I remember how it was -- JR
EdTech surging
Between January and September of 2021, the EdTech sector saw mergers and acquisitions worth more than $3.35 billion, more than three times the consolidated amounts raised in the last two years — $416 million in 2020 and $783 million in 2019. Similarly, PE-VC fundraises by EdTech firms totaled $3.77 billion in the exact same time period, far exceeding the cumulative $2.22 billion and $968 million raised in 2020 and 2019 respectively, according to data provided by Venture Intelligence.
One of the breakout companies in this sector is Roblox (RBLX). Get Roblox Report debuted in the market last March at $64.50 per share, nearly $20 above the reference price of $45. Shares rose 54.3% to close at $69.47 at the end of its first official day of trading. Roblox is valued at about $42 billion, based on its opening trade, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company posted a stellar third-quarter and is now making strides in the metaverse and EdTech, bringing gamification to education.
In January, the company raised $520 million and now maintains a $40 billion-plus valuation. The primary function of the company is to teach students how to design and code their own educational games. More importantly, the company’s learners ate up 8.7 billion hours of user engagement on the platform in Q3 2020, more than four times the 2.1 billion hours they logged in 2018, based on data from backlinko.com. That pushed revenue up to $587 million for the first nine months of 2020. Roblox is now the highest valued content-based EdTech company in the $10 trillion global edtech industry.
And while Roblox dominates the high end of the spectrum, the more than 1,000 companies in the space continue to chalk up wins in the investment column. Education services platform College Dekho, owned by Girnarsoft Education Services Pvt. Ltd, raised $35 million (Rs 260 crore) in its Series B round of funding, the company said in a Nov 30th statement. The company said it would use the funding to expand their team and platforms to serve a larger number of students and colleges, while also fueling growth in new verticals such as education loans, student accommodation, and coaching for higher education.
EdTech startup NxtWave, which was launched in September 2020 — the heart of the COVID pandemic — has continued to gain steam this past November, raising $2.8 million pre-Series A funding, bootstrapping the company and making it cash-flow positive. The company has grown by 9X in the previous 10 months to $7.5 million ARR, the company said in a statement.
The startup specializes in vernacular, asynchronous, and online cohort-based training programs in Industry 4.0 Tech careers, with a focus on college students, graduates, and early professionals. Over the last two quarters, more than 250 companies have tapped NxtWave graduates, including giants like Google and Jio, according to the company’s statement.
Another company working its own angle in EdTech is the Genius Group, headed by futurist and New York Times best-selling author Roger James Hamilton. Genius Group is a global entrepreneur education company, serving over 2 million students in 200 countries with hands-on, live, interactive, entrepreneur-based content where students and professionals learn about the trends shaping the digital decade, artificial intelligence, digital currencies, decentralized finance, and the metaverse through its EdTech arm, GeniusU.
Moreover, Genius Group is growing through investment and acquisitions, like their pick-up of Entrepreneur Resorts Ltd, comprising luxury resorts and lodges, beach clubs and city co-working hubs, for $32.6m last July. Entrepreneur Resorts is a group of entrepreneur-focused locations offering business leaders professional educational retreats in exotic destinations around the world, including Singapore, Bali, South Africa, and soon to launch in the U.S. They also have a license model with 5 new locations opening up in 2022 across the world.
The move combines old school and new school, adding the brick and mortar campuses provided by Entrepreneur Resorts to deliver the curriculum, while online learning will continue to be offered through the EdTech platform GeniusU.
As the last quarter of 2021 closes, growth in the now $10 trillion EdTech market shows no sign of slowing.
https://flagandcross.com/record-smashing-investments-prove-learning-technologys-future-is-bright/
******************************************Ethnic Studies is Anti-American Racist Nonsense
Once, I accidentally discovered a black history book in my school’s library. It must have been a “God-thang”, as we say in the vernacular.
As I thumbed through that book, I was overwhelmed at the things blacks accomplished. But as I read, I never felt slighted that my school wasn’t teaching me “black history”. I already felt empowered as an American; yes, a black American. And to see things specific to how blacks helped form America made me even more proud.
I would have loved to learn more specifically about the history of blacks in America. Nevertheless, I understood that my history classes were glimpses of history. Perhaps these stories were told from a particular perspective that favored whites. But such is history.
It was white men who discovered what would become America. And while their tactics were questionable by today’s standards, their actions built the best country in the world.
These days however, Leftists look at history in retrospect. They teach about an oppressive America, created by colonializing indigenous peoples. To this I say, “Who gives a sh*t! America is the best country in the world…period.”
Whatever got America to this point is ok by me. All countries have their bugaboos.
In a few hundred years, America has demonstrated its ability to overcome all our ills. Regardless, Leftists want to focus on America’s supposed ills, while wholly ignoring all the great things this country has given the world; like the mosaic of our people.
As Politico reported:, school districts have been attempting to divide America along racial lines.
In 2006, Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American studies curriculum was relatively unknown. The program — a series of middle and high school classes highlighting Mexican American contributions to U.S. history and culture — had shown promise in lifting Latino students out of lower test score brackets and boosting graduation rates. Only a handful of detractors had shown up at school board meetings to grouse about the curriculum’s race-focused teachings.
Again, I have no problem with having Mexican kids learn about their historic contribution to America. The problem is the indoctrination these ethnic studies programs teach.
The article showcases the real agenda of these programs:
Then, Jonathan Paton, a Republican lawmaker representing Tucson at the time, got ahold of a recording of labor organizer and Chicano rights icon Dolores Huerta telling an auditorium of Tucson High School students, “Republicans hate Latinos.”
Suddenly, GOP lawmakers in Phoenix were decrying “Raza Studies,” as the program was known, as a plot to indoctrinate children with ideas about white people as racists and people of color as their victims. (“Raza” is Spanish for “race,” though the teachers who adopted the name said the intended translation was more akin to “the people.”)
A legislative panel ordered school administrators to defend the program at the state capitol in Phoenix, with one lawmaker accusing the district of running a “sweatshop for liberalism.” By 2008, lawmakers were setting their sights on banning TUSD’s Mexican American studies program altogether with a bill to prohibit classes from teaching beliefs that “denigrate American values.”
“Organizations that spew anti-American or race-based rhetoric have no place,” Russell Pearce, a Republican representative who sponsored the first attempt to outlaw the classes, said at a 2008 hearing. “We ought to be celebrating unity as Americans and not allowing, with taxpayer dollars, these organizations.”
Thank God Russell Pearce noticed what Leftists have been trying to hide for some time. Leftists are divisive racists. And like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, they do it all in the name of unity. As if we’re too dumb to catch on.
https://theblacksphere.net/2021/12/ethnic-studies-is-anti-american-racist-nonsense/
*******************************************Australia: Country kids are falling behind in key national tests
Country kids tend to have lower IQs worldwide so this gap is to be expected
Queensland kids in the bush are falling behind in basic literacy and numeracy levels, with less than half of students in remote locations meeting the national minimum standard in key areas.
Alarming 2021 NAPLAN data released today has revealed the performance gap between students in country and city areas is widening, with experts blaming a lack of extra resources and qualified teacher shortages.
Meanwhile girls are surging ahead of boys in reading levels, though boys continue to outperform their female classmates in numeracy.
Just 39 per cent of Year 9 Queensland kids in very remote locations were recorded as meeting the national minimum standard in writing in 2021, and only 54 per cent in remote areas. By comparison, 80 per cent of kids in metropolitan areas met the standard.
In Year 7 writing just 45 per cent of students met the standard in very remote locations and 67 per cent in remote, compared with almost 90 per cent of city kids.
Year 5 bush kids were also well behind their peers, with less than two-thirds meeting the national minimum standard in reading, writing, grammar and punctuation, and numeracy compared with about 95 per cent of students located in metropolitan areas.
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority chief executive David de Carvalho said the gap between remote and metro areas was “disappointing”, and it was one of the reasons why a national standardised testing regime was important.
“(NAPLAN) does actually provide this kind of information and shine a light on these kinds of issues,” he said.
“And it does provide the opportunity to do a deeper dive, particularly in the school level practices or jurisdictional practices, to find out what’s working.”
ACARA’S general manager of assessment and reporting Peter Titmanis said the gap between remote areas and metropolitan areas in particular was “really significant”, and in some cases was close to about three years of learning.
Across the country, students from major cities outperformed students from regional areas in numeracy, reading and writing, with the gap in numeracy and reading gradually widening between 2016 and 2021 for most year levels.
The gap between boys and girls in primary school was also widening, with the gender divide larger in high school than in primary school.
UNSW Professor of Education Policy Pasi Sahlberg said there were a “cocktail of reasons” why kids in the bush were falling behind their city peers, including access to extra assistance like private tutoring, and a shortage of qualified teachers in key subjects.
“There’s big issues in the number of out of field teachers in rural and remote locations teaching out of field – it’s much higher than in the cities,” he said. “For many kids, they have had these teachers for a long time.”
Professor Sahlberg said while the location divide was “nothing to be happy about”, what was occurring in Queensland was also happening in the rest of the country, and across the globe.
“Australia is becoming more unequal, including in education,” he said. “I hope more policy makers would wake up and realise how important it is to address these inequalities, it’s the No. 1 education issue to try and fix.”
***********************************
My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*******************************
No comments:
Post a Comment