Start-ups in Arizona’s booming education technology sector are attracting investment dollars by the millions.
Yes, the Grand Canyon State has built a robust ed tech ecosystem, where a mix of large and small companies are flourishing.
Start-ups alone in Arizona have attracted at least $100 million in angel and venture capital over the past three years, resulting in at least 750 new jobs, estimates Matthew Pittinsky, an ed tech entrepreneur who tracks the sector’s growth.
Pittinsky is the co-founder of Blackboard and the founder of Scottsdale-based Parchment, a company that helps learners, educators, associations and employers securely send and receive education credentials online.
TechConnect tapped Pittinsky’s knowledge of the sector to provide a quick look at Ed Tech startups, as well as more established companies, that Arizona counts as its own:
• Proctorio: Scottsdale; its automated software provides universities with a means of validating identity and activity during online exams
• Synergis Education: Mesa; helps institutions by partnering with them to co-design, launch and grow innovative classroom, online and blended programs
• StormWind: Scottsdale; creates and delivers interactive online training
• Edgenuity: Scottsdale; provides engaging online and blended learning education solutions to deliver more effective instruction, and enable schools and districts to meet their academic goals
• Adaptive Curriculum: Scottsdale; provides web-based math and science solutions and its interactive instruction is designed for digital learners and helps schools bridge the gap between the old way and new way of learning
• Edupoint: Mesa; provides Web-based Special Education solutions focused to achieve compliance, manage workflow, accurately fill out forms, and report student progress
• BlueCanary: Chandler; higher ed data and analytics company helps institutions unlock the value in data that can be used to promote student success
• Spear Education: Scottsdale; serves the striving dentist - those who are dedicated to the pursuit of clinical excellence that transforms their practices and the lives of their patients
• EXO U: Scottsdale; Empowers educators to manage digital learning, improve engagement, and help students discover their full potential
• Parchment: Scottsdale; helps learners, educators, associations and employers securely send and receive education credentials online, in simple and insightful ways
• CampusLogic: Gilbert; speeds up the financial-aid process by giving students a simple, TurboTax-like platform to apply for and receive aid
• Purposely: Scottsdale; provides an online curriculum for systematically learning job-seeking skills with the goal of giving students the training they need to translate their academic journey into a life and job of purpose
• Unicon: Gilbert; an IT consulting, technology services and open source support company that combines unparalleled experience and comprehensive education technologies capabilities across a variety of industries, also provides an innovative support program for open source projects
• Notebowl: Scottsdale; gives students and professors the tools they need to succeed in the classroom with a platform that increases student engagement while delivering course content efficiently and effectively
• Picmonic: Tempe; helps people create, share and explore highly effective audiovisual study cards, called Picmonics - “pictorial mnemonics”
• Learning Ovations: Paradise Valley; offers a reading and writing curriculum platform for teachers to personalize ELA instruction for K-4 students
• rSmart: Scottsdale; takes fresh, new approach to organizing web-based campus services and information for access from any device
• SimplerTrips: Phoenix; exists to help teachers, venues and parents work together to create the best class field trips for K-12 students
• Skooki: Tempe; simplifies payments for K-12 schools
• Spark Open Research: Tempe; Allows any student, anywhere to participate in cutting-edge research