Jed Friedrichsen’s career in K-12 education is dedicated to helping school districts build capacity to provide expanded and enriched learning experiences to students. Ten years ago, Jed helped a group of small and rural school districts in Pennsylvania create blendedschools.net. blendedschools.net is a not-for-profit corporation that helps schools districts deliver robust, engaging learning experiences for students by providing online learning technologies, K-12 curriculum and professional development. In addition, the blendedschools.net Language Institute provides critical language instruction to students.

This semester, blendedschools.net supports more than 260,000 enrollments from 165 school districts. As the CEO, Jed spearheads the company vision and helps facilitate the operations. While at the University of Nebraska, fifteen years ago Jed helped create the nation’s first fully accredited, online high school. His other teacher professional development initiatives in Pennsylvania provided training for teachers in almost every school district in the state. His programs included the topics of Internet content in the classroom, online communication and collaboration, fostering learning networks, and aligning local curriculum and instruction to academic standards. Jed has served on advisory boards for the Oracle Corporation, MarcoPolo Educational Foundation and several state virtual school initiatives. Jed lives near Columbia, Missouri, and is an avid canoeist, hiker, woodturner and furniture builder.