Edtech Insiders

Andrew Baird is the President & CEO of the global hub of Education For Employment (EFE-Global). Andrew brings to EFE more than twenty-five years of experience in advancing private sector-led strategies to create inclusive employment and livelihoods around the world - including in several countries where EFE operates. He is a strong advocate for women’s economic employment, and promoting entrepreneurship. He co-founded the Global Center for Youth Employment, a membership-based organisation devoted to developing collective solutions to the challenges of youth employment. He has held leadership positions in a range of organisations in the field and home offices of RTI International, Making Cents International, and the Peace Corps. 

For those interested in engaging with EFE as a mentor, or lending their expertise to the youth EFE serves, reach out at [email protected]. 

To discuss edtech solutions to address the youth employment and education challenges faced in the MENA, reach out to [email protected].

Recommended Resources
Middle East Focus, a podcast by the Middle East Institute

Guest: Victoria Ransom, Founder & Co-President of Prisma

Topics This Week:

1. Higher Ed Adapts?
   • Dartmouth College eliminates undergraduate student loans and replaces them with scholarship grants
   • Higher Ed Invests in Student Success Tech – Is It a ‘New Golden Age’ or Just Vague Talk?
   • McKinsey: Technology is shaping learning in higher education
   • Americans support student loan forgiveness, but would rather reign in college costs
2. Livestreaming against a Teacher Shortage
   • General Catalyst Leads $40 Million Investment in Elevate K-12
   • Elevate K-12 to Address Growing National Teacher Shortage
3. Unacademy & Upgrad
   • Can Edtech Replace Classroom Teaching?
   • Education Unicorn Upgrad Doubles Valuation With Murdoch Funding
4. Phyllis Lockett on “Ed3”
   • How Web3/Ed3 And Immersive Technologies Signal A New Era For K-12 Education
5. Funding
   • CoachHub, TestGorilla, VR Pioneer, Prenda, Tango, Velocity Career Labs, Metacrafters.io, Pok Pok

Patrick Ward is the Vice President of Marketing at Rootstrap, a digital studio that provides UX/UI design, app and web development and staff augmentation to a variety of companies, including major edtech companies like Masterclass and Emeritus. In this conversation, we’ll talk about the marketing and technology strategies that top edtech companies use to grow, as well as the future of alternative education.

Recommended Resources
Section4 Blog by Professor Scott Galloway
Education IT Reporter by Scott E. Rupp

Guest Charles Schilling, President, Enterprise Business - US, Europe & Canada @ Emeritus

Topics this week:

1. Teacher Shortages at the End of the School Year
   • Overworked and underappreciated, teachers are burning out
   • Cardona: Americans Shouldn't be Surprised by Teacher Shortage
2. Work-Based Learning
   • Google partners with Figma to bring design tools to student Chromebooks
   • The Uncertain Pathway from Youth to a Good Job
3. Metaverse/VR?
   • What Will Learning in the Metaverse Look Like?
   • Meet the Metaverse: A New Frontier in Virtual Learning
4. Prescient/Sentient AI
   • Google Sidelines Engineer Who Claims Its A.I. Is Sentient
   • No, Google's AI is not sentient
5. Student Loans and The Value of College
   • U.S. Closer to Canceling All Federal Student Loan Debt? 
   • Biden Officials Hint At Another Extension, Potentially Tied To Student Loan Forgiveness
   • Student-Loan Forgiveness Will Help Narrow America’s Racial Wealth Gap, But Others Call It ‘Costly And Ineffective’
   • As Student Engagement Falls, Colleges Wonder: ‘Are We Part of the Problem?’
6. Funding + M&A
   • CareAcademy, Papercup, Kinside, Cloverleaf, Gomycode, Exprto, Metacrafters.io

Kavitta Ghai is the Co-Founder and CEO of Nectir, a communication platform for higher ed that uses instant chat to build a community in every class. Kavitta founded Nectir in 2018 during her time as a student at UC Santa Barbara, and has since raised over $2.25M to bring communication infrastructure to every campus and classroom out there. Her goal is to make quality education accessible to every student around the globe.

Nectir is a communication platform for higher education that connects the campus by building a virtual community in every classroom. It was built hand in hand with instructors and students to ensure that everyone has exactly what they need to make learning more accessible. With over 100 campuses adopting Nectir in just the last few months, it’s clear that this tool is the future of social education.

Recommended Resources
"Talk to 10 people every week. Find 10 people who you want to be your customers or your users and just talk to them.  I guarantee you, give it three months, and you will learn so much that you could start 10 companies out of those conversations. That is the best way to break into edtech or any industry that you want."

Guest: Philip Cutler, CEO @ Paper

Topics This Week:

1. Metaversities
   • With Money From Facebook, 10 Colleges Turn Their Campuses into ‘Metaversities’
2. Guild & Oprah
   • Guild Education Reaches $4.4B Valuation As Labor Market Demands Continue – And A Downturn Threat Rises
3. Apprenticeships
   • Multiverse nabs $220M at a $1.7B valuation
4. Sanoma in Italy
   • Sanoma acquires Pearson’s local K-12 learning content
5. Beyond Byju’s
   • PhysicsWallah becomes unicorn with $100M Series A
   • Cuemath Doubles its Valuation with $57M funding
   • Scaler readies $50M M&A arsenal
6. More Funding + M&A! 
   • Go1, Edrolo, Ethena, Odilo, Bibliu, Prisms VR, Talently, Kira Learning, Learnoverse, UniApp, & Simplify
   • ServiceNow – Hitch, Riverside Insights – Aperture Education 

Sarah Toms is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Wharton Interactive. She is a serious games expert and demonstrated thought leader in the educational technology field, fueled by a passion to find and develop innovative ways to make every learning environment active, engaging, more meaningful, and learner-centered.

Sarah has built transformative gaming platforms for education from the ground up, like Wharton Interactive’s award winning Alternate Reality Courseware platform. And she and her team are building the most innovative catalog of ARC games-based courses on the planet. Sarah has spent more than twenty years as a leader in the technology sphere, and was an entrepreneur for over a decade, founding companies that built global CRM, product development, productivity management, and financial systems. In addition, Sarah is coauthor of The Customer Centricity Playbook, the Digital Book Awards 2019 Best Business Book. And she is dedicated to supporting women and girls in the technology field, cofounding WIT@Penn, and through her work with the Women in Tech Summit and techgirlz.org.

Recommended Resources

• Learn Better: Mastering the Skills for Success in Life, Business, and School, or How to Become an Expert in Just About Anything by Ulrich Boser
• Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz
• Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson and Robert Poole

Topics This Week:

1. Edtech Funding Landscape
   • Why Some Investors Say Edtech ‘Doom and Gloom’ Overhyped
   • Unacademy tells employees to focus on profitability at all costs to ‘survive the winter’
2. College Enrollment
   • College Enrollment Drops, Even as the Pandemic’s Effects Ebb
   • Credential Train Is Leaving the Station—Get on Board
   • If Students Had Their Way, Hybrid Learning Would Be Here To Stay
3. Tech as Content
   • Teaching AI to All Students
   • ITE and Microsoft Collaborate to Equip over 4,000 Students with Responsible AI Skills
   • Why children around the world need crypto education
   • Code.org to Offer Equity-Minded AP Computer Science Curriculum Nationwide
4. Indian Edtech Shrinks
   • Byju Raveendran Set to Focus on US Market as India’s EdTech Dries Up
   • Byju's to divert focus on global businesses as Indian market is shrinking
   • The Curious Case of BYJU's and WhiteHat Jr's Sudden Downfall
5. Funding + M&A
   • SkillePointe secures $2.25M in Series B
   • Learnfully raises $2M
   • Safe School raises $2M
   • Zovio sells TutorMe to GoGuardian for $55M
   • Roblox to partner with medically-prescribed video game

Erin Mote is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of InnovateEDU, a non-profit that brings together leaders in education and technology to design and develop breakthrough models and tools to help ensure that all students graduate from high school ready to succeed in college and careers of their choosing. Erin is also the co-founder of Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School and has served in an advisory capacity to the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Obama Administration’s Global Development Innovation Policy, and the State Department’s TechCamp program.

Recommended Resources
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Guest: Jeffrey Cohen, CEO of FullBloom

Topics This Week:

1. Class Technologies Acquires Blackboard Collaborate
   • $210M Deal
   • PhilOnEdTech Take 
2. Metaverse
   • Mercedes Bent on why Metaverse isn’t Over-hyped
   • World Economic Forum: the future of education is in experiential learning & VR
   • Virtual Is the New Reality for M.B.A. Students
   • Invact Metaversity cancels first cohort
3. Big Tech in Ed
   • Facebook Working on a Udemy Competitor?
4. Declining Enrollment at Public Schools
   • NYT ‘Seismic Hit’ Take
5. Funding + M&A
   • Fundraising in a Downturn? + Emerge Summit 22
   • Masterschool raises $100M
   • Torch raises $40M
   • Parallel Learning raises $20M
   • FoondaMate raises $2M
   • 6 Bit Education raises £800K
   • Knowunity raises €10M
   • Amplify Acquires Desmos
   • Genius Group Acquires E-Squared