The Knewton Blog

Edtech is booming. In the past decade, VC investments in edtech have tripled from $146 million in 2002 to $429 million in 2011, according to the National Venture Capital Association. VentureBeat says that the market size for U.S. education could reach $1.2 trillion by 2015. If this were any other information technology vertical market, the issue of incorporation status would be no issue at all. But education is held to a different standard. A higher standard, many… Read more

Posted in From Jose, Knewton | No comments

Share on

Last Monday, Knewton hosted the NY Tech Women holiday/birthday party. Since its inception last December, NY Tech Women has grown to include nearly one thousand women. Through happy hours, mixers, pre-meetups and other informal social events, the group offers a number of ways for women to develop a real sense of community within the NY tech scene. More than just the standard business networking hour, the group is an easy way for women to form… Read more

Posted in Education & Technology, Knewton | No comments

Share on

At Knewton, we like to experiment with data visualizations. The above visualization shows the history of developer contributions to the Knewton Adaptive Learning Platform (Post Git). Contributions are measured in “commits” which occur whenever a developer alters the code and transfers the changes into our central git repository. Each file in a commit is represented by a colored-coded blob which indicates the type of file committed. Each time a developer commits a file, the algorithm… Read more

Posted in Education & Technology, Knewton | No comments

Share on

Our mission at Knewton is to democratize and personalize education for all students. We feel this mission especially keenly when it comes to those students traditionally least likely to receive a high-quality education, whether here in the U.S. or the developing world. Our new partnership with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) is very much in service of this goal. What’s the partnership? Knewton is working with HMH to provide an adaptive learning solution — SkillsTutor Powered by Knewton… Read more

Posted in Education & Technology, Knewton | No comments

Share on

Two new Knerds joined our team this month. Anne Thomas (left) is Knewton’s newest Adaptive Instruction Analyst. Originally from Tokyo, she attended Columbia University. Then, Anne says, “In 2009, I took Knewton’s GMAT prep course. That got me into business school [at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business] which in turn got me a job at Knewton. Of course this was all preconceived.” While Anne is our first student-turned-employee, we trust she won’t… Read more

Posted in Inside Knewton, Knewton | No comments

Share on

Lately there’s been a ton of press around massive open online courses. MOOCs are a “tsunami,” a “seismic shift“; the New York Times says 2012 is the “year of the MOOC.” People are right to be excited. But why? Much of the recent coverage focuses on numbers: the dozens of top-shelf universities putting their professors online through Coursera, the 160,000 students who enrolled in Udacity’s Artificial Intelligence course, the 100,000+ students who signed up for Harvard’s first edX courses…. Read more

Posted in From Jose, Knewton | One comment

Share on

I have to admit, I’ve always been a little skeptical of the idea of the “fun-loving tech startup” — companies full of geeks lounging on bean bag chairs and playing ping-pong. The idea that a pampering environment could stimulate creativity and lead to wild success in the great internet frontier always seemed a bit trite. Weren’t these really just a bunch of geeks who got lucky, now attributing their success to some nebulous inspiration found… Read more

Posted in Inside Knewton, Knewton | No comments

Share on

Knerd shirts: maybe you’ve seen them around Union Square or on the subway. Here at Knewton, we’re big fans of our oh-so-soft American Apparel tees. For our last hack day, our Head of Recruiting, Dave Garfinkel was inspired to create his very own T-shirt cannon. Facilities Coordinator Patrick Ward and Software Engineer Nick Ward helped turn his vision into a reality. Check out this video of the cannon in action. On November 1, we’ll be… Read more

Posted in Inside Knewton, Knewton | No comments

Share on

This week, our Founder & CEO Jose is being honored at this week’s Builders & Innovators Conference, as one of Goldman Sachs’ “100 most intriguing entrepreneurs.” As part of the award, the team at Goldman Sachs put together a few short videos featuring various entrepreneurs. Visit their site to see videos from the founders of Warby Parker, Minted, CloudFlare, and other companies. Jose was also featured in a video; watch to learn about Knewton’s “double… Read more

Posted in From Jose, Knewton | No comments

Share on

This Tuesday, we hosted our biggest meetup yet! Over 150 people came out to hear Jose Ferreira, our Founder & CEO, speak on a panel with Greg Gunn, Entrepreneur in Residence, City Light Capital & Co-founder, Wireless Generation; Harold Levy, MD, Palm Ventures; & Laurie Racine, Founder & MD, Startl.

Posted in Education & Technology, Knewton | No comments

Share on