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As part of its Kindle Direct Publishing program Amazon announced the launch of KDP EDU. The new portal aims to help educators and education authors to easily convert existing textbooks or other study materials from pdf to digital textbooks. Those digital textbooks can then be accessed on a variety of devices, from Amazon’s own Fire tablets, to iOS devices and Android devices to Mac and Windows desktops. Books that are created with the new Kindle Textbook Creator also have some useful features baked in. Multi-Color Highlighting - Learners can highlight and categorize key concepts for easy reference. Notebook - Learners can capture key passages, images and bookmarks and automatically add them to the notebook. Learners can also add their own notes and easily access them from one location. Flashcards - Learners can create flashcards and study important terms, concepts, and definitions in each chapter with a simple, easy-to-use interface. Dictionary - Learners can find definitions and Wikipedia information for difficult terms to improve retention. Buy Once, Read Everywhere - Learners can access their etextbooks on all of their devices. Educators and authors can earn up to 70% in royalties while maintaining complete control over the content. They can also participate in the different marketing formats offered by Amazon including the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library. The Kindle Textbook Creator software can be downloaded for free and runs on Mac OS X 10.8 or later and Windows 7 or later. Further Reading Amazon Launches Kindle Textbook Creator | Business Wire Link kdp.amazon.com/edu

This infographic, llustrating data from a Pew Internet survey, highlights some key metrics around digital engagement and higher education.

Thanks to increased access to the Internet and faster connections, Latin America has become one of the growing markets for online based education services. Etutores is an online learning platform that aims to connect students and teachers. The online portal offers additional features like online booking, a virtual classroom environment, mobile applications and teacher training. Introduce your startup and give a short description of what you are doing. Etutores is a free online tutoring portal that connects teachers and students in a seamless, interactive and unprecedented way. Our company taps into the rapidly expanding education market in Brazil, but focuses upon the untapped niche of interactive online tutoring with the focus on the teacher segment as a target audience. Who are the founders, how did you meet, what are your different roles in the startup. Andrea Paschoal CEO Etutores. She is an educator with experience in the management of teachers and the production of online content. Andrea has a DELTA diploma from the University of Cambridge, UK. She has coordinated and managed teachers at Embassy CES Oxford - UK and developed projects in the area of online learning at the BBC and Macmillan Publishers. Andrea understands the Startup dynamics and the Brazilian market well. She is capable of designing bespoke online learning solutions with a fast, cost effective approach. Bruna Piacente Offline Marketing Consultant for Etutores. Bruna has a lot of experience as a producer of promotional events and an extensive portfolio of work done for large companies in Brazil, such as Biolab and Claro HDTV. She can plan, coordinate and execute successful offline marketing campaigns. We met when working together on a roadshow of a project from the BBC in partnership with Universidades Anhanguera in Brazil. What is the main problem in education that you aim to solve. Teachers tend to be dissatisfied with their compensation at work and will often spend a long time filling school paperwork and commuting. They welcome the opportunity to gain more autonomy and earn more by managing their own workload and schedule. Etutores responds to the demands of the teaching profession by establishing a platform as a commodity in order to attract students. Etutores focuses on a transparent and fair business model, whereby the teacher is an asset and an active member and representative of the brand. Furthermore, there’s potential to grow to another big market, since an increasing number of educational institutions which offer courses online, are continually focusing upon the development of content and video lessons to cater for this ever-growing number of students that are taking up these courses. As a result, significant numbers of institutions are actively seeking solutions to offer their students a more balanced teacher vs. content learning experience. In which markets / regions are you active. What markets / regions are next. We chose Brazil as our initial market. The decision was made based on the size of the market and the local demand. It also made sense to start somewhere we knew well. The natural expansion would be to cover other Latin American countries such as Argentina and Peru, and we have plans to launch an English version on the platform in the UK soon. Who is your target audience. Etutores focuses primarily upon one distinct customer segment: Teachers; Professors at the University level along with secondary school teachers will be targeted in the initial product rollout. That’s a total number of 2.5M prospects. Our goal is to reach 3% marketshare by the end of year 3. Who are your main competitors? At present, there is no free online tutoring platform in Brazil. There are, however, three companies which offer similar services on a monthly subscription or commission per lesson basis. Unlike Etutores, none of them offer any teacher development courses. How do you engage with your target audience. How do you convert them into users of your product. We plan to initially promote Etutores through campaigns on LinkedIn and Facebook, and then support those campaigns with personal networking and outreach. We have already tested these approaches at a smaller scale, and they have delivered strong results. The teaching community in Brazil is already very active online, especially in social networking sites. With the basic functionalities of the product offered for free, the strategy to convert existent non-paying users to paying users is to promote the premium functionalities of the platform via the platform itself, email and online campaigns. These are initially; online invoicing and payment tools, advanced booking calendar and enhanced visibility in the search results. What is your business model. How much does your product / service cost. At present the platform is completely free. However, in the next couple of month we'll launch the premium memberships for teachers, which will be offered for a USD20/ month fee, through a monthly membership contract. This is comparatively cheaper to competitors’ prices. Offering variations of membership such as a more sophisticated plan or a more economic one are an option to try to capture an even wider range of users, but for the purposes of this business plan I will keep all forecast to the initial 2 variations of monthly fees (USD20/50). If you raised funding, how much did you raise. Who are your investors. If not, are you planning to raise funding. We are planning to raise funding in the first quarter of 2015. Initially we are approaching potential Angel investors, but we are also launching an equity crowd funding campaign soon. Are there milestones you are especially proud of and would like to share. In just over the first 3 months of our beta version, we had drawn subscriptions from 900 educators and 1300 students! So far the platform has facilitated over 500 private lessons and our community is growing organically and with the support of the teaching community in Brazil. What are the next steps in growing your startup. To obtain this market share we plan to use a "freemium" online portal that will offer basic, but robust tutoring capacity for teachers and students. We will draw revenue from members who subscribe to our premium membership, which includes customizable add-ons, such as advanced booking, a convenient and safe online payment and invoicing functionality. Teachers will also have access to a library of free open source content and unlimited use of virtual whiteboard rooms. As well as the opportunity to purchase teacher training and certification from the platform. Once a pool of qualified and experienced teachers is formed and graded by users, and internal assessment tools, by the end of year two, Etutores will be in a position to place itself as the "LinkedIn of online tutoring" being the complete online tutoring solution in the national market. Offering Educational Institutions a route to the recruitment of trained, certified, independent online professionals, which will cater for the growing trend to adapt online courses to a more blended learning reality. How can people get in touch with you. andrea@etutores.com.br +55 41 4042 2390 (Brazil) +44 7711088678 (UK) www.etutores.com.br https://www.facebook.com/etutoresbrasil

Pluralsight, an online training platform for professionals in the tech sector, has acquired learn-to-code platform Code School for $32 million. Through the acquisition Pluralsight extends its library to beginner level courses. Founded in 2011, Code School has attracted over 1 million subscribers with around 40.000 of them being active ones at the time of the acquisition. The startup offers over 40 courses starting at beginner levels. The courses are presented in an entertaining way with added gamification elements, like in-browser coding challenges and badges. A subscription to Code School starts at $29 per month. "Code School has differentiated itself as a fun, efficient, hands-on way to learn, offering introductory to advanced courses that are really effective." states Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard in the press release. The acquisition of Code School is the sixth in 18 months by Pluralsight which raised a $135 million Series B in August. In November the company acquired skill test platform Smarterer in order to create an industry wide standard for tech skill assessment. Like Smarterer, Code School will remain a separate entity with the team remaining in Orlando. The platform will serve as an entry point to more advanced coding classes offered by Pluralsight. Code School will also offer 10 courses from Pluralsight to its subscribers, reports TechCrunch. lynda.com, one of Pluralsight’s main competitors, just closed a $186 million Series B which will be mainly used to acquire edtech companies. According to lynda.com CEO Eric Robin the company is in the final stage of due dilligence with one and has letters of intent with three other edtech companies. This means we can expect further consolidation in the tech education space throughout 2015. Further Reading Code School has Joined the Pluralsight Team | Code School Pluralsight Acquires "Learn-to-Code" Platform Code School for $36 Million | Pluralsight Online Learning Service Pluralsight Acquires Code School For $36 Million | TechCrunch Links codeschool.com

Courtesy OnlineUniversities.com

As part of its $350 million commitment to education, AT&T announced the opening of the AT&T Aspire Accelerator program. The program aims to support edtech startups with social impact with a special focus on solutions for at-risk students. For-profit participants in the AT&T Aspire Accelerator will receive $50,000 in return for 5% equity, non-profits will receive a general contribution and need to submit impact measurements. AT&T will also cover travel expenses and other costs associated with the program for up to $25,000 as participants don’t need to relocate for the accelerator. Other perks of the accelerator include the usual mentorship from industry experts and national promotion through the AT&T Aspire Initiative. The application is open to any organization in the United States that uses technology to support students' educational and workforce success including but not limited to mobile applications that drive education outcomes platforms for teachers, students and/or parents learning and curriculum management tools assessment and outcome tracking platforms education distribution (online instruction, courses, etc.) increased access for existing best practices Applications can be submitted via the Aspire Accelerator website until February 20th 2015. The program will kick off in May and end in October with a demo day. Further Reading AT&T Aspire Launches Ed-Tech Accelerator Focused On Social Impact | PR Newswire Links about.att.com/csr/aspireaccelerator

Courtesy EdTechTimes

Non-profit NewSchools Venture Fund is in the process of creating a new for-profit investment fund, reports EdSurge. The new fund will be lead by Jennifer Carolan who is currently in charge of the NewSchools Venture Seed Fund. Carolan will be leaving the non-profit on January 30th to focus on setting up the new fund. Details on the new for-profit fund are still to be determined including the relationship between the two entities and the size of the new fund. For the time being all startups NewSchools Venture Seed Fund invested in remain assets of the non-profit, and the fund remains operational. The new for-profit fund will have its own portfolio and make investments beyond the seed stage. "One thing the new structure and access to additional investors can give us is the opportunity to participate in follow-on rounds for more of our seed stage companies going forward." states NewSchools CEO Stacey Childress in the interview. "It’s a great signal for other investors who may only come in at later rounds. To be able to provide follow-up support signals the confidence that our investor team has, having been with a company through the seed stage It’s a signal to the market of the potential of that company." Since its launch in 2012 NewSchools Venture Seed Fund has invested around $12 million in 42 edtech startups. After the launch of the new for-profit fund, NewSchools will still offer grants to edtech startups but will refocus on its original mission of supporting innovation in charter schools and districts. Further Reading NewSchools Spins Off New, For-Profit Venture Fund | EdSurge NewSchools' Nonprofit Seed Fund Gives Way to For-Profit Investment Arm | EdWeek Links nsvfseed.org

Student debt remains one of the pressing issues in higher education today, and the cost of textbooks still plays an important role in the equation. There is a range of edtech startups tackling this issue in different ways, from unbundling textbooks to OER. Redshelf which just raised a $2 million Series A led by the National Association of College Stores offers a digital distribution platform, enabling students to rent digital textbooks with different durations, offering up to 60% in savings. Introduce your startup and give a short description of what you are doing. Through the power of our software platform, the RedShelf goal is to create new efficiencies for digital content discovery, distribution, and consumption in the learning community. RedShelf ​aims to improve the online learning experience and accelerate the transition to digital in ways that support publishers, institutional bookstores, faculty, and students. Who are the founders, how did you meet, what are your different roles in the startup. [caption id="attachment_10377" align="alignnone" width="474"] The Redshelf team celebrating the Series A round.[/caption] Gregory Fenton, Co-founder/CEO & Timothy Haitaian, Co-founder/CFO. Greg and Tim have been friends since high school and co-founded RedShelf while attending college after they experienced the difficulties of accessing learning content digitally. Greg oversees new business development and product development while Tim manages RedShelf’s operations and finances. What is the main problem in education that you aim to solve. We work closely with our publisher partners and aim to provide more affordable eTextbooks for students by offering our digital materials for both lifetime access and ​limited duration options such as​ (90-day, 180-day​, and 360-days​). The limited duration options provide a deeper discount and could offer up to 60% savings compared to a traditional print book. In addition to affordable course material options we aim to provide the best reader experience through our HTML Cloud eReader. In which markets / regions are you active. What markets / regions are next. Students all over the world could purchase and read with RedShelf. Today, we are mainly focused in the higher education space within the USA. Who is your target audience. Over the last couple years campus bookstores have seen the rise in digital textbooks. In order for the campus bookstore to compete with online vendors such as Amazon or Chegg, an increasing number are turning to RedShelf to help them compete. RedShelf has more than 160 campus bookstore partnerships, and over 160,000 titles available. RedShelf has partnerships with thousands of major and independent publishers - more than any of their competitors, and acts as the bridge between the publishers and the the schools. RedShelf is able to offer 20X as many titles as their competitors as a result of these publisher relationships. RedShelf is able to attract so many publishing partners both because of their wide distribution of affiliated colleges and because their in-house e-reader allows them access to valuable user data which they can then relay back to the publishers. How do you engage with your target audience. How do you convert them into users of your product. Our sales team is actively working to build partnerships with publisher and institutional bookstores. For our students we engage mainly on ensuring our options are visible when searching for their course materials to purchase. What is your business model. How much does your product / service cost. RedShelf derives about 80% of its sales through retail partnerships with bookstores. The other 20% comes from direct-to-consumer purchases where RedShelf does not work with the local bookstore. While RedShelf can’t share exact revenue numbers, on average it has seen 400% year-over-year growth since 2012. Who are your main competitors? Some of our competitors within the college bookstore realm include: Course Smart, Barnes & Noble Yuzu and BryteWave. If you raised funding, how much did you raise. Who are your investors. If not, are you planning to raise funding. We've recently raised $2M in Series A funding from the National Association of College Stores (NACS) and previous investors. Are there milestones you are especially proud of and would like to share. RedShelf grew from 20 bookstores to 160 in 2014! RedShelf was the first edtech startup to partner directly with all five major academic publishers which included Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Cengage, Macmillan and John Wiley & Sons. What are the next steps in growing your startup. RedShelf will use the funding to launch new features and products, improve upon the existing platform, and support new relationships with both publishers and educational institutions. RedShelf plans to partner with at least 350 bookstores by the end of 2015, building on the explosive growth of 2014. How can people get in touch with you. press@redshelf.com sales@redshelf.com Website: www.redshelf.com Blog: blog.redshelf.com Twitter: @readanywhere LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/virdocs Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RedShelf

Courtesy EdTech Times

Taiwanese hardware manufacturer Acer and Google announced a partnership to make Android powered tablet devices pre-loaded with educational content for U.S. K-8 schools. The 10 inch tablets will be equipped with Google Play for Education, giving teachers and learners access to a wide variety of teacher approved applications. Acer expects that Android based tablets will see similar success in the education sector as Google Chrome based laptops, which saw tremendous growth in 2014. The company is the leader in the Chromebook segment with a 40% market share, according to Gartner. Last week Acer presented its latest Google Chrome laptops for the education space at BETT in London. via Focus Taiwan | Acer

Click to enlarge Source: Open Colleges, via EdTech Times

In Asia mobile phones are more intensively used than in North America or Europe. Often they are the main computing device, replacing laptops or desktop computers entirely. This also means that mobile phones are more and more used to perform different tasks in the field of learning, from sharing questions related to homework to learning a new language. HelloTalk offers a social app that connects language learners from across the globe. The app features a set of different tools to facilitate exchange within the community, and to help community members to learn a new language. Introduce your startup and give a short description of what you are doing. HelloTalk is a language & culture exchange social app. Users learn and exchange 100+ languages with language partners from 150+ countries worldwide. Who are the founders. Zackery is founder of HelloTalk. Born in China, raised in HK, and educated in the US, Zackery can speak English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, and Japanese (intermediate). Currently, Zackery is learning Spanish (beginner). Zackery created HelloTalk so language learners worldwide can find like-minded language exchange partners easily. What is the main problem in education that you aim to solve. The difficulty for language learners is to find language exchange partners through websites. Also it's difficult to maintain contact through the web. HelloTalk aims to solve this problem. In which markets / regions are you active. What markets / regions are next. We are currently active in Korea, Japan, China, the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, Russia, France, Turkey. We plan to expand to India, Germany, UK, Italy, Spain, Argentina next. Who is your target audience. Language learners who want to practice with native speakers in the languages they are learning. Who are your competitors? What sets you apart from them? While Duolingo and Busuu provide language learners with quizzes, exercises, and course content, HelloTalk emphasizes on practice with real humans. The app also features Text to Speech, Voice Recognition, Translation, Transliteration, Sentence Favorites, and Grammar Correction. What is your business model. How much does your product / service cost. Value added pro membership features for US$0.99 per month. The first language pair is free, learning extra languages costs US$1.99 each. If you raised funding, how much did you raise. Who are your investors. If not, are you planning to raise funding. We plan to raise funding in the next six months. Are there milestones you are especially proud of and would like to share. HelloTalk should cross the 1 million user registration mark by end of March, 2015. What are the next steps in growing your startup. Allow users to join language groups based on interest and topics they want to discuss. How can people get in touch with you. Zackery616@gmail.com Links Website | iTunes App Store | Google Play

This infographic spells out exactly how undergraduate students are using technology, what they prefer, and how they want faculty to use tech. Source: BachelorsDegreeOnline.com

AcadGild wants to tackle the shortage of IT professionals with an online training portal that connects learners in the United States with mentors from India. If the concept sounds familiar to TutorVista you are right. AcadGild is founded by Krishnan and Meena Ganesh. For this new edtech venture they are joined by inventor and venture capitalist Vinod Dham who is often referred to as the "Father of the Pentium chip" and will take on the role of CEO. As The Economic Times reports, the non-compete agreement between Pearson and Krishnan and Meena Ganesh ends in February. TutorVista was sold to the publisher for $213 million two years ago. In April 2014 the Ganesh’s made their first step back into the online education space by acquiring Avagmah, an online school for working professionals, for an undisclosed amount. Dham himself also has a successful entrepreneurial track record. He sold two of his companies for $1.2 billion and $837 million and was Intel’s lead in the Pentium chip project. AcadGild offers three months courses priced at $725. The initial market focus in on clients in the United States and India with plans to expand into other English speaking countries like Australia, the UK, and Canada. China which sees a growing number of English speaking learners is also an option, says Vinod Dham. With its offering AcadGild enters the highly competitive US IT education market that is currently under consolidation. Pluralsight and lynda.com which both raised massive rounds of venture capital in 2014 and this year are currently in a race to acquire smaller competitors that add to their content portfolio and reach. AcadGild’s offer is a bit different though as the startup sets its focus on working with a mentor and not so much on self paced learning based on video lessons of above mentioned companies. The startup aims for a mentor to student ratio of 1:3. This makes the courses also much more expensive compared to the subscription models of Pluralsight and lynda.com. Further Reading Vinod Dham makes a comeback, to start an online technology education startup Acadgild | The Economic Times Links acadgild.com

San Francisco-based peer-to-peer lending platform SoFi (Social Finance) raised a $200 million Series D led by Third Point Ventures and affiliates of Third Point LLC, with participation of Wellington Management Company LLP, Institutional Venture Partners and existing investors. Founded in 2011, SoFi has raised over $760 million in venture capital. To date SoFi has originated over $1.75 billion dollars in loans. At the time of its $80 million Series C in April 2014, the company funded $450 million in loans of over 5000 lenders. The new funding values SoFi at $1.3 billion ahead of its upcoming IPO, reports FT. Peer-lending platforms LendingClub and OnDeck are currently valued at $7 billion and $1.1 billion after their respective IPOs. The Series D round will enable SoFi to further expand into consumer lending products throughout the United States and add new options for investors to its loan marketplace. Last month Bloomberg reported that SoFi was planning to sell $313.8 million of securities backed by student loans "the largest bond offering yet from a firm that extends credit to consumers through an approach known as marketplace or peer-to-peer lending." The idea behind peer-to-peer lending platforms is that borrowers are less likely to default on loans made through a community rather than taking a loan from a faceless lender. At SoFi borrowers can expect a 5% ROI on average. Besides its loan marketplace, SoFi offers related services like career advising, unemployment protection, a member network and entrepreneurial support for founders. Further Reading Leading Marketplace Lender SoFi Secures $200 million in Series D Funding | Press Release Peer-to-peer lender SoFi raises $200m | FT Peer-to-Peer Lender SoFi Planning Its Largest Sale of Securities | Bloomberg Links sofi.com | Twitter | Facebook | CrunchBase | AngelList

A recent study has revealed that some college students and young professionals are willing to sacrifice salary and employment opportunities for social media and technology freedoms. Click to enlarge Source: Online College Courses

Amazon opened its first on-campus pick-up and drop-off location at Purdue University yesterday. Amazon@Purdue is staffed by Amazon and offers students a location to pick-up their orders at a schedule that is adapted to their hours on campus. Members of Amazon Prime and Amazon Student are eligible for free one-day pick-up of over one million items in the Amazon catalog. Textbooks that are being used by professors in their classes at Purdue are marked with a special badge and related class information once a student uses the search on purdue.amazon.com. Other items that are eligible for one-day shipping are marked with a Prime Campus badge. "Whether students are ordering textbooks, laptops, or mac and cheese, Amazon and Purdue are now providing a convenient and secure spot for them to pick up their stuff at hours that work with their schedules. We look forward to bringing this experience to more universities soon." states Paul Ryder, Vice President of Media and Student Programs at Amazon in the press release. When ordering, students simply use the Amazon@Purdue shipping address. Once the item has arrived at the pick-up location, students receive a SMS or email, print out a barcode and collect the package at a self-service locker or at the pick-up desk. As part of the arrangement Purdue University receives commission on sales of students, faculty, staff and alumni made through the program. Amazon has similar arrangements with the University of California, Davis and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Establishing this program means that Amazon is now in direct competition with campus bookstores and edtech companies like Chegg. Students at Purdue can now easily return their rented textbooks on campus and order other items related to campus life, something Chegg has been building through acquisitions of various startups, like Campus Special, over the past years though most acquisitions focus on digital services around career planning and employment. Further Reading Amazon Launches First-Ever Staffed Campus Pickup and Drop-Off Location, Free One-Day Pickup at Purdue University | Press Release Links purdue.amazon.com

Courtesy of: online-education.net

Blogging is about writing and reading, not the technology platform. This infographic identifies 4 steps for getting started blogging in the classroom. Source: Langwitches

Social media has changed the way people communicate and consume information, and most people use a variety of different social apps for different aspects of their lives. In this constant stream of information some messages might get lost. This is especially true when the demographic starts shifting towards using new apps like Yik Yak on campus. OrcaTV aims to cut through the noise and establish a unified channel for all information related to campus life and administration. Introduce your startup and give a short description of what you are doing. OrcaTV is a unique, curated channel of student and faculty submitted fliers, videos, and social media distributed to existing digital signage, cable TV, and websites that simplifies communications on college campuses and helps to inform and engage the university community. By bringing many different communication mediums to one place, OrcaTV creates a centralized platform that is accessible, interactive, and fun to use. Who are the founders, how did you meet, what are your different roles in the startup. OrcaTV was created by students for students to help make sharing information on campus as easy and fun as possible. As an undergraduate student, Rajiv Shenoy noticed screens around campus that nobody was using. So he partnered with the school to get student content on them and the platform quickly became a unique "Campus Life Channel", a centralized place for students and faculty to distribute and consume information regarding events and announcements on campus. Realizing that this was a great way to engage and inform students on college campuses, he started OrcaTV and found three individuals just as passionate as him about college and improving the undergraduate experience to help build the company. Joey Goldberg leads the Sales and Marketing team, Adam Podlisky manages Operations, and Michelle Greenblatt is the Director of Content. What is the main problem in education that you aim to solve. Content can be shared in more ways than ever, making it difficult to effectively deliver information and news to campus communities. We aim to engage and inform university communities by turning the complex web of communication on college campuses into a consolidated, centralized "Campus Life Channel", a one-stop shop for all campus news and information. IT spends less time and money managing, converting, and delivering content to the university community and can focus more on enhancing the quality and efficacy of the content that is being disseminated. Students and faculty have access to one platform they can use to distribute and consume important campus information. In which markets / regions are you active. What markets / regions are next. We are currently exclusive to the higher education market and built our beta network across the Northeast. Now that we have launched The Campus Life Channel, we’re expanding across all regions in the US. Who is your target audience. Our target audience is college students and administrators who manage communication platforms. Our channel greatly benefits faculty and IT administrators by creating efficiencies around managing content and technology. For students, it’s a powerful on-campus communication platform that allows them to express their interests in fun ways. How do you engage with your target audience. How do you convert them into users of your product. Each university is extremely unique - and The Campus Life Channel has to showcase the campus culture. We have a robust marketing strategy that focuses on developing strong relationships with students and administrators, helping us to promote OrcaTV on-campus. We first hire student ambassadors who inform us as to what content students are interested in promoting on the platform, they present at registered student organization meetings, reach out to student leaders, distribute fliers, and much more. We participate in remote and on-campus product training, create custom promotional content, and facilitate focus groups. We also work closely with administrators to carry out unique campaigns they are interested in e.g. Twitter polls and Instagram contests. Once the university community is fully aware of OrcaTV, they are excited to contribute their content to the platform and naturally become users. What is your business model. How much does your product / service cost. OrcaTV provides software and content management services for an annual fee that alleviate many administrative burdens and streamline communications on campus. The cost of our product ranges significantly depending on the size and needs of each university. However, as a smaller company, we’re extremely flexible and able to accommodate the needs and budgets of all types and sizes of schools. Who are your main competitors? What sets you apart from them? At the moment, there are no main competitors who are providing the same service as us to universities. If you raised funding, how much did you raise. Who are your investors. If not, are you planning to raise funding. Bill Gray, a Senior Advisor to Blackstone and Former CEO of Ogilvy, NA made an angel investment in OrcaTV in 2012. Bill's extensive experience has helped us to define the Orca brand while focusing on enriching the experience of its users. Campus Televideo, the nation’s leading provider of satellite delivered cable television services to colleges and universities, invested in OrcaTV in 2014. This partnership has allowed us to grow our team while building out the infrastructure needed to continue providing quality service to our customers. Are there milestones you are especially proud of and would like to share. A great milestone for us was hiring our first student ambassador and launching our student ambassador program. As our eyes and ears on campus, they have been essential in keeping us in-touch with university culture and events which helps us to push engaging and relevant content across our platform. What are the next steps in growing your startup. The next step in growing our startup is staying focused on how we can engage students through our Campus Life Channel while reducing the management burden for administrators. We are showcasing our product at several conferences this year to make new connections while continuing to innovate and deliver a fun experience for all of our current campus partners. Room for anything else you would like to add. As recent college graduates, it doesn’t get more fun than being able to build and provide a product to students and universities that we would have loved as undergraduates. Watching OrcaTV become an invaluable resource on our campuses brings us so much satisfaction and motivates us to continue to grow and innovate around making college the best possible experience not just for students, but for faculty and administrators as well. How can people get in touch with you. They can email us at support@orcatv.com, call us at (267) 373-8952, or fill out our contact form at www.orcatv.com.

A new survey from Dell indicates there are quite a few things the U.S. can learn from China when it comes to meeting students’ technology needs. According to the findings: China is more likely to integrate technology into all curriculum, Chinese students spend more time using technology in school, and Chinese teachers are more technologically savvy according to students Courtesy BrainTrack