Edtech Insiders

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.

Send us a textIn this week's Week in Edtech, Ben and special guest co-host Hailey Carter:1) Talk to Salwa Muhammad of Fourthbrain.ai about the upcoming 3-day workshop with Andrew Ng and other AI Education leaders2) Discuss "Study Hall", new Youtube/ASU/Crash Course Collaboration (Youtube Blog)3) Take note of a recent survey that expresses doubt about Edtech leaders (Edweek)4) Compare Recent Reports on the State of Edtech Funding- Reach Capital (US)- Brighteye Ventures (Europe)- Inc42 (India)5) Explore the Push for the $60K Minimum Teacher Salary in the US (Edweek)6) Look at the Race to Adapt to a ChatGPT World (Forbes, NYTimes) and Quill and CommonLit's Free Tool to Detect Cheating 

Send us a textLaurel Taylor is the founder, CEO, and driving force behind Candidly (previously known as FutureFuel.io). Her mission is to address the unmet — and urgent — market need for smart solutions that support individuals and families through every step of the planning, borrowing, and repayment experience. Candidly works towards this goal by creating trusted, intelligent and comprehensive solutions that enable Americans to reap the rewards of that investment so they can build financial wellness and wealth.About Candidly:Candidly exists to crush student debt for America's 44M borrowers. On average, Candidly shave $15k and half of a decade off of a user's student loans, through a personalized Student Debt FinHealth platform that optimizes repayment plans, automates the management of unruly student loans, and gamifies rewards points and spare change across the household.Resources:- Get Candidly Blog on the Secure 2.0 Act (which Laurel calls "the most important workplace innovation since the 401(k)"

Send us a textOn this Week in Edtech:We speak to Mateo Elvira of Elvira Media about Edtech content marketing, and how to utilize storytelling to stand out from the crowd, as well as...ChatGPT: We discuss both the prediction that ChatGPT will create a new Edtech boom......and the backlash to tech, including mass bans of both ChatGPT at large school districts and Tiktok at universitiesBig Tech: We discuss the controversial layoffs at Google and Microsoft and whether it might breed new entrepreneurs in edtech ......and Reed Hasting's one-two punch of donating to Minerva University and then stepping down as Netflix CEOXR/VR/ARPrisms VR launches in the Meta StoreASU-incubated Dreamscape Learn gets $20M in funding2023 Predictions from our friends at TranscendThe 2023 predictions from Transcend founders Alberto Arenaza and Michael NareaFunding RoundsHack The Box raises $55MSana raises $34MDreamscape Learn raises $20mWorkIndia raises $12MSupermom raises $6MEqualture raises $2.7MMergers and AcquisitionsNoodle acquires Hubble Studios

Send us a textVadim Polikov is the CEO of Legends of Learning, online educational games for teachers and students with 2,000 fun, curriculum-aligned, math and science games created to engage students and assist teachers using hybrid learning, blended learning & distance learning models.Vadim loves to learn and build. Bold new ideas excite him and he wants to put them into practice. He sees his career as a series of ideas built to fruition and scale. He wants to make an impact and believes creating self-sustaining for-profit businesses is the best way to make an ongoing impact. He believes entrepreneurship is an incredible process that creates value, ideas, jobs, and products. It is a big reason why he thinks the US is such an amazing country.He has built three successively larger businesses and is now focused on building the next one, a really exciting Ed Tech startup that uses games to help teachers teach in the classroom. He also acts as an angel investor on the side.He is incredibly thankful for Duke University, which provided his undergraduate and graduate education, and for the Baltimore community, which provided a fantastic childhood. He hopes to be able to give back to both communities.Recommended Resources:MatthewBall.vcThe Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything by Matthew Ball