Welcome to Season Seven of Edtech Insiders. The show where we cover the education technology industry in depth every week and speak to thought leaders, founders, investors, and operators in the Edtech field. I'm Alex Sarlin.
And I'm Ben Kornell. And we're both edtech leaders with experience ranging from startups all the way to big tech. We're passionate about connecting you with what's happening in edtech around the globe.
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Todd Mahler is the Chief Product Officer at Edmentum. for over 25 years, Todd has led the development of educational technology products for the nation's leading publishers and is proud to have impacted the lives of millions of students as Chief Product Officer for omentum. Todd drives project strategy, ensuring their solutions meet the needs of the educators and students they
serve. Prior to Edmentum Todd served as Chief Product Officer for APEX learning, and has held senior leadership positions with McGraw Hill, Redbird advanced learning and six red marbles. Todd holds a Master's in Education from Harvard University and a Bachelors of Science in astronomy and astrophysics from Villanova
University. PJ Caposey is a dynamic speaker and a transformational leader and educator who began his career as an award winning teacher in the inner city of Chicago, and has subsequently led significant change in every administrative post he has held. PJ became a principal at the age of 28, and within three years was able to lead a small town rural school, historically achieving near the bottom of its county to multiple
national recognitions. After four years, PJ moved to his current district Meridian CUSD, two to three as superintendent, and has led a similar turnaround leading to multiple national recognitions for multiple different efforts. PJ is also a best selling author and has written 10 books for various
publishers. His work and commentary has been featured on sites such as Washington Post, NPR, CBS, this morning, ascb, Edutopia, The Huffington Post, and was featured in a Global Leaders Forum think piece along the likes of General Petraeus,
and General McChrystal. He works in the education department of three universities, including within the Ivy League, and a myriad of capacities with the Illinois Principals Association, including as a principal coach and author of the first complete stack of micro credentials offered in the state of Illinois. Todd Mahler, PJ Caposey, Welcome to EdTech insiders. Thanks, Alex.
Great to be here. Excited to be here as well.
Yeah, I'm really excited to learn more about what you're doing at Edmentum. And this connection with copy leaks and what you're doing with AI. But before we even get into some of what we're doing with Edmentum, I'd like to hear a little bit about your personal journeys in edtech. Todd, let's start with you. You are Chief Product Officer at Edmentum. Give us a little bit of your background and what brought you to this role and into ed tech generally.
Sure, it's I've been at Tech now for about 25 years, I've had the fortune of working across a spectrum of companies, from startups to large educational publishers. I got my start in the early days of sort of the pioneering days of edtech with Tom Snyder productions back in the days of CD ROMs and single computers in the classroom, and really just struck by the power and the potential of what educational technology can do to really empower a great teaching. I love building product at the same
time. So took that as my started my trajectory and worked my way through the vendor side of the world working on publishing projects through with six remodels over almost 15 years or going on probably 200 products over that timeframe actually working my way to the West Coast started with a startup there, Redbird Advanced Learning leading the commercialization of Ed Tech program out of Stanford, which was subsequently acquired by McGraw Hill and made my way through there for a few years
before Apex learning and finally had mentum today.
Amazing. And six red marbles came out of Tom Schneider right. They were their close relationship is that like, remembering that corporate entities now? They work together but it was like a separate entities but work together. Yeah. So yeah, it's amazing trajectory. PJ, tell us a little bit about your edtech journey.
So my journey essentially is from the consumer side, largely. So I am a superintendent of schools. I became a building leader about 17 years ago and a district leader about 11 years ago, which kind of perfectly fits the timeline for the infiltration of ad tech into every element of school. When I arrived in the district, where I currently serve, we didn't have email 11 years ago, didn't have
functional email. And so leading us from quite literally like technology Ground Zero to One of the first in this To be kind of on for runners of many different tech initiatives has brought a lot of Limelight to the
district. And as a result, I get the privilege of kind of sitting on advisories or boards for some edtech startups and for my tech companies and in providing advice from the consumer lens, and trying to help companies be successful in that realm, as well as obviously still procuring in using and trying to figure out which tech products that I can use to best enact our vision, which is that we want to maintain our small town values in a small rural community in Northwest Illinois, we want to
have world class results and be competitive on that stage. So constantly in the search, which has brought us some really cool things. So like, obviously, some of the big shops we are partners with, but we've also been customer zero or customer beta for a couple of startups, which has just provided some really cool unique opportunities for for myself, for my staff for my students.
Fantastic. So you both spent a long time being very innovative and sort of following different generations. Education Technology has changed so much over the 20 plus years, we've been talking about, obviously the newest trend, and I think it's more than a trend personally. But the newest wave of education. Tooling is really this AI tooling and EDMentum has a wide variety of tools. So Todd, let me start with you. Give us a little bit of an overview of sort of the EDMentum
family of products. And then tell us about this recent partnership with copy leaks, which is all about detecting AI generated content and plagiarism and that first move into that that type of AI work.
Sure. So starting with a mentum as a whole. So we are one of the largest providers in the country of digital curriculum assessments, instructional services, we currently serve over 6 million students, maybe half the districts in the United States.
adventive is actually one the very first edtech companies our history goes back almost 60 years to some pioneering work at the University of Illinois, we focus on learning acceleration, meaning we focus on those students who need help catching up to grade levels, stay on track or need other options to see success at the early grades that's largely about skills recovery, and math and English
High School. And that means helping students stay on track with their courses to graduate through credit recovery or ultimate programs. We're giving them more course options, whether it be CTE or AP or other electives to help them reach their graduation goals. So our products meet those different district challenges. And our focus is really how do we help districts with the most pressing challenges they have today across that, that range of of needs? Terrific.
That includes, you know, Reading Eggs for phonics and Study Island and a number of different sort of edtech brand names and products all under this umbrella, exact path. Is that right?
Yes. So exact path is our program for acceleration intervention. Study, Allen provides that on grade level practice, standards proficiency and test prep, reading X provides that early elementary reading, intervention, reading, preparation and learning. And then we have our online catalog of courseware with the apex courses and the EDMentum catalog about 500 or so courses altogether.
Great. So how does this particular collaboration, this new one with copy leaks address this this new challenge that we're all facing across the K 12 space of thinking about what does academic integrity look like in schools in this age of AI generated content?
Yeah, that's a great question. I think it helps actually step back and look at the scope of the challenge. So if we look at some recent studies, you know, the half of the students have plagiarize in one way or the other. In the past year 95% of students have admitted to some form of cheating in the past year tabulates has found that about 10% of students have used AI generated content and the writing are their assignments in
the past year. So you know, the scope is large, the challenge is real academic integrity is not a new challenge, but it's definitely been amplified by the expansion of online learning and this explosion of onto the scene of generative AI. So with copy lakes, our partnership there, we cannot provide our district partners with a tool that can detect plagiarized material paraphrase material, material that has been generated by AI
tools like Jack GPT. One things that makes copulate so powerful is its ability to actually detect AI down to the sentence level. So we know students are very good at finding clever ways to deceive to different types of detection tools and plagiarism tools. But when you look down to sentence level and can see when AI generated content might be wrapped around student work, they can detect across multiple languages continues to improve
as these new models come out. So it's just a really powerful, timely continuing to evolve solution. And we also make the process very simple for teachers. They can simply upload student writing or student assignments. They get back an easy to understand report of where there might be plagiarism or AI generated content. And then they can engage with students to have those academic integrity conversations as needed.
Teacher I'd love to hear your perspective from some of this amazing new world from as an educator as a transformational leader. You've seen a lot of things happen in school districts over the years as edtech becomes sort of baked into everything. As you've been saying, how do you look at this problem of plagiarism using AI tools and how copy leaks and other tools like it, but how copy leaks in this particular instance, helps ensure academic
integrity? What is the scope of the problem from your perspective?
I don't think the scope is as terrifying as we're making, it would be, I guess, my initial stance, then when I say we I'm not this is not an ad tech thing. This is educators in our fear that all of a sudden kids aren't going to turn in original work, because for the vast majority of students, their
teachers know them. And there's enough writing that takes place outside of major assignments, that these type of anomalies are going to be abundantly clear unless the student has taken the time to train the AI to write like it, which I just don't think is happening too frequently. So what I do think it does is provide teachers some reassurance and some confidence so that AI isn't this dark enemy
that we're fighting. Right. So for me, I think it's it's much more of a solution to a problem that might not exist, but that solution makes us feel better. It's like having the third deadbolt on your door might not be necessary. But if you feel better about it awesome, is the way that I look at at this type of work. That said, I know that I'm an outlier and more progressive in how I think about this than most people. So I think it's absolutely necessary.
I'm not trying to put shade on anyone, I just think that that's essentially where we're at. I do think that regardless of what software you're using, in this case, copy leaks, that an over identification of potentially plagiarize material is equally as dangerous as an under identification of actually
plagiarized material. Because what I'm experiencing right now in my own home, with my own high school aged kids is that one of them is a willing writer, the other one is a struggling writer, and it got back, they just got to report different products and copy leaks, but like there's an 18% chance that some section was plagiarized. It's like I read it. Like if, if it was plagiarized, then he use bad AI because there was not
like whatever like. But now he's totally discouraged and doesn't want to readdress that point because he already was a reluctant writer. So I think there's this really interesting, like, what this needle that we're trying to thread in order to get this right. So I think they're absolutely necessary tools. But I think as the comfort that they provide to the educator, can also, in some cases, serve as a wet blanket on top of the enthusiasm or writing
for the student. And we have to be very careful on how to mesh those two things together.
Yeah, we're really interesting points. And I'm glad you're bringing up the sort of tension in this area, because it's something we have been sort of thinking about and seeing for the whole last year, as you know, AI is now came out basically a year ago, today, this sort of generative AI wave. And Todd, you know, I think you've seen all of this change
come from the AI world. But one of the things that I think people have really been wrestling with is there's this use case of AI as cheating, which is, as you mentioned, probably very common, or used by some students a lot. Nobody knows exactly how often. But there's also all of this potential of AI to improve learning or to be used in all
these different ways. And I think all of the edtech companies in the space are trying to balance the real concerns that teachers have and that educators have unveiled the reassurance that you're mentioning PJ, but also not serve as sort of a policing technology entirely or surveillance or trying to make AI feel like it's sort of contraband. So I'd love to hear how you've been thinking about this from a product perspective.
How are you providing this kind of reassurance and support to educators and trying to maintain integrity, but not be that wet blanket on students and make them sort of afraid for what words they're using?
Yeah, I think I think Dr. Kaposi is spot on here. Our goal with the partnership and our approach to AI and plagiarism detection is, is to empower teachers to have teachable moments, meaning we don't want this to be punitive only we don't want this to be simply a corrective action to take. We want to give them some data and insights and information to make those informed decisions. Like to Dr. corsi said teachers know their students, they know when there's likely going to be an issue or
potential issue there. So we want to give them the data they need to then say, Okay, I need to focus my attention here or now it's probably not an issue. I can handle it differently versus we don't want the policing to take place. We don't want corrective action to be immediate. We don't want students to be penalized right
away. We just want the information to be out there so teachers can be empowered to have the right right conversation, keeps teachers at the center enables them to have those productive, coachable conversations before any action is taken. I think for students, we need to recognize a couple of things one, plagiarism is often not intentional, meaning students may simply be learning and how to use sources how to cite sources appropriately how to synthesize information and
properly. So tools like copy, these can help guide course correct them and guide them wrong right paths in terms of how they're approaching their writing and their learning process. We also know that AI is a generative tool is new for them, it's new for all of us right now. So not only do they need to learn how to use it, when it's appropriate when not to use AI generated content, but also how to critique it, how to evaluate how to be critical
thinkers when it comes to AI. So tools like calculates other AI programs like that, our position, and our approach is to help both teachers and students in the driver's seat of evaluating, critiquing, deciding what's appropriate, what's not appropriate for usage, that's a skill they need today, but it's also a lifelong skill they're going to need as AI is certainly gonna be part of their, their careers in the future.
It's a fascinating takes, I mean, when I, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but when I think I'm hearing you say is that it's not about the sort of, you know, the getting coming down and being like, Oh, we found that this was plagiarized, therefore, you're in trouble. And they, the teacher immediately gets a sort of siren, it's much more about giving the educator the tools to create these teachable moments.
And to actually talk about AI generated content versus human generated content, that sort of percentage likelihood that you mentioned, PJ or Dr. Kaposi. About, you know, about whether it's 18% likely to be to be from Ai, that feels like a pretty important thing for students to understand, even if it's ideally not in a punitive environment. So so let me go back to you on that. PJ, How crucial is it? To
find that balance? What does it look like to have tools in the classroom that do create that reassurance that do give educators reports on, you know, what they might need to know about whether a student has taken you know, the entire essay and done it completely with Chad GBT? Or, or and these teachable moments and this sort of idea of teaching the skill set and the more metacognitive skills around AI, when we
talked about it as a wave, like I see it as an iteration, right diagnosis, just another iteration of where we're at with technology. And it's not an option of whether we are going to do it, it's an option of whether how well we are going to do it. So if we don't think it's going to fundamentally shift, many, many, many things. If not everything, then I think we are just dramatically under estimating it now, is it there yet? I don't think so. But it's
pretty dang close. And one of my favorite things is when I talked to teachers who want it, let's block it, let's block it, let's block it. But every tech provider and support tool that we have is usually I'm like, Well, should we block them too? Well, no, of course not. I need them. I'm like, well, it's how can how is it good for you? And not good? So I don't think we've scratched the surface yet. Right? Like, I mean, how many
years away? Do you think we are for like post secondary, talking about having a class about using AI to support instruction, right? Like, we should be there soon. But we're not going to be because in education, everything's very slow. So for me, the balance is simply we there isn't right. Like I'm not looking for balance, I am looking for moderate initial success, which is the gateway for people to be fully engaged in exploring it on their own.
Because I don't think that we can train our way through this. Like, there's elements, right, that, of course, can be trained. But at some point, like my kids who were born in the the ox, the 2000, ox, we didn't train them on Google, or YouTube, they just figured out and uses like, I don't know, there's gonna be this cabinet. It's just the next phase. And we're going to have to figure out what that that looks like. But I'd be lying if I said some of my board memos aren't written by Chet GPT, or
aren't started there. Or if I'm struggling and giving a keynote, here are my five key points. What's a famous story that supports one of these points? Where like, like, that's, like, I'm using it, right? And it's helping me. And it's, it is exactly and it is generative. But for me, it's idea generative, right, like, because it helps me to get unstuck at times. But everyone's gonna have to find what that that balance
is. And I just think that the people that do it, within the next 18 months are going to be at a dramatic advantage, whether it be in business, whether it be in marketing, whether it be in leadership, to figure out what the things are that we can maximize and efficient and make more efficient so that we can do more of our primary tasks that either bring us return on investment, whether that be in the educational sense, which is academic gains, or in the entrepreneurial sense in terms
of actual financial gain. So it's to me it's not it's, I'm not looking for balance. I am looking for a terrible term here, but I'm looking for a gateway drug for us to have full
No, I think the metaphor stands even if it Yeah, it's not not a K 12 appropriate metaphor, but it makes sense. Todd, I want to bring you in to this conversation, because I think hearing this take, I am also a big AI enthusiast, we've been talking about it on this podcast
for quite a while. But you can see that even in a world where maybe the younger generation may not need the kind of training the same way, they didn't need training on YouTube or Google, the people who this suddenly fell on them in, including the whole generation of educators and school leaders and parents, they probably are going to need some training to understand it. So I'm curious how you've been thinking about that as you roll out your AI products. Yeah,
I think just to piggyback on that, there's, there's so much hype out there right now, around AI and the notion that AI is going to transform education. The reality is, it's not AI that's going to transform it. It's the educators, administrators and teachers, how they apply AI tools, effectively, that's gonna
be transformative. And it mentions role our role in all this is to help educators understand the benefits where Responsible Use looks like with AI, serve as role models for how to embrace new technology create more engaging and effective learning experiences and environments to talk about these ideas and recommendations. You know, we do have to show how can we use for brainstorming idea
generation? How can we be part of the process, how it can be applied effectively, we do want to make sure that students are exposed to these tools and understand their potential st for administrators and educators so they can bring them into the classroom. Again, we have to help them understand what to critique how to leverage it appropriately not to ignore and not to vilify, not the band
these tools, doing. So you know, all that all that does is just contribute to inequalities that we already see in education today. So we've got to embrace we've got to bring it in. This includes academic integrity, but it's all areas where AI is applied. So we think about how we build out our portfolio, how we look at other partnerships, we need to continue to be transparent about how AI is being used, how we're using it safely, how are we using it securely? How do we ensure
accuracy? Is there how do we ensure bias issues are addressed? So those are all the things that we think about as as we continue to bring AI into our into our portfolio?
Yeah, I just want to double click on that sort of concept of AI being vilified, because I think you both sort of brought this up separately, is that one of the risks of AI being perceived as a cheating tool, or is that it can be vilified? It can be if either educators or students? Because I've heard this from students as well. They say, Oh, AI, isn't that just sort of a way to do your homework or too cheap? And it's like, no, that is not that is the smallest possible use
case of what it could be. So I'd love to hear how both of you and let me start with you PJ. But but I'd love to hear both of you are really wrestling with this complex issue of getting people to understand the potential of this new world in an equity based way and see it as a positive force. But also recognize that there it's not made up that it's vilified. There are lots of students using it to sort of get out of doing
their traditional work. It's a very funny needle to thread, as you said, how do you thread that needle? Clearly, you are enthusiastic about the potential of AI. But what happens if a school if a teacher comes to you and says, I just It's driving me crazy, all these new papers, I'm getting feel like they're plagiarized.
So again, exposure matters. So one really cool example happened in a school I was consulting in, and it was right after holiday break last year. So it was right when the initial storm of chat GPT was out. And teachers were calling for it to be banned and asking my opinion, and whatever the case happens to be. I walked into this one classroom and the teacher already and this is like
January 12, right? So it's just fresh, turn to the essay that they she was going to assign, put that into chat GPT had that create an essay, and then had students critique the SH, LGBT roadstead totally flipped it game changer. And it worked out, it worked out wonderfully. So like, for me, it's just, there are so many amazing creative ways that we can use this. There's just like everything else, there'll be 14 books on
it. And then the next few months, right, once they get published, so there'll be all kinds of instructional strategies that will come. But for me, one of the more powerful was working with the teacher that I'm close to, and that was relatively anti, but also like on the ignorant side, like technical sense of the word of of AI. And so I just said, Hey, what do you what are you working on? And it was an ELA teacher, like, Well, why don't do you have a rubric for that one?
She's like, No, I gotta write it. I said, what standard? Are you trying to do? Tell me the standard, like, why don't you put that in and see what it creates for you in a rubric? And she was blown away. And I'm like, Is it perfect? And she's like, No, not quite like, but it's really, really good start, right? And I'm like, Alright, tell it what's wrong. And like in four minutes, now, she's like, a true blue hardcore believer, right? It's just
exposure. So we do it at our cabinet level meetings, because some of the people are reticent. So I do an activity almost every meeting just to expose, just to expose, just to expose, because eventually, that's all it's going to take right the product is going to sell itself. And even though it's free, right or our version is a bit different. It's just exposure to see the power that it happens to have. And I think again, I think what we can see in the data is
abundantly clear, right? Like its market share, or user percentage is growing at an exponential rate to everything else in history. I don't think we're going to be fighting this very long. I think it's just going to be a uncomfortable phase. And then all of a sudden, it's going to be how well can we
do it? So for me, it's it's if you're an educator listening to this, that should be the focus not do we allow it or not allow us how can you position yourself, position your school position your district, so that you are leaders in this because it is common one way or the other?
I'd love to hear you build on that. How are you thinking about threading that needle and ensuring that the products that you're making with EDMentum are serving that serving that purpose of ensuring that AI is being used properly, and that teachers are reassured but not vilifying AI?
Yeah, I think for me, it's very much just continued exposure continue to, to provide use cases that are effective helping teachers understand what this might mean for the assessments and assignments and how to think differently about how AI could be applied and integrated into how they assess student learning what it actually means to assess student learning going forward, that will play a role in how we think about our own assessments in our curriculum, and how we
encourage teachers to use those, but then how we encourage teachers to build upon those and their own in their own
classroom. So for us, it's just, it's a matter of time to get these use cases and this exposure out there, we had all these same concerns when the calculator was first brought to bear and I was concerned about how it's gonna blow everything up, and students are gonna be able to skate their way through and actually learn anything out there was flipped on its head, the focus now on more conceptual learning and higher order thinking skills, AI is going to do the same thing now and just
re recalibrate and actually probably elevate what happens in the classroom versus traditional focus on just knowledge memorization or fluency application. Now, we actually using AI focus on those higher order skills. So that's where we're focused on bringing into our programs. That's what we want to role model for teachers and help build out with our offerings.
Yeah, it's I mean, you have a number of different offerings, and obviously, their roadmaps and plans for each of them. I'm curious to hear, you know, obviously, not anything proprietary or secretive. But I'm curious to hear how you're thinking about that. That concept of exposure. And going from a very reasonable use case of well, determining whether a student is submission is AI generated is a very important
use case. But you know, there are lots of other use cases which are in the works, I'm sure to be in many of your different projects and programs. How do you see that roadmap sort of developing in a way that helps educators be exposed to AI in a sort of nuanced way that doesn't feel like Oh, you think of the turn it ends or the Grammarly is the plagiarism detectors really weren't sort of seeing this way.
They weren't like, hey, it's a teachable moment when you realize that the student has plagiarized half of their essay, it weren't really seen that way. But this feels like it could be I'm curious how you're sort of seeing that playing out?
Well, the truth is, AI has already been in front of teachers for many, many years now. And it's been part of adaptive learning and personalized programs for over a decade now. Some teachers have already been exposed to some of the power and potential of these programs to help diagnose what students are ready to learn help put them on individualized learning pathways, help them grow in an accelerated fashion from what they might do without these programs. So that potential application has
already been there. I think the opportunity now is to how do you build upon that meaning the first generation of AI and personalized learning as still very much been one size fits all, very much using the same curriculum, but just having students start at different places, they might progress a different pace through that that curriculum, but still, adaptive learning precise learning 1.0 with AI, potential now agenda of AI, the latest that is out there is to get to this 2.0 version on
personalized learning where it truly is tailored to individual students needs even more precisely, meaning giving content that is going to resonate with students more appropriately, giving them more scaffolded instruction and getting the most scaffold supports, whether it be reading supports language supports that individual students might need.
That's what we're excited about the potential adjusting reading levels on the fly for students who need additional support, things that are potential opportunities today are going to be much more powerful with generative AI going forward. So for us, it's really at the application of AI to further amplify, to further reinforce where AI is already being used in many cases, but really intensifying the use of personalized intervention for students to help them achieve
better outcomes. help them grow faster, help them get back up to grade level. That's what we're looking at in our products.
That's fantastic. And I I appreciate you calling out that AI is not new in tech. It's not new in education, and it's been used for this concept of activity. In personalization for a while, but we're now entering a sort of new phase of it. And PJ, I'd like to ask you, because I think this is a really interesting nuance
here. Educators may or may not realize that AI is built into existing programs that they've used for years or that it is just suddenly been their new features coming into the programs that they are they love and have been using for years. I'm curious how you see that learning curve to help educators go through that sort of transformational moment, you mentioned before informant and somebody went from I don't know what this is to Oh, my gosh, they can make a rubric with it.
And if standards aligned and all that, as AI is sort of increasingly in everything. How do you and it has been for years, as you're mentioning that? How do you help educators sort of get on that AI train and feel excited about it, rather than be afraid of it?
Well, I think talking about products, vendors, partners, solution providers, whichever vernacular we're going to choose to use today, I think, is a key element of this. Because no matter who or what product, the new generative AI is transformative, in my opinion, because we all became accustomed to how AI was working in, in concert with choices being made, and how we could better serve kids in certain ways. But like we see it in the personal life with our social
media algorithms, right? What I'm exposed to is different if we didn't understand that that was coming from some type of artificial like, so I think we got that this next phase was superintendents asked me, so this is a change your question and answer. And then if I but when superintendents asked me what's next with AI, for us, now it becomes product vetting
again. So even if we've had a really, really strong relationship with XYZ provider for six years, their competitors going to come in with AI, their model may dramatically beat the other. So to me, it's almost levels the playing field again, and then all of a sudden, now we're, we're back at Ground Zero with almost every partner, because almost every ad tech solution is going to go to their second generation or third generation, whatever iteration it is, I'm that on the tech side
of AI. And so it's, when I say it's not if you do it, it's how well you do it, like, it's gonna be the same for our providers. And I don't know what that's going to mean, supply demand wise, I don't know what that's gonna mean, cost wise, I don't know. So there's all kinds of shifts that are going to happen
that way, as well. So I think one of the things that teachers are gonna feel first with AI is, I think you're gonna see dramatic shifts in the services and supports that, that different solution providers have, and potential shifts in which solution providers, districts are doing business
with. And so I think that is also going to be a massive front runner in terms of creating change, because when you can see some of the products that are out there, and again, this is relatively at the Infancy is mind blowing, right now, for me, and I'm not naive to this stuff, but some of it is insane. And so by the time that this gets worked out a little bit in front of teachers at that level, I don't think that there's they'll have any choice but to be like, Oh, wait, this is this is legit,
right? Like, we're gonna have to figure out how to do it.
Todd, I think that leads to a really interesting question, which is about the partnerships aspect of this. This is Ed mentum, which, as you mentioned, one of the original texts been around 60 years, and this moment comes along, and I'm sure you have the choice for every different use case of AI that you're doing to
build by your partner, right? I mean, do you are you going to build something internally that does the type of personalization or integrity checking that you want, or partner with a dedicated startup that's doing
it or by them? And I'm curious, again, not to ask anything proprietary, but as you think of the different use cases, including the one you're working on right now, which is that reassurance that in academic integrity, making sure that you're really keeping, keeping tabs on that, how do you decide whether to try to build something internally or partner and when you do decide to partner how do you vet partners to make sure that people are doing something that meets the
kind of needs that Pj is talking about knowing that schools and districts are going to vet every every
decision? Yeah, it's a great question. I think for us, we focus very much on what are our core competencies as an organization, we very much focus on how we make sure the learning experience in totality is easy to use, as streamlined as possible for for educators.
They have the right data at their fingertips, they can work effectively across the programs that we offer, that we can set up an effective support implementations that scale and a district that our folks in customer success who work with district leaders have the data they need also to work effectively and ensure that
programs are effective. All that means is that we're going to focus on how we bring these different components together in a solution that is going to work We're going to focus on the curriculum itself. We're going to focus the assessments in our programs, we're going to focus on how we move students through that experience and plug into
it. Likely third party solution, third party tools were appropriate to make that even more effective, or we're not trying to do is invent new problems, new challenges, we want to find better ways to address the challenges that we already addressed today. And where does AI fit into that
equation? Key to us, though, and I think this is part of an overall trend right now in edtech, that I hope doesn't go away, is this focus on efficacy and research, meaning, we're only going to partner with third parties and other solutions and bring in other components that actually are proven to work? Or will we will pilot those together and demonstrate that they work before we bring them to a district and ask them to
implement that scale? Coming out of the pandemic, there's been so much scrutiny around what programs districts keep, what they buy going forward, teachers were inundated with so many programs coming out of pandemic, there is going to be this shift, as Dr. Fauci said, thinking about this next generation of the programs coming in, or what I hope doesn't happen is this pullback from thinking first about what's actually going to work for our students, where's their proven efficacy, where's
their proven research are these partners or vendors coming forward with that evidence base that has been validated, that shows that it's going to work for their students, it's going to create these outcomes in the district that they're going
after. Otherwise, we risk or whining back the clock to a lot of promises that were made in edtech, 10 years ago, where you know, we're gonna have robot tears in the sky are other things that we're going to have all these genetic changes for, for students that never came to fruition. So we've got to be careful in this next generation, that we focused on the research focus on the efficacy before we embrace new programs. Robot
tutors in the sky always makes me chuckle. That was my first role in edtech, was at a Newton in New York, which was that that quote of robot tutors in the sky came from the CEO there, and it sort of went a little bit of this ridiculous sci fi aspect to everything which has been codeword ever since for over promising and ad tech. And I'm glad you brought it up there. It is a really interesting moment for that. And I, it makes sense.
I mean, for a company like Ed mentum, that has such reach that has what 10,000 schools and districts you work with, as you said, 6 million students, it makes a lot of sense to partner with efficacy based tools, tools that have proven their impact and efficacy. I love that trend
as well. And we've talked to a number of guests on the show about it, to bring them to scale and to basically take the strengths of the the distribution arm and the content library and all the great things that had meant them does with the super specific capabilities of these brand new tools, especially in AI because they're all a year old, basically, you know, I mean, a very few of them in generative AI. They're all they're all very small startups, but they're already trying to
get momentum. And some of them are, it's really interesting to see how it works together. PJ, I have a question for you. And we haven't addressed this yet. But it is something that I'm sure some of our listeners are wondering about. There's a debate actually in the sort of AI education community about whether AI content can really be detected reliably. And there was mention of false positives before or various things. But there's, there's there's a real
debate. And there's also been mentioned in this call about how students will are always going to try to find, you know, pathways around any kind of blocker that's keeping them from doing what they might want to do. I'd love to hear both of
you. I'm going to start with MPJ just speak about from from your experience, you know, do you think that this AI detection world is going to be able to keep up with the creativity of learners or be capable of reliably identifying plagiarized or AI created material?
Oh, I don't know. I mean, sincerely, I am not sure I will say this. I have several 100 employees. I've got several cabinet members, I I teach for three different universities. So I see lots of different people, when people don't give me something that was created by them. I still know. Because I
know that people. And so if we are this worried about it, like I think that it is not as complex potentially, as we think it is, if we actually know are people I think where this has much more of a debate is at the graduate and postgraduate level where people turn into papers a year and that's all you see. And that is where I think this can come into place. But one of the funny example is like we've got
shocking in a district. We've got some parents that don't like us, and we have this one parent that sends really nasty emails and they're almost comically written when we get them in there usually late at night on a Friday or Saturday night if you can pick up what I'm saying. All of a sudden, all of their emails are perfectly well, at least like you know, I'm not getting called crazy names. games anymore, there's no expletives in it, but very clearly, and I know that's like a very
outrageous example. But I don't think it's that outrageous to think about how we know our kids, right? Versus how they start to write. Now, does that mean that they're not using AI to be generative in terms of ideas that then they are putting into their own words will serve, but that is going to be what research is called in the future. So I don't know that
it's ever going to keep up. I think the way that we actually work around it is to nor people, whether it's the people that we serve as students, whether it's people we serve as leaders, I think that that will help us to an extent, and then from from there, and it's it's figuring out what asking ourselves, why do we care so much about this? What are we actually trying to measure and teach? Because I think using AI, as a generative feature to help idea is to
ideate. And to do all those things, is going to become a requisite skill of employability. And, for me, if we are so concerned about the plagiarism that we then don't teach that skill, then we're just missing out on preparing our kids to be successful in the next stage of their life.
Yeah, I completely agree there, I think it's gonna become less and less of an issue over time, it's impossible to predict or is technology going to keep up with rejection, I hope for the sake of social media, and where we are, as a society, it does keep up to some extent, to help protect us all.
But when it comes to education educators, especially in K 12, they know their students, they know when they're using their authentic voice, they know when something's probably integrated, some AI generated content in
there. So I think it's going to become more about setting expectations around codes of contact, expectation around academic integrity, encouragement, students how to use AI, actually pushing them to use AI for brainstorming, idea generation, but also to acknowledge that use despite that use, as probably as not the learning process. Process. I think that's going to become ingrained and just ingrained in the way teachers are going to
evolve with these tools. But overall, it's gonna become less and less a issue over time.
And it's exciting. I think, even in a year, I mean, even in a year, I think we've seen the conversation begin to evolve from that sort of punitive view, and slightly old fashioned view of, oh, if you handed a paper that has any AI contribution, you're in trouble, that sort of, you know, punitive view, I already think that that's not really how most schools and educators are dealing with it, I think they're doing much more of the kind of teachable moment, thinking about this as a new
tool. It's an equity issue. This is the future of work, as you've mentioned, given all of that it's incredibly powerful, and parents are, and teachers are using it, and principals are using it and district leaders are using it. So the idea of keeping it from our students feels a little strange. That said, the tools like copy leaks still have a very valuable role. It's just not a punitive role. It's not a binary, we're out to catch, you rolled out the sort
of dog catcher net role. It's much more around, hey, this is a tool that can actually distinguish if you accidentally took too much of your brainstorming ideas and just put it into the paper without sort of putting your own spin and thought on it. That's a really good teachable moment. And that is something people will have to know in the future and their workforces. It's not, you can't get away with sending out a corporate memo as a CEO, and every word feels like it was
completely generated by it. But like, that's not good, either. So I think there's something really interesting in there, it's fascinating to hear you both talk about it. So I just have one more question. Before we get to our final questions. And let me throw this back to first PJ, which is we're looking at this moment, where AI use cases are really starting to proliferate very quickly. We're seeing image creation, we're seeing video creation, we're seeing it quickly go beyond text
generation, to multimedia. And all of the things we're talking about in this call are still true, but maybe even more so in a world of, of multimedia. And I'm curious how you see this kind of thinking playing out, you know, the same teacher who generated a rubric on the fly on a standard and said, This is amazing when they realize they can generate a full 10 minute teaching video in a minute that can summarize everything that happened this semester, and then
send it out to the parents. Like there's a lot of stuff that's possible. I'd love to hear your talk about this sort of multimedia aspect and your rent after.
Yeah, I think that part is going to be more terrifying. I mean, so that's essentially where I stand. I mean, hashtag deep fakes, right. Like we start we are seeing some of the imagery get put out right away. That is going to be I think scarier, longer. So as I try to envision what the adoption curve looks like in terms of, especially at the pre
K 12 level. Once we get into images, man like in multimedia, I think it's going to be a slow go comparatively, I really sincerely believe the the generative for brainstorming, writing, etc. I think in two years, we're going to feel silly for having this conversation in some ways, but with the imagery and the multimedia, I don't know. And that's not necessarily my wheelhouse as much, I guess. But it's also that one is that one's a little bit scarier for me. So I I'm sorry, that aren't
a great answer. I just think, educationally, we are going to push pretty hard against that just because of how insanely good it is already, and how scary that happens to be. Definitely share their concerns. I think it's scary, and in so many ways. And it's news stories. Today, it's a moment in time around deep fakes and what what's happening out there that really put students at risk, and we've got to get a
handle on it. At the same time, I think the exciting part, the potential for me, I see is the future of project based learning and what it means for students who can now create portfolios of work that are multimedia multimodal, that have imagery, that have combination of not just this text in terms of their their projects, and how they show their learning how we do more authentic assessments in the future, I think it's become super interesting when you think about now students can become
filters, in a way, create things that they could never have the skills or time or aptitude to do in the past. But now they can actually create things that are just mind blowing, and do so in such a short order of time. And I wish I had when I was a kid. So I think really exciting potential there if we can get a handle on some of the safety and security issues around around media.
Yeah, it feels like an sort of exacerbated version of the same conversation we're having it can be very terrifying and scary, especially to generations for whom it's just suddenly landing on. And I don't know if this is something specific. I don't know if you're
obliquely referring to this. But I think our listeners may know that one of the things that's already starting to happen in schools is deep fakes of people putting basically faking nude pictures of other students, which is like something that as soon as you hear it, you're like, of course they are. But at the same time, oh, my goodness, that's crazy. And it's just a very, very beginning. But at the same time, the power is unbelievable, I think of like a Spike Lee, right, growing up in
a poor neighborhood. And Canarsie going to NYU being like the one person in his neighborhood could ever make a film. And in six months, every kid in the country is going to be able to make their own film, they'll be able to script it and casted and you know, so the potential is unbelievable, the risks are absolutely terrifying. And, boy, and here we are, as an edtech community trying to drive down the middle and figure out
how to do it. But I think the two of you have had a very, very thoughtful approach so far, too, what you're doing, I really admire, you know, this conversation and how nuanced it is. So with that, let's go to our last questions. We always wrap with two questions. One is what is the most exciting trend, you see, and we are not allowed to just say, AI? exciting trend that you see in the EdTech? Landscape right now? Do you think our listeners should keep an eye on? Todd, let me start
with you on this one. Yeah, pologize,
for echoing back some earlier comments, but I think for me, that is the the trend around efficacy and research that we've to really embrace this next generation of learning tools, we need to see that persist, we need to see the focus on what actually works. Do these programs actually improved student outcomes? Do they actually do what they say they do? Do students actually come out of this in better shape than they were before? There's so much I can promise and great marketing material out there
still around these programs. But the end of the day, they have to work, we're putting them in front of students. And we're asking educators to use it fascinated kids spend their time on these programs, it's got to have the evidence behind it that
it works. And we're seeing, especially with our largest district partners, much more scrutiny on that decisions being made based on the research commitments to ongoing partnership between ad tech vendors, providers with districts to set up expectations for a program to start, do the research along the way, show the outcomes at the end, versus just handover a program and openworks in a year at the renewable conversation. We want to be partners along the way. And that's the trend that we hope
persists. It is an
amazing trend. I'm so excited that it's taken on so much momentum. PJ, how about you? What are the most exciting trend that you see in the tech landscape right now?
I think it's similar, but just said a different way. I think for the consumer perspective, right? I think the market is contracting a little bit. I think we saw this expansion of the market with the influx of both VC money and with the federal money in terms of so we saw it coming from both ways, right? We had more money to spend and then there's more money in the market as a result of us having more
money to spend on the school. So we had an explosion of of entrepreneurial ideas and solutions that can be provided in schools, which is amazing. But what happened is that there are some great products what happened there are some bad products, some of the great products got bought by bigger products and turned into bad products. Some of them have all these things right. And so the market is contracting right now at the same time. That money is
becoming tighter in schools. So So thereby, leaders in my position are starting to have to actually measure return on investment with these tools. And it's amazing that like, it just hasn't been a thing. Like I wrote an article a few years ago on, this is how we actually measure return on investment. And I got so many things like, What do you mean, how do we do this? Like you're spending hundreds of 1000s of dollars on this? How are you not seeing if it's working? And so I think the
contraction of the market? Well, the cream will rise to the top right. So I think as a result of this, I think we have 18 months left, I think whoever's left standing is, especially the small shops that are coming up are going to be very, very high quality. And I think what's gonna happen is the big shops are going to acquire many of these things that are working and just make them bigger, more
robust solution. So I think the market contraction is actually a strength for educators, like from an economic business perspective, it might not be, but for us as practitioners, I think that's a strength and an exciting trend.
Very interesting insight. And what is a resource that you would recommend that can be a book, a newsletter, a blog, x feed, anything that you you follow or think is really interesting that you would recommend for somebody who wants to dive deeper into any of the subjects that we discussed today? Todd, let me let me go back to you.
I think for the academic integrity topic and how to use generate it effectively in the classroom. Edutopia had a great article just last last month, it was on how do you set ground rules around original writing and in Chad GBT for an article a lot of additional resources there. In general, I think Edutopia is a great resource to stay on top of what's happening and topical issues today. So that article in particular, that was a very well written one.
Fantastic, as always, we will put links to the resources recommended in the show notes for this episode. But yeah, I haven't read that one. That sounds really fascinating. I'm going to check that out. Right after this, Dr. Posey PJ, how about you what is a resource you would recommend? So
I'm going to actually give name of an association if it's if it's okay. But what I will say is that there, as a superintendent, there's not enough time in the day for me to understand all of the trends that are happening, all of the new products that are out there just doesn't, it doesn't exist on a day. And until, for me, I became part of a organization called Institute
for Educational Innovation. And what they do is they bring together both sides, they bring together the partners and the solution providers, with superintendents in a very formal but collegial manner, where you can learn a ton in a really short amount of time, and get to know what the trends are, because they'll bring companies that literally have zero customers to the big boys to the table, so that you can kind of see what's going on. And we meet just about quarterly to get
there. But in doing that, I feel like in two days, I kind of catch up on the 1002 articles that I could have read, to kind of get to know where it's going. And then once you're there and you're having conversations, then it's just like, like this conversation. If I had the opportunity to sit and have a cocktail or coffee with Todd, I'm going to learn a lot more about what's happening on the
back end business side. And he's going to learn a lot more about what as a practitioner I want, those opportunities just don't exist, because almost every one of those conversations is typically sales. And so around this AI is what we call it allows some of those things are salesy, but the vast majority of
them are iterative. And okay, this is how you're using this, you could couple it with this great i Now notice as a practitioner, or this is what your solution has, if it was just like this, I'd be really attractive, and kind of go back and forth and learn what the trends are. So that to me is my biggest resource when I start to think about what I've learned in the EdTech sphere.
Fantastic. So that's the Institute for Educational Innovation. I II, I we will put the link to that association in the show notes
for this episode as well. And yes, I mean, I think there's a sort of mega trend that that speaks about communication, cooperation, you know, getting out of people getting out of silos and getting, you know, education practitioners and edtech companies and policymakers and all of these folks who sometimes work in a little bubbles, getting in the same space together in a non non salesy non coercive environment,
incredibly powerful. That's part of why we do this podcast is to bring people together around interesting ideas without it feeling like a sales pitch or webinar. Thank you so much. This has been a really, really interesting conversation. Dr. PJ Caposey Todd Mahler Chief Product Officer at Edmentum, which just announced a partnership with copy leaks. Thank you both for being here with us on Edtech Insiders. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of edtech
insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the Edtech community. For those who want even more Edtech Insider, subscribe to the free ed tech insiders newsletter on substack.