EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
Brainly | April 21, 2023
Post-pandemic, schools grapple with teacher shortages, frustrated parents and declining student test scores. And now, we are heading into the most stressful time of the school year. Brainly, the leading global learning platform for all school subjects and grades, announces help is on the way: new AI-enabled features that provide homework help where and when students—and their parents—need it. AI-powered products explicitly developed to assist teachers will be released later this year.
These newest features build on Brainly's Knowledge Base of over 250 million high-quality and accurate answers, generated from its moderated student and expert communities. The AI powering the new capabilities, developed with OpenAI's GPT-4 technology, uses that Knowledge Base to provide an even more dynamic, personalized and effective learning experience.
Learners now have the option to “Simplify” or “Expand” answers and “Ask a Follow-up Question” and receive personalized content based on their understanding of a topic. Also debuting is Ginny, Brainly's digital mascot, who is always at the ready to guide students and parents to ensure they get the AI-powered help they need.
Personalized help for all students
“This time of year is always stressful for parents, students and teachers,” said Bill Salak, Chief Technology Officer at Brainly. “Instead of arguing whether AI belongs in education—a moot point since it's already here—let's use AI to help mitigate those stressors. With these latest additions to our feature suite, we put AI-powered learning tools in the student’s pocket, enabling them to get the homework help they need to deepen their understanding of a topic. It's about getting students the help they need when they leave the classroom.”
Learners can now ask for simplified answers to their questions or opt for more in-depth solutions that explore complex topics. They can also ask follow-up questions for more information, clarification of a response or a step-by-step solution to a problem.
For example, a student may ask, “What are organic compounds?” After receiving an answer, they may want to ask a follow-up question, such as, “Why are they vital to living things?”
“This is just the first of the new AI-powered features we are releasing as we move forward on our vision of giving every student access to personalized learning,” said Salak. “Stay tuned for new product releases that will bring our AI-powered technology to teachers, enabling even more students to benefit from our learning platform.”
About Brainly
Brainly is a leading learning platform worldwide with the most extensive knowledge base for all school subjects and grades. Hundreds of millions of students, parents and educators rely on Brainly as the proven platform to accelerate understanding and learning. Based in Kraków, Poland, with offices in New York City and Barcelona, Brainly apps and websites are visited by users from over 35 countries. Brainly is backed by Prosus, Point Nine Capital, General Catalyst, Runa Capital, Learn Capital and Kulczyk Investments.
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TALENT DEVELOPMENT
Businesswire | April 13, 2023
PowerSchool the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America, today announced a partnership with Scribbles Software and PowerSchool Naviance. This partnership will nearly double the number of institutions in the Naviance eDocs network, greatly expanding college access for high school students.
“Naviance eDocs has been trusted by thousands of high schools for over a decade to deliver transcripts, letters of recommendation, and other critical documents supporting over six million college applications each year,” said Amy Reitz, Group Vice President of Product at PowerSchool. “Partnering with Scribbles makes college more accessible to students by giving counselors the ability to send supporting documentation for students’ college applications to 2,100 more colleges – our largest ever increase in a single year.”
Scribbles Software has served over 12 million students with transcript requests since 2012 and provides over 400 districts and charter schools with a best-in-class network to ensure easy and equitable access to students pursuing higher education. In the last year alone, Scribbles completed nearly one million electronic transcript requests from districts across the United States, including 25 of the 30 largest districts in the country.
“Scribbles is thrilled to partner with Naviance to expand access to a broader higher education network. Through this partnership, districts, and schools will be able to empower more students with greater access to life-changing opportunities,” said Marshall Simmonds, Vice President of Sales for Scribbles Software.
About PowerSchool
PowerSchool is the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America. Its mission is to power the education ecosystem with unified technology that helps educators and students realize their full potential, in their way. PowerSchool connects students, teachers, administrators, and parents, with the shared goal of improving student outcomes. From the office to the classroom to the home, it helps schools and districts efficiently manage state reporting and related compliance, special education, finance, human resources, talent, registration, attendance, funding, learning, instruction, grading, assessments and analytics in one unified platform. PowerSchool supports over 50 million students globally and more than 15,000 customers, including more than 90 of the top 100 districts by student enrollment in the United States, and sells solutions in more than 90 countries.
About Scribbles
Scribbles Software empowers education systems to provide life-changing opportunities to students and alumni. Since 2012, the company has partnered with K-12 educational communities to enhance, streamline, and simplify the student and family engagement experience through online student records management, enrollment systems, choice programs, lottery management, and reporting solutions. Scribbles Software helps district and charter school partners provide equitable, open access to administrative resources to students, families, and community organizations– beginning with PreK enrollment and continuing with digital transcript orders post-graduation.
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ENTREPRENEURS AND LEADERS
PRnewswire | April 24, 2023
As the digital transformation partner for the Education Practice Area of Public Consulting Group (PCG), Navisite today announced the successful migration and management of PCG's education solutions on Microsoft Azure.
PCG Education provides industry-leading educational technology solutions, including its EdPlan™ suite, that support thousands of schools and districts nationwide. As the company embraced a cloud-first strategy, PCG's Education practice needed an unbiased, experienced digital transformation partner to ensure that its core education products could be seamlessly migrated and securely managed in the public cloud.
"Navisite brought the public sector digital transformation expertise we needed in a partner to migrate, scale, and grow our Education practice on the cloud," said John Matthews, CIO of PCG's Education Practice Area. "Navisite continues to manage our cloud environment and operates as an extension of our team—ensuring we maintain the highest levels of security, performance, and availability for the school systems and states that rely on our products."
Navisite guided PCG Education's journey to Azure with cloud services and expertise that included a comprehensive migration of the team's IT estate along with recommendations for the go-forward cloud strategy. Navisite designed and built a highly secure Azure environment, executed the migration in partnership with PCG's team, and continues to provide ongoing managed cloud services, security services, and 24/7 support.
"As an industry leader, PCG's Education team was dealing with a large migration of business-critical products to the cloud," said Gina Murphy, Navisite's president and chief transformation officer. "They put their trust in Navisite and our proven experience guiding complex enterprise application migrations for mid-market companies of their size. We were thrilled to help guide and support their success and look forward to our continued partnership together well into the future."
About Public Consulting Group
Public Consulting Group LLC (PCG) is a leading public sector solutions implementation and operations improvement firm that partners with health, education, and human services agencies to improve lives. Founded in 1986 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, PCG and its affiliates employ over 3,000 professionals in offices worldwide—all committed to delivering solutions that change lives for the better. PCG offers clients a multidisciplinary approach to meet challenges, pursue opportunities, and serve constituents across the public sector.
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