News Brief

02/05/13

With $100M From The Gates Foundation & Others, inBloom Wants to Transform Education by Unleashing Its Data

TechCrunch (02/05/13) Empson, Rip

As interest in education technology grows, some of the most influential businesses and entrepreneurs are engaging in the conversation, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who said in a CNN op-ed that digital education is important in the unification of the student population and to "maximize students' potential to succeed by opening their eyes to a more diverse, customized array of learning techniques." Additionally, Bill Gates says technology can be used to collect and analyze data from schools and that big data can help "save" troubled schools. Businesses and others have contributed $100 million to the development of the Shared Learning Collaborative (SLC), which is an alliance of states, districts, nonprofits, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and others with a shared vision of "accelerating student achievement through personalized learning." The collaborative is building a "set of shared technology services" that states and districts can use "to connect student data and instructional materials" and integrate them effectively.

SLC, which has rebranded itself as inBloom, aims to help schools, districts, and others make sense of and use big data, especially as schools adapt materials and assessments to meet the Common Core State Standards. InBloom aims to create a standardized, open-source data architecture that is not limited to Student Information Systems but is inclusive to Learning Management Systems and any applications that schools and districts use to store critical learning data. The hope is that the tools will enrich learning applications and connect them to systems and information in a variety of formats and places, while at the same time keeping costs for schools in check.

News & Events

News Brief

With $100M From The Gates Foundation & Others, inBloom Wants to Transform Education by Unleashing Its Data