Top 200 Education Influencers and Brands


Reading time: 2
shutterstock_348916574 E-learning concept with man holding a tablet computer

@TeacherToolkit

Ross Morrison McGill founded @TeacherToolkit in 2010, and today, he is one of the 'most followed educators'on social media in the world. In 2015, he was nominated as one of the '500 Most Influential People in Britain' by The Sunday Times as a result of...
Read more about @TeacherToolkit

Who are the most influential individuals in ed-technology and eLearning across the world? And what brands influence education across the profession?

Voices of influence …

In the world of education, it is dominated by the likes of you and I. We all have a voice. The world of education (and in particular, online bloggers) is not just reserved for policy makers and government. You, me and everyone else can ‘influence’ educational dialogue.

In the top 200 brands we can find a great selection of edtech companies such as EdSurge and MindShift, as well as some tech publications and industry resources and industry heavyweights such as Microsoft and Amazon. Find out who are the top 200 most influential edtech and elearning individuals and education brands. (Source)

Onalytica - Edtech and Elearning - Mark Anderson

Mark Anderson – Consultant, blogger, speaker, and author. ITL associate – @ICTEvangelist

“Never before in the history of education technology have such opportunities for supporting learning been so available. The key to the success however lies not in the technology but in the training and support of the teachers; this is what is paramount.”

 

Network-Map-Edsurge Edtech and Elearning 2016: Top 200 Influencers and Brands

Methodology:

So, how does it work? How do we decipher who and what is infleuncing the edtech and elearning debate across the globe?

The PageRank based methodology is used to extract influencers on a particular topic (tweets mentioning edtech OR #edtech OR elearning OR “e-learning” in this case) takes into account the number and quality of contextual references that a user receives.

These calculations are independent of a user’s number of followers, but Onalytica does alter their lists based on how much a user is engaged in the conversation.

The data presented has been analysed over a 90-day period from 1,016,706 tweets by the 122,367 users who have shared information about edtech and elearning; the data also uses 554,142 engaged tweets (e.g. clicks, mentions etc.)

In layman terms, it simply means how often I (or others) have shared the term ‘edtech’ or ‘e-learning’ online. n.b. statistics are all lower than 2015.

Top-100 Brands:

In 2015, I was ranked 83rd worldwide with a 42.55 PageRank influence. In 2016, I have jumped up 50 places to 33rd in the world with an ‘influencer score’ of 5.82. I have no idea why this measurement is reported differently to 2015 data.

Network-Map-Edsurge Edtech and Elearning 2016: Top 200 Influencers and Brands

Source: www.onalytica.com

Congratulations to other UK-based individuals who have been listed in the top-100 individuals (list). Notably, @ICTEvangelist (16th), @dajbelshaw, @ICTMagic, @josepicardo, @ianfordham,  and @Urban_Teacher. It is also interesting to note a first female-blogger from the UK, @OhLottie and also @eLearning_Laura (25th) for the second year in a row.

Download:

If you want to learn more, read Onalytica’s article that outlines influencer identification. You can download their report here.

Disclaimer: As ever with these lists, it must be stressed that the ranking is by no means a definitive measurement of influence, as there is no such thing. The brands and individuals listed are undoubtedly influential when it comes to driving discussion in the edtech and elearning debate.

TT.

@TeacherToolkit logo new book Vitruvian man TT

 


3 thoughts on “Top 200 Education Influencers and Brands

  1. While I’m a heavy user of social media, it does seem to me quite a narrow view that the title “most influential individual/brand in the world of education technology” would be based on use and engagement with some limiting key phrases or hashtags on social media. In the school I taught in last year with a teaching staff of 60, there were just a handful of teachers using social media in relation to their profession. There are many schools in the countries around the world with extremely limited access to social media. I constantly need to remind myself that I’m one of a minority of educators using social media. Surely it would be better to measure the influence of something by measuring the effect it has had on classroom practice rather than discussion on social media? Or have I completely misread the article?

    1. I agree entirely. As I’ve said on this blog – or somewhere else – these are quick fixes from marketing companies to raise awareness about their own brand and metrics to drive traffic to their own content. It clearly works! It’s a shame that the analysis of edtech and elearning does not span a great period of time, to avoid those who ‘spam’ the hashtags in light of pending announcements, versus those who are sharing content (genuinely) every day. And yes, if someone could measure classroom impact, we’d all be interested.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.