The 10 most innovative edtech companies to watch 2018

www.insightssuccess.com MAY 2018

10

THE

MOST

INNOVATIVE

EDTECH COMPANIES TO WATCH

NOAH SAMARA Chairman & CEO

EDITOR’S PICK Changing Paradigms of the Traditional Education System INSIGHTS’ PERSPECTIVE Necessary Deliberations for Establishing a Successful EdTech Startup EDUTALK The Impact of Educational Technologies on the Institutional Ecosystem

YAZMI DELIVERING KNOWLEDGE TO THE WORLD

The New GLA. Always Restless...

Editor’s Note

Igniting the Love of Learning with Digital Marvels

I

t’s the colossal impact of technological wonders that the love of learning has got a new life.

Undeniably, technology has that mythical “touch of Midas” which can change the status-quo of anything whatever it swings by. With myriad of innovations and inventions such as Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, technology has opened up new vistas for the world at large.

It’s a proven fact that the traditional learning methods are unable to create excitement or quest for learning amongst the learners anymore, especially for the Generation Z. This is a world of tech-savvy or rather tech-adhesive kids where they find more informative, more entertaining and more exciting ways to get exposure to the global landscape at anytime from anywhere.

E-learning is not a new concept though, the recent disruptions like AR and VR or Blended learning has given an entirely new dimension to the concept of e-learning. In spite of the fact that AI is still at the early phases of becoming an integral part of any classroom, educators around the world has started using AI to facilitate more individualized pedagogical approaches for students. Smart content programs use AI to breakdown textbooks, and other study materials in study guides which can be easily digested.

Augmented Reality can transform the classroom learning into a ‘fantasy-reality mix’ experience. All our fantasies in the past have taken the form of reality. The ability to overlay digital content and information onto the real world with images and locations opens up a whole new world of learning opportunities.

Another transformation has come in the form of flipped or blended learning where the traditional concept of classwork and homework is reversed. These are the awesome creations of technology in our age that are going to re-ignite the gradually fading love of learning among the learners of all ages.

Thanks to these digital gestures of the Educational technologies for giving the education system a new hope of progress and rejuvenating the love of learning.

In this issue “The 10 Most Innovative Edtech Companies to Watch”, we’ve portrayed those global organizations which are creating and spreading new technological solutions to make learning fun with the magic of AR, VR and AI. Also a rich plethora of information about the recent developments in the education industry has been included in the issue.

On the cover of this issue, we’ve depicted the successful sojourn of Yazmi, a global leader in education technology who is spreading the gleam of knowledge in Africa and beyond. It has often been observed that while the urban education is being blessed with new digital innovations, the underprivileged rural learners are still aloof from it. To eliminate this imbalance, the Charismatic leader from Ethiopia, Noah Samara has established Yazmi, the world’s first satellite-to-tablet content delivery system.

Yazmi is essentially a powerful satellite system that provides a unique and highly cost-effective learning technology infrastructure for rural, remote, and underprivileged areas in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Yazmi’s solutions are offered to government education ministries as well as private school operators, and also can be an effective solution for health service, disaster risk reduction, and emergency response applications.

In this issue, we’ve enlisted those companies which are providing insightful and innovative solutions to enhance the classroom experience with the incorporation of AI, AR and VR. Apex Learning: A Global Pioneer in Virtual Learning; bulb: A Multimedia Artifact for Lifelong Learners; Querium: Revolutionizing Learning with Artificial Intelligence and Showme: Enriching Global Education with Flipped Learning Technology are the companies enlisted.

While leafing through the magazine, don’t miss out on our Editor’s Pick- Changing Paradigms of Traditional Education System; Insights’ Perspective- Necessary Deliberations for Establishing a Successful EdTech Startup and Edu Talk- Impact of Educational Technologies on the Institutional Ecosystem.

We’ve also included an Expert’s Column- The Importance of Technological Resources in Education and Leadership thought- Leveraging the potential of Gaming into Education. Hope this issue of the magazine will definitely appeal to you.

Suhel Mashayak

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YAZMI Delivering Knowledge To The World

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LEADERSHIP THOUGHT Leveraging the Potential of Gaming into Education

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EXPERT’S COLUMN Technological Resources are Keys as Teachers Shape Education's Next Big Leaps forward in Schools

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APEX LEARNING A Global Pioneer in Virtual Learning

26

BULB A Multimedia Artifact for Lifelong Learners

28

QUERIUM Revolutionizing Learning with Artificial Intelligence

34

SHOWME Enriching Global Education with Flipped Learning Technology

22

EDITOR’S PICK Changing Paradigms of the Traditional Education System

32

INSIGHT’S PERSPECTIVE Necessary Deliberations for Establishing a Successful EdTech Startup

38

EDUTALK The Impact of Educational Technologies on the Institutional Ecosystem

Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal Senior Editor Anish Miller Managing Editor Suhel Mashayak Contributors Upama Goswami Brian Smith Visualiser David King Art & Design Director Amol Kamble Associate Designer Mayur Koli Co-designer Asha Bange Art & Picture Editor Paul Belin Jayant Khanna Senior Sales Manager Passi D. Business Development Manager Peter Collins Marketing Manager John Matthew Business Development Executives Steve, Joe, Alan, Rohit Sales Executives Sophie Smith, Judy Kent, Karen Holland Technical Head Jacob Smile Technical Specialist Amar, Pratiksha Digital Marketing Manager Marry D’Souza Online Marketing Strategist Alina Sege, Shubham Mahadik, Vaibhav K SME-SMO Executives Prashant Chevale, Uma Dhenge, Gemson, Irfan Research Analyst Chidiebere Moses Circulation Manager Robert, Tanaji Database Management Stella Andrew Technology Consultant David Stokes sales@insightssuccess.com

May, 2018 Corporate Ofces: Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-602-1754 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.com

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Noah Samara Chairman & CEO

10Most

The

Innovative

EdTech

Companies To Watch

y r o t r S e ov

C

YAZMI: DELIVERING KNOWLEDGE TO THE WORLD

‘

We bring education into your hands.

Anywhere.

Anytime.

‘

BRIDGING The

DIGITAL

DIVIDE

T

he importance of education cannot be overstated. It is the means by which individuals may raise themselves, their families and their communities into a higher standard of living. Education levels the playing ďŹ eld – taking race, religion and social status out of the picture. It is the foundation of true democracy. With major advancements in technology over the past few decades, classrooms have been enhanced with modern devices and tools such as livestreamed lectures, e-textbooks and interactive exams.

Despite this progress, millions of children around the world still never receive a quality education.

Many countries, especially those with large rural populations, do not provide basic schooling to their students. As a result, their people are unable to break the cycle of lost opportunities, squandered potential, and sub-par living conditions.

Research has even shown a strong correlation between a lack of education and lower life expectancy. That’s right – you are more likely to die young if you didn’t go to school.

If you think that is just unacceptable, you are not alone.

Meet Mr. Noah Samara, the Founder of Yazmi The Founding Father of Satellite Radio Mr. Noah Samara is the Chairman and CEO of Yazmi, an organization committed to ensuring that no child goes without an education.

Noah was born in Ethiopia to an Ethiopian mother and Sudanese father. Unlike many of his compatriots at the time, Noah was fortunate enough to be schooled from an early age, and ultimately attended university in the U.K. and the United States.

After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree from East Stroudsburg University and pursuing his graduate studies in European Renaissance History at UCLA, Noah went on to study law at Georgetown University. At Georgetown, he was introduced to Space Law and how satellites deliver massive volumes of information across continents.

Equipped with this newfound knowledge, Noah entered the communications industry.

In the late 1980s, he launched AfriSpace, a company providing digital audio broadcasting services for Africa.

AfriSpace made it possible for people to listen to dozens of radio channels with complete clarity using a portable radio.

The company offered its radios at an affordable price and, by signing news and entertainment giants on as content providers, giving listeners a wide range of programs to tune to.

‘‘

Governments and corporate customers can rely on the Yazmi Service to ensure that any student, or teacher, can obtain advanced learning tools, official curriculum materials and structured classroom teaching to improve their educational outcomes

‘

Noah explains, “In truth, we’ve long known that access to information is indispensable to human health, stability and advancement. Access to information means teachers will be capable of guiding children to become literate and numerate, essential skills that will support them as workers, parents and citizens. Access to information creates the demand for more information. It never fails: in every age and in every land, people hunger for information. By the same token, where there is a poverty of information you will find a poverty health, sustenance and human dignity.

The responsibility in the EdTech sector is deep and serious because we design and build systems to arguably distribute the most precious commodity: information.”

In 1990, determined to change the education landscape, Noah established WorldSpace, Inc., the world’s first company to launch a satellite radio system. While growing the WorldSpace operation, he also served as an advisor to numerous global telecommunications and broadcasting organizations on a wide range of business and regulatory issues. As the founding father of satellite radio, Noah has dedicated his life to using satellite technology for improving millions of lives around the world.

An Education Solution for Remote Areas In 2009, Noah established Yazmi to tackle a seemingly impossible challenge – delivering quality education to areas lacking internet, telephone connectivity and electricity.

Yazmi’s satellite-based and solar-powered technology transmits educational content to tablets or smartphones at schools that are otherwise unreachable. With Yazmi, an limitless number of students and teachers can access materials such as e- xtbooks, live-streamed lectures, interactive exams and educational games – solving the major challenge of material shortages.

Yazmi’s solution provides the sender with full control of the content being accessed on users’ devices, which strictly display information broadcasted by the sender.

The system includes a return path via the satellite, allowing for communication between education administrators and the schools being served, as well as data analytics such as exam performance and time spent studying.

TRANSMITS YAZMI INSTANTLY

Fresh

CONTENT TO TARGETED

USERS AT NO EXTRA COST,

PROVIDING UNIFORM

REACH AND BENEFITS

REGARDLESS

OF THE STUDENT'S

LOCATION

Yazmi’s solution also addresses the vital issue of teacher performance: before each lesson, teachers can watch tutorials by “super teachers” to improve their techniques and understanding of the content.

For example, a recognized math professor can transmit a video and lesson plan to all Algebra teachers explaining the lesson and his preferred exercises that help his students learn.

The Yazmi tablet takes the place of a backpack filled with textbooks, acts as a reference library and serves as a portable desk. Unlike any other educational technology provider, the Yazmi system is deviceagnostic and broadcasts content via its own two-way communication satellite – guaranteeing end-to-end content delivery.

Moreover, applications of Yazmi’s technology go beyond the traditional school setting. The solution can be used to train technicians entering the manufacturing industry, provide health workers with tools and alerts to suppress disease outbreaks, and support agricultural extension workers with techniques to improve efficiencies and yields of their community’s farmers.

A Sharp, Motivated Team Yazmi’s team – a blend of seasoned management and young talent – share a common belief in the impact their work will have on millions of lives around the world. Their leader, Mr. Noah Samara, is recognized as a great mentor to young entrepreneurs.

The team is working day-to-day on improving connectivity, expanding content and improving efficiencies in their operation.

Yazmi’s main headquarters are in Washington DC, USA and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The company is always on the lookout for new, skilled team members to join their mission of equipping people around the world with the knowledge they need to pave the way for a better tomorrow.

Mr. Noah Samara’s vision is becoming a reality, as his company continues to fuel the development of the education, health, agriculture and industry sectors in Africa and beyond.

In a manner typical perhaps

of juvenile enthusiasm,

I felt that

bringing

i n f o r m at i o n t o the &

people who needed desired it most

would be a

Promethean

endeavour, stealing, as it

were, fire from the gods

& giving it to men NOAH SAMARA, New Media and Broadcasting Conference 1997, London

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10Most

The

Innovative

EdTech

Companies To Watch

Company Name

Management

Brief

Apex Learning apexlearning.com

Cheryl Vedoe CEO

Apex Learning is a leader in digital learning for secondary education, developing online Advanced Placement courses to provide students, who would otherwise not get the opportunity to take rigorous college-level courses.

Beyond 12 beyond12.org

Alexandra Bernadotte CEO & Founder

Beyond 12 is a technology-based service nonprofit whose mission is to increase the number of historically underrepresented students who graduate from our nation’s colleges and universities.

Bloomz Inc. bloomz.net

Chaks Appalabattula CEO & Founder

Bloomz Inc. is a free app that is transforming teacher-parent, school-parent and parent-parent communication in today’s social and mobile world.

bulb bulbapp.com

Eric Goldreyer CEO & Co-founder

bulb is a digital portfolio where students and educators curate and create, showcase and share their smarts.

Coursera coursera.org

Jeff Maggioncalda CEO

Coursera is an education-focused technology company that connects millions of learners around the world with the skills and knowledge they need to transform their lives and careers.

Kaltura corp.kaltura.com

Ron Yekutiel CEO & Co-founder

Kaltura has emerged as the fastest growing video platform, and as the one with the widest use-case and appeal.

Kaplan kaplan.com

Jason Moss President, Co-founder

Kaplan, Inc., a subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company, is a premier provider of educational services for individuals, schools, and businesses worldwide.

Querium querium.com

Kent Fuka Founder & CEO Patti Smith Co-founder

Querium Corporation is building a smart, scalable, online assessment platform for Math, Science and Engineering. It features a patented expert system, advanced simulation technology, and an easy-to-use interface.

ShowMe showme.com

Adam Karen Bdoyan Founder & CEO

ShowMe is a flipped learning technology that can be used in iPad, Chromebook and Android devices which can be called a personal interactive whiteboard.

Yazmi yazmi.com

Noah Samara CEO & Chairman

Yazmi provides a unique and highly cost-effective learning technology infrastructure for rural, remote, and underprivileged areas.

APEX LEARNING: A Global Pioneer in Virtual Learning The company is committed to innovation that delivers what works for students, insights for teachers, and results for administrators.

Cheryl Vedoe, CEO

C

all it a blessing or the glory of technology; the days are gone when learning was restricted to printed books and traditional classrooms. It’s the age of digital wonders. The tech-savvy young adults are seen to be unconditionally in love with digital gadgets which distracts and prevents them from achieving a good scorecard in school. To eliminate this negative affect and disarm the young students, digital curriculum has been developed with an ambition of making the learning process more entertaining, engaging and active.

Based in Seattle, USA and founded in 1997, Apex Learning is a forerunner in digital curriculum for secondary education. Apex Learning has a 20-years history of partnering with school districts to improve educational outcomes. The digital curriculum is proven to help districts to increase graduation rates, close achievement gaps, and expand learning opportunities for middle and high school students. From struggling to advanced, all students in Apex Learning are prepared for the next course, next test, and the next step.

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The Innovative and Dynamic CEO Cheryl Vedoe, the CEO of Apex Learning is a software engineer, marketer, and executive for computer companies including Digital Equipment, Apollo Computer, and Sun Microsystems, who experienced the impact of innovative technologies across industries. Cheryl holds a BA in Mathematics from Wheaton College in which she is serving as a trustee, in Norton, Massachusetts, and an MBA from Northeastern University, in Boston, Massachusetts.

It was at Apple in 1992, as the head of the K-12 education division, she first became involved with the application of technology in education.

That experience sparked a passion in Cheryl to help educators integrate technology to create new solutions to the challenges schools are confronting today.

Cheryl then joined the founding team and served as CEO of Tenth Planet, a leading developer of multimedia content for elementary math and literacy instruction. Following an exciting period as CEO of Post Communications, an early innovator in email marketing, Cheryl returned to Apple as vice president of education products and marketing, heading up marketing efforts for K-12 and higher education.

Following that she worked as the president of PowerSchool, a leader in web-based K-12 student information systems. In September 2002 Cheryl joined Apex Learning as president and CEO. Drawing on her experience in both technology and education businesses, Cheryl leads Apex Learning’s efforts to help schools make learning more accessible, relevant, and effective for today’s students.

The Unique and Distinguishing Features Apex Learning partners with school districts with a promise of personalizing learning with the help of digital curriculum. In Apex Learning the virtual curriculum helps and propels the entry-level students to grade-level mastery and beyond.

Courses: Apex Learning’s extensive catalog of middle and high school courses has been developed with an aim to fulfill the needs of school districts for online courses, for initial credit and credit recovery in both blended and virtual learning environments. Apex Learning courses

| MAY 2018

Innovative

EdTech

Companies To Watch

actively engage students in learning, with embedded scaffolds and supports that help struggling students, including English language learners to master rigorous content.

Tutorials: With personalized learning paths and adaptive remediation to address learning gaps, Apex Learning Tutorials are an invaluable resource to help teachers ensure students pass their courses the first time, are ready for the next course, and achieve success on high stake exams.

Success Management: Apex Learning’s success managers partner with school districts every step of the way—from strategy planning to ongoing program evaluation and optimization—to ensure the users achieve their objectives with Apex Learning digital curriculum.

What truly set Apex Learning apart are the results. Three third-party research studies demonstrate the efficacy of Apex Learning digital curriculum. In addition, schools across the country get better outcomes in higher graduation rates, lower dropout rates, and improved scores on high-stakes exams. For example, Houston Independent School District increased the graduation rate by 7.5 percentage points and Sarasota County Schools cut the dropout rate in half.

Rising Above the Challenges Like every startup, Apex Learning also had to confront with some initial challenges in its establishment years. It takes a lot of efforts and time to build a K-12 curriculum company. However, Apex Learning has been fortunate to have committed, patient investors. The company has also benefited from an executive team with significant knowledge of educational technology and experience in the K-12 education arena. Another challenge was to resolve the clients’ problems with innovative approaches which would result in achieving district goals.

Evolving Opportunities Ensuring students stay on track and become well prepared for the future is more than just completing the courses. It’s about making sure that the students are really ready for what comes next. If students complete a course, but are not ready for the next step; they might not be able to pass the state end-of-course exam, end up in credit recovery for the next course, or get frustrated and drop out. Digital curriculum not only supports at-risk students, but also helps in meeting the needs of all students in achieving success by: Personalizing the Learning Experience When learning is personalized, teachers become able to focus on the diverse needs of an entire class. Not every student is prepared to learn the same thing on the same day in the same way. Some students lack foundational skills or require more time to master content, while other students are capable of accelerating. Digital curriculum makes it feasible for teachers to personalize learning at a large scale.

MAY 2018 |

‘

At Apex Learning we have great expectations for all students and want to ensure every student has an opportunity to achieve to his or her potential

‘

10Most

The

Supporting All Students Maintaining a balance of direct instruction, meaningful practice, and formative assessment, digital curriculum supports all students in mastering required skills and concepts and developing critical thinking skills. Students can access digital curriculum at any time anywhere.

Actively Engaging Students Instead of passive and traditional learning method, the digital curriculum enables students to share an active and engaging learning platform motivating them to complete their coursework.

Students get the opportunity to observe, inquire, create, connect and confirm to deepen their understanding.

Future Perspective “With a foundation based on 20-years of innovation and experience, we are very optimistic about our future growth and ability to continue to have an impact”, says the visionary leader of the company.

Apex Learning has a team of dedicated, passion-driven, and innovative professionals who aspire and commit to make this digital curriculum more engaging and entertaining in upcoming years. The increasing success-ratio of its students and achievements of the district partners are awe-inspiring. This is what compels the employees of the organization to adhere to their creative best in the process of building a brighter future for Apex Learning.

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Leveraging the Potential of Gaming into Education “

G

o outside!” “Read a book!” “Go to bed!” These were some of the common phrases from my childhood, because I had discovered video games, a portal into an amazing dimension where I could explore and use magical powers! As an adult game designer, I thought to myself -- how can I leverage this natural tendency for play to actually teach something useful?

We started with mathematics, because it felt easy to turn elementary math concepts like addition and fractions into game mechanics. Many kids will tell you that they HATE math, but, when looked at from the right angle, mathematics is downright beautiful and fun to learn.

Edward Frenkel, a famous mathematician from UC Berkeley, is known for saying that if art was taught like math, we’d be told to paint a fence red 1000 times until we got it right. Would it be any surprise if people thought they hated art because it was taught this way?

But, this is exactly how math is taught! It doesn’t have to be this way. Leveraging my many years of gaming--ahem, market research--as a child, I worked with my co-founders

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to build a game that measured up to the experiences I was used to. You don’t play Starcraft, Half-Life, and Diablo without learning a thing or two about fun engagement. And so, Mathbreakers.com, and later SuperMathWorld.com was born. The idea behind these games is simple: Starting from solid, fun mechanics, build a game on top of a solid foundation of math, so that the emergent gameplay is naturally mathematical in nature, while retaining a playfulness that allows you to jump right in without feeling like you’re being tested.

In this, we were extremely successful. We actually have many of our customers (parents and teachers) telling us their kids play the game for fun; one parent even commented that their kids would rush through morning chores in order to get more time on the game. Now that’s product success! If you have a kid aged 8 - 12, I encourage you to check out Mathbreakers.com and SuperMathWorld.com -- there are free trials and you may see their attitude change from “math sucks/is boring” to “this is amazing and fun” in a matter of minutes (it’s happened many times before).

| MAY 2018

LEADERSHIP THOUGHT

However, that’s not the end of the story. It turns out that making a successful business is more than just making an awesome product that your end users love. The remainder of this article will focus on the extreme challenges facing the ed-tech market today.

1. Schools are slow. You won’t see hockey-stick style growth with a product in schools, because the sales cycle can be up to a year. Furthermore, they’re slow to adopt -- in the curve of user adoption, schools tend to lump towards the “late adopters” side. Not good for startup sales.

2. Schools are SLOW. Even after multiple playtests on site that had kids literally screaming about how awesome the experience was, and even after clearly learning fractions from our game, it wasn’t enough. At one playtest an 8-year old boy was using a sword to chop numbers. Half, Fourth -- easy! Just chop the numbers up until you get the right amount. Until he got to 7/8ths -- that was a tricky one.

He thinks aloud to himself -- what’s 7/8? It’s.....3 and a half 4ths! Yes, Billy, it is, and congratulations, you’ve achieved a solid understanding of fraction composition. Jo Boaler would be proud.

It didn’t matter. Communicating these kinds of results to schools is like trying to talk to a whale about global warming. It’s critical information, but whales are huge and don’t speak your language.

3. Parents are difficult to reach. Every other math app out there -- and there are *thousands* -- claims to be as fun and engaging as ours. I’ve seen enough side-by-side playtests to tell you they’re flat out wrong, and can’t hold a candle to our game. I don’t mind saying it, because it’s really true.

But it doesn’t matter. To a parent looking at marketing material, it all seems the same. Standing out is an expensive proposition, one that requires investor backing (or possibly some luck and skill that we missed). But even if you get that part right, there’s even more bad news.

MAY 2018 |

Charlie Van Norman Co-founder Mathbreakers

4. The market is tiny. Math apps in the US are valued at about $1.2 billion for parents and teachers. If you don’t know anything about market sizes, I’ll give you two comparisons. Painting residential interiors is upwards of $50 billion. A single metal-scrapping company can be worth $1.2 billion alone -- the industry is worth $500 billion globally. In other words, a $1.2 billion market size simply isn’t big enough for most investors to care.

So what’s the future of games in education?

There will continue to be innovative and powerful solutions in ed-tech, but they will be small and you’ll have to hunt for them. The market will continue to be saturated by giants fueled by government grants and philanthropy, which makes the gems that startups create harder to find. So the future of games in education is fuzzy, but if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to find the pearls that will make a world of difference to the young learners that find them.

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a

P

radigms

of

Traditional Education

E

ducation and literacy is an integral part of human civilization for centuries. The Ancient texts and scriptures around the globe mention education being imparted by Gurukuls, Monasteries, Madrassas and various other schooling mediums.

Teachers and mentors in ancient times imparted knowledge regarding Religion, Scriptures, Philosophy, Literature, Warfare, Statecraft, Medicine, Astrology and History, which, in fact, are the mainstream subjects taught today. The domain of education has evolved from traditional handwritten text and learning material to Hi-tech interactive classrooms and laboratories. This complete overhaul in the education sector can be attributed to the emergence of EdTech startups and companies lately. EdTech companies have changed the landscape of entire education sector and creating a positive impact globally.

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| MAY 2018

EDITOR’S PICK

What drives the EdTech Sector?

When the need for something becomes essential, you are forced to find ways of getting or achieving it, which is absolutely true in the context of EdTech field.

Most of the EdTech companies are the brainchild of innovative minds and incredible ideas of the talented folks. They have had the sole intent to make a constructive change in the traditional education system with advanced and hi-tech solutions, they developed.

Many a time, students, as well as teachers, find the traditional education system monotonous and disinteresting, which affects the overall development and productivity of pupils, who are in fact much more capable of grasping and learning, if engaged appropriately. If the learning is a stressful process, it hampers motivation and quality of education. It is said that a person can easily grasp and recall visual things than just theory.

The various subjects like mathematics, biology, chemistry, art, etc. have become fun to learn and easy to comprehend with the advanced interactive and thought-provoking learning solutions provided by the EdTech companies, which makes it more effective for pupils in long run. According to a recent study, a drastic difference was observed in the students from elementary to high-school in terms of productivity, who went through the digital and interactive learning process.

Another important factor is “student to teacher ratio.” Most of the developed and less populated countries have an adequate student to teacher ratio in schools and colleges. However, it’s a completely different picture in developing, underdeveloped and densely populated countries, where the education sector is in grim condition due to the lack of teachers and inadequate learning facilities. The quality of education is also compromised due to government inactions and apathy.

EdTech companies are playing an extremely crucial role in these countries by imparting education and providing much-needed learning infrastructure to the masses in a very minimal budget and time.

Learn on the Go For almost past 100 years or so, we have been following a learning model (especially elementary to high school level) where, a teacher or professor stands at the front of the classroom explaining ideas, writing on the board, while students sit and listen with the learning materials being mostly physical textbooks.

MAY 2018 |

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Now, however, in the digital realm, EdTech has transformed the conventional notion of a classroom. The availability of low-cost and high-speed internet has made it possible for EdTech to reach a wider and vast section of the population.

Students are using laptops and tablets to learn various aspects of the curriculum through digital media, and teachers find it more appealing to elucidate different facets of their subjects. Many schools and colleges have in fact implemented BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies for students’ convenience.

This digital learning content is more up-to-date and comprehensive in nature, which allows the pupils to explore and learn at their own pace. It can be altered and customized as per the learners’ need at any point in time.

Hence it gives liberty to schools and colleges to easily adapt and embrace this digital technology.

Distance education is just a click away today; one can pursue the interesting courses from miles away sitting in another city or country altogether, thanks to e-learning programs offered by several institutions across the globe. It saves huge time and money for the individual, which couldn’t be possible within the traditional education system.

progress and development rely on its younger generation, & hence it has to be well-educated and literate.

EdTech, the Future of Education Edtech is poised to be the biggest and possibly the most profitable digitalized sector in the future. This sector possesses huge potential and offers you a plethora of tools and options to learn, unlike the partial knowledge offered by cumbersome and relatively expensive textbooks. Since all students don’t have the same learning proficiency, one can personalize these EdTech tools according to one’s needs.

The steep rise in the cost of a high-school & college education coupled with the competitive job market has allowed EdTech companies to increasingly grow its reach to the masses.

From companies providing education via video conferencing and to using neuroscience for personalizing learning experience, Edtech sector is growing rapidly in size and revenue. EdTech is assumed to be the next FinTech.

EdTech tools offer a very high level of user engagement and learning. Teachers and Educational institutions leverage the EdTech tools to practically and smartly access a student’s progress. Instead of waiting for exam results to disclose a student’s development in a particular subject, one can use EdTech tools to monitor their performance on day-to-day basis. It offers you ways to track a student’s performance by going through his scores, classroom attendance, and participation and then come up with a plan to work on the weak areas.

Every society is divided into different strata. Some belong to the privileged class and some to moderate and some to underprivileged class. According to UNESCO report, approx. thirty-five percent of world’s illiterate population lives in India, which is quite alarming. Due to the advent of EdTech companies, the situation is changing gradually, as an underprivileged class has now access to digital education with the help NGOs and civil societies. The country’s

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A Multimedia Artifact for Lifelong Learners district, hence you always have a place to create, refine and share your work for a lifetime.”

The Ambitious Entrepreneurial

Eric Goldreyer, CEO

S

ince the meteoric rise of technology, the trajectory of e-learning has followed a similar path. E-learning spawned everything from “on-line education” to various learning applications, including Kahoot and Khan Academy. Another critical application born out of e-learning is the digital portfolio, a collection of multimedia artifacts that showcase students’ learning experiences, goals and achievements. bulb is a simple, easy to use digital portfolio for students and educators, that allows anyone to create, share and showcase their work.

Launched in 2011 and headquartered in Colorado, USA, bulb is purpose- built for learning at all levels. bulb makes it quick and easy for students to tell their learning story from their laptop, tablet, or smartphone. From an educator’s perspective, bulb Digital Portfolios can be used to document the learning process, encourage peer review, facilitate project-based learning, promote collaboration, and foster the development of healthy digital citizenship. Most importantly, the company states, “bulb is yours forever; it’s not a system owned by the school

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Passionate about education, the founders of bulb recognized a need.

With over a dozen school aged children among them, bulb’s founders watched their children yearning for a place to create ideas, share projects and ultimately showcase their best work. Throughout the 20th century, student work has ended up gathering dust in filing cabinets and the teacher’s work buried in piles of three-ring-binders. With design and development backgrounds in software development, the founders designed a practical, simple and beautiful solution. bulb offers students and teachers a way to efficiently create a portfolio of academic and professional work that will grow with them for a lifetime.

Eric Goldreyer, the CEO and Co-founder of bulb, is passionate about creating new ways for learning to prosper. The consummate entrepreneur started BedandBreakfast.com in 1995. He grew the company into a top specialty lodging brand, and expanded its offering through the acquisition of several websites and lodging software companies.

Overcoming Challenges and Creating a Milestone in the World of Education Technology bulb has always held steadfast to a vision anchored beyond the most popular, current trends. The purpose of the company is to modernize the most significant, fundamental principles of education by transforming them into beautiful, practical, and easy-to-use 21st century technology.

“At our inception, we knew if we could establish a shared vision that stayed true to the effective, time-tested pedagogical approaches, we would weather inevitable storms,” Goldreyer said.

Six years later, the bulb team is still pursuing that vision, with more strength, success and conviction than ever.

Designing the Exceptional Strategy that Counts bulb is the only true “K-12 and beyond” portfolio in the market.

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Innovative

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Companies To Watch

One very important element that makes bulb unique is their clear purpose: build the most beautiful, reliable, easy-to-use digital portfolio. This is the sole focus of the company. Another critical element is that bulb is about a philosophy of education rather than a tool. bulb’s clear focus on how users teach and learn as well as their impeccable design and commitment sets them apart from most EdTech companies. bulb belongs to the user so they can leverage their portfolio wherever they go. Once a student or educator leaves the classroom, they are able to continue to build and refine their body of work, anytime, anywhere and for a lifetime.

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We don’t only want to be known as the best portfolio tool on the market; we want to transform the way students and educators think about learning.”

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Additionally, bulb balances the demands of IT professionals and educators, offering everything an educator or a school district needs to succeed, including: Learning system integration, Auto-rostering, Administrative dashboards, On-site professional development, Robust privacy & data security and Custom education pricing and more.

Additionally, bulb makes customer care a fundamental part of their mission.

“Education needs products designed by educators. The bulb team is made up of several talented teachers who know technology and know how people use it,” Eric said.

“bulb took everything I’ve learned from the service industry and applied it to serve education,” Eric said.

EdTech Challenges Down the Road

Clients are supported by the most responsive care team in the business, offering highly individualized technical support, near-immediate feedback and highly responsive design reflecting their clients’ unique needs.

School districts, teachers and anyone in education are currently confronting a major challenge in the EdTech market today, we call it the “flood” of disparate EdTech solutions. Every day teachers, administrative leaders and students are bombarded with shiny, new tech tools.

“We’ve found that the edtech industry is quick to offer fast solutions to very complex education challenges. These ‘easy-fix’ solutions don’t often acknowledge the depth or expansiveness of the learning process and therefore don’t stand the test of time,” Eric said.

Additionally, within that flood of solutions it is nearly impossible to find a well-designed, easy-to-use, beautiful product.

Investing in the Future Through a partnership with Future Ready and Digital Promise, bulb continues to listen and learn from a talented group of like-minded partners.

This year, alongside the best and brightest in the industry, Eric plans to further invest in the product and continue to bring digital learning opportunities to all students and educators.

That’s why bulb’s top priority is to build an attractive, relevant and easy-to-use product. Very few companies actually spend the time and money it takes to develop thoughtful and beautiful education technology despite the fact that the future of learning depends on it!

Enriching Client Experience First and foremost, investing in bulb means not only investing in a life-long product but in the processes of critical thinking, selective curation, narrative-making, vision-casting, reflection and collaboration.

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QUERIUM Revolutionizing Learning with Articial Intelligence Kent Fuka, Founder & CEO

the US. Success in Algebra is generally considered to be an important benchmark to academic success in high school and college, yet a large number of students are socially promoted into higher math levels, leaving them unprepared and likely to fail in future math or science courses.

Cheryl Vedoe, CEO Patti Smith, Co-founder & CMO

I

n recent years, the emergence of Artificial Intelligence has opened up new vistas in almost every sphere of our lives including education. These technological wonders have given wings to the world of education to fly higher and explore newer horizons of success. It has made its way to the classrooms near you to make learning more interesting, personalized, and full of amazement for the learners.

Querium brings in such a Virtual Tutor, which employs AI technology to mimic the skills of great tutors and teachers. Founded in January 2013 in Austin, TX, Querium helps teens and adult learners to master critical STEM skills, enabling them to achieve their college and career goals. StepWise™ Virtual Tutor, the key technology of the company provides students with low-cost, 24*7 access to the STEM training needed to succeed in their course and beyond.

The Dynamic Duo of Querium Lack of math competence is an epidemic in

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Across the U.S., students admitted in developmental math courses in community colleges due to their lack of math skills, have less than a 10% chance of finishing their degrees.

Kent Fuka, the CEO and Founder of the company along with Co-founder, Patti Smith, designed Querium to help tackle this problem.

Earlier, Kent was the Chairman and CFO of Austin-based educational publisher Thinkwell. Prior to Thinkwell, Kent was an early employee or founding employee of three VC-backed startup companies that went on to have successful IPOs followed by acquisition, including Tivoli Systems. Kent was also a founding employee of Convex Computer Corp where he was Director of Product Planning responsible for defining next-generation computer architecture.

Patti Smith has more than 20 years of experience of driving educational product strategy and marketing solutions that address emerging technologies and market demands.

The Technology that Makes Querium Unique Querium’s key technology is StepWise Virtual Tutor, a SaaS-based tutoring system. StepWise uses an AI expert system to help students master mathematics.

Within StepWise, students solve problems by submitting each step for evaluation; the AI engine immediately tells students if their step is correct or incorrect.

If students request hints, StepWise informs them why the step is wrong or suggests what to do next. Students may also ask to be

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Innovative

EdTech

Companies To Watch

shown turn-by-turn instructions to complete the solution at any point while solving a problem.

A key differentiator for StepWise is that students are not required to follow a given path in order for their steps to be understood.

StepWise encodes multiple methods and associated rules for problem solving and error analysis, including techniques at different levels of expertise. As long as the step is mathematically valid, StepWise will accept the step and allow the student to move forward.

Whenever students make errors, regardless of whether the error comes from a new skill, a skill that should have been mastered previously, or a careless mistake, StepWise analyzes errors and coaches students back on the path to successfully complete the assignment.

Exciting Opportunities and Strategic Challenges Some of the most exciting innovations in EdTech are in the use of data to improve student success. While good teachers have always been adept at reading their students’ visible cues, the insights they can gain from learning analytics tools allow them to intervene more quickly and accurately. A proliferation of mobile and online games and activities in the market has been designed to engage students, improve learning outcomes, and generate data for teachers. The use of AI for personalized learning is another especially exciting area of opportunity because of its ability to provide incredibly detailed, individualized feedback to students at their moment of confusion and share that information with teachers.

Some of the challenges in the EdTech industry include the sheer number of new companies competing in an already crowded space, data integration, and pricing. It is difficult for a startup to break through the noise of so many competing products to get the attention of teachers, and it’s hard for teachers to fully evaluate software products without testing them with students which can be time consuming and counter-productive. Then, when teachers implement products from multiple companies, they must access student performance data across different platforms, each with their own learning curve for the teacher. And EdTech companies must battle through the downward pressure from schools on pricing, making it tough to achieve profitability.

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StepWise analyzes students’ errors and coaches them back on the path to successfully complete the assignment

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content providers to integrate into their solutions. Because of the technical challenges of developing both in-house expertise in AI and math pedagogy to deliver a single product, it is more cost effective for the channel partners to work with Querium than to build their own in-house AI group to develop a virtual math tutor like StepWise. As for schools and teachers, the company has minimized the time and effort for teachers to implement our products: no additional set-up or provisioning of students, no classroom instructors in the use of the products.

Future Endeavor The AI technology in Querium StepWise can extend to support other multi-step problems that students face every day in classes and careers. There is an exciting range of additional STEM subject areas that Querium can expand StepWise to handle in the future, ranging from technical education for auto repair and allied health fields up through quantum physics and biochemistry.

The Client-Friendly Approach of Querium Querium licenses its technology to publishers and other online

MAY 2018 |

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NECESSARY DELIBERATIONS

FOR ESTABLISHING A SUCCESSFUL EDTECH STARTUP E

ducation has always been an interesting phenomenon with the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. School is often regarded as the ďŹ rst home for the students, which merely focuses on the completion of the syllabus. But the emerging EdTech startups are ramping up to transform this education sector. They are acutely struggling to change the way

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knowledge is imparted, beat the competition, and revolutionize the Global EdTech market and space.

Currently, many of the EdTech startup entrepreneurs are facing challenges, being attentive and coming up with the big ideas to renovate the highly competitive education industry.

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INSIGHTS’ PERSPECTIVE

Comprehending the Intricate EdTech Market to Establish Better Products In order to withstand the complexities, it is necessary for an EdTech startup company to analyze the existing market.

They should develop their product in such a creative way that it would successfully satisfy the pool of consumers or the institutions willing to buy them. The product offerings should be flexible enough to the needs of the end user. The companies need to focus on the understanding of the demand gap for the EdTech products and concentrate on real demands. Keeping in mind the market challenges, they should actively focus on attracting and appealing to the decision makers- principals, school administrators & policy makers as well as students and their parents. They should remold the traditional education-based market practices to create a better product and to attain stability in the present education sector.

Understanding the Core and Competitive Landscape The education sector has enough options competing for the same pool of educational institutions. An EdTech startup should have a perfect solution and strategy to deal with the growing competition and be the best in the cutting-edge education system. Analyzing the solutions and targeting the products will provide the EdTech startup organizations with a better product to withstand the competitive landscape.

This will help them in saving time and effectively providing insights for a differentiated marketing strategy to position it against others. They should have the potential to create a benchmark that would differentiate them from the crowd.

The competitive landscape will provide them with the chances to beat their own weaknesses and to be an incredible EdTech startup.

Significance of the Personnel The education system cannot be revolutionized by one; it needs a squad having the potential to go a long way. This can be attained, when the EdTech startups would focus on possessing a good network and relationship to uplift their strategies in getting the purchase order from their respective clients. To broaden the company horizons, there is a need for the personnel, well connected with teachers, principals, and other decision-makers to get proper feedback on the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This would help the EdTech startup enterprises to design their products as per

MAY 2018 |

user requirements. The staff should comprise members that can distinguish the positioning of the product and effectively market it. Additionally, the startup enterprise needs the right team for the successful marketing, decoding the revenue code, and providing solutions to the client’s problem.

Developing a Scalable and Successful Business Model It is necessary to have an enterprise metrics that can test the scalability of the business model as the investors and clients are possibly skeptical about the growing entrants in the existing market. These company metrics may be the arising industrial opportunities, pricing of current goods, and understanding the needs of the end user. This would allow the Edtech startup organizations to scale into current and growing company sector. The scalable business model will help them to exponentially expand their business and their operational strategies. Developing a successful business model would support the budding Edtech organizations to become more agile and adaptive to the changes in the dynamic business environment.

Dedication is Vital The EdTech startups need to sustain the business till it starts gaining paid clients and attracting external funding. This commitment is the solution to the problems that are imperative to be cracked for the betterment of the education and help in core functioning of the administration of the organization. The EdTech startups need to have a good network with the primary investors of the education system, sticking to the norms of education. They ought to have the ability to scale the business to the right size until the time it anticipates the finance to come in the business.

Perseverance will lead the EdTech startup enterprises to attain stability and withstand the growth curve.

Global EdTech market is predicted to grow at 17% per year to reach $252 Billion in the near future. This development will lead to gigantic benefits for the students and open up the potential for a massive range of apps and devices to support this development. The innovative use of technology in teaching and learning would revamp the traditional educational system and transform the future of the education sector, linking the students and professionals.

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Enriching Global Education with Flipped Learning Technology company is to connect great educators and experts with the students across the world. With rising number of tablet devices and iPads at schools across the world, ShowMe is steadily expanding its user base, already reaching more than 20 million teachers and students.

Adam Bdoyan, Founder & CEO

F

lipped learning is a blended learning process which makes learning more engaging and fruitful for learners and involves them in the learning process without much effort. This is the most acclaimed and admired process of education today where the classroom activities and homework assignments are reversed or flipped. The new generation has become smart and so has the learning and teaching process. With the flipped etiquettes of technology, the learning methodology has also been flipped to enrich the classroom experience.

ShowMe is a flipped learning technology that turns a touchscreen device into a personal interactive whiteboard allowing teachers to easily record voice-over lessons and share with their private classrooms or a community of teachers and students. Founded in 2009, ShowMe graduated from the DreamIt Ventures accelerator and received an initial funding from reputable VCs such as Lerer Hippeau, SV Angel, Betaworks, Learn Capital, Bold Start, and Eniac. ShowMe is building a global learning community - a place where anyone can learn or teach anything. The mission of this

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The Passionate Leader Adam Bdoyan, the Founder and CEO of ShowMe, holds a BS in Radio Physics from Yerevan State University and an MBA from New York Institute of Technology. The accomplished entrepreneur previously managed the e-mail platform team at Lycos Europe, which was serving 25 million daily active users. Apart from that, he also helped to build one of the best Real Estate marketing engines of New York City.

Adam with San, another Co-Founder, decided to create ShowMe to democratize learning and connect great teachers to students across the world with the help of advanced technology.

Surpassing the Initial Challenges The first challenge of ShowMe was to overcome the fear of technology from the mind of the teachers. “They were skeptically looking at the flipped classroom concept at the early stages”, asserts Adam.

It was the user friendly experience the app was providing, that helped the company to overcome that challenge. The app allowed users to get started without any need for tutorials. It’s super intuitive and teachers could easily navigate and create their lessons and share with their students.

Initially, ShowMe was available only on iPads and many groups of teachers couldn’t get access to the app. After releasing ShowMe app on other platforms such as Chromebooks and Android tables the app became able to reach a wider network of teachers.

The Unique Features that Made the Difference ShowMe app is an interactive whiteboard that helps teachers to create instructional video lessons with their handwriting and voice.

This user-friendly classroom app has many powerful and comprehensive features:

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Innovative

EdTech

Companies To Watch

1. Explore With Explore section in the app, any teacher or student regardless of where they live or what school they are from, can get access to all great lessons created by amazing educators across the world.

2. Groups It is a convenient tool for teachers that has made it easier to communicate with the entire classroom or student groups inside a classroom.

3. Analytics ShowMe’s analytics suite lets educators record each individual student’s progress through lessons and the intuitive interface. As a result, teachers can give each student the personalized attention and support they need.

4. School channel School teachers can effectively create their library of ShowMe lessons with School Channel. It’s an exclusive library to which school’s students will only have access to.

5. Slides With ShowMe app, teachers can not only create video lessons but also export them to slides and print their lessons anytime.

6. Courses With the help of ShowMe’s Courses feature, teachers can put together multiple ShowMe lessons into one course, one playlist making it more compatible for student use.

7. Google Classroom Integration It is an incredibly important tool for educators across the globe.

With Google Classroom integration, ShowMe allows teachers to upload the URL of their slides and video presentations, making it easy for students to view, download, and store teaching materials as they go.

Some More Positive Attributes of the App The app has made the educators more empowered to utilize the classroom time in a more efficient and beneficial way, to deliver personalized lessons more accurately improving the teacher-student interactions.

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Create beautiful tutorials with the tap of your nger

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Beneficial Factors for Clients ShowMe is a totally free app which allows its users to sign up for free. The app is super intuitive and does not require any special training.

Users just need to open the app and start focusing on lesson creation. Teachers can create unlimited student accounts and easily monitor students’ individual learning progress and engage in group activities. Teachers can build amazing portfolios and share it straightaway. Most importantly, teachers and Schools can store all their video lessons and libraries indefinitely with the cloud storage of ShowMe. Future Prospect Today, ShowMe has over 20 million teachers and educators creating amazing lessons and sharing those with their students. This number of users is growing exponentially. In a very near future, the app is expected to be used and appreciated by the vast majority of schools and educators around the globe.

Thus, ShowMe is in its way to become the thing of excellence in a classroom – where all lessons and notes whether videos or slides can be permanently recorded and accessed from anywhere.

However, as the sector has become so much fragmented with numerous applications, sometimes it becomes really challenging for the teachers to keep up with the flow.

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The Impact of T Technologies EDUCATIONAL

on the Institutional Ecosystem

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he education revolution nowadays has been highly driven and greatly inuenced by technology.

Technical advancement in the ďŹ eld has transformed the learning system to its core. The technology is evolving the education and the innovations are being embraced with every steps of its evolution. After waiting for several years, educational technologies are impacting on how students, corporates, and business professionals wished to learn.

Investments are constantly owing into the edtech market at an unprecedented rate. The cloud-based LMS technologies including virtual classroom, mobile devices, digital readers, on-demand videos and online courses are constantly thriving and continuously catering the market for innovation.

With the help of the upcoming education technology companies and entrepreneurs, educational institutes are capable of identifying the possibility to leverage the innovative products beyond the boundaries and design the tools that quench millennial demands. Both pedagogy in educational institutes and training in corporates have been

| MAY 2018

EDUTALK

enormously benefited with the introduction of new tools and technology. Some major sectors which are going to witness prospective development and innovation are: Learning Management Systems (LMS) With the help of computer programs, LMS platform delivers several education courses in an organized way.

This system utilizes diverse customer base along with both online and offline by various educational bodies. This educational ecosystem acts as a primary target for tech companies striving for innovation. This LMS platform enables thousands of learners across the nation to pursue online certificate course anytime, anywhere.

Artificial Intelligence By empowering edtech industry with automation and awesomeness, Artificial intelligence is a huge vault in the education system. The satisfying thing about this segment lies in automating nearly all kinds of learning resources.

Both teachers and students are working efficiently with special needs of children with the help of innovative AI products and devices. It is heading on the creative path with the introduction of robotics, machine learning and design thinking under the hood.

It’s a multi-modal platform that offers several programs to students and executives through online modules and video lectures. In the recent years, some global companies such as Tata Elxsi that has set up the first virtual reality or visualization facility and also are working towards designing VR based learning management systems.

Mobile-Style Education Today, numerous students own a mobile device. This learning technology can improve the engagement and motivation across all learning abilities. Mobile learning will also offer accessibility for learning and greater flexibility at home. The teachers can be allowed to provide a fully immersive, integrated learning experience for all learning styles and abilities within the classroom by connecting mobile technology and devices.

Teaching Assistance For teaching assistance, the technology is deliberately open for the disruption. Various video platforms are streaming across the globe to share the lectures of teachers. The popularity of teaching assistance methods has ramped-up in no time with the advent of chatbots, real-time assistance, and extensive support system. The transformation of teaching methods and teachers is certain with innovative approaches of edtech companies towards assistance tools.

The traditional teachers can be a leader, facilitators, and innovator equipped with real world skills.

With the student’s extensive use of technology, many schools will be able to adopt tablet-like experiences for their front of class displays and incorporate this with camouflaged learning techniques and the gamification of learning. The traditional interactive whiteboards are becoming costly to replace and harder to scale, whereas SMTs are turning more future-proof with upgradeable technologies. Meanwhile, innovative teachers are finding ways to use technology for differentiated learning and getting more creative with their edtech, and increased engagement.

Enhanced Use of Virtual Reality The virtual reality is a new technique to completely access education as a real-world object. The tech leaders such as Google, HTC and Samsung are investing massively in the development of educational application using VR technology. The students can get a better and detailed understanding of the content by incorporating virtual reality in education system, and complex data can be resolved into simple modules.

The greatest potential impact of educational technology on students will be the opportunity to nurture skills to help them succeed, increase the quality of learning across mixed-ability classes, and protect students’ online safety.

The key aspect of innovation in education technology is the adoption rate of new tools and technologies by the learners of the millennial community. They are transforming leaders for future and exploring all possible ways to achieve best technically optimized learning and driving ideas in edtech companies. The innovation will keep on taking place along with it the education and training industry will continue to evolve, and the market will have lasting impacts for years to come.

In the early year of 2015, Google launched the ‘Expeditions Pioneer Program’ that has already allowed over one million students from almost eleven countries to explore virtual world using Google Cardboard. Virtual reality will soon bring imagination to real life for students.

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Technological THE

Resources ARE Keys as Teachers Shape

Education’s Next Big Leaps

forward in Schools S

ince the arrival and subsequent growth in widespread use of digital tools in classrooms all over the world, the education industry has gone through changes that many would deem revolutionary.

opened up a myriad of new possibilities for educators, is greatly impacting the current generation of students and will keep playing a central role in the future of education.

A New Model

Devices such as whiteboards, tablets and smartphones, coupled with learning management platforms and digital resource availability may, at first glance, just be additional educational tools teachers can use to further students’ learning experiences and promote greater knowledge acquisition. First and foremost it is still the teacher who remains the key to the development of the learning process, and, ultimately, determines its success or failure. Yet, it is also undeniable that technological resources in schools have

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Since the turn of the millennium, the implementation of a digital project using new Information and Communication Technologies applied to education have allowed teachers to build a new working model for every learning environment, from primary and secondary schools to universities, vocational training centres to language institutes, homeschooling and workplace skills update programs, among others.

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EXPERTS’ COLUMN

About the Author

Gonzalo Baranda CEO BlinkLearning

MAY 2018 |

Gonzalo Baranda is, since 2010, the Co-founder and CEO of BlinkLearning, an educational technology company present in more than 40 countries.

He is a Business Administration graduate of CUNEF in Madrid and holds an MBA from Columbia University in New York.

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This new model is primarily characterised by the gradual transition from a one-way communication approach to increasingly flexible learning settings where student interaction and collaboration, selflearning and a diversification of information formats take precedence.

The paradigm shift has also benefitted greatly from the development of innovative teaching methodologies which have evolved substantially or were entirely only made possible using technological resources. When correctly applied by motivated educators, several of these classroom techniques, such as Flipped Classroom, Project-based Learning or Gamification have become over time teacher favourites, bringing about a particular learning dynamic and generally boosting student performance.

The Importance of Increased Resource Availability Starting a digital project from scratch in any learning environment can be a challenging endeavour. It is at once, time-consuming, budget-demanding and often slow to produce the desired results. However, teachers and administrators agree that it is beneficial in the long run, as BlinkLearning’s latest Survey on the use of technology in the Classroom shows. The survey, which collected replies from over 2,000 teachers, found that 94.1% of respondents would recommend to a colleague starting a digital project at their school.

Beyond being a useful tool for teachers and students alike, in the sense that educational content is displayed in a much more user-friendly way than yesteryear’s formats as well as highly interactive and with immediate feedback - which is particularly important when dealing with younger students with short attention spans - technological resources are a means to better engage the “anywhere, anytime, anyhow” mindset of today’s millennials and Generation Z individuals. Accessing content directly from the cloud at school, at home or on the move anywhere in between using a slew of different devices is an extraordinary advantage that goes a long way to strengthen communication and information sharing.

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And, at its core, that is the foundational pillar of learning.

Furthermore, a strong case can be made that technological resources especially designed for education purposes and customized to address each student’s unique learning pace and individual strengths and weaknesses is, so far, the greatest tool that can be used to achieve the most democratized education possible. Not only do these digital formats help open up students’ minds to an unparalleled trove of information and possibilities to use it, it also cheapens the access to it. This is especially true in more remote regions of the globe where, for one reason or another, access to traditional education resources is scarce or restricted, as India’s Sugata Mitra, winner of 2013’s TED Prize, showed to great effect with his SOLE and School in the Cloud model of education.

Management Efficiency But other advantages await schools who decide to start a digital project. These range from administration efficiency, to student health and security, parent engagement and ecological gains, to name but a few.

The advent of the Internet of Things - a term coined in 1999 but only recently starting to live up to its original promise - is turning schools into highly integrated digital infrastructures, where access cards monitor employee and student attendance, grade management is automated to a great extent, risky student behaviour is detected early and parents receive real-time information regarding their children.

Inside the classroom, this management efficiency also helps teachers considerably with their workloads, allowing them to focus on what matters most: the student. As an ever-evolving tool, technological resources can present challenges but they also offer enormous possibilities, and it is difficult to see how a modern forward-thinking educational institution would cope without them.

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