DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF EDUCATION IN DENMARK, ETC.

In 2016 the Danish Government launched a project to co-fund (50-50) digital learning applications for the school system where the municipalities funded the rest. The total funding from the government was €8.7 million (65 million Danish Crones). All municipalities participated and 99% of the funding has now been used to digitize the school in Denmark. However, this is the second part of the project to implement digital learning, which includes totally 500 digital learning applications that is approved for funding. The total funding from the national government since the year of 2012 is €67.2 million (500 million Danish Crones). Many of the municipalities has used much more funding for digital learning than from what was granted from governmental project. In this spirit, Bart Epstein, the founding CEO of the Jefferson Education Accelerator and a research associate professor at the Curry School identify from a US perspective one of the major problems in such transformations of school, he says the following about start ups with focus on edtech: “They fail at a higher rate because selling in the education space is fantastically complicated. School leaders are overwhelmed and have over 6000 different products to choose from, often with little guidance or support.” Source: Danish Ministry of Education and UVAToday from University of Virginia