Billionaire Michael Bloomberg gave through his philanthropic arm $150 million to Harvard University to establish the Bloomberg Center for Cities. The announcement was made yesterday. This center will build upon the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, which worked with 159 mayors and 800 of their advisers since it was launched in 2017 with an initial $32 million investment. According to a press release, the Bloomberg Center for Cities aims to assist mayors and their teams in order to advance organizational practices in city halls and create new research and instructional materials. "Mayors are the most creative and effective problem-solvers in government — and that’s exactly the kind of leadership that the world urgently needs," said Michael R. Bloomberg, 108th mayor of New York City and founder of Bloomberg L.P. and Bloomberg Philanthropies. "Building on our partnership with Harvard, this new investment will help more city leaders learn from one another and get even more big things done locally." "The University is home to many people who are committed to serving the public and improving communities through deep expertise, useful knowledge, and wide-ranging research," said Harvard President, Larry Bacow. "Bloomberg Philanthropies and Harvard University have created camaraderie among dozens of mayors from across the globe, allowing us to collaborate and find synergy as we all address our top priority — meeting the everyday needs of our residents," said Randall Woodfin, Mayor of Birmingham, Ala.
Open LMS—formerly called Moodlerooms—announced yesterday that it will open-source by the end of 2021 many of its Moodle modules and enhancements included on its Learnbook platform. The distribution license will be GPLv3. "Over the months to come, Open LMS will release a variety of different software components in its open-source project roadmap, contributing all of this code back to the open-source community for all educators to take advantage of," said Phil Miller, Managing Director at Open LMS. Client-specific customizations, SaaS cloud architecture and management components, and data integration code won't be released as open-source. While going more open source, the platform will be rebranded as Open LMS Work. In December 2020, the parent company, London-based Learning Technologies Group (LTG) acquired eThink Education, a large Moodle provider and Platinum Totara Partner, for $20 million in cash. In October, LTG purchased Australia-based eCreators. Previously a Blackboard product, Indianapolis-based Open LMS was acquired by Learning Technologies Group plc (LTG) in March 2020.
Google Classroom attracted 40 million new users in the last year until reaching 150 million students—the giant of search announced. "As more teachers use Classroom as their 'hub' of learning during the pandemic, many schools are treating it as their learning management system (LMS)," explained in a blog-post Melanie Lazare, Program Manager at Google Classroom. Later this year, Google Classroom plans to add new features, mostly intended to simplify teacher's workflow and integration with other tools without extra log-ins. Another new feature will allow teachers to set up classes in advance with their SIS (Student Information System). Pushing grades into schools' SIS will also be available later this year. Functionalities intended to provide deeper insights about Classroom adoption and engagement will be added, as well. A new student engagement tracking will allow educators to see which students are engaged and which are falling behind. The Classroom Android app will allow learners to work offline or with intermittent connections. Students will be able to review assignments, open Drive attachments, and write assignments in Google Docs. More expected features "coming later this year" are the following: Better scan and submission pictures of homework through the Classroom Android app. Improved grading on mobile. Rich text formatting in Classroom's posts or assignments. Detect plagiarism in reports written in 15 languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish, French, Italian, Indonesian, Japanese, Finnish, German, Korean and Danish, Malay, and Hindi.
2U will distribute its portfolio of online short courses, boot camps, and degrees to Guild Education's corporate clients, as an additional channel. A partnership between the two companies was announced this Tuesday. No further details were provided beyond the press release announcement. Guild's platform gives access to Fortune 1000 employers to different educational pathways, while Lanham, Maryland-based 2U powers and markets programs for 75 colleges. "The average college student takes on $29,000 in debt; Guild is focused on helping America's workforce access affordable education, in partnerships with employers," said Rachel Carlson, CEO of Guild Education. This company—which has raised $228.5 million in venture capital to date—claims that "employees going back to school with support from Guild are more than 2x as likely to have a role change or promotion than their colleagues." About 79 percent of CEOs worldwide cite their workforce skills gap as a top concern, according to PWC.
Coding instructional platform Codeacademy announced yesterday it raised $40 million in a Series D round after years without raising capital. The round was led by Owl Ventures, with participation from Prosus and Union Square Venture. Other startups like Udacity, CourseHero, Quizlet, and Class Dojo have been equally raising new funding as capital is flowing into the EdTech industry during the pandemic. The global health crisis has notoriously woken up VCs' appetite for the remote learning sector. New York-based Codeacademy said it will use the funding to add new products and courses and expand its footprint in growing markets like India. So far, the firm has raised $82.5M from investors. Founded in 2011, the online learning platform claims to host 50 million learners, after seeing a large uptick with five million new users—150,000 paid subscribers of Codecademy Pro, and 600 customers of Codecademy for Business—in 2020. "The company has been cash-flow positive for over two years and has consistently grown in new users and revenue," said Zach Sims, CEO and Co-Founder. Codeacademy provides online training on popular coding languages suitable for data science, machine learning, and game development-based careers. Along with a basic plan, it offers a $19 a month Pro membership. Their Codeacademy for Business unit offers regular exercises, assessments and certificates intended to provide new skills on coding to corporate learners. We’re thrilled to announce our next big step forward: the close of our Series D funding round. Find out what it means for our learners and our mission on our blog. https://t.co/Z8ZH4ZK84p — Codecademy (@Codecademy) February 23, 2021
