Nordic EdTech News #85: 2023-03-20
Your Weeks 10 - 11 update from the Nordic and Baltic EdTech ecosystem
Nordic EdTech News is the best way to keep up with the EdTech ecosystem across 8 Nordic and Baltic countries. I curate it from company updates and a wide variety of international sources. It’s a passion project of mine - the rest of my time is spent advising / consulting the companies who lead the future of learning. If you’d like to find out more, drop me an email.
Hello and welcome to today’s Nordic EdTech News. With Bett coming up, it’s a busy time for everyone, so let’s get straight to it.
It’s been quiet on the investment front for the last few weeks, so it’s great to see Sweden’s Kognity announcing $5 million in new funding from Mars Growth Capital, a joint venture between MUFG and Liquidity Group (Link). It will be used by Kognity to support “further growth in their U.S. high school science business and for expanding their product offering for customers worldwide.” Kognity’s digital teaching and learning platform is currently used by more than 140,000 students in 1,300 schools worldwide.
This is Mars Growth Capital’s first Nordic deal, but there’s clearly an appetite to do more. According to their CEO, the deal “represents the first of many funding deals we anticipate doing in the Nordics over the coming 12 months. We are committed to the inventive and creative founders in the tech space and expect to commit up to a further $500m in the next year in the Nordics.”
Congratulations also to Estonia’s Edumus, who have announced a new €250,000 investment from Heateo Haridusfond, the Estonian Business School, Edumeel and a number of previous investors (Link). Maria Rahamägi, CEO and founder, said the investment would ensure that “Edumus School's courses will reach nearly 10,000 Estonian high school students by the fall semester."
Whilst on female EdTech founders, it was great to see the Nordic and Baltics so well represented in HolonIQ’s list of “women who are leading the world’s most promising EdTech Startups.” Great to also see Ingrid Skrede (Ludenso) and Sari Hurme-Mehtälä (Kide) taking the stage at SXSW Edu recently (Link).
In an important intervention, IKT-Norge has powerfully argued that “it is absolutely crucial that schools have sufficient funds to purchase good Norwegian digital teaching aids” (Link). In their submission to the Expert Group for Digital Learning Analysis, they also highlight the important voice that students should have in the digital learning debate and reiterate the view that state intervention should not overtake “well-functioning private solutions.”
The Norwegian Classroom forms part of a strong Nordic and Baltic presence at Bett in London next week and I’m looking forward to meeting Nordic EdTech businesses and connections during the show. If you’d like to meet, hit me up via email to arrange a time. Look forward to seeing you there!
If you’ve got a story that you’d like me to include in a future issue of this newsletter, please email hello@10digits.org, tag me on Twitter or LinkedIn or use #nordicedtech / #balticedtech. Sharing this email with your network is also always much appreciated!
Best regards, Jonathan
News from Denmark
Leading Danish tech voices advocate for the use of technology in schools but also propose that schools should be phone-free zones. (Link)
Board reorganisation at CanopyLab (Link) as the company appeals against Erhvervsstyrelsen’s latest decision to reject reinstatement. (Link)
Flying Bizkit announces investment in Opinoma, a formative assessment startup. (Link)
LearningBank and Planday announce a new integration for their corporate learning customers. (Link)
Shape Robotics confirms a distribution agreement with HandyAV, a UK-based distributor. (Link)
+30 digital services crash causing huge disruption across education. All are run by Styrelsen hos IT og Læring. (Link)
Tore Neergaard Kjellow, CEO of Ugly Duckling Games, argues for a change in the way games for education are made. (Link)
Uqualio was named as a Global Excellence Awards winner for 2023. (Link)
News from Estonia
Märt Aro has been interviewed by national TV in Malta about Estonian education and EdTech. (Link)
Check out how 99math are leveraging teachers as powerful product advocates on social media. (Link)
ALPA Kids’ CEO Kelly Lilles has been named in the “Top 10 Women in Education 2023” by The Women Entrepreneur India. (Link)
News from Finland
Interesting update from the DigiVOO study, which was carried out as a collaboration between the Universities of Helsinki and Tampere. It examined the impact of digitization on learning, learning situations and results. (Link)
Annie’s SMS chatbot is making a real difference with students in Italy. (Link)
Strong update from Eduten showing their progress in Vietnam. (Link)
Freeed have been featured in the Spanish version of Forbes, who covered their AI in Education Survey. (Link)
Qridi’s new Core proposition, which launches on 22 March, helps schools upgrade their IB programme with a digital learning platform centred around students.
Great to see Silta Education’s neuroscience-based online training featured in a lengthy article in Helsingin Sanomat. (Link)
News from Iceland
Amazing to see how Iceland is working with OpenAI’s GPT-4 to preserve and develop its language. (Link)
Iceland is lagging when it comes to cyber security education and will develop a new university programme focusing on it in the next year or so. (Link)
News from Latvia
New HackCodeX hackathon in Riga, 3rd to 5th June 2023. Applications still open and challenges will be announced in May.
News from Lithuania
All you need to know about EdTech Lithuania’s Bett presence here.
The EU-India Innocenter has selected MOKOSI to explore and validate opportunities in the Indian market. (Link)
The Lithuanian National Education Agency's project "Digital Education Transformation (EdTech)" has been named as a finalist in the European Innovation in Politics Awards 2023. (Link)
News from Norway
As part of their 10th anniversary celebrations, Kahoot! identify 10 of their “innovations that made learning awesome.” (Link)
Ludenso signs new deals with Lotus Publishing (Link) and with Plantyn, the leading Belgian publisher. (Link)
Storyboard, a leading player in Norwegian corporate learning, has acquired Denmark’s Børsen Academy after 10 years of working together. The move will enable Storyboard to “establish a larger presence in the Danish market.” (Link)
Telenor and Plan enter into a partnership in Bangladesh to strengthen 450,000 young people's digital skills. Most of them are girls or young women from disadvantaged areas. (Link)
WiKIT and the UK’s EdTech Impact have announced a new partnership to boost their EdTech evidence services. (Link)
News from Sweden
Parts of the national tests in Swedish for Y6 students were widely shared on TikTok. (Link)
Digiexam signs RISE Research Institutes of Sweden as a new customer. (Link)
Gleechi have been nominated in the Best Developer and Authoring Tools category at the leading XR conference Laval Virtual. (Link)
Dugga has announced a new agreement with SoftwareOne to “enhance digital assessment and education solutions for students and educators.” (Link)
Learnster and Sting combine to launch Startup Academy, a new online course to support founders building fast growth companies. (Link)
How Magma supports maths teachers to deliver virtual lessons at distance. (Link)
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