Content is King in EdTech Too

 

Content is still catching up with technology when it comes to education. While classrooms are increasingly integrated with digital learning platforms and tools such as computers, tablets and smartboards, they still lack the appropriate content to fill those screens.

Students are getting increasingly used to accessing information through video in their day-to-day lives, so are naturally eager to use similar resources in the classroom Click To Tweet

That is the problem that Knowledgemotion, a cloud-based video aggregation platform for education, is looking to solve.

“In terms of video, this deficiency seems to stem from a lack of understand between the worlds of education publishing and video production, where the former is unable to search through many different content providers and the latter is accustomed to pricing and marketing video for the advertising industry rather than for education,” Says Knowledgemotion CEO David Bainbridge. “We’re seeking to knit together these two industries by making video acquisition easy for education providers.”

 

Those sorts of technologies were just emerging as he moved into middle school, Bainbridge recalls: “Much of this technology was not put to the best use, partly due to the lack of good-quality content to use on these new digital platforms. Certainly, as far as video is concerned, documentaries were used to fill space or to entertain at the end of term, and were often too long-winded and unengaging to hold everyone’s attention.”

 

Students are getting increasingly used to accessing information through video in their day-to-day lives, so are naturally eager to use similar resources in the classroom. A recent Kaltura report The State of Video in Education 2015, reflects this trend, suggesting that video usage in the classroom is growing year on year (from 76% in 2014 to 84% last year).

Knowledgemotion targets the entire education market from primary through to Secondary, Higher Education, Corporate learning, English Language learning and lifelong learning Click To Tweet

Knowledgemotion targets the entire education market from primary through to Secondary, Higher Education, Corporate learning, English Language learning and lifelong learning. OECD research suggests that the global educational video market will be worth over $1 billion in the next decade, and by 2010 Knowledgemotion is looking to grab a 10% share of that market. Their main competitors in that space are Getty and ITN source, but these are generalist resources not geared specifically towards education, and this is where Knowledgemotion believes it holds the edge, as over $30 billion is pent annually on instructional materials in primary, secondary and higher education, and 43% of teachers now report using video regularly in lessons, with 70% of US higher education institutions including videos in the classroom and supplementary course materials.

Though arguably a few years behind the entertainment world in tech innovation, teachers and learners alike understand the significant educational value of rich, relevant and engaging content Click To Tweet

“We have an established in-house team with several decades of combined experience in the media industry and the world of education publishing,” says Bainbridge. “We’re aiming to become teacher’s one-stop shop for video resources by providing a simplified licensing agreement and pricing structure together with the most comprehensive library of videos where they can easily and quickly find relevant materials for their lessons.”

Knowledgemotion is now looking to build more relationships with various content providers, and to build up their search algorithm that allows users to refine clip searches by curriculum, topic, and source. Having already raised £790,000 from Angel investors, they are gearing up for a Series A round of around £2 million later in the year and working on significantly expanding their library, which currently has over 1.8 million videos

“Though arguably a few years behind the entertainment world in tech innovation, teachers and learners alike understand the significant educational value of rich, relevant and engaging content. The digital re-architecture of the classroom experienced over the past five years has transformed whiteboards into smartboards, textbooks into tablets. All that is left, it seems, is the content on the screen.”

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.