In four small schools scattered across San Francisco, a data experiment is under way. That is where AltSchool is testing how technology can help teachers maximize their students’ learning.
Founded two years ago by Max Ventilla, a data expert and former head of personalization at Google, AltSchool runs schools filled with data-gathering technology.
Funding to education-technology companies is booming. Financing grew from $944M in 2013 to $1.6B in 2014, a 71% increase. In the last four quarters, including Q2’15, ed tech startups attracted $2.3B, a jump of 96% compared to the previous four quarters.
Meanwhile, deal flow ticked down in 2014 compared to the previous year. There were 217 deals in 2014, down from 223 in 2013.
The confluence of cost and funding pressures, technology-enabled learning innovations and new paradigms of quality and teaching will continue to force higher education institutions to redefine their value. However, higher education institutions are unwilling to embrace new definitions of value and quality "as valid, even when they can see that customers increasingly prefer the new value offerings," notes a report from TIAA-CREF Institute.
I co-founded PrepMe in 2001. We were one of the first education companies online and the first purely online, personalized platform. We were acquired in 2011 by Providence Equity-backed Ascend Learning. In the last month, I’ve had 3 VC firms bring me in to chat with their partnership about education and 6 independent entrepreneurs reach out to me about their new education startup. This is a summary of what I tell them in person.
Ed-tech giant Blackboard has acquired MyEdu to help students get the most out of their college experience, and maybe even (dare to dream), land a job after graduation.
“Completion rates aren’t as high as they could – or should – be,” Blackboard’s CEO Jay Bhatt told VentureBeat. “Nearly half of all students who earn degrees are either unemployed or underemployed once they graduate. It is clear that we need stronger connections between schools, students and the workforce. Students need to be better equipped to graduate on time and secure a job.”
Desde el ayuntamiento de San Sebastián, una nueva propuesta para fomentar el reciclaje ¡Isletas!
"El departamento de Infraestructuras y Servicios Urbanos del Ayuntamiento de San Sebastián instalará 16 isletas de contenedores para recoger de manera selectiva los residuos de diez plazas y parques de la ciudad, nueve de las cuales ya están colocadas."
Eve is the single information point on European education, training, culture and youth projects. It showcases thousand of projects and their results, from the Culture, Youth and Lifelong Learning Programmes (Erasmus, Leonardo Da Vinci, Comenius, Grundtvig, …). Eve is a tool for the dissemination and exploitation of results of projects supported by programmes managed by the European Commission. Through Eve you can access a wide range of learning materials, handbooks, websites, policy papers, photos … and much more! Eve has something for everyone!
Quizá a muchos os sea familiar la iniciativa OpenCourseWare, popularizada por el MIT en 2002, a través de la cual diversas universidades publican materiales lectivos de diversas temáticas de manera abierta y gratuita. Pues bien, este año, se ha popularizado otra iniciativa innovadora relacionada con el mundo educativo, se trata de los Cursos Online Masivos y Abiertos (COMA o MOOC, en inglés). Un curso online masivo y abierto se trata de un tipo de curso online orientado a la participación masiva y con acceso abierto a través de la Web.
