of new education-focused startups, Edmodo continues to press forward.
Today, Edmodo is announcing that it has officially crossed 7 million users and its service is now being used in over 80,000 schools. Districts across the U.S. are… → Read More
Y Combinator and Start Fund-backed startup SendHub, which offers a simple SMS solution for businesses, is killing it…and it never “officially” launched. Instead, the company soft-launched a couple of months ago with zero fanfare, and already has several hundred customers, 40% of which are active monthly users, sending some 30,000 SMS text messages per month.
Although generating revenue… → Read More
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