Edtech Insiders

In this episode, we speak with Joe Connor of Odyssey, which raised a $4.75M dollar seed round this week to help districts and families use flexible education funding sources, like Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) and microgrants.

Ben and Alex also discuss:

1) Elections & Education: The Rise of Education Polarization 

• Is College Worth It? Voters Are Split. (Five Thirty Eight)
• How the Diploma Divide Is Remaking American Politics (New York)
• ‘There Are Two Americas Now: One With a B.A. and One Without’ (NYTimes)
• Award-Winning Teachers Are Pushing Back Against Attacks on ‘Honest Education’ (Edweek)

2) Stanford's Pandemic-Fueled Pivot to Online Education

• Review of Stanford’s ‘emergency remote teaching’ and learning explores lessons learned from the pandemic (Stanford)

3) Edtech Mega-VC Michael Moe on the Metaverse

• Virtual Reality and the History and Future of Education in the Metaverse (EIEIO: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Education, Impact and Opportunity)

4) Gates foundation pivots to Math as NAEP scores underscore crisis 

• Student math scores are down from pre-COVID levels, the National Report Card finds (NPR)
• Why the Gates Foundation Is Investing $1.1 Billion in Math Education (Edweek) 
• NAEP ‘Nation’s Report Card’ Shows Steep Fall in Math Scores (Edsurge)
• How Do Schools Come Back From ‘Catastrophic’ Drops in Math, Reading on NAEP? (Edweek)

5) Digital Surveillance and Monitoring in Schools and Children's Right to Privacy

• Kids Are Back in Classrooms and Laptops Are Still Spying on Them (Wired)
• Surveillance Education Cycle: Finding Ways to Protect Privacy in Schools (Random Lengths News)
• New Polling Finds Parents and Educators Overwhelmingly Support Technology Designed to Keep Students Safe Online (GoGuardian PR)

Monica Arés is the Head of Immersive Learning at Meta, where she is focused on building an ecosystem that will allow anyone, anywhere to learn and grow in the metaverse. As a Harvard Graduate School of Education alumna, former math educator, curriculum developer, and planetarium director, Monica is at the forefront of skilling the next generation of AR/VR creators and developing products, programs and content to make learning more powerful and accessible. 

In this podcast, we discuss both the great opportunities and great challenges of the Educational metaverse.

Guest Julia Stiglitz, CEO of CoRise and former GSV partner

1. The Massive Lego/Brainpop acquisition
   • Lego Acquires Brainpop - WSJ
2.  Questioning the ROI for Higher Ed
   • Ranking 4,500 Colleges by ROI (2022)
   • How liberal arts colleges are adding work-focused courses students want 
3. Byju's Layoffs/Edtech in India
   1. Byju’s cuts 2,500 jobs 
   2. Post-Pandemic World Poses Existential Challenge to India’s Edtech Sector
4. Online Ed Research
   • What researchers learned about online higher education during the pandemic

Funding:

• Adda247 ($35M)
• CLASSUM ($11M)
• Fizz ($4.5M)
• Halp ($4M)
• Ludenso ($1M)
• Marathon (Undisclosed Seed)

Mergers and Acquisitions:

1. KIRKBI A/S (Lego) Acquires BrainPOP (BusinessWire)
2. Google Acquires BrightBytes (

In this episode, we speak to Greg Toppo and Jim Tracy, co-authors of Running with Robots: The American High School’s Third Century from MIT Press, available at Amazon, Bookshop or wherever you get your books!

Greg Toppo is a journalist with more than 25 years of experience, most of it covering education. He spent 15 years as the national education reporter for USA Today and was most recently a senior editor for Inside Higher Ed. From 2017 to 2021, he was president of the Education Writers Association. 

Jim Tracy is Senior Advisor at Jobs for the Future (JFF) and Senior Scholar of the Center for Character and Social Responsibility at Boston University's Wheelock School of Education. He has been head of several independent schools, as well as a college president.

Recommended Resources:

• Teaching Machines by Audrey Watters 
• The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Makes Kids Smarter by Greg Toppo

In this episode, we talk to some of the standout stars of the StartEd New York Edtech Week conference.

• Sari, Kide Science (story-based early years learning with platform for educators from Finland!)
• Nikita Gupta, Symba (internship and apprenticeship management)
• Matthew Evans, Julius (job training for green economy jobs) 
• Rachel Jordan, TeachFX (measuring pedagogical 'talk' in the classroom)

Warning: This was a crowded event, and the audio quality of the interviews can be spotty at times. 

In this episode, guest host Matt Tower of Edtech Thoughts and Alex discuss:

1. The Possible "Second Boom" of the Edtech Investing Market as per Brighteye

• The evolution of Edtech: Activity in private and public markets | Dealroom.co
• Edtech’s honeymoon might be over, but expect a second boom | TechCrunch

2) Addictive Game Mechanics Used For Good

• Opinion | I Make Video Games. I Won’t Let My Daughters Play Them. - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
• Roblox jumping into ads in effort to diversify beyond virtual goods (cnbc.com)

3) Dark Web Hackers Attacking LAUSD

• Hackers Release Data Stolen From Los Angeles Schools in Ransomware Attack - The Wall Street Journal (subscription model) - 2 October 2022
• Cyber Gang Posts Los Angeles Students’ Sensitive Data on Dark Web After Hack - The 74 - 3 October 2022
• Los Angeles schools’ data leaked after ransomware attack - K-12 Dive - 3 October 2022

4) The Continued Rise (and funding) of Social Emotional Learning 

• Applications open for $280M in school mental health supports - K-12 Dive 
• Investors Remain Bullish On Social And Emotional Learning (forbes.com)
• Little Otter Health making acquisition and back to school kit

5) Big Tech and Edtech Working Together 

• Futurelearn Partners with Microsoft
• Springboard approved by Amazon Career Choice

Plus Fundraising:

• Ocelot - $117M
• CoRise - $8.5M
• Bibliu - $5.5M (of a $15M round)

In this short episode, we talk to Jamie Poskin, CEO and founder of TeachFX, about TeachFX's new $10mm funding round and how the company is finding a completely new source of classroom data in the 'talk' that happens in both online and in-person classes. 

In this episode, we speak to Shawna Young and Mitchel Resnick of the Scratch Foundation, which runs the largest creative computing community in the world around the Scratch programming language.

Recommended Resources:

Mitch Resnick and Ken Robinson, Lifelong Kindergarten
2021 Scratch Foundation Annual Report

Shawna Young is the Executive Director of the Scratch Foundation. 

Before coming to Scratch, Young led the Duke University Talent Identification Program (Duke TIP), one of the largest academic talent searches, with over 450,000 K-12 students and over 3 million alumni. She also spearheaded the expansion of the Office of Engineering Outreach Programs (OEOP) at MIT, serving as the Executive Director for eight years.  The OEOP provides rigorous educational opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to K-12 students from primarily underrepresented and underserved backgrounds. Young started her career as a public high school science teacher in North Carolina, then working as a curriculum developer at the Educational Development Center.

Mitchel Resnick is the LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research and Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, which developed the Scratch programming software and online community, the world's leading coding platform for kids. 

His group has also collaborated for many years with the LEGO Company and the LEGO Foundation on the development of new educational ideas and products, including LEGO Mindstorms and LEGO WeDo robotics kits. Resnick co-founded the Computer Clubhouse project, an international network of 100 after-school learning centers, where youth from low-income communities learn to express themselves creatively with new technologies.

Acky Kamdar is the CEO of Magic EdTech and Magic Finserv. He is a technology entrepreneur and an investor in the fields of digital technologies, blockchain, machine learning, AI and NLP. Acky has over 25 years of experience in Process Management, Technology Solutions, and Outsourcing services at companies like Genpact, Headstrong, Compaq Computers and the HCL group. Currently, he also serves as General Partner at Solmark, a NY-based entrepreneurs equity fund.

Recommended Resources
EconTalk, podcast by Russ Roberts
Educated by Tara Westover

Francie Alexander is Chief Research Officer at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) and an industry leader in the fields of Early Childhood Education, Literacy, and Intensive Intervention for striving reading and math students. Francie provides inspirational and informative leadership on topics from early and adolescent learning to brain development and its influence on childhood and teenage learning and is focused on Future Ready Readers and the future of learning. She works closely to listen to and learn from key school districts across the U.S. in order to lead HMH's efficacy efforts.

Francie serves on the board of Text Project and formerly Los Angeles Universal Pre-K (LAUP). She served for almost 10 years on the PBS Next Generation Media Advisory Board. She was previously chief academic officer for Scholastic.

Additionally, Francie has authored more than 50 books for children, including Curious George Readers.

Prior to her time at HMH, Francie held key positions in both state and federal education agencies, including serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Department of Education's research branch, where she led Department-sponsored standards efforts and campaigns in support of libraries and the arts. 

HMH is an education technology company and a leading provider of K–12 core, supplemental, intervention, and professional learning solutions.

Recommended Resources
Shaped, blog by HMH
Educator Confidence Report by HMH