Start Up Weekend Education London

I was one of the organisers and a judge at the recent Start Up Weekend Education London. For those who have survived one of these 54 hours marathons you will know all about the heady mix of inspiration, frustration, elation and exhaustion. In 2011 Night Zookeeper won the first ever London Start Up Weekend Education […]

10 years ago Education More

Onalytica Influence Index of the top 100 education blogs

Over the last few weeks I have been working with UK tech firm Onalytica to develop an index of the Top 100 Influential Education blogs which we launched during the recent Start Up Weekend Education London. At a basic level the index is built using Onalytica’s sophisticated data analysis tools, which are used by companies […]

10 years ago Education More

New York’s school bus strike & US education reform

One of the most recognisable icons in America are the yellow school buses that take millions of students to and from school each day. If we had anything similar in England it’s estimated that it would reduce traffic congestion in cities by 10% during peak hour, saving the economy billions. Will we ever? Unlikely, unless […]

10 years ago Education More

My edSurge story: Where’s the Money, Jack?

Last year Tony Wan at edSurge asked me to write a story about the London edtech scene. It took a little while to finalise and my story went live at the same time as I was on a panel discussing start-up funding with members of the London Educational Games Meetup Group (LEGup). LEGup is organised […]

10 years ago Education More

Chris Whittle – third time lucky?

Education can be an unforgiving lover, as education entrepreneur Christopher Whittle knows only too well. His latest venture ‘Avenues – The World School’ a nascent chain of for-profit international private schools – comes after bruising encounters with his first education start-up, the sponsored media business Channel 1 News (sold in 1994) and his more high-profile […]

11 years ago Education More

Elite universities schooled?

Chris Whittle’s new venture Avenues – The World School may be an object business lesson for the elite university sector. Yale recently invested $600m to expand its undergraduate intake by 15% or by around 800 students. At $750k per student this is rather expensive even when you take into account they had to build two […]

11 years ago Education More

Problems with US for-profit colleges aren’t unique

The Harkin report into US for-profit colleges makes for uncomfortable reading and for those of you who want the details you can download a copy at http://bit.ly/T2dnve. I have watched this investigation from afar, which may seem odd as ‘I don’t have a dog in this fight’. Well, not directly, but I work with people […]

11 years ago Education More

The MOOCs are coming!

Hype in education has reached incredibly massive, extraordinary proportions! Nowhere is this more apparent than in the coverage and debate about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Why is the HE sector so atwitter about MOOCs? HE is a massive and rapidly growing international business sector where demand outstrips supply. Like any market this demand has […]

11 years ago Education More

What’s wrong with the UK education start-up scene?

In the last six months we have had the successful launch of StartUp Weekend edu and seem some interesting companies at the start-up competition held at Learning Without Frontiers. These show there is plenty of innovation in the UK educational start-up scene, but sadly this isn’t matched by much enthusiasm from incubators or investors.   […]

11 years ago Education More

Learning Without Frontiers

Not as big or well known as BETT, LWF (originally Handheld Learning) has become a serious thought leadership event in the international edu tech calendar.   LWF this year had speakers ranging from Noam Chomsky (on video) and Lord Puttnam (film director and edu ‘inspirator’) through Ray Kurzweil (‘rightful heir to Thomas Edison’), Mark Surman […]

11 years ago Education More