Edtech Insiders

Send us a textLisa Jiang has a long career at the heights of edtech; she was most recently the head of Remote Learning at Facebook, after 4 years as a senior director of product at New York’s Flatiron School, a leading bootcamp provider and 6 years at Google, where she was a product manager and lead for education for Google Hangouts.Joe Burgess was the first hire at Flatiron School and worked his way up to the VP of Education, where he led the education product and delivery teams across four disciplines both online and in Flatiron’s eight campuses.Together, they are the co-founders of Ribbon Education, which is building software to help student-facing staff scale their impact to serve more learners and improve outcomes in adult education.Recommended ResourcesPhil Hill's blogMichael FeldsteinRobert Ubell's booksLearners' Success Guild & blog by Ribbon Education

Send us a textGuest: Ish Baid, Founder & CEO @ VirtuallyCheck out Ish’s podcast: Reshaping EducationTopics This Week:Duolingo MathJoin the waitlist to test their new math app!Takes by Forbes, The Verge, & Fast CompanyCollege Enrollment Shifts2020-21 IPEDS Data: Profile of Mid-Pandemic 12-Month EnrollmentsAs More Stressed-Out Students Consider Dropping Out, Surgeon General Pushes College Leaders to Ramp Up SupportWhich School Has The Most Expensive College Tuition In 2023?One state offers lessons in how to cope with the college enrollment crisisAround 25% surge in popularity of hybrid learning amongst study abroad aspirantsPublic Teacher Workforce5 Big Technology Challenges Teachers and Administrators Will Face This School YearHow Bad Is the Teacher Shortage? Depends on Where You Live.America’s new “national teacher shortage” is neither new nor nationalNearly 70% of LA teachers have seriously considered quitting, study finds | US educationCareer Education‘Academic Career Plans’ Have Students Exploring Careers as Early as KindergartenNew Poll From Third Way Shows Voters Want Accountability For Career Education ProgramsFunding + M&A HighlightsCrunchbase: Edtech Funding Falls SharplyFrance launches fund endowed with 500 million eurosUpkid raises $1.7 millionETU receives Strategic Growth InvestmentVUIHOC raises $2 millionNazara acquires WildWorks kids IP ‘Animal Jam’ Renaissance Acquires Illuminate EducationAlchemy acquires ChainShotAkili raises $163 million in “blank-check” merger

Send us a textT. Nicole Tucker-Smith, founder and CEO of Lessoncast, helps schools implement professional learning initiatives focused on inclusive leadership and teaching practices, culturally responsive pedagogy, and equity best practice. Tucker-Smith was an assistant principal charged with planning professional development (PD) for a turnaround middle school in the Baltimore County Public Schools when she realized that traditional PD methods were not going to lead to transformational results. This PD redesign led to the Lessoncast process - providing customized teacher learning experiences that capture the impact on classroom practice. Founded in 2011, Lessoncast offers its platform technology to schools, districts, consultants, and teacher education programs. With the unique Lessoncast video format and interactive PD modules targeting specific teaching practices, educators engage in professional learning that is tailored for their individual needs and aligned with their community's goals. Tucker-Smith also leads the Jumpstart PD Network, a community of educators who access flexible PD options to engage in high-quality professional learning experiences that fit their needs, budget, and capacity. She has served as a teacher, supervisor of parent support services, principal, and systemwide coordinator of professional development and training for Baltimore County Public Schools and as a faculty member for Johns Hopkins University School of Education. She is the co-author of Supercharge Your Professional Learning: 40 Concrete Strategies that Improve Adult Learning and the host of the Did We Learn Anything? podcast.Recommended ResourcesCaste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel WilkersonPredictably Irrational by Dan ArielyDecentertheTeacher on Instagram

Send us a textTopics This Week:Student Loan ForgivenessNYT + Inside Higher Ed Valuations”Stars Through Thunderstorms”Accelerator NewsY Combinator cuts startup batch size by 40% amid economic downturnCrunchbase: 2,000 Tech Layoffs in 2022Higher Ed & K12 EnrollmentThese Colleges and Universities Are Reporting Record Size Freshmen Classes + UC program seeks to re-enroll adults who stopped outHopeful but careful: Parents and teachers address new school yearHigher ed must build on what we learned during the pandemicStates Where Public Schools Are Losing the Most StudentsLabor Disputes Threaten Start of New School YearFunding + M&ASunstone raises $35MGrowthSpace raises $25MMicroverse raises $4MITHAKA raises $2.5MReady Player Me raises $56M BrightCHAMPS Acquires ScholaNerdy Acquires Codeverse

Send us a textSunil Gunderia is the Chief Innovation Officer at Age of Learning, a leading education technology innovator with a mission to help children everywhere build a strong foundation for academic success and a lifelong love of learning. He oversees the company’s innovation strategy and has led the development, distribution, and implementation of its research-proven educational programs for students prekindergarten through second grade. Age of Learning has been recognized as one of the most innovative companies in edtech for its research-based, highly scalable learning products that are built to advance positive educational outcomes and address inequities in learning. The company’s flagship program, ABCmouse, is the leading digital education brand for young children in the U.S., and its expanding portfolio of offerings includes Adventure Academy, ABCmouse English, and the personalized, adaptive learning programs for schools, My Math Academy and My Reading Academy.  To-date, Age of Learning has helped educate more than 50 million children worldwide. Today, Sunil also serves on the Board of Trustees at the Children’s Institute, an LA-based non-profit that provides early education and services to help transform the lives of children and families affected by poverty. He also sits on the advisory boards of Edtech Evidence Exchange, Digital Wellness Lab, and Educating All Students Alliance, and served on the Editorial Advisory Board for the “Handbook of Research on Innovative Approaches to Early Childhood Development and School Readiness.”Prior to Age of Learning, Sunil was the General Manager of Mobile at The Walt Disney Company, overseeing mobile strategy, product development, distribution, and partnerships globally. Sunil also founded Gunderia Advisors, where he advised numerous early-stage technology companies on strategy, product, and execution.Recommended ResourcesChristensen InstituteSmall Talks, newsletter by Isabelle HauEnd of Average by Todd Rose

Send us a textGuests: David Harris, OpenStax at Rice University & Justin Weinberg, Aktiv LearningTopics This Week:Back to School, But Media Narratives Say Education Is in TroubleTeacher ShortageLocal School Grades PlummetingHMH report: education is not an appealing fieldValue of Higher Ed in QuestionWhy Americans are increasingly dubious about going to collegeHigher Ed Must Change or DieA New Vision for College ExcellenceThe Shrinking of Higher EdCardona SpeechFeds cancel $4B in ITT Tech loans  Potential Solution? Increasing Modularity in Higher EdCompany steps in to ease transfer credit frictionIndicators of Higher Education Equity in U.S.What Works in K12Learning on TikTok & YouTubeTeens, Social Media and Technology 2022TikTok TeachersThe Edtech Space in 2022EdTech isn’t special anymore and that’s a good thing.7 investors discuss why edtech startups must go back to basics to survive23 Most Promising Edtech Startups in 2022Funding + M&ACreatorDAO raises $20MFundamentalVR raises $20MJunto raises $5MSphere raises $4.3MHarver acquires Pymetrics

Send us a textGauthier Van Malderen is the co-founder and CEO of the University Digital Library Perlego. Gauthier decided to start Perlego as a Cambridge student after realizing how many people were having problems financing their textbooks. In 2017, he decided to found a subscription service to provide all the textbooks a student would need, in eBook form, at an affordable price.Perlego raised $50 million in March (out of $75M total funding) to expand its business after seeing its platform boom through COVID-19. The London based startup currently has 400,000 paying subscribers who get all-you-can-read access to some 850,000 titles — textbooks, fiction and other literature that students are assigned as coursework at universities and other higher-learning institutions. It works with 5,000 education publishers, including Cengage, Routledge, Cambridge University Press, Elsevier and Harvard University Press. That catalog makes Perlego the largest online textbook subscription service in the world. Perlego has won 26 awards including Europas Best Edtech, Virgin Voom and the KPMG pioneer award.Recommended ResourcesBrighteye Venturesenablinginsights blog by Adam Black

Send us a textTopics This Week:Fall Election CycleVa. Gov. Youngkin faces second suit over teacher tip lineDemocrats Cede ‘Party of Education’ Label to GOP2022 CHLOE 7 ReportAnnouncement + PDFOnline learning leaders think fully in-person will be a rarityBig Tech vs. UdemyAmazon Launches Udemy CompetitorFacebook Working on a Udemy Competitor?MetaverseHarvard Metaverse in Education ReportDeloitte Metaverse ReportAppLovin wants to buy video game maker Unity for $20 billionFunding + M&AupGrad raises $210M and acquires ExampurJodo raises $15MTerritorium raises $4.4MKide Science raises $1MAchievable raises $650KPrometric LLC acquires FinetuneEducationDynamics acquires EDU First

Send us a textJosh Chernikoff is an educational entrepreneur and small business advisor. For the last 14 years, he has founded and grown two successful educational enrichment programs serving hundreds of thousands of students in 85 schools across six states. He now runs Cascade Communications, an edtech advisory. Josh and his team at Cascade are, above all, content and relationship experts in the educational space, leveraging email communication and live relationship roundtables to engage the entrepreneurs and businesses with key education decision makers. He also hosts two entrepreneurship and Edtech podcasts - How I Broke That and Breaking the Grade.Recommended Resources@brianbeers@thejustinwelsh@dickiebush@JasonRBradwell@justingordon212@nathanbaugh27

Send us a textWelcome to Season 2 of This Week in Edtech!Guest: Matthew Tower, Principal @ Workshop Venture PartnersSubscribe to Matt’s weekly newsletter @ https://matthewtower.substack.com/Topics This Week:Byju’sLayoffs, debt, litigation!?Bearish OPMsPhil Hill: ”The brutal spring and summer for OPMs & MOOCs”Zovio sells OPM business to University of Arizona Global Campus2U Layoffs + tuition share agreementsFunding LandscapeHolonIQ – Global Edtech Funding 2022 H1MetaverseCollege in the metaverse is here. Is higher ed ready?Time Magazine cover + Meta ads Classdojo raises $125MMCrypto & Web3Pearson plans to sell its textbooks as NFTsDAOs - the new LLCs?Also check out our weekly newsletter @ https://edtechinsiders.substack.com/