Gonzalo Baranda is the Blinklearning CEO. He has previously been vice president of JP Morgan in London in the area of corporate strategy. He also has a degree in Business from CUNEF and MBA from Columbia University in New York. Blinklearning is a business initiative founded in 2009, by Gonzalo Baranda and Joao Marques Canas, with the aim of helping to personalize education through innovative solutions based on advanced technologies. Its objective is to become a worldwide reference in the field of e-Tutoring solutions, developing solutions that allow teachers to create interactive content tailored to the needs of each student. We have already talked about Blinklearning in the blog of Peques y Más and how it is a company in the process of expansion and with a clear focus on getting educational processes to make a qualitative leapWe have interviewed Gonzalo Baranda, its General Director, to explain many more details of the company.
What is Blinklearning?
Blinklearning allows teachers to adapt the contents to the different learning rhythms within a classroom. The teacher can enrich the contents and make an individual follow-up of the students.
How the Blinklearning business plan advances
We have agreements with the vast majority of school publishers in Spain which allows the platform to be truly multi-territorial and that the student can access all their books easily either from a tablet or a computer. We are currently present in Spain and Colombia and introducing ourselves to Mexico.
What are Blinklearning's future plans
On the one hand we are constantly improving Blinklearning and introducing new functionalities in order to make it increasingly useful for teachers, students and parents. As a company we are expanding internationally fundamentally in Colombia and Mexico.
How much does Blinklearning cost and how the investment is profitable
The price varies according to the functionalities (if it includes for example the solution for tablets, etc.) and the number of users. The cost savings come mainly from the side of digital content that if they are cheaper than the paper book.
How old is Blinklearning?
This is really marked by the contents not so much the platform. Blinklearning is currently used from nursery teachers to high school students.
What are the publishers that are already in Blinklearning
All major educational publishers working in Spain.
What is the future of the content that the kids will use in class: paper or digital
We believe that digital will live with paper. Logically there are subjects for which digital makes more sense than for others. We believe that it is necessary to leave the teacher and the centers freedom to be able to incorporate technology progressively and wherever it is most useful. Over time more and more activities will be done on the tablet.
How children's education is changing with the use of technology
How technology is to be used in the classroom has to be a decision of the teachers who are the ones who know their students best. It is true that technology opens many possibilities for collaborative learning.
How teachers are receiving the platform
Teachers do not have to generate content and can continue to use all the content provided by publishers through Blinklearning. The platform can save them time in routine tasks such as for example in the correction of activities that are self-correcting in large numbers.
How parents and students are using Blinklearning to track the educational process
The experience of different users is absolutely essential to improve Blinklearning and can contribute to our fundamental objective, which is to help personalize education. In this sense we believe that helping greater parental involvement is very positive.
How Blinklearnning can help manage children's learning
It is true that there are many resources on the Internet but it takes time to locate them and not all of them are of quality. Blinklearning allows the teacher to incorporate these resources into their materials in an organized way so that the use by teachers and students is easier.
There is some difference in how they are managing technology in Latin American and Spanish schools
If there are differences fundamentally marked by the provision of technology infrastructure in the centers and access to connectivity. Unfortunately, the biggest differences are not marked so much by the country in particular but by the socio-economic situation of the center.
Where Blinklearning is being implemented in public or private education
We address both public and private schools but it is true that given the economic situation in Spain, the investment capacity of public schools is now much lower.
And so far the interview with Gonzalo Baranda. We thank Gonzalo because he has allowed us to know the current situation of Blinklearning, his plans for the future, the process of expansion throughout the world, the reception of the platform by teachers, parents and students and how the use of Technology applied to education.
We also remember the explanatory video of Blinklearning and leave access to its website to learn more about the company and what is its response to the exciting challenge of how children's education will be in the future.
