Apple has acquired LearnSprout, a San Francisco based startup which makes software that helps teachers to keep track of their students’ performance.
LearnSprout claims that over 2500 schools across 42 states in the US are currently using their software. The software charts student progress, test scores, achievement targets for classes and other school-oriented features.
CrunchBase reports that LearnSprout has recently received venture capital funding of about $4.7m from Anderson Horwitz, Formation 8 and Samsung Ventures.
Apple issued a statement in this regard, saying: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."
Apple has been keen in developing education based apps and features that can help in achieving its vision to contribute to education.
This is evident from the applications and features that are being introduced into the new iOS 9.3.
Apple’s upcoming iOS 9.3 has numerous education-based tools and features built into it. Some of them include fast access to material where students can pick up where they left, photo ID which lets students find their iPads quickly, and simple login feature for younger kids.
Apart from these, there are certain features for teachers as well. These include being able to see what students are seeing on their screens, sharing student’s work on big screens, thw ability to launch apps and lock them, and resetting the forgotten passwords then and there.
According to a report by Technavio, the global smart education market is expected to grow over 15% per year by 2020. The report claimed that the growth in smart education market will be led by unified education ecosystem, ability to enhance learning process, advances in technology and penetration of cloud-based learning analytics.
