EdTech Thoughts Weekend Reading - 5/12

Week of 5/8 - 5/12

Hello!

EdTech Thoughts Weekend Reading is a roundup of what happened in the EdTech industry over the course of the week. It includes funding and M&A activities, people moves, and important news articles across early childhood, K12, Higher Ed, and Workforce.

Weekend Reading is the free sister publication to the EdTech Thoughts Weekly Update, which provides an analysis of why these events happened. It comes out on Sunday nights. I’d love to have you subscribed to both!

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Funding / M&A

K12

• TEKY Alpha raises $5M / Vietnam, K12 Curriculum and Afterschool

• BeeReaders raises $3.5M / US, K12 Curriculum and Language Learning

• HMH acquires Classcraft / US/Canada, K12 Curriculum

Higher Ed

• D2L acquires Course Merchant / Canada/US, Higher Ed Infrastructure

• MPOWER Financing raises $150M credit facility / US, Student Financing

Workforce

• Edflex raises $13M / France, Corporate Upskilling

• Simango raises $3.8M / France, Healthcare Training and VR

• Novaheal raises $600K / Germany, Healthcare Training

• Young Heroes raises $400K / Holland, Facilitated Mentorship

• Go1 acquires Blinkist / Australia/Germany, Corporate Training

• HireVue acquires Modern Hire / US, Recruiting Software

Looking for a full list of companies that have raised venture funding this year? Paid subscribers also receive access to the EdTech Funding and M&A database

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People Moves

• Amy Seusing joins Jobs for the Future (JFF) as Chief Development Officer

• Ian Lotinsky joins Great Minds as CTO (+ other internal promotions)

• Chris Hedrick joins Carnegie Learning as Chief Revenue Officer

• Dr. Siva Kumari joins College Possible as CEO

• Guild is hiring for a CPTO - Preference will be given to robots hailing from Tatooine

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Links

Early Childhood

• Response to California Transitional Kindergarten “tepid.” Sounds like the issues are more logistics than demand though / via Los Angeles Times

  • Related, NYC also struggling with “chaos” in early childhood education system / via Chalkbeat

• Employers trying to offer more childcare benefits for blue-collar workers / via Wall Street Journal

K12

• ESSER-powered construction season this summer / via K12 Dive

  • Related, as craft breweries reach saturation point, owners of old factory buildings turn to schools for adaptive re-use / via New York Times

• Adding nuance to the term “gamification” / via EdSurge

• AI Chatbots will help students learn nothing faster than ever. Welcome nuance on a topic rife with grand proclamations / Shoutout

  Dan Meyer
  at MathWorlds

• The Science of Math - I’m less familiar with this topic than the Science of Reading (which it is playing off) but am interested in reading more about it / via Hechinger Report

• An unexpected source of enrollment growth for DC Public Schools - adult learners / via Washington Post

• Florida rejects multiple social studies textbooks. Reminder that, no matter your stance on the issue, Florida, Texas, and California effectively control curriculum for the US K12 market due to their size / via NPR

Higher Ed

• Arnold Ventures influence beyond regulation / Shoutout Phil Hill and OnEdTech

• More universities building DC “satellite campuses.” Probably not unrelated to the growing political influence of Higher Ed / via Inside Higher Ed

• edX launches OpenAI-powered learning assistants / via edX

• ASU replaces intro-level biology labs with VR / via Inside Higher Ed

• Harvard and NY Eastern Correctional Facility debate the corporatization of Higher Ed / via Wall Street Journal

• Colleges looking for ways to attract more men / via Hechinger Report

• CUNY adds apprenticeship programs / via Inside Higher Ed

• Education Department understaffed to manage all policy priorities / via Washington Post

  • Related, Secretary Cardona defends ED budget proposal / via Higher Ed Dive

• UNC Chapel Hill’s Social Media Is Bad Club / via Inside Higher Ed

• Gambling’s place in campus culture portends scandals to come / via Associated Press

• “MISSING Have you seen this man?” posters on the UF campus. An entertaining, but also fairly entitled, way for UF students to protest new president Ben Sasse’s presence (or lack thereof) on campus / via Open Campus

Workforce

• Apprenticeships decline by 150K in UK (scroll to bottom) / Shoutout Paul Fain and The Job

• Coursera Learner Outcomes Report / via Business Wire

• Microsoft employees “hooked” on highly-produced corporate training videos / via Wall Street Journal

• World’s first accredited course taught by AI instructors. Neat, but stretching the definition of “accredited” and not sure about “world’s first”

EdTech

• “AI, broadly speaking, is the kernel, a technology enabler, if you will, that creates the opportunity for disruptive innovation. It’s not the disruptive innovation itself, though.” Strong agree from me, we’ve got a long way to go on this front. / via

  Michael B. Horn
  for MarketScale

  • Related, Pearson says “Rest assured, there will be AI” to calm markets / via Bloomberg

• Indian Tech’s promise of rivaling China falling apart / via Wall Street Journal

• Stack Overflow traffic down 14% due to rise of AI chatbots. Sad. Stack Overflow is/was one of my favorite hidden EdTech companies / via SimilarWeb

Potpourri

• American Psychological Association issues health advisory on social media. “Not inherently beneficial or harmful,” but something to monitor. / via Techcrunch

If you have a link you’d like to see in a future Weekend Reading post, please email matt@etch.club

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EdTech Thoughts Weekend Reading is the free sister publication of the EdTech Thoughts Weekly Update. It provides links to the week’s EdTech Funding, M&A, People moves, and a curated list of Links to relevant industry news. If you enjoyed this edition, I hope you will subscribe and/or forward to your friends!

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