Edtech Insiders

Send us a textMärt Lume is the co-founder of Futuclass, a company building curriculum-aligned Virtual Reality games to enrich natural science education for secondary school students.With a 15-year journey across Vancouver, Denver, Lviv, Berlin, and Tallinn, Märt has designed gaming, enterprise, and educational software. Notably, in Vancouver he was the first employee of Glitch game, which eventually became known as Slack.A pivotal moment in 2017 introduced him to VR, sparking the realization that immersive technologies, coupled with learning via layered game mechanics, hold the key to transformative human learning experiences. This revelation fueled the inception of Futuclass, which now elevates chemistry and physics classes in over 10% of Estonian schools, earning praise from students and educators alike.Drawing wisdom from years of close collaboration with schools, Futuclass has expanded its offerings into the comprehensive Futuclass School Kit. This turnkey solution equips schools with hardware, software, teacher onboarding, mentoring, and best practices, igniting students with excitement for learning through VR. Futuclass School Kit is also launching partner apps, seamlessly integrating VR lessons into subjects like art, design, social studies, music, and physical education.Märt's recognition includes the "Friend of Education 2022" title at Estonia's esteemed Teacher's Gala, acknowledging his contributions to numerous EdTech startups and initiatives. He is also an advisor and angel investor to 20+ companies at the moment, with a focus on EdTech and XR.Recommended Resources:The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything by Matthew Ball“We Met in Virtual Reality” documentaryEdtech EstoniaVR Chat

Send us a textNikil Ragav is the CEO and founder of inventXYZ.Nikil studied Electrical Engineering & Business at Penn/Wharton and interned at Intel, Google, Microsoft before starting inventXYZ. In college, he ran inventathons for middle and high school students to learn to build and code real products. He worked with schools in rural PA then remotely across the US to teach CS and electronics.For his work, Nikil was awarded Penn’s President’s Innovation Prize to start inventXYZ. NFL player Travis Kelce tweeted he was sponsoring a STEM lab for underserved kids in Kansas City. Nikil tweeted at him, and eventually inventXYZ moved to KC to help design and run the STEM lab.Now, inventXYZ makes it painless for middle and high schools across the country to teach 100% of their students Computer Science and AI even if they don’t have a dedicated teacher.Nikil has published a paper on teaching AI in K12 w/ Johns Hopkins researchers: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/nai/ti/pre-prints/content-22.4nwRecommended Resources:inventXYZ: Preparing Students for the Future of Workinventxyz.comEvaluation of Evidence-Based Practices inOnline Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies by US DOEBite-sized Way to Understand Learning Science

Send us a textIn this episode of Week in Edtech, Ben and Alex discuss:1. Big Tech:Meta launches “Seamless” LLM for speech-to-speech translation.  Multi-modal innovationMeta’s Instagram also made news in all the wrong ways2. Higher Ed:StraighterLine Partners with Acadeum to Offer College Course Sharing3. In Other News...U.S. Department of Education Holds Off On New Rules for Third-Party Servicers… For NowCurriculum Associates Acquires SoapBox LabsParentSquare Acquires Remind2U finances unveiled by Phil Hill, doesn't look goodPortland Teachers Strike Ends after a month and nobody is happyCongress (Tom Cotton) pushing a ban on cell phones in schoolSpecial Guests:Sara Mauskopf from Winnie discuss Early Childhood EducationCandice Faktor from Disco discuss Community Powered Learning

Send us a textMaria Barrera, is a Stanford-educated engineer and founder & CEO of Clayful. She is committed to addressing the youth mental health crisis. Born in Colombia and understanding the pressures of adversity, she leverages her experience from her pioneering role on Nearpod's founding team to create impactful solutions in education.Through her tireless research and collaboration with a diverse team of experts, Maria developed Clayful, offering accessible, preventative mental health resources to families of all socio-economic statuses. Her dedication to training a diverse mental health workforce and establishing partnerships with schools has already impacted thousands of students across the country.Recommended Resource:Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Dan and Chip Heath

Send us a textPer Borgen is the CEO and co-founder of Scrimba (YC S20), an interactive code-learning platform with over a million users worldwide. He’s also a web developer and coding instructor. Per's passion is to help people change their careers and lives through learning how to build software, just as he did at age 29.These days, he leads Scrimba's AI Engineering initiative. The company has partnered up with Hugging Face and LangChain to create tutorials and courses that help web developers learn how to build AI-powered apps. Through these partnerships, Per get a front-row seat at how these AI infrastructure companies lay the groundwork that the rest of the industry builds on top of. Recommended Resource:Latent Space: Rise of the AI Engineer

Send us a textAnurupa Ganguly is the founder & CEO of Prisms. She founded Prisms to scale a new world teaching model where students learn core math and science concepts spatially, physically and steeped in important real world contexts. Prisms targets bottleneck topics that are often memorized in lieu of deeply understood -- leading to huge gaps and drops offs over time in STEM. Anurupa and her team are transforming math education in the US by rapidly deploying the next generation of spatial computing devices across US K-12 districts, training teachers to integrate problem-driven learning with VR into core curriculum, and working with district leadership to rapidly improve joy, confidence and proficiencies in the modern math and science classrooms. She began her career as a math & physics teacher and later served in leadership roles across the Boston Public Schools, NYC DOE, and Success Academies. She holds degrees in EECS from MIT, and an EdM from BU. Her life's mission is to empower an equitable workforce in STEM.Recommended Resource:Experience on Demand by Jeremy Bailenson

Send us a textThis is a special episode focusing on two major leader ship changes in technology and their ramifications for Edtech: Sam Altman being released from OpenAI and hired by Microsoft, and Chip Paucek being replaced as CEO of 2U.

Send us a textIn this episode of Week in Edtech, Ben and Alex discuss:Artificial Intelligence:Executive Order on AI includes mandate that Education Department roll out guidance on the way schools should use AI technologiesOpenAI launches Agents (“GPTs”)OpenAI introduces custom AI assistants called “GPTs” that play different rolesMy North Star for the Future of AIForget ChatGPT — Extractive AI Is the Real Game-Changer for Teachers, StudentsRosalyn Launches StableSight, an Exam Proctoring AI That Counters Generative AI Use and Cheating RingsK-12:Home Schooling’s rise from fringe to fastest growing form of educationInstructure acquires Parchment for ~$800MByju’s in Talks to Sell US Unit Epic for $400 Million to JoffreTeachers and K-12 EducationHigher Ed:The False Binary in Higher EdChanges to university research Carnegie ratingsUniversities can’t accommodate all the computer science majorsFacing Pressure on Enrollment, Will Colleges Support More Transfer StudentsThis Obscure College Major Commands $100K Within Four YearsWorkforce:Udemy 2024 workforce trends reportSpecial Guest:Johann Zimmern, Education Strategy Lead at Zoom featuring Zoom One for Education

Shiren Vijiasingam, Chief Product Officer at Instructure, discusses AI, partner programs, and education evolution. Topics include enhancing education through AI, integrating technologies in the learning experience, purpose-driven niche models in education, demonstrating skills and using verifiable credentials in EdTech, and deconstructing proxies for learning and credentialing.

Send us a textIn this special episode of Edtech Insiders, Sarah Morin interviews seven founders of AI education companies at the AI Founders Forum held earlier last month in San Francisco.John Danner, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Project ReadCatalin Voss, Co-Founder and CTO at ElloChristian Byza, CEO and Co-Founder of Learn.xyzCourtney Monk, Co-Founder and COO at SchoolyticsGautam Thapar, Co-Founder and CEO of Enlighten AIShweta Gandhi, Co-Founder and CEO of Strived.ioBrandon Grusd, Co-Founder of Ethiqly AI