Edtech Insiders

Send us a textDepartment of Ed launches new OPM RestrictionsInsider Higher Ed on thisPhil Hill on this (here too)U.S. Department of Education Launches Review of Prohibition on Incentive Compensation for College RecruitersTeen girls in mental health crisis, blowback toward big techNPR: 10 things to know about how social media affects teens' brainsNearly 1 in 5 Teen Girls ‘Engulfed’ In Wave of Sexual Violence; Many SuicidalRecord Levels of Sadness in Teen Girls, CDC Reports - The New York TimesCovid Relief fund cliff is comingTime Is Running Out for Colleges to Spend COVID-19 Relief FundsChatGPT- Things are moving faster than we can anticipateMost sites claiming to catch AI-written text fail spectacularly | TechCrunch

Send us a textGuest co-host this week: Zaza KabayadandoTopics This Week Include:New Federal Guidance for Higher Ed FalloutEducation Dept. Shocks Ed-Tech Experts and Colleges With Expansion of OversightAI Continues to Polarize Educators AI bots can seem sentient. Students need guardrailsIs ChatGPT the future of cheating or the future of teaching?Adapt, evolve, elevate: ChatGPT is calling for interdisciplinary actionGSV Goes to IndiaGSV + Emeritus India Summit: Women entrepreneurs lead conversations on gender funding gap; call for critical changes to foster women entrepreneurs Edtech Startup Ecosystem in AfricaCo-Creation Hub’s edtech accelerator puts $15M towards African startups | TechCrunchAfrican tech startup funding reaches new recordState of Edtech ReportFound Here

Send us a text1. ChatGPT, Pt. 1: APIsOpenAI launches an API for ChatGPT, plus dedicated capacity for enterprise customers | TechCrunchIntroducing Q-Chat, the world’s first AI tutor built with OpenAI’s ChatGPT | QuizletChatGT, Pt 2: Ramifications of ChatGPTThe evolution of ChatGPT will fuel the future of higher education, says Udacity's Sebastian ThrunWill ChatGPT Make Students Turn Away From Homework-Help Services? | EdSurge News2. Federal Guidelines on TPS DelayedDepartment of Education Delays Guidance on TPS Expansion3. Interesting AcquisitionsIXL Learning Acquires Teachers Pay Teachers, the World's Largest Platform for Educator-Created ContentPaper™ acquires MajorClarity to Create a Comprehensive Career & College Readiness PlatformEducation services company Perdoceo acquires coding bootcamp school Coding Dojo for $52.8M4. TikTok Launches New Edtech Platform GeniusJoy for MathTikTok's parent ByteDance is building a new 'AI-based' edtech platform called GeniusJoy and is hiring in Los Angeles and SingaporeFrom TikTok to Trigonometry: Could ByteDance Corner the Market on Edtech?Funding RoundsNew Markets Venture Partners Raises Over $160 Million Chinese platform Nowcoder raises $50mStudentFinance secures $41m for ISAs in Europe 

Send us a textIn this special episode, we speak to four of the seven finalists for the SxSW EDU Launch competition: - Sari of Kide Science- Nick Suwyn of Promineo Tech- Varun Gulati and Christie Chu of Koalluh- Kavindya Thenakoon of Tilli

Send us a textDana Bryson leads the Study.com's social impact and double bottom-line strategy, working to build new mission-aligned partnerships, and manages the company's policy and strategic positioning. Dana has spent the last 25 years creating breakthrough results through her vision, innovation, and dynamic leadership in service of non-profits, local governments, and businesses. She is an entrepreneur, nonprofit advocate, activist, founder, funder, board member, chair, and advisor. Dana has served as Chief of Staff to Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, Chief of Staff for City Operations for DC Mayor Anthony Williams, and as a senior appointee for Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. She represented the ownership group of Major League Soccer team DC United as she led the negotiations with the D.C. government to build a new stadium, which was completed in 2018. Most recently, Dana designed and implemented a national leadership program for a 45,000-member organization committed to equity in education. Her program supported over 260 former teachers who were newly elected to public office, in over 230 communities nationwide, representing over 26 million children.Dana Bryson holds a master's degree in Public Policy from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and a bachelor's degree in both Foreign Affairs and French Literature from the University of Virginia.Fun Fact: Her parents had the first legal, interracial marriage in Virginia after the Loving vs. Virginia case. As a child, she once found a needle in a haystack.Recommended Resources:Pod Save the People by DeRay Mckesson, Kaya Henderson, De’Ara Balenger, and Myles JohnsonTeacher Diversity and Student Success: Why Racial Representation Matters in the Classroom by  Seth Gershenson, Michael Hansen, Constance A. Lindsay

Send us a textAndrew Shewbart is an edtech executive and board member who spent more than two decades working in the digital and offline education management and training industry throughout Asia. As EVP and Board Member of ALO7, China’s largest digital publisher and B2B content solutions provider, Andrew oversaw digital curriculum development and provided English Language Learning (ELL) guidance for the entire company and the 10,000 schools that utilized ALO7 products. ALO7 revolutionized the way children, parents, and teachers participate in the ELL process by providing a communicative and task-based learning platform and content. ALO7 and its curriculum were designed to increase confidence and stimulate children’s interest in learning English through the use of engaging materials and content in class, at home, or on the road. ALO7’s Genius English series was a CODiE award finalist for Best ESL, ELL or World Language Acquisition Solution.Andrew is the lead consultant for CCTV’s educational English programming, and an internationally renowned expert on children’s ELL production, teaching theory, practical teaching, and using technology to empower teachers, children, and parents in the digital age.Andrew's Recommended Resources: - "I feel in the edtech space, books become outdated as soon as they are published, so I prefer blogs or news aggregators. GSV N2K EDU is a great source of up to date news on edtech"

Send us a textKian Katanforoosh is the CEO and cofounder of Workera.ai, the skills intelligence platform redefining how enterprises understand, develop, and mobilize talent. Workera empowers organizations to stay ahead by unlocking the skills data needed to drive innovation. Enterprises get an objective pulse of their innovation skills through a configurable skills ontology, using AI-powered measurement of data, AI, software, cloud, and cyber skills at an atomic-level. Kian is also a lecturer at Stanford University, where he teaches Deep Learning in the Computer Science department with Prof. Andrew Ng. Kian has been acknowledged for his teaching excellence by Stanford with the Walter J. Gores Award, Stanford’s highest teaching award, and the Centennial Award for Excellence in teaching.Additionally, Kian is a founding member of deeplearning.ai and he co-created the Deep Learning Specialization on Coursera with Andrew Ng. From 2014 to 2016, Kian co-founded and co-led Daskit, a French start-up developing in-classroom ed-tech solutions for universities.Kian's Recommended ResourcesTo learn more about cutting edge AI, try:Learning through TiktoksFollow AI company CEOs, founders and researchers on Linkedin and Twitter, and see who they follow. People like:Andrew NgAndrej KarpathyDemis HassabisYann LeCunJeremy HowardIan GoodfellowRuslan SalakhutdinovWhole slew of companies and CEOs hereAI Reddit goes deeper on researchr/ArtificialInteligence/ (yes, with 1 "l")r/MachineLearning/r/ChatGPTr/OpenAI/For more Technical training, go on AI conference websites to look at award-winning papers. This includes conferences like:ICLRICML NeurIPS

Send us a textOn this super-sized episode of "This Week in Edtech":We talk to Guests Audrey Witters of Stanford GSB and Mike Malefakis of Emeritus about the Emeritus/Stanford collaboration to bring localized executive education from Stanford to the worldAnd hear from Amy Jenkins, COO of Meadow, about their plans to improve tuition transparency and streamline payments.Ben and Alex also dig into:ChatGPT and Edtech coming togetherPhotoStudy announces ChatGPT-like Chatbot for Math Textbooks and their PublishersWho Owns the Generative AI Platform? | Andreessen HorowitzDARPA for EducationIs a ‘DARPA for education’ finally happening?Culture Wars Continue in US SchoolsThe College Board Strips Down Its A.P. Curriculum for African American Studies - The New York TimesBBC: Revised AP African American Studies class drops controversial topics after criticismAP African-American studies: Syllabus changed after Florida 'woke' claims - BBC NewsTeacher/Mental Health Professional Shortages as the ESSER Cliff nears63% of educators consider leaving profession | K-12 DiveThe funding cliff for student mental health Phoenix moving to Arkansas?University Of Arkansas May Acquire For-Profit University Of Phoenix - Which Is Good NewsFunding:Corporate Training platform Gemba raises $18M in Series AMath VR company PrismsVR Raises $12.5M from Andreesen HorowitzSwiss curriculum delivery platform Evulpo raises $8.3MIndian LMS Provider Saarthi Pedagogy raises $3.7M Pre-series AHealthcare training platform Re:Course AI raises £3.4m in seed funding

Send us a textSiya Raj Purohit is the Global Edtech & Workforce Development Lead at Amazon's AWS Marketplace and a General Partner at Pathway Ventures. She’s an operator-investor in the Edtech and Future of Work sectors who helps grow & invest in companies that drive economic mobility through innovative models of earning, learning, and community building. Siya is an edtech veteran and a true insider, as an early employee at Udacity & Springboard, a graduate of Harvard GSE’s TIE program, and an author; she published her first book: “Engineering America” while she was an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin. Resource Recommendations from SiyaMatt Tower's Ed Tech Thoughts newsletterThe work of business professor and author Adam Grant

Send us a textIn this special episode, we speak to Beth Havinga, Managing Director of the European Edtech Alliance, and Rhys Spence, Head of Research at Brighteye Ventures, about the state of European Edtech. Both organizations have recently released fascinating reports about the state of Edtech:European Edtech Funding Report 2023 (Brighteye Ventures)European Edtech Map: Insights Report (European Edtech Alliance) European Edtech Map (European Edtech Alliance) Beth Havinga is the Managing Director of the European EdTech Alliance and the EdSAFE AI Alliance. Beth represents the EEA both in the EdTech Roundtable of the European Commission and UNESCO’s Broadband Commission. Beth has considerable experience developing interoperability standards frameworks, and represents Germany as head delegate to the European Committee for Standardization of Interoperability for Learning Technologies and EdTech. In addition to creating her own consulting firm, Beth has taught in schools, managed education software and publishing houses, founded two startups, and worked in over 45 countries to develop digital structures and strategies.— Rhys Spence is Head of research at Brighteye Ventures. He researches geographic and product market trends, as well as supports the portfolio with business-related themes, including international expansion, marketing, HR, ESG and impact. Before Brighteye, he worked in UK education policy research, specialising in the early years and latterly edtech.