In just a few weeks, homeschooling has gone from a rarity to a baseline in homes across the country.

Jonah Liss, a 16-year-old student at International Academy of Bloomfield Hills in Michigan, was sent home out of precaution due to the coronavirus outbreak.

While the transition has been okay for Liss, who has used some of the extra time to create a service to help those impacted by COVID-19, he recognized that other students are experiencing some pain points; not everyone has access to the same technology outside of school, so they can’t complete assignments. The school, he says, isn’t giving tests because they have no way to prove students aren’t cheating. And learning doesn’t feel personalized.

“It can be difficult to learn in an environment where there is less structure, direct instruction and ability to ask as many questions as possible,” Liss said. His school is placing emphasis on Google Classroom, Hangouts, Zoom and Khan Academy — all currently free for schools that have been shut down.

Edtech companies are seeing a usage surge because they’re offering services for free or at discounted rates to schools that are scrambling to switch to remote learning. But when students return to campus, many of the hurdles to adopting education technology will persist.

And as edtech startups find their time in the spotlight, these emerging challenges must be addressed before companies can truly convert those free customers into paying ones.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | What happens to edtech when kids go back to school?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines and the COVID-19 pandemic has surged event cancellations across the country. Tech workforces have found ways to stay productive: back-to-back Zoom calls, work-from-home happy hours and more Twitter threads than anyone asked for.

But Jason Craparo, the founder of events platform Hio, wants to put organic, face-to-face networking back on your calendar — in a socially distant, yet compliant, way.

Today, Hio launched a virtual lounge and a Network Now feature to replicate by-proximity networking. Using your iPhone, you can use Hio to see professionals nearby that are currently ready to, wait for it, hit it off. Then you can slide to their profile, ask if they want to do a 1:1 video chat and share information.

“Work from home doesn’t mean your results stop,” Craparo said. “People are being held accountable. We wanted to get this out so that the salespeople, entrepreneurs, small business owners and the like can basically get out to events virtually connected with people and meet their sales quotas and still do business.”

Network Now is a premium feature for which Hio usually charges $10 a month, but in light of all the canceled conferences, Craparo says it is free for the next three months.

How Hio wants you to network with other professionals nearby

The company also rolled out a virtual lounge. It’s similar to Network Now, except it is specific to events that have gone remote. Think a focused lounge produced by event organizers to help event participants meet each other.

From diners and drive-ins to startupland

For Craparo, the intricacies of sales and small business ownership were a focus long before Hio.
The founder moved to San Diego to attend college, but he instead worked his way up to owner at Sonic Drive-Ins, a fast food chain. He then went to Juma Ventures, a company that employs inner city kids at concession stands at stadiums and did volunteer work across San Diego. He then earned his MBA from Babson, where he received a $275,000 check at a startup competition for his Hio prototype.

Hio initially launched as an app that allowed users to share their chosen social media handles with others. Today, it connects people to events and professionals nearby.

Users sign up and create a profile with their bio, interests and an elevator pitch in the form of a short video. The idea is that people can then attend a virtual event, and meet others through the app putting their profile foot forward. Beyond video chatting, users can send follow-up emails or direct messages. People also can set reminders to contact said individual once a week, month, quarter or never.

Craparo claims that Eventbrite isn’t a competitor, but instead a partner: Hio integrates with the ticket-selling and event registration company to provide independent organizers with a mobile app to go along with their events as an added networking tool.

Craparo also integrates with Meetup, which was acquired on Monday from WeWork by a group of investors, including AlleyCorp.

The novel coronavirus outbreak and health concerns have led to a rapid adoption of online-only groups. In fact, at the time of publication, Eventbrite’s front page touts online events.

Hio has the potential to serve Eventbrite and Meetup customers that are now in an online-only world and want an extra layer of communication between event participants. Of course, for now shelter in place and lockdowns are mandated by governments around the world. But, if Hio and other remote meetup services are seamless and friendly enough, virtual networking could stay part of our culture long after the pandemic is controlled.

Hio’s more direct competitors are services like Bumble for business, which is an offshoot of the popular dating app into a professional connection network. BumbleBizz lets you swipe through professionals near you. Hio wants to touch upon that same organic discovery process, but have control of more parts of the networking experience: from pre and post-communication to live networking opportunities and messaging.

Craparo says that dating isn’t a focus for Hio right now, but he noted that the lines between work and personal life feel blurry (especially these days). He won’t be surprised if some personal relationships develop.

Prior to this announcement, Hio already landed a few big clients, like New York Tech Meetup, a 200-person meetup that happens monthly.

“Ticket services only know how many tickets they sold,” Craparo said. “We can tell them how many people physically showed up or virtually showed up, how many connections were made, how many pieces of contact information were shared, what the most commonly shared item was, or on average how many people each person met.”

Hio originally took seven months to hit 1,000 events. In the past three weeks alone, Hio has helped with 1,200 events. The rapid change illustrates that Hio is filling a gap for professionals that want to be connected during a time of isolation.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Hio wants to put networking events back on your remote-only calendars

Addionics, an Israeli/U.K. startup that is developed next-generation rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles and other applications, has raised $6 million in funding. The round is led by Next Gear Ventures, and includes a $2.5 million grant as part of the European Union’s Horizon2020 innovation competition.

Founded by former Imperial College London academics, Addionics has created what it claims are improved rechargeable batteries through a redesign of chargeable battery architecture. It has developed a “patent-protected” and scalable 3D metal fabrication method that are said to enhance car battery performance, increase mileage and safety, and reduce cost and charging time.

Specifically, this new so-called “smart 3D structure” minimises internal resistance and improves the “mechanical longevity, thermal stability and other fundamental limitations and degradation factors” in standard batteries, says Addionics.

It also says its approach is different to other companies that are trying to improve batteries, which tend to focus on chemistry rather than on physics. Addionics’ chemistry agnostic approach means that it can still benefit from advances in chemistry, while bringing something additional to the table.

Addionics CTO Dr. Vladimir Yufit explains in a statement: “We are agnostic to the battery chemistry. Therefore, we can take existing or future batteries and enhance their performance by our smart 3D components. No matter what chemistry technology will win the electrification race, we will improve it even more.”

Or to put it more colourfully, Yufit says Addionics is “betting on the race, and not on the horse.”

To that end, the company is initially targeting the automotive market but also sees its technology finding a home in other products such as consumer electronics, medical devices, grid energy storage, drones, and more.

In terms of commercial traction, it’s still early days. However, Addionics says it is currently working with an unnamed tier-1 American automotive company on a proof-of-concept design and testing Addionics cells in vehicles.

Dr. Moshiel Biton, Addionics CEO, says that the goal is to have 3-4 major collaborations with “world-leading OEMs” over the next year.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Addionics, a startup creating ‘next-gen’ batteries for electric cars and more, raises M