Here are some of the well-recognized in the Education Technology (EdTech) sector \u2013 in no particular order. These are the companies that are developing the paradigms that will shape Big Data in Education. They are also the companies that are developing the technologies to implement those paradigms and offer them to educational institutions.<\/p>\n
This is important because, until recently, schools have not needed to look outside their own walls for the tools they needed to do their work. The obvious exceptions are textbooks and, starting some 60 years ago, general purpose computers.<\/p>\n
Educase Conference<\/strong> \u2013 This company is growing fast. It offers systems to store Big Data in a cloud and perform analytics on that data to make sense of it for administrators.<\/p>\n SAS <\/strong>\u2013<\/strong> is a well-established company that dominates the advanced analytics industry with almost 32% of the market.<\/p>\n Renaissance Learning <\/strong>\u2013<\/strong> A few years ago this company was sold for $1.1 billion. Renaissance is a testing and student data company. At the time of its sale, it had data on the test results for 10.1 million school age children.<\/p>\n InBloom <\/strong>\u2013<\/strong> This company is a middleman between school districts and education technology companies. It handles the data storage and distribution of student data to authorized users. The Bill and Melinda gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York had so much confidence in this venture that they kicked in $100 million. However, social concerns about data security grew to a fever pitch and the company withdrew its offerings.<\/p>\n