Learning apps during the pandemic:
We all went through a year of juggling between remote and in-person teaching. Students, teachers, and their families burnt out from pandemic learning. But on the other hand, distant learning tools have flourished throughout this period.
Venture and equity financing related to education technology startups has the world. The search went from $4.81 billion last year to $12.58 billion. CB insights provided this report which is a form that monitors startups and venture capital.
During the same time, various laptops and tablets were shipped to the US. The primary and secondary schools double to 26.7 million from 14 million. This data comes from future source consulting which is a market research company based in Britain.
Statement from Michael Boreham, the Senior Market Analyst at Futuresource:
“We’ve seen a real explosion in demand,” said Michael Boreham, a senior market analyst at Futuresource. “It’s been a massive, massive sea change out of necessity.” Gradually the district has started reopening for in-person instruction. Hence, billions of dollars that schools and venture capitalists have invested in education technology will be put to test.
Statement from Matthew Gross, Chief Executive at Newsela:
“There’s definitely going to be a shakeout over the next year,” said Matthew Gross, chief executive of Newsela, a popular reading lesson app for schools. “I’ve been calling it ‘The Great Ed Tech Crunch.’”
But if the ed-tech market contracts the industry executives will not turn back. The pandemic has accelerated the spread of laptops and learning apps in school. They say that the normalization of digital education tools for millions of teachers, students, and families is here to stay.
Statement from Michael Chasen, co-founder of Blackboard:
“This has sped the adoption of technology in education by easily five to 10 years,” said Michael Chasen, a veteran ed-tech entrepreneur who in 1997 co-founded Blackboard, now one of the largest learning management systems for schools and colleges. “You can’t train hundreds of thousands of teachers and millions of students in online education and not expect there to be profound effects.”
The Tech evangelists knew that computers would revolutionize education. The future of learning involves apps that run on AI. The implementation of AI here would curate the lessons according to children’s abilities quickly and precisely.
Why robotic teaching is still not an option?
The robotic teaching method has been slow in development. This is because partially, very few learning apps show a significant improvement in the students’ performances. During the pandemic, schools turned to digital tools like video conferencing to execute conventional practices and schedules online. There has been criticism around replicating the school day for remote students. Because it has affected many children who don’t have access to digital and remote education.
Statement from Justin Reich, Assistant Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
“We will never again in our lifetime see a more powerful demonstration of the conservatism of educational systems,” said Justin Reich, an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies online learning and recently wrote the book “Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education.”
Mobile apps which enable online interactions between teachers and students have reported extraordinary growth. This also has lured investors to invest in such apps.