- On EdTech Newsletter
- Posts
- Interesting Reads This Week
Interesting Reads This Week
Somehow both a sobering and a “hold my beer” sort of week
Glenda Morgan
November 11, 2023
Was this forwarded to you by a friend? Sign up, and get your own copy of the news that matters sent to your inbox every week. Sign up for the On EdTech newsletter. Interested in additional analysis? Try with our 30-day free trial and Upgrade to the On EdTech+ newsletter.
It has been another heck of a week, and not just because I have some looming deadlines with which my “hunt and peck” method of typing (a source of much derision from Phil) is having difficulty keeping up. A lot of things were announced or emerged or just simply sunk home this week. Some of them I am going to keep for a more detailed analysis later (i.e., I can’t type fast enough), but these are the things I want and need to share right now.
Are we returning to normal in VC funding and what does that mean for EdTech?
We have seen a decline in VC funding over the past two years. Phil often talks about (and I sometimes listen) about how some of the dynamics in the OPM market are the consequences of there being less cheap money around thanks to rising interest rates. This week I read an analysis of general (i.e., non EdTech) VC funding and interest rates. It occurred to me that our current situation may be closer to a long-term normal. That the burst in VC funding and cheap money we experienced during the pandemic and immediately after were outliers. This is a sobering thought.
AI+Edu conference sessions
Edtech Insiders have made available online a passel of the sessions from their AI+Edu conference. A lot of the sessions have a K12 focus but will still be helpful for those of us in higher ed. I haven’t watched all the sessions yet, but so far many of them are significantly better than the recent conference sessions on AI we have been to, where quality appears to be the inverse of quantity.