Knewton teams up with Macmillan to bring adaptive learning beyond K-12 and higher ed
photo: Thinkstock
Knewton, a New York-based adaptive learning startup, has partnered with education publisher Macmillan. Read more »
New tool uses big data to predict student performance
A new analytics engine from education technology company Desire2Learn uses big data to predict and improve student performance in higher education. Read more »
Zynga and NewSchools Venture Fund create accelerator for educational gaming startups
Zynga is partnering with NewSchools Venture Fund to launch an accelerator program for educational gaming startups. Read more »
With new exchange, TareasPlus takes on Khan Academy in Latin America and beyond
TareasPlus, a Spanish-language educational site for students in Latin America, is launching a new marketplace of video content and eyeing more global expansion. Read more »
Pioneering ed tech accelerator ImagineK12 ups startup funding to $100k each
Ed tech startup accelerator Imagine K-12 has created a new Start Fund, enabling it to increase the amount of funding given to each startup from $20,000 to $100,000. Read more »
Q&A: How Kaplan’s TechStars ed tech accelerator plans to get to the head of the class
As Kaplan’s new TechStars-powered ed tech accelerator recruits its first class, Don Burton, the program’s new managing director, talks about the developing industry and opportunities ahead. Read more »
Steve Case-backed Echo360 buys ThinkBinder to bring more social learning to higher ed
Echo360, a education technology company supported by the Revolution Growth Fund, has acquired social learning startup ThinkBinder. Read more »
NovoEd, another Stanford MOOC startup, opens small-group learning services to public
photo: mtkang
Launched at Stanford University, NovoEd wants to build on the massive open online course (MOOC) phenomenon with a startup that puts collaboration at the center of the online learning experience. Read more »
Udemy adds revenue stream with private online learning sites for companies
Online learning site Udemy is launching a corporate training option that enables companies to create private online learning sites for their employees. Read more »
From animated animals to algorithmic art: Tynker wants to turn kids into creative coders
Tynker offers a drag-and-drop approach to coding, in which kids build projects by connecting colorful, digital blocks in a Lego-like way. Read more »
Ed tech teams compete for modest prizes from Gates Foundation, Facebook
The Gates Foundation and Facebook pick the winners of their HackEd 2.0 hackathon. Read more »
With $7M, learn-to-code startup Treehouse eyes high school market
photo: spaxiax
Treehouse, a Portland, Ore.-based startup that offers online coding lessons, has raised $7 million in new Series B funding. Read more »
Exclusive: Udemy lands on mobile so students can learn on the go
San Francisco-based online learning startup Udemy has launched a new mobile app to help students enroll in and take courses from their phones. Read more »
Digital learning startup Benchprep expands into video-based software training courses
Benchprep, a digital learning startup based in Chicago, is rolling out video-based software training courses targeting college and high school students, not adults looking for professional development. Read more »
Noodle, backed by founder of Princeton Review, buys social education startup Lore
Noodle, a company backed by Princeton Review founder John Katzman, has snapped up Lore, a small New York startup that provides a learning management system. Read more »
How Unbound Concepts crunches readability, or how big data could help improve literacy
Unbound Concepts, a startup launched in Washington, DC, is applying machine learning and natural language processing to help teachers identify the most appropriate books for their students. Read more »
The “Linux” of online learning? edX takes big step toward open source goal
Moving closer toward its vision of being an open-sourced learning platform, edX on Thursday released its XBlock SDK, the underlying architecture supporting edX course content. Read more »
Online education could get big boost from Calif. bill backing web classes for credit
photo: ra2studio
A new bill proposed by a state senator in California would create a new system that would allow public universities across the state to accept college credit for online courses. Read more »
A wish list for education technology
At the SXSWedu ed tech conference this week, I got an earful on plenty of new technologies aiming to remake education. But here are a few themes I still hope to hear more about. Read more »
Bill Gates: education needs much more than just 1 percent of R&D spending
Given advancements in computing, the growing penetration of technology and the rise of cloud storage, Bill Gates said now is a “special time” in education technology. But despite climbing investments, the sector still needs more. Read more »
The future of digital learning? News Corp.’s Amplify debuts its tablet for K-12 classrooms
Amplify, the education division at News Corp., on Wednesday will reveal its new education tablet that comes optimized for the K-12 classroom and fully loaded with learning and instructional tools. Read more »
Social network for education Edmodo buys Root-1 to expand its app market for teachers
Edmodo, a San Mateo-based startup that provides a social network for teachers and students, has purchased education app maker Root-1. Read more »
What ed tech can learn from health care when it comes to data access
Amid parent concern over new efforts to harness student data, an education technologist talks about how public discussion over health data could positively influence current debates over the use of student data. Read more »
Digital portfolio startup Pathbrite scores $4M more to help students showcase learning
Digital portfolio startup Pathbrite, which lets students store and display their academic achievements, has raised an additional $4 million from testing giant ACT, Rethink Education and other angels. Read more »
Data, makers and MOOCs: 6 ed tech trends to watch at SXSWedu
SXSWedu, an annual conference on all things ed tech, kicks off Monday. From the growing role of data to debates on online education to DIY approaches to education, here’s a look at what’s ahead. Read more »
If the Web is your textbook, Scrible offers new ways to mark it up
Web annotation startup Scrible launches student edition with academic features for online research and digital reading assignments. Read more »
With $1M, Thiel-backed Thinkful builds a one-on-one tutoring business atop its online ed peers
photo: ra2studio
Thinkful, an online education startup co-founded by a Thiel Fellow, has raised $1 million from a group of investors including Peter Thiel’s FF Angel, RRE Ventures and Quotidian Ventures. Read more »
How former Mozilla VP Damon Sicore plans to make Edmodo into an ‘engineering brand’
Barely two weeks on the job, Damon Sicore, ed tech startup Edmodo’s new VP of engineering, talks about the company’s technological priorities and challenges and how he plans to create an engineering culture. Read more »
Coursera expands foreign-language classes with help of new international partners
Online learning startup Coursera said that it has added 29 new school partners, about half of which are international. With the new partners, Coursera will now offer courses in French, Spanish, Chinese, and Italian. Read more »
Ed tech accelerators go corporate: Pearson and Kaplan launch startup programs
This week, Kaplan and Pearson both announced their own accelerators for ed tech startups. Their announcements comes on the heels of launches by two other ed tech accelerators. Read more »
More growing pains for Coursera: in another slip-up, professor departs mid-course
Over the weekend, a professor on Coursera announced that he would no longer be teaching a course that was only in its fifth of ten weeks, marking the second time in a month that a Coursera class has hit a stumbling block. Read more »
With $11M, Quad Learning links community colleges and top universities for cheaper degrees
Washington, D.C.-based Quad Learning has raised $11 million to provide an online platform and program intended to help community college students more successfully transfer to four-year colleges to complete a bachelor’s degree. Read more »
Kno wants to help publishers turn static files into interactive content
Digital textbook startup Kno has released Advance, a new platform that it says can help publishers turn flat files into interactive ebooks “in minutes.” Read more at paidContent »
A Twitter chat: How technology in schools can help bridge the skills gap
In a Twitter chat Thursday, educators and technologists debated how emerging technologies and new models for education could help students better prepare for college and careers. Here’s a look at the conversation. Read more »
NYC’s new ed tech accelerator Socratic Labs debuts its first class
After a year of building up its network and creating its curriculum, ed tech accelerator Socratic Labs this week debuted its first cohort of startups. Read more »
Former Zynga exec ‘Lo’ Toney lands at Khosla-backed learn-to-code startup LearnStreet as CEO
Laurence ‘Lo’ Toney has been named the new CEO of LearnStreet, a learn-to-code startup supported by Khosla Ventures. Previously, Toney was a general manager at Zynga, overseeing Poker and mobile publishing. Read more »
Gates Foundation-backed InBloom frees up data to personalize k-12 education
photo: Mopic
Supported with $100 million from the Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation and others, InBloom launches out of the Shared Learning Collaborative to help educators aggregate education data to personalize student learning. Read more »
East coast ed tech innovation ramps up with new accelerators in New York and Boston
For the past few years, Palo Alto-based ImagineK12 has run a startup accelerator exclusively for education technology entrepreneurs. But Socratic Labs and LearnLaunchX are bringing similar models east. Read more »
Who were the top ed tech acquirers in 2012?
photo: Supri Suharjoto
A report out Wednesday from M&A database CB Insights gives a breakdown of the 2,277 tech acquisitions it tracked last year, but the company did a deeper dive into education to give a snapshot of activity. Read more »
Exclusive: Desire2Learn buys Bill Gates-backed ‘virtual guidance counselor’ Degree Compass
Canadian ed tech company Desire2Learn has acquired Degree Compass, a course recommendation engine developed at Austin Peay State University with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Read more »
