When you think of education in the Nordics you might first think of Finland’s PISA test scores, but Norway seems to be the one really capitalizing on EdTech. A good excuse to cover this is that Norway is representing itself with a pavilion at BETT, a London-based learning technology event, and with it they’re sharing some numbers on the rise of Norwegian EdTech startups. With it they claim Norwegian educational technology has over 40 million users worldwide – a number that seems to easily top the rest of the region.
Much of this 40 million users can be attributed to Kahoot, a startup that is no stranger to posting insane numbers. As the school season kicked off this year Kahoot saw 900,000 unique new players in one week, and now they say that Kahoot is used by 10% of the K-12 classrooms in the United States. Kahoot’s platform allows anyone to create a gamified quiz on the front projector that can be answered live in class on mobile devices or tablets.
Add to that list Creaza, a platform that allows students to create mind maps, presentations, comic strips, and movies. We first covered them in 2011 but rather than fading away, they’re on the list of the top 20 fastest growing Edtech companies in Europe. Also worth a mention is Gyldendal, which has become the only non-British finalist of the BETT awards, which suggests they’ve got a good concept (considering the platform is only available in Norway’s Bokmål and Nynorsk dialects).
Perhaps the best thing about this is how these Norwegian EdTech startups are somewhat banding together to become a Norwegain EdTech startup which surely will help draw investors to the region, and become a centralized theme to rally around.
