Company type | Privately held company |
---|---|
Founded | 2005 |
Founder | Wayne Skipper |
Headquarters | |
Services | Software Design & Development |
Number of employees | (90 employees (2022)) |
Parent | Instructure |
Website | concentricsky |
Concentric Sky is a software development company located in Eugene, Oregon. The company was founded in 2005 by Wayne Skipper, [1] and grew to nearly 90 employees prior its sale to Instructure in April 2022. [2] [3] In 2015, Cale Bruckner was promoted to President of the company. [4] Skipper continued to serve as CEO until the company's sale. Concentric Sky is the maker of Badgr and is a well-known contributor to the development of open technology standards focused on improving outcomes for learners and workers.
Concentric Sky grew steadily from its founding in 2005. [5] [6] In 2008, the company announced a partnership with GoldMoney to create an iPhone app to allow the transfer of digital units of gold. [7]
In 2009, the company formed a partnership with Encyclopædia Britannica to launch a series of iOS apps for the K-12 education market. [8] [9] [10] That same year, the company released the official iOS app for NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] and also developed the website for film maker Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story . [16]
In 2010, Concentric Sky Founder Wayne Skipper was asked by Google to submit expert testimony to the Federal Trade Commission regarding Google's acquisition of Admob. [17] [18] That same year, the company partnered with the World Bank [19] to develop a series of data visualization apps and partnered with National Geographic to design and build a series of official study apps for the National Geographic Bee. [5] In 2010, the Internet Engineering Task Force voted to make the company a development partner. [20]
In 2011, the company partnered with the United Nations to develop a data visualization app to support the UN's annual reports. [21] That same year, the company was named "the only App Developer officially endorsed by Mashable." [22]
In 2012, the company designed and built an iPad version of the Encyclopædia Britannica . [23] The app received widespread recognition, [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] including an Appy Award. [29]
In 2013, products featuring Concentric Sky's work for partner Cengage Learning won 2 Codie awards. [30] That same year, the company's work resulted in a US patent for usability improvements to electronic medical records. [31]
In 2014, the company joined the Open Badges movement and launched the Oregon Badge Alliance with partners including Oregon State University. [32] Later that year, the company released an open source Android viewer app for Khan Academy content. [33]
In 2015, the company led the development of Open Badges 2.0 in partnership with MacArthur Foundation spin off, Collective Shift. [34] [35] That same year, the company launched the Badgr project with partner edX. [36] The use of Badgr grew rapidly, [37] and by early 2018 the product had grown to serve nearly 10,000 organizations around the world. [2]
In 2016, the company announced a broad partnership with Collective Shift focused on advancements in education technology and workforce readiness. Under this partnership, the company developed LRNG [38] and took over development of GlassLab Games, which included the educational variants of several popular video games including Civilization and SimCity. [39] GlassLab Games was shut down at the end of 2018, and Concentric Sky worked to release many of the games open source. [40]
In 2017, the company became a founding member of the IEEE Industry Consortium for Learning Engineering, [41] and announced partnerships with the California Community Colleges System, [42] Georgia Department of Education, [43] and SURFnet. [44] [45] The success of the company's Badgr product led to Founder Wayne Skipper being interviewed broadly in the education community, [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] as well as Badgr's inclusion in the European Commission Joint Research Centre's 2017 "Blockchain in Education" report. [51] That same year, the company offered digital badges to commemorate The Great American Eclipse, [52] and another product featuring the company's work for partner Cengage Learning won a Codie award. [53]
In 2018, the company expanded the digital badges ecosystem by releasing an open technology standard called Open Pathways, [54] [55] [56] [57] and by creating a program to award digital badges to learning content aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards. [58] That same year, Mozilla announced the retirement of the Mozilla Backpack and the migration of its users to Badgr, [35] [59] the company announced a new suite of open source tools for edX, [60] Badgr was selected as the native badging solution for the Canvas Learning Management System, [61] the company announced a 4-year partnership with the community college system of Washington state, [62] and products featuring the company's work for partner Cengage Learning won another 2 Codie awards. [63] Later that year, the company's EdRec initiative was named a winner of the US Dept of Education Reimagining Higher Education Ecosystem Challenge for its blockchain-based approach to digital transcripts, [64] [65] and the company's work was featured in the book "The Interconnected Individual.” [66] [67]
In 2019, SURFnet announced a plan for The Netherlands to adopt a national digital credential strategy based on the company's Badgr platform, [68] the company launched a series of tools in partnership with the California Community Colleges System designed to help prospective community college students and their families identify regional educational programs and employment opportunities, [69] [70] [71] and company founder Wayne Skipper was invited to speak at SXSW EDU on the topic of “Open Standards & the Quantification of Learning." [72] During 2019, the company's work was featured by Digital Promise, [73] EdSurge, [74] Educause, [75] IBM, [76] The Inter-American Development Bank, [77] and the Technology Association of Oregon. [78]
In 2020, Microsoft announced the integration of the company's Badgr product into Microsoft Teams, [79] the company co-founded the Open Skills Network with partners including Western Governors University and Walmart, [80] [81] the company's Badgr product was demonstrated by Salesforce and Walmart to the United States Department of Commerce as part of a program serving over 2 million US workers, [82] [83] the company launched a first-of-its-kind comprehensive learner record with the University of North Texas, [84] [85] and the company announced partnerships with The International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET), [86] Credential Engine, [87] and Emsi. [88] In December 2020, Concentric Sky and partners including Instructure and Zoom wrote a public letter to the incoming US presidential administration urging an immediate focus on improving student learning outcomes in order to address ongoing issues impacting the US education system. [89]
In 2021, the company announced a proposal for version 3.0 of Open Badges, [90] bringing together the company's work across the World Wide Web Consortium and Decentralized Identity communities, [91] [92] the company released the Open Skills Management Toolkit in partnership with Western Governors University, [93] and the company announced several new partnerships including Blackboard, [94] Postman, [95] and Open eLMS. [96] During 2021, the company's work was featured by the American Institutes for Research, [97] Futuro Health, [98] and numerous other organizations around the world. [99] [100] [101] [102] [103] [104]
In early 2022, the company announced partnerships with the National Student Clearinghouse, [105] and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). [106] In April 2022, the company was acquired by Instructure. [3]
Named as one of Oregon's Top Workplaces of 2021 by The Oregonian, [107] Concentric Sky is known for its creative company culture. [6] [108] [109] In 2012, the company dubbed its local metro region the Silicon Shire, [110] and began hosting Shire-themed events to promote the region [111] [112] [113] [114] [115] including the annual Shire for the River fundraiser in partnership with the McKenzie River Trust. [116] In 2013, members of Concentric Sky launched an award-winning technology design team known as Light At Play. [117] In 2015, this team developed a series of LED-powered art installations that were showcased in several events around the world as part of the International Year of Light, including displays at the Smithsonian and the National Academy of Sciences. [118] [119] [120] [121]
The Encyclopædia Britannica is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The encyclopaedia is maintained by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 contributors. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, which spans 32 volumes and 32,640 pages, was the last printed edition. Since 2016, it has been published exclusively as an online encyclopaedia.
Moodle is a free and open-source learning management system written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Moodle is used for blended learning, distance education, flipped classroom and other online learning projects in schools, universities, workplaces and other sectors.
Audacy, Inc. is an American broadcasting company based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1968 as Entercom Communications Corp., it is the second largest radio company in the United States, owning over 220 radio stations across 47 media markets.
Babbel GmbH, operating as Babbel, is a German subscription-based language learning software and e-learning platform, available in various languages since January 2008.
Busuu is a language learning platform on web, iOS and Android that allows users to interact with native speakers. In 2021, Chegg acquired Busuu for $436 million.
Focus Multimedia Ltd is a multi-faceted publisher and retailer of video games, consumer software and mobile apps. Founded in 1995, the company is headquartered in the town of Rugeley in Staffordshire, England, and has about 30 employees.
Instructure Holdings, Inc. is an educational technology company based in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It is the developer and publisher of Canvas, a web-based learning management system (LMS), and Mastery Connect, an assessment management system.
Digital badges are a validated indicator of accomplishment, skill, quality or interest that can be earned in various learning environments.
Image files that contain verifiable information about learning achievements, Open Badges are based on a group of specifications and open technical standards originally developed by the Mozilla Foundation with funding from the MacArthur Foundation. The Open Badges standard describes a method for packaging information about accomplishments, embedding it into portable image files as a digital badge, and establishing an infrastructure for badge validation. The standard was originally maintained by the Badge Alliance Standard Working Group, but transitioned officially to the IMS Global Learning Consortium as of January 1, 2017.
FutureLearn is a British digital education platform founded in December 2012. The company was acquired by Global University Systems in December 2022 and previously jointly owned by The Open University and SEEK Ltd. It is a massive open online course (MOOC), microcredential and degree learning platform.
Treehouse or (Teamtreehouse) is an online technology school that offers beginner to advanced courses in web design, web development, mobile development and game development. Its courses are aimed at beginners looking to learn computer coding skills for a career in the tech industry.
Kidaptive is a Silicon Valley–based developer of educational technology. Kidaptive's core product is an adaptive-learning platform, which powers a variety of learning domains including two Kidaptive-created apps for early learning. Kidaptive was founded by P.J. Gunsagar and Dylan Arena. The creative director for Kidaptive's Leo's Pad series is Dan Danko, who has worked on numerous children's television shows such as Rugrats and Fresh Beat Band.
Unizin is both a consortium of higher education institutions and a service provider. The Unizin consortium was founded in 2014 by Colorado State University, University of Florida, Indiana University, and University of Michigan. On July 22, 2014, Unizin named Amin Qazi its founding CEO. The Unizin service debuted its first offering, Canvas by Instructure, in late summer 2014. The goal of the Unizin service is to standardize digital learning by creating common standards that enable collaboration within the higher education community. The Unizin consortium offers a channel for collaborating on solutions to the many challenges being faced by educational institutions, as well as a means for those institutions to collectively govern resources and cost-effectively control infrastructure necessary to enable innovation at their universities. Unizin, Ltd. is a registered 501(c)(3).
In higher education a microdegree, also microcredentials and microcourse, is a qualification focused upon a specified professional or career discipline and typically comprises one or more sources of accelerated educational experiences. Microdegrees are a single manifestation of Competency Based Education (CBE) which seeks to tie credentialing to specific skills sets. Micro-credentials may be completed on-site, online or in a blended format.
Impelsys is a global technology company founded in January 2001. The company is headquartered in New York and operates in the United States, European Union, and India. It supports businesses worldwide in their transition to digital-first, data-driven operations.
Otus is an educational technology company providing a learning management system, data warehouse and many classroom management tools for K-12 students, teachers, parents, and administrators. Otus was nominated as a finalist of two 2016 Codie awards in the "Best Classroom Management System" and "Best K-12 Course or Learning Management Solution" categories, one 2018 Codie award for "Best Student Assessment Solution", and two 2019 Codie awards for "Best Data Solution" and "Best Administrative Solution". Otus was a finalist in EdTech Digest's 2016 "District Data Solution" and "Learning Management System" categories. Otus co-founder Chris Hull was also announced as one of the National School Boards Association's "20 to Watch Educators for 2016".
Online learning involves courses offered by primary institutions that are 100% virtual. Online learning, or virtual classes offered over the internet, is contrasted with traditional courses taken in a brick-and-mortar school building. It is a development in distance education that expanded in the 1990s with the spread of the commercial Internet and the World Wide Web. The learner experience is typically asynchronous but may also incorporate synchronous elements. The vast majority of institutions utilize a learning management system for the administration of online courses. As theories of distance education evolve, digital technologies to support learning and pedagogy continue to transform as well.
Online credentials for learning are digital credentials that are offered in place of traditional paper credentials for a skill or educational achievement. They are directly linked to the accelerated development of internet communication technologies, the development of digital badges, electronic passports and massive open online courses (MOOCs).
VitalSource Technologies is an education technology and digital content company founded in 1994. The company works with companies, universities, and publishers and resellers, providing digital course materials to users. VitalSource has offices in Raleigh, North Carolina; Boston, Massachusetts; San Francisco, California; Seattle, Washington; as well as in England and Australia.
IBM SkillsBuild is a free education program focused on underrepresented communities in tech, that helps adult learners, and high school and university students and faculty, develop valuable new skills and access career opportunities. The program includes an online platform that is complemented by customized practical learning experiences delivered in collaboration with a global network of partners.
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)