Technology plays an ever-growing role in education. In an attempt to expand their audience reach and provide educational content through their platforms, tech giants such as TikTok and Spotify have been beefing up their partnerships and investments with education companies.
Here are a few updates on the increasing role of tech in education:
Quizlet Partners with TikTok
Quizlet, an award-winning flashcards study app, announced their partnership with social network giant TikTok a few days ago. Through the partnership, Quizlet study cards can be directly linked to TikTok videos, allowing for a more interactive learning experience. In an interview by Marketing Brew, Quizlet CMO Brad Ramsey shares the company’s goal of improving accessibility for their learning tools to students all over the world.
Quizlet’s goal of widening its reach through TikTok is linked to the social media platform’s rapid growth. The video-sharing application surpassed 2 billion downloads and garnered 315 million new users in April last year, the highest attained by any social app in a single quarter.
Many educators are currently using the platform in order to appeal to their students who like the short-form content by sharing interesting tidbits of information as well as assigning short video projects. Currently, there are 80 million knowledge-based content on the platform so far.
The tech giant also launched a hashtag last year called #LearnOnTikTok along with $50 million in funding to bolster these types of educational content for its user base. Organizations such as the Royal Society of Chemistry have joined in on this initiative as well as media personalities including Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
Catch the full interview with Brad Ramsey here.
Spotify partners with NYU for podcast courses
As of this year, there are 1.75 million podcasts with 43 million episodes on a variety of topics. Podcasts are used as a learning medium, serving as an archive of supplemental lessons or a way to further discuss topics through guest interviews. Student-produced podcasts have also been made to effectively solidify learners’ understanding of concepts discussed in class.
New York University has begun adding podcast-related courses to their course offerings, delving into topics such as pitching, cross-platform storytelling, and interview techniques. Their partnership with Spotify solidifies that pivotal shift, resulting in a three-week intensive course on all the basics of podcasts where they provide “a survey of history before diving into formats, genres, business and more.” Interested students were also given the opportunity to delve into more advanced skills such as data and distribution, career development, and editing.
Antonio Merlo, NYU Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science sees potential in further developing the course into a full certificate program.
Elon Musk donates to Khan Academy
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, recently donated a total sum of $5 million dollars to the non-profit education platform, Khan Academy, through the Musk Foundation. Khan Academy’s founder, Salman Khan, thanked Musk through a YouTube video, mentioning the company’s plans on using the fund to accelerate the production of learning content and help build towards the goal of becoming a “multi-generational institution.”
Watch the video here.
