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  • Learning Technology's Next Generation

    By Joshua Kim October 20, 2009 9:36 pm EDT

    Learning tech needs some new blood. We need to recruit young people to go into our discipline (actually - we need to define our discipline - but that is a larger debate). We need to encourage people in their twenties to work in academic technology units, to join learning tech companies, and to start their own learning technology companies.

    One of the developments I worry about with the Blackboard's roll-up of the for-profit CMS space is that we will have less space for young start-ups. I guess a good argument could be made that twenty-somethings could start learning tech companies that join the existing CMS ecosystem (through building blocks or vendorizing the open source offerings), and I'll be looking at EDUCAUSE to see if that is the case.

    An example of a learning technology twenty-something startup is Schoology, a cloud based course management system that explicitly aims to incorporate social learning into its core design.

    The elevator pitch for Schoology from their product page is:

    "Schoology combines social networking with course management to enable students and educators to manage classroom work while having the ability to seamlessly communicate and collaborate through a safe and secure network."

    In chatting with founders Jeremy Friedman and Ryan Hwang I learned that the business model is school sales / subscription - with K-12 as the initial market focus. Higher education will come next, although they are eager to start working with colleges and universities to better learn the needs of this market. Anyone can go to the site and register to create their own individual course and play with the system. This gives us all the opportunity to participate in developing what may prove to be the next great CMS, as the founders are eager for feedback and ideas from the user community.

    Schoology's founders are young and hungry, willing as Jeremy told me to "work to 4 a.m. coding and be back at our desks by 9." They have built a feedback button into every page of their CMS, and they are fully committed to agility, flexibility and speed to meet the needs of their users.

    Interested in getting a seat at the table in the development of a clean sheet CMS? Interested in following an educational technology company that is just starting out? The Schoology guys want to hear from you.

    Any other examples of new ed. tech. companies from recent(ish) college graduates?

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Comments on Learning Technology's Next Generation

  • onus is on the schools
  • Posted by Michael Staton , CEO at Inigral, Inc on October 21, 2009 at 9:15am EDT

  • Hi Josh,

    Building a company in the education space is extraordinarily difficult. The most encouraging thing that could happen would be on the institutional side - streamline the money transfer, not because start ups are greedy but because in order to survive they need a revenue base.

    Higher Ed does not make technology purchases in a streamlined way. There often is no existing process for being vetted, rounding up budget, and piloting new software. Because of this, entrepreneurs have no idea how to get their foot in the door, with random exceptions, and are locked out of the education economy. That's why you see companies like ClassTop move from serving education with Coursefeed to now serving consumers/advertisers with Yearbook. And worse, you see lots of young engineers try to build something to serve their school and they feel the difficult and discouragement first-hand.

    The other travesty caused by this lack of process is the "sales-driven" rather than product-driven approach that companies like Blackboard have. In this game, the spoils go to those who can sell into the fortress. That's where all the resources go, and that's where they highest paid people are.

    Out here in San Francisco, I'd say companies to watch (besides Inigral, hah) are Inetoo and TopSchool. Oh, and check out Academia.edu

    Best,

    Michael

  • Supporting grad students through peer mentorship
  • Posted by Jeff Lang , Community Manager at GradShare on October 22, 2009 at 9:45am EDT

  • I'm the community manager for GradShare - www.gradshare.com - where grad students can connect with peers across department and university boundaries. Students can browse our forums and post questions to the community plus we post Expert Advice briefs on common grad school challenges.

    We encourage faculty to join the conversation by answering questions and university administrators can recommend local campus resources, Google Ads-style, targeted just to their students.

  • Emerging Technologies
  • Posted by Sal Pellettieri , CEO at Enter The Group on March 9, 2011 at 2:15pm EST
  • Schoology and others like Edmodo seem great. I'm happy to see some changes in the field of education.
    I have recently built a site which helps students manage group projects. It provides them the tools and advice they need to get their work done. It also allows them to do social networking and personal productivity.
    It's called http://Enterthegroup.com and it's free.

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