Nordic EdTech News #53 : 2021-11-01
Your Weeks 42 and 43 update from the Nordic & Baltic EdTech ecosystem
Good morning and welcome to today’s Nordic EdTech News!
This newsletter always aims to help subscribers better understand the businesses, technologies and tools shaping the future of learning across the Nordics and Baltics. So it has again been a pleasure for me to work with the team at HolonIQ on the 2021 Nordic & Baltic EdTech 50, which highlights the most promising startups from across the region. If you missed it, there’s a recording of the announcement webinar here and detailed analysis of the key trends here.
TL;DR : Sweden & Finland make up half of this year's cohort, plus strong growth in workforce & skills category as STEAM and Advanced Tech businesses remain strong.
Mait Müntel, CEO of Estonia’s Lingvist, was one of the leaders who participated in the above webinar. Shortly afterwards, Lingvist announced that it had raised an additional €5.1 million in funding (Link). The investment will enable the business to scale to new markets and include new languages as well as hiring a “separate scientific research team to experiment with radical ideas and bring them into production.” Exciting times and congratulations to everyone at Lingvist!
Congrats also to the team at Eduten, who were confirmed as one of the winners of the 2021 EdTechX Impact Awards. Full details here.
For many education businesses, Q3 and the start of the new school year is a vital period. It’s therefore encouraging to see strong results from two of the largest Nordic businesses - Atea and Sanoma Learning. Atea confirmed strong growth in sales and profit across all countries with group revenue increasing by 4.2% to NOK 8.5 million (Link). Figures from Sanoma also showed strong Q3 growth (Link). This was driven by the acquisition of Santillana as well as strong comparable net sales growth of 6%.
If you missed the Baltic stop on Brighteye Ventures’ European EdTech Virtual Tour, then there’s a recording of a fascinating session here!
And finally, it’s great to announce that XcitED will be taking place at the new Helsinki Education Hub on 30th November. This year’s theme will be “Scale up” and there’s a great programme of keynotes and panel discussions featuring Brighteye Ventures, Educapital, the European Edtech Alliance, Unicef, Yes.vc and Zanichelli Ventures. Book your tickets now!
XcitED will also feature the GESAwards Nordic & Baltic semi-final. The eight companies pitching for a place in the global final are now confirmed. They are Astrid Education, CanopyLab, Grapho Group, Hypocampus, iSpeak App, Peaqs, Skolon and WecoPlay. Good luck!
As always, do let me know if you’ve got any feedback or a story to include in a future issue of this newsletter by emailing hello@10digits.org. Sharing this email with your network is also always much appreciated!
Best regards, Jonathan
News from Denmark
Issue 9 of Learning Tech magazine is now available, focusing on the practical interpretations of teaching resources. (Link)
Jonas Gyalokay, co-founder and chairman of Airtame, features on the Tech.Eu Podcast to discuss their story and overarching vision. (Link)
Interesting feature with Sahra-Josephine Hjorth, CEO and co-founder of CanopyLAB as she argues for change in the investment ecosystem. (Link)
Labster’s Science Online (SO): Connected event takes place on 2nd Nov. (Link)
STIL provides a new tool for schools to help educators understand how student data is shared and used by free digital products. (Link)
How Vurdigi can help and support educators to evaluate digital and print teaching resources. (Link)
News from Estonia
New Estonian research details the three-step process teachers go through in adjusting to new technological learning methods (Awareness, Acceptance and Adoption). (Link)
Detailed review of the recent EdTech Hackathon 2021 (Link) and do pre-register for next year’s event here.
News from Finland
Claned has been included in the Soonicorn Club of Finland. (Link)
Elias Robot announces partnership with STEM Alliance (Link) as research details how primary school students worked with the app over 3 months. (Link)
Don’t miss this Eduten podcast with Olli-Pekka Heinonen, Director-General of the International Baccalaureate. (Link)
GraphoGame will be given free of charge to schools in Jamaica. (Link)
It’s Helsinki Education Week this week - full details of the programme here.
The HundrED Innovation Summit 2021 takes place this week (3 - 5 Nov). Three days of expert panels, live workshops and networking. (Link)
The Learning Kingdom and Finnish Education Solutions (FEDS) in Malaysia have agreed to build the first "Finnish Experience” flagship kindergarten. Code School Finland, Eduten, Kide Science, Kindiedays and Moomin Language School are all involved . (Link)
Kide Science named as the DACH and Nordics Regional Winner at the Super Connect for Good 2021 competition. (Link)
Psyon Games launches Antidote COVID-19. Developed with the WHO, it is the world's first COVID-19 vaccine awareness game. (Link)
News from Iceland
UTÍS 2021 takes place this week (4 - 6 November) - follow #utis2021 to keep up to date.
News from Latvia
Zvaigzne ABC wins a special jury prize at the BELMA awards. (Link)
Tackling the digital divide amongst Latvian educators. (Link)
New digital teaching resources produced by government and experts to support teachers and parents during Latvia’s latest lockdown. (Link)
PyGirls programming course launches to encourage girls into programming careers with support from Google and TietoEvry. (Link)
News from Lithuania
29 schools begin testing digital resources and smart devices as part of the government’s Digital Education Transformation project (Link) as even more approved teaching resources are made available to schools. Link)
Network of new STEAM access centres opens. (Link)
BitDegree launches reskilling courses to support Lithuanian businesses by teaching employees valuable coding skills. (Link)
Šarūnas Dignaitis has been named as CEO of EdTech Lithuania. (Link)
The EMU School project uses digital tools to determine children's well being and recommends ways to improve it. (Link)
Teachers Lead Tech confirms new cyber security course for primary school teachers in Lithuania (Link) and wins a Gold at the BELMA awards (Link)
News from Norway
The new Norwegian government outlines its priorities for education - the so-called Hurdal platform. (Link)
Notable data breach at the University of Tromsø - 26,000 users have to change passwords. (Link)
Kahoot! features in the latest CNN Tech for Good episode (Link) and teams up with Khan Academy’s LearnStorm 2021 programme. (Link)
Join Ludenso’s “Future of Textbooks” webinar (3rd Nov). (Link)
Norway’s NDLA provides a model of how state-financed open educational resources can create “more inclusive upper secondary schools.” (Link)
News from Sweden
Do take time to read last week’s report on “Is Edtech Sweden's next big export industry?” Good summary here.
Large-scale quantitative study of over 1,000 Swedish secondary schools finds no impact of mobile phone bans on student performance and rejects even small-sized gains. (Link)
Lots to digest in the 2021 Svenskarna och Internet report, but perhaps most notable is the finding that students and their parents think that face to face teaching is preferable and that learning is better. (Link)
The National Library has been asked by the government to map and analyse the use of open educational resources (OER) in Sweden. (Link)
Skolon starts a collaboration with Gyldendal, which will see the Norwegian publisher’s 350 school titles made available on the digital platform. (Link)
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