TALENT DEVELOPMENT
amazon | November 09, 2022
Amazon and Yousician, the world's leading music education service, are collaborating to help inspire the next generation of musicians. Beginning October 24th, consumers who purchase a qualifying musical instrument in Amazon stores will receive as an added gift-with-purchase, 30-days free access to Yousician Premium+, making it easy for any beginner to get started learning an instrument. Yousician has set a new standard in music education with its gamified approach to learning how to play an instrument. Its platform offers thousands of interactive guitar, bass, piano, ukulele, and singing lessons to quickly learn to play your favorite songs from hundreds of artists across all musical spectrums: from Coldplay and Adele to Billie Eilish, Metallica, and many more. Amazon, whose Amazon's Alexa Fund invested in Yousician's $28 million Series B fund in April 2021, is collaborating for the first time with Yousician to create this special bundle. Yousician always offers new users the option to receive a 7-day free subscription, but with this collaboration, they will receive 30-days free. This is the first time Yousician has collaborated with another company for a consumer product bundle.
Yousician's approach to music education uses innovative audio recognition technology that differentiates the platform from its competitors. The audio feature listens to the user play and provides real-time feedback. The gamified experience is that of an on-demand music school with world-class instructors at the helm to guide interactive learning for users at any level.
"Through our collaboration with Amazon, we make it very easy for people to begin their musical hobby. Get the instrument delivered to your home, download the Yousician app and start playing. It's that simple. Customers trust Amazon's seamless retail experience, and millions trust Yousician to learn how to play an instrument. We're looking forward to being able to offer Yousician to Amazon customers and help them kickstart their musical journey."
Chris Thür, Co-founder and CEO of Yousician
Yousician recently partnered with Metallica, the multi-Grammy Award-winning and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band, to create 3 beginner-friendly courses with step-by-step tutorials directly from the band so users could learn the songs the way they're meant to be played directly from the band themselves. Amazon customers will receive a special code with their qualifying instrument purchase that gives them 30-days free access on Yousician Premium+. Premium+ access on Yousician includes unlimited lessons and thousands of songs to learn from. No credit card is required to redeem the offer. The promotion will kick off October 24th and run in the United States for a 1 year period.
About Yousician:
Yousician is the world's leading platform for learning and playing music, driven by the belief that the more people play music, the better this world will be. With a combined 20 million monthly users, the platform's groundbreaking products, Yousician and GuitarTuna, are the leaders in their field. Yousician has revolutionized how people learn and play music with innovative technology that gives players real-time feedback. It offers interactive learning for guitar, bass, ukulele, piano and singing with lessons, exercises and songs.
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EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
Spear Education | December 20, 2022
Avista Capital Partners ("Avista"), a leading private equity firm focused exclusively on healthcare, today announced its acquisition of Spear Education ("Spear" or the "Company"), a tech-enabled provider of digital and in-person clinical training, practice analytics and consulting solutions for the dental market. Transaction terms were not disclosed. Headquartered in Scottsdale, AZ, Spear is the industry's leading dental education provider. Spear offers unmatched breadth of content including 5,000+ on-demand videos, 300+ hands on workshops annually, and 100+ study club modules. Spear's solutions enable dentists to learn higher acuity skills and generate new revenue streams, providing a high ROI to dental practices and practitioners across the spectrum of experience. Avista Partner Sriram Venkatraman, said: "Avista sees Spear as a compelling investment opportunity given its industry leadership, demonstrated growth potential and diversified business model. We look forward to leveraging our deep experience in the healthcare technology sector and dental end-market to help accelerate Spear's growth trajectory.
"Spear has achieved robust growth over the last several years, with increases in membership and the expansion of our digital content. We are well positioned to capitalize on the tremendous opportunities ahead, against the backdrop of an accelerating industry. We are thrilled to have Avista as a partner as we pursue a multi-lever expansion strategy that will result in compelling benefits for our customers, employees and the entire dental industry."
CEO of Spear Education Kaleim Manji,
Steve Schiess, an Avista Strategic Executive with over 30 years of experience in the dental industry, most recently as the CEO of Zest Dental Solutions, a former Avista portfolio company, added, "Spear offers dentists a tremendous value proposition. Spear's education and training courses enable dentists to learn new skills that drive the retention of procedures in-house which, in turn, delivers a high return on their Spear investment. We believe there are multiple opportunities to accelerate both the dental practices' and Spear's growth. Wilkie Farr & Gallagher LLP acted as legal advisor and William Blair acted as financial advisor to Avista.
About Spear Education
Spear Education is dentistry's premier source for continuing education. The company serves dentists of all clinical skill levels and transforms practices and the lives of patients by offering physical hands-on courses, extensive peer-to-peer regional learning, and comprehensive online educational tools. For more information, go to www.speareducation.com.
About Avista Capital Partners
Founded in 2005, Avista Capital is a leading New York-based private equity firm with over $8 billion invested in more than 40 growth-oriented healthcare businesses globally. Avista partners with businesses that feature strong management teams, stable cash flows and robust growth prospects – investing in the medical devices, pharmaceuticals, outsourced pharmaceutical services, healthcare technology, healthcare distribution and diagnostics, and consumer healthcare sectors. Avista's Strategic Executives and Advisors are an integral part of the team, providing strategic insight, operational oversight and senior counsel, which helps drive growth and performance, while fostering sustainable businesses and creating long-term value for all stakeholders.
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EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
Lexia Learning | January 13, 2023
While literacy is essential to success in all disciplines, many upper elementary and middle school kids lack the necessary literacy abilities to learn efficiently. In fact, according to the most recent NAEP findings from 2022, 69 percent of eighth-graders cannot read at a competent level, and 67 percent of fourth-graders cannot read at a proficient level. Lexia, a Cambium Learning Group subsidiary, recently introduced Lexia AspireTM Professional Learning to assist educators in accelerating students' literacy skills throughout the curriculum in grades 4-8.
Lexia Aspire Professional Learning is a digital solution that is flexible, self-paced, and anchored in the science of reading. It is the first professional learning solution built exclusively for educators of adolescents. It emphasizes the shift from "learning to read" to "reading to learn." This new curriculum expands Lexia's award-winning professional learning solutions, including the industry's gold standard, Lexia LETRS® (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling).
The professional learning suite of LETRS, empowers educators and administrators with in-depth expertise in the science of reading as literacy and language specialists. LETRS teaches the skills required to master the fundamentals of reading, such as phonological awareness, fluency, vocabulary, phonics, writing, comprehension, and language.
Liz Brooke, Lexia's Chief Learning Officer, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, said, "Lexia Aspire Professional Learning gives educators the agency and flexibility to choose content that's most relevant to improving their students' literacy outcomes. The courses are practical and immediately transferable to the classroom."
(Source – Business Wire)
Lexia Aspire Professional Learning is intended to assist all upper elementary and middle school teachers, including classroom teachers, content area teachers, speech pathologists, interventionists, and English language arts teachers.
About Lexia Learning
Lexia, a Cambium Learning Group subsidiary is the authority on structured literacy. The organization has been entirely focused on literacy for more than 35 years, and it now offers a comprehensive range of solutions for both students and teachers. Lexia empowers more students to confidently read, write, and speak with its broad capabilities for individualized instruction, personalized learning, professional learning, and assessment.
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