From education to employment

London-based #EdTech companies pitch for over half a million pounds of prizes

Professor Rose Luckin, director of UCL EDUCATE

The Cutting-edge of EdTech Innovation – Virtual and Augmented Reality #AR #VR | Artificial Intelligence #AI | Speech Intelligence | Internet of Things #IoT

Eight of the UK’s most successful educational technology enterprises will be pitching for a prize bundle worth over half a million pounds, at UCL EDUCATE’s annual flagship Demo Day at London’s City Hall, on 29 November.

The Demo Day will showcase some of the best of UCL EDUCATE’s pioneering and leading edtech entrepreneurs who will demonstrate their products in front of an audience of investors, educators, policy-makers and potential customers.

These products represent the cutting-edge of innovation – virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, speech intelligence, internet of things. The demos will be rapid-fire 5-minute pitches with the audience voting for the favourite pitch at the end of the event.

The pitching companies are:

Principal Research Lead, Dr Alison Clark-Wilson will also be pitching for investment for a UCL EDUCATE product, ‘EDUCATE for Schools’.

Millions of pounds are misspent each year on technology and with demand from schools, teachers and governments alike around the globe to stay up to date with edtech innovations, EDUCATE for School provides a solution.

EDUCATE for Schools is a groundbreaking digital platform that empowers users with the ability to make informed decisions about whether the edtech they have, and the edtech they require, will address the educational needs of their learners.

EDUCATE for Schools will use artificial intelligence to provide educators with curated ‘just in time’ professional resources to respond to their own learning priorities, while enabling school leaders to stay abreast of the increasingly diverse edtech that is in use.

Professor Rose Luckin, director of UCL EDUCATE, said:

“Edtech is the fastest growing sector in the technology industry, with the global edtech market reaching more than $250 billion by 2020.

“But this is only part of the story. Behind these numbers lie huge educational benefits for learners and educators all over the world giving us, for the first time ever, the potential to educate the entire population of the world. But it also gives us the possibility of meeting some of the existing challenges facing schools in the UK and beyond, such as teacher shortages and workload, as well as meeting the differing learning needs of students.

“Demo Day is, therefore, about celebrating all of these opportunities, of highlighting some of the excellent edtech that has already been developed and looking ahead to technological advances that may not yet exist in a tangible form but are in the pipeline. It is a very exciting time to be involved in this sector.”

The event and prizes have been sponsored by Santander, Amazon Web Services and United Airlines.

The UCL EDUCATE research accelerator’s annual flagship event follows the highly acclaimed Investor Summit and Demo Day in 2018, which was a first of its kind in Europe.

This year’s event will also include UCL EDUCATE’s third EdWard ceremony, which recognises the accomplishments of companies that have successfully completed the accelerator’s programme.

The EdWards were created as a quality mark to recognise companies who share UCL EDUCATE’s mission to improve edtech through research and evidence, ensuring that their products have a demonstrable impact on learning and can effectively meet emergent educational needs. Forty-three UCL EDUCATE companies will be awarded an EdWard at the prestigious 2019 ceremony, sponsored by United Airlines.

Since its inception in 2017, UCL EDUCATE has worked with more than 250 start-ups and innovators building a variety of products ranging from early years development, to STEM and language learning platforms, and health and wellbeing tools. The organisation’s expertise in the edtech landscape, and its focus on research-centred design and development, gives it a unique insight into the impact of technology on our learning environment.

Professor Luckin added that Demo Day 2019 would include announcements on the future of UCL EDUCATE’s new global growth phase.

“We know that by investing in edtech that has research and evidence at its heart, we can radically transform the way people live and learn,” Professor Luckin said.

“This means building a global community of educators, entrepreneurs and researchers, working together collaboratively to provide robust, effective and fit for purpose solutions to existing and emerging challenges.

“The UCL EDUCATE accelerator is applying a new approach to edtech design and development, with research and evidence at its heart. Our success is down to global recognition of the challenges facing education systems, and what needs to be done to solve them.”

Led by the UCL Institute of Education, UCL EDUCATE is the UK’s leading edtech research accelerator programme. Our mentoring and consultancy services combine world-class pedagogical research with best practice business intelligence to uncover innovative solutions in teaching and learning. Our vision is to create an edtech ecosystem which has evidence at its heart – understanding what truly works for learners and how to use technology to serve its users effectively.

Professor Rose Luckin: Rose is Director of the UCL EDUCATE research accelerator for edtech. Rose is also Professor of Learner Centred Design at the UCL Knowledge Lab in London. Her research involves the design and evaluation of educational technology using theories from the learning sciences and techniques from Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Rose was named on the Seldon List 2017 as one of the 20 most influential people in education. She is a UFI charity trustee, a governor and trustee of St Paul’s school in London and a governor of the Self-Managed Learning College in Brighton. She has taught in the state secondary, Further Education and Higher Education sectors, and she was previously Pro-Vice Chancellor for Teaching and Learning at the University of Sussex.


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