CONTINUING EDUCATION
PRnewswire | May 30, 2023
LINQ, the leading K-12 education business solutions provider, today announced the launch of LINQ Connect, a K-12 education SaaS platform to improve parent-to-school transactions. LINQ Connect is the latest iteration of the widely used TITAN Family Portal platform, adopted by more than 1,500 school districts,16,000 schools, and over 1.2 million parents and guardians across the U.S.
LINQ Connect provides parents and schools with a modernized payment system that eliminates the need to send cash for school lunches, class field trips or additional course materials. The automated payment platform provides a secure method for financial transactions to ensure successful and accurate payments, reduces risks associated with cash transactions and relies less on school finance staff to make daily cash-on-hand deposits.
"Districts are feeling the negative effects of staffing shortages, budget restrictions and school meal debt, so they need a system to easily manage communication and financial transactions with parents and guardians," said Bryan Jones, CEO of LINQ. "LINQ Connect offers a solution that simplifies the management of information and financial transactions throughout the school year for our district partners, easing daily interactions for busy parents and students, and helping schools strengthen their relationships with the communities they serve."
As schools face unprecedented levels of unpaid meal debt, LINQ Connect allows schools to send notifications about low balances or debt to parents and guardians in a discreet and direct manner. Moreover, the platform enables parents and guardians to input food allergy information, review nutritional information for school meals and place spending restrictions on accounts to ensure funds last the intended period of time. The platform can be translated in Armenian, Burmese, Chinese, French, Korean, Spanish, Russian and Vietnamese to ensure all parents and guardians have access to their children's nutrition and play an active role in their educational experience.
"LINQ Connect was designed to ease the burden on parents and school district office staff through easy-to-use technologies that guarantee the information is readily available and accessible for parents and caregivers," said Brandy Keller, Senior Vice President at LINQ. "Now, they can digitally access their children's meal accounts, apply for free or reduced meals, and monitor their nutrition through a single payment system that is secure and convenient and provides parents and caregivers the opportunity to share information with their schools."
Schools that currently use the platform will have access to a library of resources to support communication and engagement with parents and guardians, as well as district toolkits, offered in Spanish and English, to support the adoption of the enhanced platform for new and existing users. For parents, using the new platform is as simple as downloading a new application; their past balances will transfer seamlessly.
About LINQ
LINQ brings a new level of digital transformation and operation efficiency to K-12 leaders across districts and states. Built by a team of K-12 experts, our solutions include Nutrition for districts and states, Education Resource Planning (ERP), Forms & Workflows for districts and Payment portals for Parents and Guardians. Through our first-of-its kind K-12 Business Platform, LINQ is committed to Empowering the Business of K-12.
Read More
ENTREPRENEURS AND LEADERS
Globenewswire | May 09, 2023
Go1, the world’s learning content expert, announced today the acquisition of Blinkist, a mobile-first learning app that summarizes key ideas from professional books and podcasts which is used by tens of millions of people worldwide. The acquisition forms the foundation of an innovative new model of corporate learning which seeks to engage learners throughout their day-to-day lives.
Go1 has made a name for itself as an aggregator of learning and development content, offering access to tens of thousands of short-form courses that are typically consumed in a corporate setting. However, engaging learners on a grand scale relies not only on democratizing access to more types of learning content but also on making that content available in more places, meeting learners where they are. For many online corporate learners, that's on their cell phone or during their commute.
This is where Blinkist excels.The acquisition of Blinkist expands Go1’s appeal to an audience that seeks to learn new skills and stay up to date on business and self-improvement topics with bite-sized content, consumable on demand. Learners can access Blinkist content through their corporate learning management system (LMS) but, for the first time ever, they will also be able to access content on their mobile, in CarPlay, or wherever and whenever they choose to learn.
“The combination of Go1 and Blinkist offers something not replicated in any corner of the corporate learning market: an experience of ongoing learning that serves professional goals that’s purpose-built to be personally engaging,” said Andrew Barnes, co-CEO of Go1. “Go1 is not entering the content production market – we’re combining our existing content aggregation service with Blinkist’s similar service for books to open a new model for consumption of any type of learning content.”
“I have been following the Go1 journey for a number of years and believe in the impact and opportunity that education affords,” said Charles Conn, chair of Patagonia, co-founder and partner of Monograph Capital. “As a co-author of Bulletproof Problem Solving, I know first-hand how critical it is to reach a broader audience, and it is great to now have our audiobook, book summary, and short course all available through one subscription. Go1's acquisition of Blinkist will significantly expand top content offerings to its users, increasing access and knowledge from authors and researchers to empower learners and organizations across the world.”
“We're thrilled with Go1's acquisition of Blinkist," said Thilo Semmelbauer, managing director at Insight Partners. “Blinkist’s mobile content and product will expand the learning opportunities already available to Go1’s customers and create a powerful pair with Go1’s corporate learning offering. We're excited for what's to come." Insight Partners will remain an investor in the combined entity, as will Greycroft, Headline, IBB, and MGO.
Mike Bertolino, global leader of EY’s Skills Foundry which partners with Go1 for access to professional learning content, shared similar enthusiasm on the deal.“EY Skills Foundry is an upskilling and reskilling platform. We are excited about the Blinkist acquisition and the ability to now offer summaries such as Jim Collins’ ‘Good to Great’ to our customers,” said Bertolino. “We partnered with Go1 over a year ago due to the depth of their library and expertise on learning. We believe the need for upskilling and reskilling will only increase in the future as the global workforce becomes more agile. Having access to both bite-sized content and longer form courses is ideal.”
In addition to its popular consumer app, Blinkist also works with leading employers to offer leadership and skill development to their employees.
About Go1
Go1 is the world’s learning content expert, aggregating content from top providers to deliver high-quality education and training across a range of industries and topics. Over 8 million learners from over 60 countries use Go1 to access curated, personalized training, and skills development courses in the formats that best suit them – all in a single solution. Home to a vast library of over 100,000 courses from hundreds of leading content partners, Go1 is a Y Combinator 2023 Top Company, an SAP Partner with an SAP Endorsed App, and an EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award Nominee. Key investors include SEEK, SoftBank Vision Fund II, M12 (Microsoft's Venture Capital Arm), Madrona Venture Group, and AirTree Ventures as well as Blinkist investors including Insight Partners, Greycroft, Headline, IBB, and MGO.
About Blinkist
Blinkist connects people with powerful ideas from leading authors and experts to broaden perspectives, gain knowledge, and spark understanding in all areas of their life, both personal and professional. Used by over 26 million people worldwide, Blinkist finds the most relevant, impactful books and podcasts and distills them down to their key ideas, which can be read or listened to in 15-minute explainers called Blinks. In addition to individual learners, over 1,500 organizations around the globe have already chosen Blinkist for Business to empower their teams at their point of need—anytime, anywhere.
Read More
CORPORATE LEARNING SYSTEMS
Globenewswire | June 06, 2023
nextSource announces TalentCalling™ – an advanced approach to talent sourcing for the Higher Education market.TalentCalling delivers a shared talent community, enabled by an online centralized system, where participating institutions can draw from the community to access qualified professionals with select skills. It enables colleges and universities to fill high-volume, recurring roles when needed, returning the resource at assignment end for future redeployment or for engagement by another university. The community is populated with admissions personnel, administrative assistants, exam proctors, instructional designers, research assistants, teaching assistants, application readers, general managers, and student success specialists. It also offers IT implementation managers, software developers, project managers, and other non-academic personnel.
Each participating college or university is assigned a program specialist who coordinates the institution’s use of TalentCalling, continuously soliciting new talent community members, reinforcing the value of engagements with participating academic institutions, and identifying best fit talent for each open position. If a position is filled by a resource in the talent community, nextSource takes responsibility for payrolling the worker and all other assignment-related administrative duties while the individual is on assignment.
nextSource has established our first TalentCalling direct sourcing center to support colleges and universities in the Metro Washington DC area.
This unique approach gives each participating academic institution ready access to great talent when needed. And peer best practice sharing accelerates innovation and saves time and money.
“nextSource is continually at the forefront of innovation in the temporary talent market,” commented Tim McAward, nextSource Vice President of Higher Education Client Services. “Academic institutions have a long history of joining together to leverage their combined buying power and share academic and extracurricular resources. Our TalentCalling direct sourcing solution applies that concept to talent acquisition. We deliver a highly effective additional way to access temporary, project-based, or full-time high-volume or recurring roles and skill sets. By delivering an exceptional talent sourcing system with extensive support for both the academic institutions and the candidates within the TalentCalling system we can offer our clients a strong competitive advantage in this tight labor market.”
About nextSource:
nextSource advances the way the world connects with talent. As a privately held, woman-owned business with 25 years’ experience, nextSource provides a personalized, intelligent approach to workforce solutions driven by high impact, strong results, and continuous growth. We offer innovative workforce solutions that deliver extraordinary service, efficiency, analytical insight, risk mitigation and improved access to talent that enhances a unified workforce. Solutions offerings include Managed Services Program, Direct Sourcing solutions, Employer of Record services, Independent Contractor Compliance Management, Agent of Record Services, Statement of Work based Project Services Management and Workforce Consulting and Advisory services.
Read More