Podcasts about learnlaunch

Send us a textMark Miller is the founder and Managing Director of Good Harbor Partners (GHP), a boutique M&A advisory firm specializing in the education technology and publishing sectors. With over 20 years of experience as an edtech entrepreneur and advisor, Miller has a proven track record in guiding Pre-K-12, Higher Education, and Workforce clients through strategic growth, fundraising, and successful exits. A co-founder of LearnLaunch and a dedicated member of Cornell's Entrepreneurship Advisory Board, Miller is widely respected for his contributions to the edtech ecosystem and frequently shares his insights as a speaker at industry events.

Ami Shah is the Co-Founder and CEO of Peekapak, an award-winning social-emotional learning platform that engages elementary and middle school students to learn skills like self-regulation, empathy and teamwork and reaches over 450,000 educators and students. Peekapak does this using stories, evidence-based lessons, and game-based learning. Behind-the-scenes, teachers, and administrators receive real-time reports showing a student's progress and emotional state.  This empowers educators to be proactive in helping curb future mental health issues. Educators can share pre-written class updates, activities, and stories with families to reinforce learning at home in English and Spanish. Peekapak is backed by; Silicon Valley-based accelerator, Imagine K12, the Edtech vertical of Y Combinator and the Unreasonable Institute. Ami has earned an MBA from INSEAD, a BBA from Wilfrid Laurier University and is passionate about improving youth education, and has previously taught in K–4 classrooms and advised & volunteered at education-related non-profit organizations. Ami has been featured on Toronto Life, Flare, TechVibes, CBC and numerous other outlets.  Ami has also spoken on topics such as social-emotional learning, student well-being, and mental health and education technology. Ami has spoken at conferences such as SXSWedu, Future of Education Technology Conference, LearnLaunch, ASU GSV and many more. Overcoming the barriers Interviewed over 300 educators to find out if SEL is actually important. It's really hard to fit this in if it's not required. Weren't taught this, how am I expected to teach this to my students Shouldn't parents be teaching this? How to involve parents in SEL. Family Well-being nights How to be a transformative principal? Help people feel heard. Sponsors Pikmykid Improve your school dismissal and safety response with Pikmykid, the Schools Safety and Dismissal Platform. Help move your dismissal from chaos to calm, get kids to their families faster and safer.  Visit pikmykid.com/be to learn more Transformative Principal Mastermind Lead a school everyone can be proud of. Being a principal is tough work. You're pulled in all kinds of directions. You never have the time to do the work that really matters. Join me as I help school leaders find the time to do the work they became principals to do. I help you stop putting out fires and start leading. Learn more at https://transformativeprincipal.com

We'll take your calls on Mayor Wu, COVID, and infrastructure with former Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift, now president and executive director of LearnLaunch, and Michael Curry, president and CEO of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, member of the NAACP National Board of Directors, and former President of the Boston Chapter of the NAACP.

Our guests are former Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift, now the president and executive director of LearnLaunch, and Gary Daffin, the executive director of the Multicultural AIDS Coalition, and the co-chair of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus.

Adam McGowan is a problem-solving consultant for early-stage entrepreneurs. As a serial entrepreneur, he prides himself on being a great ally, advocate, and adviser for numerous startups in Boston and worldwide.Adam helps entrepreneurial clients raise funds, build teams, and perfect their tech products. For the first decade of his career, he analyzed risk for an investment bank and hedge fund.In the following ten years, Adam founded and grew Firefield, a successful consultancy that built and enhanced tech ventures and products. He was a true partner to their clients, often taking on acting product, technology, or leadership roles in their ventures.Adam's connection to the startup ecosystem runs deep. He has mentored various programs, including LearnLaunch, the WIN Lab at Babson, MIT Hacking Medicine, the SCALE Challenge, and BUILD Boston.As a featured speaker, teacher, or judge, he shared insights at General Assembly, MassChallenge, The Startup Coalition, Lean Startup Challenge, YouthCITIES, Radio Entrepreneurs, and TrepCamp.In 2017, Adam founded The Spark Series — cultivating the inspired ideas of more than 250 founders, investors, and change-makers across 45 events.You can learn more, reach, and follow Adam McGowan on the following links below.Website - https://adammcgowan.net/LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamadammcgowan/To hear more about the Eight Billion Project podcast, please go to https://eightbillionproject.com/. You can also subscribe and listen to Eight Billion Project on YouTube and Apple Podcast.If this episode has moved you in any way, please review and share your thoughts. Or text your thoughts to 949-247-2800.

Adam McGowan is a problem-solving consultant for early-stage entrepreneurs. As a serial entrepreneur, he prides himself on being a great ally, advocate, and adviser for numerous startups in Boston and worldwide.Adam helps entrepreneurial clients raise funds, build teams, and perfect their tech products. For the first decade of his career, he analyzed risk for an investment bank and hedge fund.In the following ten years, Adam founded and grew Firefield, a successful consultancy that built and enhanced tech ventures and products. He was a true partner to their clients, often taking on acting product, technology, or leadership roles in their ventures.Adam's connection to the startup ecosystem runs deep. He has mentored various programs, including LearnLaunch, the WIN Lab at Babson, MIT Hacking Medicine, the SCALE Challenge, and BUILD Boston.As a featured speaker, teacher, or judge, he shared insights at General Assembly, MassChallenge, The Startup Coalition, Lean Startup Challenge, YouthCITIES, Radio Entrepreneurs, and TrepCamp.In 2017, Adam founded The Spark Series — cultivating the inspired ideas of more than 250 founders, investors, and change-makers across 45 events.You can learn more, reach, and follow Adam McGowan on the following links below.Website - https://adammcgowan.net/LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamadammcgowan/To hear more about the Eight Billion Project podcast, please go to https://eightbillionproject.com/. You can also subscribe and listen to Eight Billion Project on YouTube and Apple Podcast.If this episode has moved you in any way, please review and share your thoughts. Or text your thoughts to 949-247-2800.

We review the week's big news with former Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift, now the president and executive director of LearnLaunch. And Renee Graham, a Boston Globe columnist and a WBUR contributor.

Join Jeanne and her co-host, Michael Musante, for this week’s conversation with former Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift, President and Executive Director of LearnLaunch, an edtech innovation hub that connects innovators to emerging trends, and drives the development of high-quality educational opportunities for learners of all ages. LearnLaunch’s “Across Boundaries Conference,” which has been described as New England’s premier education event, will convene for its 8th annual gathering in Boston on Jan. 30-31. The program will highlight innovations across the education sector, and more than 1,500 will be in attendance. Jane highlights several areas of focus for the conference this year, and ties her pioneering experiences in politics to her pioneering work in edtech. For more information about the LearnLaunch Across Boundaries Conference, visit its website: https://learnlaunch.org/2020conference/ Follow Jane Swift on Social Media: Twitter: @janemswift Facebook: Jane Swift This episode of Reality Check is brought to you in part by Edmentum, providers of adaptive curriculum, research-based assessment, and education services eduators love: https://www.edmentum.com/

Todd Hand discusses the upcoming LearnLaunch Across Boundaries conference with members of ASA, Jean Eddy and Annabel Cellini, sponsors of this year's event. For more information about LearnLaunch and to register, please go to https://learnlaunch.org/2020conference/ Jean Eddy, President & CEO, and Annabel Cellini, Chief Strategy Officer, discuss what to expect at this year's conference and why ASA has chosen to sponsor this event. Eddy and Cellini also describe how ASA has been helping students through their unique 'direct-to-kid' approach, and what they refer to as an informal learning opportunity. Get transcript excerpts of this episode here: https://knowledgeleadersgroup.com/learn-launch-eddy-and-cellini/ Share clips of this podcast on social media: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV9EySWdXqg - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WyT0kwSZ50 - https://youtu.be/jCgjPKmMoB0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iksw0SgxLpI Follow Jean Eddy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jean-eddy-6584786/ Follow Annabel Cellini on Twitter: https://twitter.com/annabelcellini Follow Annabel Cellini on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annabelcellini/ Follow Todd Hand on Twitter: twitter.com/HandTodd Follow Todd Hand on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/toddhand/ Follow LearnLaunch on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LearnLaunch Follow LearnLaunch on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/learnlaunch/ Follow Knowledge Leaders on Twitter: twitter.com/KnowledgeLDRS Follow Knowledge Leaders on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/knowledge-leaders

Invest Alongside Boston's Top Angels in Our Syndicates: Our Investment Syndicates Page Building a business in education is hard but Steve Shapiro has beaten the odds several times. His latest accomplishment is as CEO of FineTune Learning which is set to grade essays from 3.6 million students taking the CollegeBoard's AP Exams starting in July of 2019. Founded by brilliant Maine educator Ogden Morse, FineTune Learning is a platform using software to facilitate human grading of essays at scale. An awesome interview with an outstanding and captivating entrepreneur. Highlights of the interview: Ogden Morse’s inspired approach made possible the use of software to evaluate answers by students to open response questions. The first product, Literature Companion, got local traction in Maine. However, selling district by district proved daunting. Steve Shapiro opted to go after large businesses that already had established relationships with schools. The danger to Steve’s strategy is that large players can string startups along and not do any business. Ogden, an AP teacher heavily involved in grading the exam, teed up this process for Steve by initiating the conversation with the CollegeBoard, which happened to be the ideal partner for FineTune. The challenge is aligning the standards of the tens of thousands of teachers who grade the AP Exam. CollegeBoard is a leader in developing technology for assessing critical thinking skills; FineTune’s approach was a natural fit. Phase I supports teachers in preparing student for the summative exam which will happen in May 2020. The platform will be used formatively throughout the year and will likely result in students being better prepared for the exam. Helping teachers assess the progress of individual students and of the class as a whole and to remedy weak spots. Phase II will be scoring the exam, a massive production. 5,000,000 exams are taken in early may and need to be graded by mid-June. Challenges: (1) how do we know the exams are being scored reliably and (2) how can the scoring be reported in a coherent way to the test takers. Sal was surprised that FineTune is also in the classroom helping teachers assess learning. FineTune also has a teacher development portal with short videos from master teachers on how they teach each particular topic. Its competency based and allows teachers to earn credit for professional accreditation. FineTune’s pedagogical approach will be used in all 36 AP Exams including the exam in calculus FineTune is collaborating with a small educational publisher to deploy its platform in support of teachers in the classroom outside the context of the AP Exam. Steve Shapiro is not big on the “individualized student journey”; like most educators he believes there’s more value in helping students learn in collaboration with their peers. Tech world is fascinated with individualized learning; educators are not. Rubrics are a set of expectations for student learning; FineTune has pioneered the digital rubrics to empower educators to be more effective at teaching. This also empowers students to understand what is expected. CFA Exam and the Bar Exam are on Steve’s prospect lists. Sal asks for your review of the podcast. The future of FineTune, AI enhancement of the human workflow in education. FineTune is integrating existing AI resources to automate the more mundane aspects of evaluation open responses to questions. Steve thinks the winner is this space will be taking a hybrid approach; using AI where it can help and having humans do the more subtle aspects of the assessment. Example: AI can now discern if there are supporting arguments for a position but will likely always struggle to understand the voice of the writer. Estimates indicate that FineTune’s platform can save teachers 40 to 50% of the time they spend correcting essays. This means teachers can assign more essays. It’s a force multiplier for teachers. Finding your calling: as a high schooler, Steve worked at a local delicatessen that made all its food from scratch and he was captivated by the idea of running a restaurant. One of his father’s students had gone on to the hotel school at Cornell. Steve and his dad went up to Cornell and visited and he loved the hotel school. In the early 1980s when Steve went to the Hotel School at Cornell, entrepreneurship was not yet cool, but there was a strong entrepreneurial spirit in the hotel program. In those days, people coming out of an Ivy League school looked for safe careers in large companies, startups were not an option for most graduates. A required summer internship exposed Steve to the risks of the restaurant business and dissuaded him from that career path as an owner. Working in the hospitality industry instilled in Steve the importance of pleasing your customer; it now informs his approach to product management. Working at a large bank as a credit analyst after business school convinced Steve that banking was not for him. While on a hiatus from graduate school at Harvard, Steve’s wife was working for a company that taught brought in foreign students to Boston. She convinced him he could start a similar business an be really good at it with his background in hospitality. This idea became American Learning, Steve’s most successful venture. Steve emphasizes that a lot of his success was due to lucky timing; he caught the start of a wave of foreign students wanting to come to the US to study. Good timing is everything in business. Focused on four-week stays and for students mostly from Japan. Had so much business they could almost not accommodate all the students who wanted to come. Being at the right place at the right time with the right skills led to a big success. Two-sided market: American kids teaching English to Japanese kids created an inter-cultural experience for local youth while serving foreign students. American Learning generated an unexpected benefit of wonderful good-will between Americans and Japanese people, frequently bypassing negative media stereotypes. Loads of positive unexpected benefits from intentional decisions that achieved their aim and got an additional unplanned bonus. Social impact imperative. Next business was tutoring for kids in poor neighborhoods. Provided parents with formation to help parents navigate the school system for the benefit of their kids. Third business was a workforce training. Helping blue-collar workers to transition to white-collar jobs. Cornell’s hotel wine courses and beer courses; highly popular electives! Steve’s best job ever was being a teaching assistant to a multi-hundred student wine course. Had to manage wine sampling and (boo-hoo) deal with the left-overs! Steve also learned computer programming, accounting and a bunch of other practical disciplines at the Hotel School. Steve is a big believer in bootstrapping your business and raising money only if you really must. He mentioned “The Millionaire Next Door” by Thomas J. Stanley as providing the surest way to wealth. Steve is a member of Launchpad Venture Group (a leading angel group in Boston) and Red Bear Angels (Cornell’s angel group). Involved in LearnLaunch, America’s premier ed-tech accelerator in Boston. Steve is also a fan of “Never Eat Alone” by Keith Ferrazzi, the best book on business networking. If you get in the habit of helping others amazing things come back to you. Steve’s advice to first-time founders: really bone up on the competitive landscape to understand what your unique advantage your business can offer customers. He sees a lot of pitches in which not enough attention is given to the competitive matrix. Watch the Bill Gross video on startup success. Be sure to go into entrepreneurship for the right reasons; job avoidance is not a good reason. Bootstrap as much as you can; it’s easier than ever to do that. Once you have real data on your business investors will be chasing you.

Zipcar’s first investor, Jean Hammond, is Boston’s indispensable angel. Her hands-on approach has been pivotal to the success of her startup and several others. She co-founded the leading accelerator for educational technology startups, LearnLaunch. The interview was great fun and hugely instructive to me. Don’t miss it! Here are some highlights: Sal Introduces Jean Hammond From Studying Biology at Boston University to Running a Food Warehouse Jean Decides She Needs a Rigorous MBA – Goes to MIT Sloan Moved to Edinburgh & Worked at Fast-Growing Computer Networking Startup “By the time I left there [Spyder], I felt like I'd done all the different functions in a little startup and done it while growth was going on.” Jean Hammond Founds AXON “AXON was four years old when 3Com acquired it and had grown quite rapidly to a pretty good business, and we got a pretty good price.” Jean Hammond’s Second Startup, Quarry, Suffered from Bottlenecks in Telecom Infrastructure “We live in a magic world of technology today that just things you wouldn't have imagined could happen are happening every day.” “First, I wish to thank listener Phillip L. 36 for this great review on iTunes” Jean Hammond Becomes Zipcar’s First Investor “By coming back into town and talking to everybody, I found out that I was an angel investor. I didn't even know that all of that time.” This Is Why We Call Her the Indispensable Angel Jean Hammond Invests Widely with Boston’s Angel Community Golden Seeds & Teaching Angel Investing Jean Hammond Starts the Activity that Would Lead to the Founding of LearnLaunch, the Ed Tech Accelerator “Education is a really interesting industry. It's the last of the giant industries, well over five trillion globally, maybe six, to digitize.” “Qstream is based on technology that actually understands how memories are fixed.” “…learning science is quite clear that we need to be striving, taking a little bit harder than you took the last time.” “…some of our most excited investors in the LearnLaunch accelerator are coming in from India and China and Japan because they want to be a part of these changes.” Jean Hammond’s Thoughts on the Importance of Boards to Startups “Being a board member for a startup is actually quite a challenging job…” Jean Hammond’s Parting Thoughts

In this interview from the 2018 LearnLaunch conference, we speak to Paul Fama, Global Learning Leader at GE, about how the multinational company and others are starting to accept these alternative credentials and the push for skill-based learning. Listen in to the podcast above, or watch the video below to learn more.

In the fast-paced and busy world of healthcare, it can be hard for those working in that field to find time to also pursue higher education. But with advancements in education technology and online education programs, healthcare providers are putting forward ways to provide their employees opportunities that don't necessarily require classroom time. In this interview from the 2018 LearnLaunch conference, we speak to M.J. Ryan, Workforce Development Director for Partner's Healthcare System, about how healthcare employees are finding success through convenient and helpful online education programs that work around their busy schedules.

This year at the LearnLaunch 2018 conference, we spoke with Michelle Bata of Clark University about how the school is creating a culture around career exploration.

In today's age of accelerated technology and industry, there is a looming issue in the workforce. New innovations are creating jobs with skillsets never previously required, and there exists a workforce of employees with skills that are slowly becoming outdated. There is a gap between these two developments, and workers are going to need to adapt to the new circumstances to up-to-date in these fast-paced fields of growth. In this interview from the 2018 LearnLaunch conference, we speak to Frank Britt, CEO of Penn Foster, about the need for training to fill this skill gap. Listen in to learn more.

In this interview from the 2018 LearnLaunch conference, we speak with Chrystina Russell, Executive Director of SNHU's Global Education Movement (GEM), about how the school is using its educational resources and partnerships abroad to help train refugees for new jobs.

This year at the 2018 LearnLaunch conference, we had the chance to interview Maria Flynn, CEO of Jobs for the Future. In this interview, Maria and EdTech Times CEO Hester Tinti-Kane discuss the demand for skilled workers, and how workers can level up their skill set to compete in the workplace.

Paul Fama, the Global Learning Leader at General Electric, spoke with us about his panel at the 2018 LearnLaunch conference on alternative credentialing, and how GE is partnering with edX to connect MicroMasters graduates with jobs.

Joseph Fuller is not only a professor of management at Harvard, but he also co-leads a multi-year program called Managing the Future of Work. Listen in to our interview with Joe from the LearnLaunch 2018 conference, where he spoke about the need for employers to hire based on skills over degrees.

This podcast is the first in a three-part series produced in partnership with the Learning Assembly. In this series, we are exploring the most important lessons that the members of the Learning Assembly have learned in their work developing pilot programs for districts and schools looking to try new personalized learning and EdTech programs. In this installment of the series, we speak with Megan Smallidge (Professional Development Project Manager of LearnLaunch's piloting initiative, which is part of the Learning Assembly), Lynda-Lee Sheridan and Cathy Lyons (Principal and second-grade teacher, respectively, at Franklin D. Roosevelt K-8 School, which is part of Boston Public Schools and a participant in one of LearnLaunch's pilots) about what a pilot is, and what it takes to lay the foundation for an initiative that can provide the data its organizers are looking for. For more, see the podcast on our blog: http://www.gettingsmart.com/2017/06/podcast-pilot-programs-foundation-for-innovation

“Personalized learning” is a term that is no stranger to interpretation—even to the point that writers have started to argue about whether it’s worth defining or not (just check out here and here.) But no matter how a school or district defines it, is it worth including technology in that definition—or does edtech merely distract educators from understanding and delivering on what students really need? In early March, three education research experts—Eileen Rudden of Boston’s LearnLaunch, Chris Liang-Vergara of Chicago’s LEAP Innovations, and Muhammed Chaudhry of the Bay Area’s Silicon Valley Education Foundation—joined EdSurge on a panel to discuss the very answer to this muddy and oftentimes challenging question. Check it out on this edition of the EdSurge podcast!

In this conversation, Dr. Bror Saxberg recaps what he spoke about at the LearnLaunch conference, as well as what personal experiences sparked his interest in learning science and personalized learning.

We interviewed Michael Horn, author & co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute, at the LearnLaunch 2017 conference about his ideas about 21st century education, and the beginnings of the edtech industry. Music: Giving Tree by Podington Bear, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License. http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Podington_Bear/Daydream/Giving_Tree_1206

Eileen Rudden, co-founder of LearnLaunch, reflects on the state of entrepreneurship and ed tech - with anticipation for LearnLaunch's annual conference in Boston on February 28th.