The popular collaboration tool for 12-K instructors, Edmodo.com, with 100 million users, announced this month that it will shut down its free platform and service, including the mobile apps, on September 22, 2022. Seen as a competitor to Schoology and Google Classroom, Edmodo social platform has been operating for 15 years.

The accounts of teachers, students, and parents are expected to be permanently deleted after the platform is shut down. ​​”You can be assured that your personal data will not be shared, transferred, or sold to any 3rd party and, in fact, once permanently deleted, it will not be accessible or recoverable even by Edmodo,” said the owner of the company, China-based, publicly-traded NetDragon Websoft, that paid $137.5 million for Edmodo in 2018.

Users will need to manually export their files and information to a personal device or drive before the Edmodo platform shuts down.

With heavy hearts, we announce the sunsetting of the Edmodo platform on September 22, 2022. It has been a pleasure serving 100 million+ users all over the world for over a decade. We apologize for any inconvenience & remain committed to providing support until then. pic.twitter.com/kDil9jn36x

— Edmodo (@edmodo) August 15, 2022

Nerdy Inc. (NYSE: NRDY), the owner of live online tutoring and classes platform Varsity Tutors, announced yesterday the acquisition of Codeverse, a platform that teaches kids to build apps and games with real code, for a non-disclosed amount.

“Coding is one of the fastest-growing segments in education, yet the tools and resources for students have not kept up with the increasing demand,” said Chuck Cohn, Founder, and CEO of Nerdy.

Varsity Tutors will integrate Codeverse’s tools as part of its membership offering.

Codeverse was founded by husband and wife duo Craig Ulliott and Katy Lynch with a mission to “teach a billion kids to code.”

Nerdy’s flagship business, Varsity Tutors provides 3,000+ subjects and multiple formats through its platform, including one-on-one instruction, small group classes, large format group classes, and adaptive self-study.

In the second quarter of 2022, Nerdy reported revenue of $42.2 million, up 29% compared to the second quarter of 2021. Gross profit of $28.8 million in the second quarter increased 35.2% year-over-year. The company claims to hold no debt and $121.0 million in cash on the balance sheet.

Among its investors, Nerdy has Learn Capital, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and TCV. To date, the company has raised over $107 million.

https://youtu.be/uUo9weedgi0

O’Reilly reported a 45% growth in enterprise sales during the first half of 2022 on technical content and technologies, especially on its cloud communications platform Infobip. No further data was disclosed.

Through a PR-driven press release, the Boston-based media tech company also announced it added 82 new hires in the same period, resulting in an increase of its global employee base by 20%.

Udacity.com launched its Digital Transformation Platform suite solution on Amazon Web Services (AWS) marketplace last month.

This suite focuses on in-demand technologies, mentor support, and project-based learning taught by industry experts.

Programs include a curated content catalog in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), data science, autonomous systems, and cloud computing.

The price of the platform starts at $150,000 per twelve months.

“We are bringing to the AWS Marketplace – the ability for companies to transform their legacy workforces into job-ready cloud professionals, capable of powering their cloud transformations,” said Gabriel Dalporto, CEO of Udacity.

Enterprise data management will grow at least 12.8% annually from the period of 2022 to 2027 to attain over $150.6 billion by 2027, according to the consultancy Expert Market Research.

In 2021, the business of managing data became the fastest growing area of infrastructure. It was estimated to be worth over $70 billion and accounted for over one-fifth of all enterprise infrastructure.

“Data continues to be one of the most important and furiously growing innovation drivers across both large enterprises and new start-ups,” said an analyst of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Data management marries the field of software engineering, analytics, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing.

Andreessen Horowitz has elaborated a list of the most exciting companies in data management in 2002. Overall, these companies are valued at more than $100 billion. In aggregate, they have raised $14.5 billion, with 20 having reached unicorn status by 2021.

Data50 List:

1		Query and Processing	San Francisco, CA	$5B+	Databricks
2		ELT & Orchestration	Oakland, CA	$5B+	Fivetran
3		AI/ML	Palo Alto, CA	$5B+	Scale.ai
4		Data Governance & Security	Atlanta, GA	$5B+	OneTrust
5		ELT & Orchestration	Philadelphia, PA	$1B-$5B	Dbt labs
6		Query and Processing	Boston, MA	$1B-$5B	Starburst
7		Data Governance & Security	Brussels, Belgium	$5B+	Collibra
8		Query and Processing	Santa Clara, CA	$1B-$5B	Dremio
9		Query and Processing	New York, NY	$1B-$5B	Dataiku
10		AI/ML	New York, NY	$250-999M	Hugging Face
11		Query and Processing	Boston, MA	$5B+	DataRobot
12		AI/ML	San Francisco, CA	$250-999M	Primer.ai
13		AI/ML	Palo Alto, CA	$1B-$5B	Snorkel
14		AI/ML	San Francisco, CA	$1B-$5B	Anyscale
15		Query and Processing	Tel Aviv, Israel	$1B-$5B	Firebolt
16		ELT & Orchestration	Cincinnati, OH	$100-$249M	Astronomer
17		Data Governance & Security	Redwood City, CA	$1B-$5B	Alation
18		AI/ML	San Francisco, CA	$1B-$5B	Weights & Biases
19		BI & Notebooks	San Francisco, CA	$1B-$5B	Sigma Computing
20		Data Observability	San Francisco, CA	$250-999M	Monte Carlo
21		AI/ML	Seattle, WA	$250-999M	OctoML
22		Customer Data Analytics	San Francisco, CA	$250-999M	Census
23		BI & Notebooks	San Francisco, CA	$250-999M	Hex
24		Customer Data Analytics	San Francisco, CA	$250-999M	Hightouch
25		Customer Data Analytics	Seattle, WA	$1B-$5B	Amperity
26		Data Governance & Security	New York, NY	$1B-$5B	BigID
27		Data Governance & Security	Fremont, CA	$250-999M	Privacera
28		Data Governance & Security	Boston, MA	$250-999M	Immuta
29		Data Observability	San Francisco, CA	$250-999M	Bigeye
30		ELT & Orchestration	Greater Manchester, United Kingdom	$1B-$5B	Matillion
31		Customer Data Analytics	San Francisco, CA	$1B-$5B	Heap
32		AI/ML	San Francisco, CA	$250-999M	Tecton
33		Query and Processing	Burlingame, CA	$250-999M	Imply
34		BI & Notebooks	San Francisco, CA	$250-999M	Sisu Data
35		ELT & Orchestration	San Francisco, CA	$100-$249M	Rudderstack
36		Customer Data Analytics	New York, NY	$250-999M	ActionIQ
37		Query and Processing	Portola Valley, CA	$1B-$5B	ClickHouse
38		ELT & Orchestration	San Francisco, CA	$1B-$5B	Airbyte
39		Query and Processing	San Mateo, CA	$250-999M	Rockset
40		AI/ML	San Francisco, CA	$250-999M	Labelbox
41		AI/ML	San Mateo, CA	$250-999M	Explorium
42		AI/ML	San Francisco, CA	$100-$249M	Rasa
43		ELT & Orchestration	Washington, DC	$250-999M	Prefect
44		Query and Processing	New York, NY	$250-999M	Materialize
45		AI/ML	San Juan Capistrano, CA	$100-$249M	Coiled
46		BI & Notebooks	San Mateo, CA	$100-$249M	Preset
47		BI & Notebooks	San Francisco, CA	$100-$249M	Metabase
48		AI/ML	San Francisco, CA	$100-$249M	Iterative.ai
49		AI/ML	San Francisco, CA	$100-$249M	Robust Intelligence
50		AI/ML	Mountain View, CA	$100-$249M	Fiddler

The most innovative companies in education are trying to supplement traditional schooling and democratize access to education, especially when the COVID-19 pandemic blasted online education and exposed its many challenges.

Following these criteria, Fast Company magazine chooses the ten most innovative corporations in education, analyzing everything from online classes and digital textbooks to AI tutors.

Among the transformers, Fast Company selects Duolingo and Coursera, which are expanding their reach into new markets.

Others are offering a new spin on music education (like the app Trala), monetization on course creation (Maven), or enhancing early childhood education (Lovery and A Kids Company About).

Here is the complete list, along with a brief explanation elaborated by Fast Company:

1. Maven — For empowering creators to monetize their expertise as courses
2. Duolingo — For translating its language-learning app to test English proficiency
3. Coursera — For helping Indian businesses and universities invest in online learning
4. Pearson — For making textbooks more affordable—and less biased
5. Trala — For adding rosin to the bow of online music instruction
6. Lovevery — For creating low-tech toys to support early childhood development
7. A Kids Company About — For building a topical kids’ multimedia brand
   
8. Sketchy — For taking the pain out of test prep
9. Riiid — For turbocharging tutoring with AI
10. PowerSchool — For supporting school districts as they reopened

• Fast Company: The World’s Most Innovative Companies of 2022

The Center for Reimagining Learning, Inc. organization — the new non-profit entity of MIT and Harvard that stewards the Open edX software — posted the technical notes and description of features of Maple, the 13th version of the platform released on December 20th. The next version, scheduled for mid-year, will be called Nutmeg.

Maple replaces Lilac, released on July 2021. It includes new features, such as the following:

• The Learning Micro Frontend (MFE) is now the default course experience for learners, including section effort estimates, learner progress celebrations, and jump navigation.
  The user can see the estimated time to read and watch videos, plus the number of activities, on the course outline.

• Ability to give users course and library creation rights on a per-organization basis.

• LTI 1.3 and LTI Advantage support.

• The jump navigation feature gives learners the ability to jump into any part of the courseware at the click of a button instead of having to navigate manually through units.

• Mobile app enhancements:
  • Course dates can now sync with a user’s default calendar app.
  • Ability to detect iframe content within the HTML block, giving the user the option to view the iframe content in the mobile browser.
  • The LTI Consumer XBlock is now supported natively in the iOS and Android apps.

• CourseGraph graphical representation of course data in neo4j popular graph database.

• Reusable Rubrics: Course staff can now reuse a rubric from an existing ORA.

• Improvements on course authoring’s common problem editor.

• The studio is changing to become an OAuth client of LMS, using the same SSO configuration.

For production, along with the native Open edX installation, a dockerized distribution based on Tutor was released.

Moderna, Inc., (Nasdaq: MRNA) announced the launch of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Academy in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

With its AI Academy, the well-known biotechnology company intends to educate its employees on AI and machine learning capabilities and skills.

This program will focus on data quality and data visualization, statistical thinking and models, machine learning algorithms, and AI ethics.

Classes will be both in-personas and online. The AI Academy will use the CMU-home-developed learning platform called ISLE (Integrated Statistics Learning Environment).

Moderna will launch the program this week with its first cohort of students. In early 2022, will be the full rollout.

The company’s goal is to identify and integrate these technologies into “every Moderna system and process to bring mRNA medicines to patients.”

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biopharmaceutical firm — which is pioneering messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and vaccines, “attributes its speed in part to the incorporation of digital technologies,” said Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna.

“We believe AI is a key enabler of our ability to build the best version of Moderna now and into the future. This AI academy will enable us to make AI part of the company’s ways of working, part of our DNA. We look forward to driving this with Carnegie Mellon’s team.”

Two learning platforms, Docebo Inc (NASDAQ: DCBO; TSX: DCBO) and EdCast, announced a strategic integration partnership intended to create an AI-powered solution. No further financial and technical details were provided. Docebo’s SEC filings page didn’t reflect this partnership this week.

“Our integration with EdCast’s XP creates one universal learning platform, combining the benefits of LXP and LMS into one system,” said Federica Melis, Vice President of Strategic Alliances at Docebo.

The declared goal of Toronto-based Docebo and Mountain View, California-based EdCast — which uses Open edX software in its tech stack — is to offer an end-to-end learning system with one place for centralized reporting for auditing compliance, and upskilling.

The Open edX project — which moved from U2’s edX to Massachusetts nonprofit corporation called Center for Reimagining Learning (tCRIL) — announced this month the creation of a Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) that will provide the overall technical governance and stewardship of the initiative.

This committee will have nine members: three appointed by The Center for Reimagining Learning’s Board of Trustees, three by 2U Inc., and three representatives from the Open edX community.

tCRIL and 2U have already appointed their members, but their names have not been disclosed yet.

For the first time, the community will have direct input into project governance. “We will be moving to identify and select the community members of the TOC as quickly as practical,” said MIT and Havard University’s led nonprofit organization.

Appointed members will serve a one-year term and won’t receive any compensation.

The nonprofit “will follow the consensus-seeking decision-making model and will only resolve issues by a vote in cases where consensus cannot be reached,” said the document, which set the general rules and operations.

Learn more about the recent Open edX governance changes in our latest blog post: https://t.co/eJeQ76ySiv#openedx #edx #opensource #platform #edtech #elearning #technology #lms #moocs #spocs pic.twitter.com/ehnoft8iqJ

— Open edX (@OpenEdX) December 7, 2021