SmartTech Roundup
On the edu-innovation calendar, we’re shifting from the market-focused ASU summit to the Sundance of edReform, the NewSchools Venture Fund-Aspen Institute Summit. There’s a big overlap between the two but there’s more innovation at ASU and a stronger equity focus at NewSchools. Rahm Emanuel, Sen. Michael Bennet, Harvard’s Roland Fryer, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Dave Goldberg of SurveyMonkey will be among the 120 speakers this week. Tom & Sarah will be there from GettingSmart.com–hope to see you there!
More Upcoming Events
Education on Air is hosting an edtech conference May 2, 2012 from 12pmET to 10pmET entirely online and completely free with more than 40 sessions with topics ranging from blended learning to how Google tools can help with productivity, collaboration, and instruction.
YouWeb and StartEngine are holding Double Demo Day on May 1 at YouWeb’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Peter Relan, YouWeb, said to VentureBeat that he believes that education, entertainment, and gaming will all converge soon.
Innovation Announcements
Inspired by Sal Khan, MIT students are making K-12 instruction videos with a focus on something they know about–STEM.
OpenStudy announced SmartScore, an individualized, data-based, quantifiable evaluation of “soft skills” of students.
RosettaStone acquired GoGoLingo, a little kid language immersion platform.
In The Money
StraighterLine, has raised $10M in series A funding led by FirstMark Capital,with contributions from City Light Capital and existing investor Chrysalis Ventures.
Schoology, has raised $6M second round of funding led by FirstMark Capital.
Alt12 Apps closed its seed round of funding of $1.26M, led by Felicis Ventures.
Core Education and Technologies plans to invest at least $44 million to open a chain of vocational education institutes across India to train some three million people over the next five years.
Talent Sprint, a Hyderabad-based skills development and training company, raised 200 million rupees ($3.8 million) from Nexus Venture Partners.
ICYMI
Tom recapped a few apps that are reinventing the learning experience.
Sarah posted a Q&A about StumbleUpon.
Adam explains how digital annotation helps you possess a book.
With help from Pearson’s Peter Foltz, Tom describes how formative assessment supports writing to learn.
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