2023-01-09
In what may be a first, Seattle Public Schools has sued social media platforms TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Snap, claiming exploitation of “the vulnerable brains of youth” led to a mental health crisis in schools. https://www.geekwire.com/... (@GeekWire) #edchat #edtech
GeekWire
Seattle Public Schools sue TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Snap, Instagram, and their parent companies for allegedly exploiting “the vulnerable brains of youth”
2023-01-08
In what may be a first, Seattle Public Schools has sued social media platforms TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Snap, claiming exploitation of “the vulnerable brains of youth” led to a mental health crisis in schools. https://www.geekwire.com/... (@GeekWire) #edchat #edtech
GeekWire
Seattle Public Schools sue TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Snap, Instagram, and their parent companies for allegedly causing a youth mental health crisis
A new lawsuit filed by Seattle Public Schools against TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Snap, Instagram, and their parent companies alleges …
2022-12-19
@Techmeme @TwitterSafety This is Alice-in-Wonderland level fantasy. Twitter is Musk's. No one should presume any vote, or voice, other than his means anything.
Washington Post
Elon Musk's poll, asking “Should I step down as head of Twitter?”, ends with 57.5% voting yes, after Musk said Twitter polls will decide “major policy changes”
After a new policy prompted backlash, Twitter CEO Elon Musk said future policies would be determined by polls
@Techmeme @TwitterSafety This is Alice-in-Wonderland level fantasy. Twitter is Musk's. No one should presume any vote, or voice, other than his means anything.
@twittersafety
After Elon Musk said polls will decide major new policies, @TwitterSafety posts a poll on whether accounts primarily promoting other platforms should be allowed
Should we have a policy preventing the creation of or use of existing accounts for the main purpose of advertising other social media platforms?
2022-12-09
Those in #edtech will recall that, at one time, Amazon Inspire was a forever-in-beta educational resource sharing site, launched in 2016 and now offline at its original URL. Background on that and other Amazon efforts from 2018: https://www.geekwire.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Wall Street Journal
Amazon rolls out Inspire, a TikTok-like photo and video feed in its app that lets customers “like” and buy products, initially to select customers in the US
2022-11-07
For those who recall the turn of the century: Yes, this is the dot-com bust all over again, for very different reasons (said the guy who had a regular “dot-gone” TV segment). This time, easy money + appear to grow at all costs. Not broad based this time (yet), but reality based. https://twitter.com/...
Wall Street Journal
Sources: Meta plans to lay off thousands of employees this week, with an announcement expected as soon as November 9, the first broad staff cuts in its history
Social-media company's planned cuts expected to affect many thousands of its workforce — Meta Platforms Inc. META 2.11%increase …
2022-10-28
Classera said “proceeds would be used to continue developing its Learning Super Platform (LSP) for the education and corporate e-training sectors,” and “to target further growth in the Middle East and Africa, and to quicken global expansion, including in Asia Pacific.” #edtech https://twitter.com/...
Reuters
Classera, a San Francisco-based edtech startup focused on the Middle East and Africa, raised a $40M Series A led by Sanabil, which is run by Saudi Arabia's PIF
Yousef Saba / Reuters : Tweets: @frankcatalano Tweets: Frank Catalano / @frankcatalano : Classera said “proceeds would be used to continue developing its Learning Super Platform (...
2022-10-07
“The joint filing said Shopify had resolved the dispute with Macmillan Learning, Cengage Learning, Elsevier, McGraw Hill, and Pearson Education and asked the court to dismiss the case with prejudice, which means it cannot be refiled.” #highered https://twitter.com/...
Reuters
Shopify settles a lawsuit with five major education publishers that claimed the platform ignored notices of users selling pirated textbooks and other materials
Blake Brittain / Reuters : Tweets: @frankcatalano Tweets: Frank Catalano / @frankcatalano : “The joint filing said Shopify had resolved the dispute with Macmillan Learning, Cengag...
2022-09-07
Mixed feelings about this. While I'm listed on Muck Rack (https://t.co/...) and have found them responsive to fixing errors in my #journalism profile, I also know from personal experience that taking growth equity can skew a company's attentiveness. https://twitter.com/...
TechCrunch
Miami-based Muck Rack, a database of journalists, raised a $180M Series A from Susquehanna Growth Equity, after being bootstrapped since being founded in 2009
For any journalist who has ever googled their name, there is a good chance that one of the hits will be for Muck Rack …
2022-08-10
Really worth noting? “The company's net loss was $176.4 million, or a loss per share of 30 cents. Analysts had anticipated a loss of 25 cents.” Despite its popularity, especially among young kids and teens, Roblox is not profitable. #edtech https://twitter.com/...
Bloomberg
Roblox misses with Q2 bookings down 4% YoY to $639.9M, vs. $657.2M est., and average DAUs up 21% YoY to 52.2M, vs. 54M est.; stock drops 15%+
2022-06-29
“Google touts ‘growing custom needs’ in creating this subsidiary with ‘specialized sales, customer engineering, customer success and services, customer support, channel and partner programs, compliance, and security operations.’” #edtech https://twitter.com/...
9to5Google
Google announces Google Public Sector, a new division aiming to bring Google Cloud tech to US educational institutions and federal, state, and local governments
Google today is home to two divisions that have their own CEOs: Cloud and YouTube. “Google Public Sector” was announced today as a …
2022-06-23
“While it is celebrated for leading the edutainment category, MasterClass has always had some clear hurdles to surpass, including getting users who gravitate to the platform for one class to stick around for other classes.” #edtech https://twitter.com/...
TechCrunch
MasterClass, which offers celebrity-taught online classes, lays off ~120 employees, or 20% of its team; sources: MasterClass was valued at $2.75B in May 2021
Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch :
2022-06-20
“We have proven that live-streamed teaching works when done right, and we will continue to build on that...This new round of funding will allow us to make our service even more powerful as we continue to assist schools to address their teacher shortages.” #edtech https://twitter.com/...
Built In Chicago
Chicago-based Elevate K-12, which helps school districts alleviate teacher shortages by virtually connecting teachers to classrooms, has raised a $40M Series C
Abel Rodriguez / Built In Chicago :
2022-05-09
Effective monthly cost is $0 for ACP-eligible families who apply their Affordable Connectivity Program benefits to these new 100Mbps internet plans. There are said to be 48M households who qualify. Possible “homework gap” filler? #edtech https://twitter.com/...
Axios
The White House says 20 ISPs, including Verizon, Comcast, and Charter, have agreed to offer $30 per month 100 Mbps internet service to low-income families
The White House said Monday 20 internet service providers have agreed to offer $30 high-speed internet plans to low-income families …
2022-04-18
Classroom Technologies, maker of Class, is the latest company headed by Michael Chasen, co-founder of Blackboard. Class runs on top of Zoom. As the Intel AI test, ""I don't think it's tech that's fully reached its maturity yet." #edtech https://twitter.com/...
Protocol
Virtual classroom startup Class is testing Intel's “emotion AI” tech that claims to detect bored, distracted, or confused students, raising privacy questions
When college instructor Angela Dancey wants to decipher whether her first-year English students comprehend what she's trying …
2022-03-15
“A model like ours not only prevents piracy, but it reduces the need for second-hand books.” #highered #edtech https://twitter.com/...
TechCrunch
London-based Perlego, a digital subscription-based library of academic textbooks with about 850K titles, raises a $50M Series B led by Mediahuis Ventures
Spotify helped pave the way for a new model for consumers to listen to music: pay a monthly fee to stream whatever you want …
2021-11-29
“Obviously, the $45m we raised in September takes away some of the urgency around figuring out how we fund the future. On the other hand, we have great plans for what we are going to do over the next five years.” #edtech https://twitter.com/...
Tom's Hardware
Report: Raspberry Pi Trading hired investment banks Stifel and Liberum to advise on a London IPO planned for this spring that would value it at ~$500M
Les Pounder / Tom's Hardware : Source: Telegraph .
2021-11-08
What happen when parents reverse engineer and recreate a school app because they're frustrated with the one the school system itself made? It works. And then the school system (in Stockholm) reports it to the police. https://arstechnica.com/... (@arstechnica) #edtech
Wired
A look at the fight between city officials and parents over Stockholm's glitchy app for its schools, as annoyed parents built their own open source version
Stockholm's official app was a disaster. So annoyed parents built their own open source version—ignoring warnings that it might be illegal.
2021-10-31
Roblox is down: “Roblox is very popular, especially with kids — more than 50 percent of Roblox players are under the age of 13.” Roblox says “the root cause [of the outage is an] internal system issue,” not free burritos. #edtech https://twitter.com/...
The Verge
Roblox has been down since about 7PM ET on October 28, with some speculating the outage may be related to a Chipotle promotion, but the company denies a link
Roblox is having some major server issues — Roblox has been down for more than two days, with the game and its related website offline for millions of players.
2021-08-13
As part of the new changes, TikTok will limit push notifications to teens. Younger teens 13-15 won't receive push notifications after 9 PM, while those 16-17 won't receive any notifications after 10 PM. https://twitter.com/...
TechCrunch
TikTok details upcoming protections for users aged 13 to 17, including turning in-app messaging off by default and changes to notifications
@arielfoxjohnson @margarethmcgill @sarafischer #KidsPrivacy https://twitter.com/... @ultraviolet : “I'm glad that companies are taking steps in the right direction to increase priv...