As the school year comes to an end, the education tech climate is heating up. Blackboard, led by Boston-area CEO Jay Bhatt, is a longtime leader in edtech—but it needs to expand, in part by going international. Bhatt is a former math teacher who previously helped lead Autodesk and Progress Software, two companies that did the majority of their business overseas. Now, as he points out, the globalization of education is just starting to take off. And students in India, China, and Brazil are going to be reached on devices, and by international brands. We’ll have to see if Blackboard is one of them.
In other innovation news:
— Deepwater Wind, based in Providence, is collaborating on a new project to put floating wind turbines off the coast of Oregon. Deepwater is also leading a more conventional offshore wind project in New England.
— Our startup of the week is Romulus Capital, a seed-stage venture firm that’s raised a new $50 million fund. Romulus, which came out of MIT, is competing to invest in young tech startups, mostly in Boston and New York.
— And lastly, you may have heard that the radio program “This American Life” is getting a new audio distributor. The technical part will be done by Public Radio Exchange, or PRX, based in Harvard Square. The rise of this 10-year-old Internet firm is more evidence of what we in the media already know: that the future is, increasingly, on the web.
