As Ministries of Education introduced new curricula in Ontario, Alberta and other provinces across Canada this school year, school boards need to ensure teachers have the latest, accurate and trustworthy resources for their classrooms. To address those requirements, Nelson Education, Canada’s leading education content provider, has incorporated further updates to Edwin, the company’s digital learning ecosystem, for the 2024/2025 school year to reflect the recent curriculum changes. By popular demand, the company has also enhanced its “browse by curriculum” feature on Edwin, making it easier for teachers to access the latest curriculum-linked content for their subjects.
Committed to the individualized needs of students, teachers and administrators, Nelson aligns with the priorities set by Ministries of Education across Canada with digital content built for Canadian classrooms. It works with school boards and districts nationwide to deliver and update content that is relevant and curriculum-aligned for all learners. Some of the curriculum changes this year include Grades 4-9 Language, Grade 9 Science and Grade 9 Mathematics in Ontario; and Grades 4-6 English Language Arts and Literature, and Social Studies in Alberta, among others changes.
With Edwin, teachers can build culturally relevant, engaging and differentiated learning plans to support classroom equity. Multiple modes of content including text, audio and video enable students to learn and collaborate in ways that are right for them. With all subjects’ resources, interactive tools and notes in one place, the easy-to-use platform can relieve the time pressures felt by teachers.
One month into the school year, Nelson has already seen an 89 per cent increase in the number of teachers trained on Edwin at the end of the first week of school this year compared to last year.
Nelson helps teachers and improves student engagement
Nelson disrupted the education industry by launching Edwin in 2017, virtually reinventing itself from a century-old publisher into a digital content provider. Year over year, Edwin has been proven to reduce strains on teachers and help drive improved student outcomes. In a national survey conducted in January 2024, teachers reported saving almost one hour per week in lesson planning, finding resources and creating assessments by using Edwin, an equivalent of one prep period per week or one full week a year. They gave an A or A+ to Edwin’s subject content, classroom success and support. In 2021, a school board in Ontario also showed a 14 per cent increase in students who met or exceeded the provincial standards in Mathematics after using Edwin.
Engaging and reliable resources to support a variety of learning subjects
Educators rely on Edwin to provide timely, creative lesson ideas. For example, Edwin saw a 70 per cent spike in usage in November 2023 with teachers and students accessing not only curriculum related content, but also content about Remembrance Day, Indigenous Veterans Day and Recognize Treaty Rights and Relationships.
Edwin’s rich library of online resources supports core disciplines, other subjects and contemporary topics. It also goes beyond traditional classroom materials with learning tools to let students explore, create and collaborate. One major difference between Edwin and traditional textbooks or eBooks is users never get just one grade of content; it provides access to multiple grades to cover a wide range of student needs.
Edwin’s Classroom Success Team, made up entirely of educators, provides support for teachers and students throughout the school year. Free, monthly Live Lessons are also available for everyone. Most recently, a three-part series of Live Lessons: Truth and Reconciliation: Then, Now, Tomorrow was developed. Students can take a journey through Truth and Reconciliation in Canada by exploring three key aspects: Learning from the Past (Sept. 25), Navigating the Present (Sept. 30), and Inspiring the Future (Oct. 9).
For more information on Nelson’s digital learning ecosystem, Edwin, visit: https://edwin.app/.
Redbird Launches Conversational AI platform
Posted in Commentary with tags Redbird on September 26, 2024 by itnerdDespite general advances in AI and LLMs in recent years, enterprise organizations have largely struggled to successfully use chat-based approaches for business intelligence in a way that is accurate, secure, and customized to their business. While consumer-centric tools like ChatGPT have shown great promise for more surface-level tasks rooted in general information from the internet, there has been a gap when it comes to applying the same technology to the deeper data analytics that enterprises need to run on their complex data ecosystems.
With the launch of its AI chat platform, Redbird is filling this void through AI agents designed to perform advanced data analytics on top of tooling that securely integrates with an organization’s data ecosystem. Users can engage these AI agents in natural language through chat interactions that don’t require technical knowhow. This enables the true self-serve analytics that legacy dashboarding tools like Tableau, Looker and PowerBI have promised but ultimately failed to deliver on given the limitations of a more rigid dashboarding approach.
Redbird’s AI platform leverages proprietary AI agents trained to do specific analytical tasks equivalent to what specialized human resources currently do. For example, Redbird has developed AI agents that can do data collection, data engineering, SQL analysis, data science, reporting, and domain-specific data analytics. These AI agents have access to Redbird analytical tools and can orchestrate as well as execute multi-step analytical tasks to answer user questions. Redbird AI has access to an admin layer where domain experts within an organization can load business logic, definitions, data ontologies, and existing assets like presentations or documents that provide the context needed for the AI to produce accurate results.
Redbird also solves for the infrastructure and security challenges involved with enterprise AI implementations through turnkey on-prem deployments that can run LLMs within contained environments on the enterprise’s own cloud. This means that all enterprise data is securely contained within that enterprise’s AI ecosystem and never used to train an LLM for use by other enterprises.
Throughout 2023, many enterprises watched developments in the LLM space from the sidelines wondering how the technology could be used within their organization. In 2024, they have started to test different approaches and allocate budget in search of an AI solution that actually works for them. Unfortunately, efforts to build solutions in house have proven costly and ineffective given the complexity of fusing LLM technology with unique, messy enterprise data ecosystems. 3rd party AI products like Microsoft Copilot have also failed to deliver the depth needed and instead opted for more of a surface level assistant approach. Redbird’s AI product is quickly gaining traction with some of the largest enterprise brands as an alternative to complicated in-house builds or surface-level 3rd party options.
Since raising its seed round in 2022, Redbird has increased its customer count 7X, tripled its team size, and built out an extensive AI ecosystem on top of its core data analytics automation platform, which it is now making accessible to enterprises more broadly. Redbird is now working with 8 of the Fortune 50 brands and also in the process of onboarding some of the largest government organizations in the US.
Founded by Erin Tavgac and Deren Tavgac, data analytics and AI experts with deep enterprise experience across the world’s largest brands, Redbird works with enterprise customers across diverse verticals. Since its founding, the Redbird team has expanded rapidly to include key AI engineering hires to help accelerate the development of Redbird’s AI product.
Redbird is excited to bring its AI product to the market to help enterprises unlock the potential of conversational BI for their organization, and recognizes this as a huge leap forward in its mission of democratizing data analytics.
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