Nordic EdTech News #99: 2023-10-30

Your Weeks 42 - 43 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.

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Hello, good morning and welcome to today’s newsletter. Here’s to a brilliant last two months of 2023.

I identified the worsening global teacher shortage in NEN #98 as one of the most significant challenges facing international education systems and, by extension, global EdTech. Another is the identification and sharing of best practice or, put simply, what works well.

In his new book, Hidden Potential, Adam Grant highlights some of the factors that make the Finnish and Estonian systems so successful and argues for their global adoption. As he writes in an extract published in the New York Times: “…both countries have done more than just achieve high rates of high performers — they’ve achieved some of the world’s lowest rates of low performers, with remarkably small performance gaps between schools and between richer and poorer students.”

It’s therefore no surprise that Finnish EdTechs are highly attractive to international B2B buyers. After Kide Science’s recent acquisition, Ilona IT has now announced its sale to Belgium’s Academic Software (Link). Ilona is the market leader in Finland for educational software / training and will form the launchpad for Academic Software’s growth across the Nordics. More broadly, Academic Software is looking to “leverage Ilona IT's more than 20 years of specialised knowledge across Europe.”

Staying in Finland, Sanoma Learning’s Q3 report showed a significant net sales increase for Q1 to Q3 to €695 million (2022: 579). Revenues for the Finnish learning business showed a small yoy drop in Q3 revenues (€8.8 million vs €9.4 million in 2022), but results for the first three quarters were up yoy (€52.6 million in €51.0 million last year). The full report is available here.

At the recent GITEX Global 2023 event, Estonia’s Minister of Education and Research, Kristina Kallas, spoke about 'AI Powered Education: Designing a Future-Ready Learning Ecosystem.' Her speech emphasised the importance of ensuring secure, sustainable, and affordable digital access to education and highlighted the steps that governments can take to ensure the successful integration of AI.

In other ecosystem news, Kurt Gammelgaard Nielsen has been appointed by EdTech Denmark's Board of Directors as the organisation’s new CEO (Link). Esben Trier says his farewells here. Best of luck in the future to both of them.

And finally, it’s great to see that SETT have launched a new Nordic Track for their 2024 event. Content on 16th April will highlight key topics from a Nordic perspective and offer “the opportunity to meet, network and exchange lessons with colleagues from all over the Nordics.” I’m looking forward to it already!

As always, 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.

Thanks for reading, Jonathan

News from Denmark

• Teachers: The politicians have gone the wrong way. The school is not too digital, it is not digital enough.

• Airtame won prizes in both the Higher Education and Primary Education categories at the Tech & Learning Awards of Excellence. (Link)

• Ezri is a new generative AI for educational use and a competitor to the newly-launched SkoleGPT. (Link)

• Praxis won the BELMA Gold Prize for the best European learning tool for upper secondary schools. (Link)

• Shape Robotics won a significant new contract to supply 7 STEAM Labs to high schools in Moldova (Link) as CEO, André Fehrn, expresses concern about a lack of national ambition towards technology. (Link)

• uQualio secured third place at the 9th e-Learning Excellence Awards 2023 at the European Conference on e-Learning. (Link)

• Encouraging evidence of the need for VitaSim’s simulation training to address staff shortages and support training in the healthcare sector. (Link)

News from Estonia

• Ten leading EdTech solutions are highlighted on the Education and Youth Board of Estonia blog.

• Amazing update from Tõnis Kusmin at 99math: “Two years ago today…we celebrated 200 million tasks solved. Today the number is 2,766,682,376.”

• Karen Ordones has confirmed that Tutor.id is up for sale. Reach out to her via here if you’re interested in learning more.

News from Finland

• Annie Advisor has been selected as one of Finland's most promising growth companies by Kasvu Open. (Link)

• Working with a local partner, Code School Finland is now delivering teacher training courses in coding across Ireland. (Link)

• Eduten will conduct a 12-week pilot project in Bhutan to assess how it can improve the numeracy skills of 500 students across 20 schools. (Link)

• Finnish Schools International and Highlight Ventures have invested in KidsDay “to digitise and transform Early Childhood Education globally.” (Link)

• Check out the full programme for Helsinki Education Week - it’s happening this week (30 Oct to 3 Nov).

• Kide Science has been chosen as a finalist in the STEM / STEAM Instructional Solution category of the 2023 Supes’ Choice Awards. (Link)

News from Iceland

• Atlas Primer is now available to users of the EvolveMe digital platform developed by American Student Assistance. (Link)

• According to CEO Jon Gunnar Thordarson, Bara tala has secured funding and launched 50 generic Icelandic learning courses on App Store and Google Play. (Link)

• Adalheidur Hreinsdottir, CEO and founder of LearnCove, joined the Á mannauðsmáli podcast. (Link)

News from Latvia

• More than 23,000 laptops have now been delivered to Latvian municipalities for use in early years classes. (Link)

• Exonicus R&D will help develop a digital training platform for EU armies as part of a consortium delivering a €30 million project. (Link)

• Tilde is working with Microsoft to “offer more accessible and equal educational opportunities for people with hearing impairments.” (Link)

News from Lithuania

• The National Ministry of Education provides an additional €5 million to schools for new textbooks and teaching resources. (Link)

• Lithuania launches digital Individual Learning Accounts to upskill and reskill its citizens, particularly in key digital competencies. (Link)

• EdTech Lithuania’s next EDucated event focuses on AI in Education. Full details here.

• Turing College confirmed the start of their 50th cohort. Congratulations! (Link)

News from Norway

• Karianne Tung has been named minister for digitisation and administration, a new cabinet post with responsibility for IT and administrative policy. (Link)

• Great podcast featuring Anne Lise Waal on Attensi’s journey from 3 to 150 million NOK.

• Good to see 4,000 Year 5 girls taking part in this year’s Girl Tech Fest. (Link)

• IKT-Norge and ViTarAnsvar join forces to offer extra maths teachers to 20 secondary schools across Norway. (Link)

• Ludenso celebrates delivering 100,000 Learning Experiences (Link) as their CEO, Eirik Wahlstrøm, argues the case for AR to adapt books to support diverse learning styles (Link).

• Sikt launches a new AI chat service for knowledge sector customers. (Link)

News from Sweden

• Education Minister, Lotta Edholm, responds to criticism of the Swedish Government’s changes to the use of digital tools in preschool. (Link)

• Sana Labs have published their 2022 financial statement. Turnover has increased from SEK 12.5 million in 2021 to SEK 23 million in 2022, but losses have also widened to SEK -71.6 million compared to SEK -42.1 million in 2021.

• Skolon’s third quarter report shows a 94% yoy increase in net sales, a 38% increase in paying users and operating profit up to SEK 0.5 million from SEK 37,000 in 2022. (Link)

• Storyals and Atea have signed a new partnership across the Nordic and Baltic states to address “customers' growing need for effective and continuous upskilling.” (Link)

• Swedish Edtech Industry has updated their guide to EdTech procurement, which forms an invaluable part of their Edtechkartan. (Link)

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