Silicon Valley Turns Attention to Education Technology

Several new companies are looking to enter the lucrative education technology market that has grown to $7.5 billion a year.

The Silicon Valley, located in the heart of California, has always been an incubator of technological innovation, so it is no surprise that efforts to successfully meld education and technology would originate there as well. Several startups that hope to specialize in this field are drawing both philanthropic funds, and, lately, venture capital dollars.

In recent months, Bay Area education-tech companies such as Piazza Technologies Inc., a question-and-answer service for students and teachers, and Desmos Inc., which makes a Web-based graphing calculator, have received new funding. Overall, venture capitalists invested $429.1 million in 82 education-technology deals last year, up from $334.3 million and 58 deals the year before, according to Thomson Reuters.

More and more startups are entering the field that has now grown to nearly $7.5 billion dollars, and are trying to make a splash at events such as the recently concluded South By Southwest. Some are also banking on the different approach, trying to appeal to students, parents and teachers directly in order to bypass cumbersome paperwork and tight budget constraints of the nation’s school districts.

One such startup, ClassDojo, which allows teachers to monitor student behavior in real time, attributes its success to getting teachers to try the free tool and then recommend it to others. The company’s CEO Sam Chaudhary hopes that the positive word-of-mouth will make the free and paid version aimed at parents and scheduled for release later this year, a hit as well.

There are many companies, however, who feel that they can not afford to ignore the billions of dollars that make up the school district budgets. BloomBoard sells a software to aid in teacher evaluations that cost the schools $2,500 per year. Its CEO Jason Lange hopes to take advantage of the drive by many districts to update their teacher evaluation systems.

[The company] is trying to land contracts by taking advantage of the nearly three-year-old “Race to the Top” federal education initiative, which has doled out billions of dollars to states that implement new systems for evaluating their teachers.

He says education is “a brutal industry averse to change in every way, shape and form.” Still, he says the falling prices of some technology and the growing amount of data schools have to handle make this an “unprecedented time” for change.

Comments

Kevin

April 2, 2012 at 12:23 pm

Well, I guess we’ll see what happens when capitalism and technology meet.

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Silicon Valley Turns Attention to Education Technology | Education … | Silcon Group

April 3, 2012 at 7:54 am

[...] View post:Â Silicon Valley Turns Attention to Education Technology | Education … [...]

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Linda Brees

April 3, 2012 at 8:02 am

I guess there’s enough money out there now for the vultures to descend.

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Sandie Barrie Blackley, MA/CCC

April 3, 2012 at 3:08 pm

Education may be averse to change but parents, especially when their child is struggling, are not. They know an effective education technology when they see it. Where is it written that education can only occur at school?

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- Linda Brees
  
  April 4, 2012 at 6:38 pm
  
  No one says it can’t. But survey after survey has shown that it doesn’t. If more parents took a more proactive role in theirs kids’ education, we wouldn’t be in the hole we’re in.
  
  Reply
Kathy

April 4, 2012 at 11:34 am

I think that technology in our schools would be beneficial to students but the problem is there is no one qualified in the schools that can teach, use or resolve technical issue with the technology for students and with some teachers. I know first hand as a parent and helping in classrooms for 6 years! I have on many occasions helped teachers and student in their so-called computer labs. This is going to be another failed attempted at correcting the education system and wasting tax money. This should be offered as an elective for students that want to learn and be innovating and learn from professional in the field. We need to stick with the basics at this point in time. How can we have students learn something technical when majority of them cannot read, write or do math? We need to have more engagement (not computers people) of the students to solve the problem! Also I have to add that the schools in my area have technology in place but do not use it. There are emails, teacher websites, parent link for grades and assignments and it is not being used or used correctly! This is a waste of funds that can be applied in another area. Thank you!

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