VentureBeat

Online education portal Education.com will announce a total of $9.75 million in its second round of financing today, VentureBeat has learned. The site seeks to become a one-stop destination for parents looking for online answers about their children’s education.

The site’s main appeal lies in its School Finder application, allowing parents to see information such as teacher-to-student ratio, test scores, and other parent’s reviews about local schools. The site also hosts about 7,000 articles, drawn from both Education.com in-house talent and partnerships with organizations the American Association for School Administrators, covering topics like bullying, gifted students, or keeping kids healthy. The site also has launched an Activities section, which has suggestions for things parents and children can do together, arranged by grade and topic.

Chief officer Ron Fortune wants the site to be the equivalent of WebMD for parents anxious to learn more about their children’s education than what is currently available. “You can’t rely on the schools alone to get the job done in education,” says Fortune. “There’s a lot of talk of No Child Left Behind, there should be more about No Parent Left Behind.” The site is already seeing about 4 million page views a month, according to ComScore, and Fortune says they’re seeing more than 600,000 unique visitors every month.

Tech devoted to learning is having a moment in the sun. According to a report put out by Ambient Insight, the market is seeing its highest rate of investment since the last recession. We’ve written about several companies seeing investment of their own, including Flashcard Friends, Edufire and Dreambox Learning. Education.com is most directly competing with sites like Great Schools and SchoolDigger. With 53.2 million school-aged children in the US according to the US Census, the education marketplace obviously has the potential to grow rapidly.

The company plans to extend the sites social network capabilities, as well as build out their own educational content. Fortune says the site hopes to expand the services offered, mentioning offering premium subscriptions and low-cost online tutoring.

This round of funding was led by California Technology Ventures, with Azure Capital Partners and TeleSoft Partners also participating. Both Azure Capital and TeleSoft Partners had taken part in the first round of funding as well. The company is headquarted in Redwood City, Calif.

Education is a field that missed out on the start-up boom. But now the sector is making up for lost time.

One of the latest companies to jump on this trend is eduFire, a company that makes it a lot easier to find tutors and learn with them. The site launched about 90 days ago and it has more than 500 tutors who have trained students in more than 900 hours of one-to-one tutoring sessions.

“We’ve got an open platform where anybody can sign up as a teacher, upload their credentials, create a profile and then sign up the students,” said Jon Bischke, chief executive of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company.

Students can login and look for language tutors and then conduct live video chat sessions. That helps with the pronunciation and the need to cram for tests at any time of the day. The students and tutors can talk to each other in a video window and send live text messages. They can also use a live whiteboard.

Teachers can set their own prices and eduFire gets a cut of the proceeds. Students can rate the teachers. Over time, the best teachers can build good track records and get more business.

The company has a ton of competition. But Bischke believes that his site brings learning to life with its live interaction, which many sites lack. In fact, many sites simply match tutors and students but don’t provide for distance learning. Several rivals have raised money: Tutor Vista, Tutor.com and Global Scholar. However, these sites don’t offer live video learning, though they do offer voice communication and whiteboard manipulation. And Bischke is trying to take the lead with social network and discussion forum tools.

While other sites focus more on K-12 education, eduFire focuses on the 18 to 35-year-old students. Bischke hopes that his open platform will be an advantage. Other companies have closed platforms or aren’t open to the loose structure that eduFire allows. Teachers, for instance, can offer their own prices and choose how and when to teach. Bischke is focused on language tutoring now, but he said that in the future, eduFire will be open for tutoring in any subject.

This is Bischke’s fourth startup in the training realm. The first, 2000Tutor.com, a tech-training network, was acquired by Penton Media in 2001. Zaadz, a green-living New Age social network, was acquired by Gaiam in 2007, and LearnOutLoud.com, an aggregator of audio learning content, is still operating and is profitable. He has taught business at the University of Minnesota and GMAT preparation course for Kaplan Education. The company has three full-time employees and six part timers.

EduFire raised $400,000 from angels earlier this year and the company is in the process of raising a first venture round now. Coming this fall are new subjects and a one-to-many virtual classroom product.

Musicians, not just record labels, are facing major issues: Small-time acts may find audiences through MySpace and other music sites, but they still need to make money to survive — and it’s not clear how to make money unless you’re a top star with the ability to draw in large concert crowds (and sell lots of t-shirts).

To try to help out as-yet-unknown stars, a few sites are creating ways for users to fund the work of their favorite acts. A notable one is Amsterdam-based Sellaband, which lets its users buy a “part” of a musical work for at least $10 — once a musician’s total funding reaches $50,000, the company hooks them up with a record studio and producers (see screenshot of sample band So What’s profile on the site).

The fans’ money is used to fund production. The fan gets a free CD when the goal is reached, or gets their money back. Meanwhile, musicians get a third of all advertising revenue from their profile, 60 percent of proceeds from any album sales, and full rights to the album one year after it is released.

So far, the company has had 18 artists pass the $50,000 mark. Its musicians have received close to $2 million in user investments.

Other companies that offer similar services include Amie Street and OurStage.

Sellaband has partnered with Amazon’s music sales site, indie music distribution service The Orchard, and the beer company Heineken, and it has just raised $5 million in a round led by Prime Technology Ventures.