Four ed-tech companies secured big venture capital deals, while one of the largest education publishers might go public this fall.
Winners of the sixth annual Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition were announced Wednesday, with $140,000 in funding awarded to emerging ed-tech startups.
About 1,000 stakeholders in education, and three students who are currently part of it, looked at topics of school re-design, equity, and technology.
Three ed-tech companies raised nearly $20 million and LinkedIn entered the education market with a $1.5 billion acquisition of lynda.com.
Four ed-tech companies brought in a combined $7.8 million of funding, for everything from a platform to track student academic data to an adaptive learning platform.
Classkick, an ed-tech startup that allows teachers to provide personalized, realĀ-time feedback to students working on iPads, raised $1.7 million in seed funding.
Denmark’s WriteReader, an app that enables children to create digital books as they learn how to read, will be expanding into the U.S. market.
Fedora, LocoMotive Labs, and EdTrips headlined a busy week of K-12 venture capital.
NoRedInk, a website that uses student interests to create grammar and writing exercises, raised $6 million in a Series A round.
Listen Current, a curator of public radio stories geared towards science, social studies, and English/language arts classrooms, raised $950,000 in seed funding.