The Future of K12 Learning Platforms with Adam Franklin of Nearpod

Adam Franklin. Adam Franklin is a senior product manager on the content team and Nearpod, an award winning platform teachers used to make engaging interactive lessons and videos. Nearpod allows teachers to create their own technology enhanced content and curriculum, but it also creates and curates a library of over 15,000 pre made lessons for providers like amplified iCivics and Teaching Tolerance. This curriculum creation and curation function is the core role of Adams team.

Before entering edtech Adam was a high school social studies teacher, and a graduate of Stanford's Learning Design and Technology Program. In this conversation, we talked about Adams transition from classroom teaching to leading an educational technology product team, as well as some of the details of near pods product roadmap, and what trends Adam sees for the future of K 12. Classroom platforms. Adam Franklin, Welcome to EdTech insiders. Thank you so much for having me.

So to start, I just wanted to ask you about your beginning of your career in education, technology, how did you get into education? And then how did you get into edtech? That's a great question. Let me start from the beginning. So I when I was in undergrad, I attended Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee. And it was one of the few places that actually allowed teachers to get

certified as an undergrad. And for whatever reason, I was kind of, I went into college thinking I was going to be pre med, it was the classic like chemistry weeded me out. And I was looking for, like, what do I want to do. And Vanderbilt had a great teacher certification program. So I was like, I'm gonna do this, I want to teach psychology and history, for example. And I earned my certification, there was a great student teaching program where I got to teach at a few high schools in MNPS.

While I was a junior and senior that was incredibly valuable. I decided I wanted to be a high school history teacher like US history, the classic position, for whatever reason, I'm from Chicago originally. And when I graduated, they had closed 500 schools in Chicago. Wow. And I was caught off guard because they weren't hiring new high school history teachers in Chicago any longer. So I was forced to go out and look for where were they hiring high

school history teachers. At that point in time, frankly, it was mostly charter schools, or your Teach For America sort of places that you could go out and get a job without any experience. And this school system, yes, PrEP is a charter school system in Houston, Texas, they actually flew me out for an interview, which was pretty unheard of at

the time. And I don't think I would have been open to moving to Houston cold otherwise, but I, I got to go out there and decided like, Hey, this is actually not as bad as I thought it would be. I really love Houston is actually where I live now and own a house. So that tells you a lot about my feelings about the city. But I taught high school history for four years there. Now frankly, it was a charter school system, which just tends to mean, it's more demanding of its workforce.

And occasionally, you can be kind of a victim of your own success in a certain extent. I loved teaching us and government and economics. And because I loved it. And because I love developing curriculum materials, it meant that I was given the opportunity to be the district Social Studies coordinator for those two courses. And I was writing assessments and coaching other teachers on how to bring in strategies like discussion or debate, which I found really

rewarding. But in addition to the fact that I also had a full teaching load, and was coaching the high school varsity soccer team. Ultimately, like I was watching the like, demands catch up with me and felt really burnt down probably about three or so years into it. And so I decided, like, What do I love about teaching that I want to continue doing? But how could I maybe pivot into a career that can leverage that expertise where I'm not feeling so juiced or like, down to the bone every day

or every month? What have you, and curriculum design was, frankly, what I wanted to pursue based on that experience. I loved making materials for other teachers in the district. I love the feeling of like, not only do teachers love you, because it's just a burden off their shoulders, but it's also like creating better learning opportunities for the students that do get to experience those types of things. And considering the alternatives teachers might use if they weren't using what I

provided. And so I have looked to institutions, essentially that were making the type of curriculum I used And then I would hope to contribute to. And one of those institutions was called the Stanford History Education Group. They make a program called reading like a historian, which was my favorite thing in the world. It's such a great way. It's so concise.

Basically, the premise is that you put primary sources in front of students, and have them ask questions about the context and learn critical thinking skills in terms of being able to interpret primary source and tell you what it says about the era from which it came. Sam Weinberg was the creator of that. And he worked at Stanford University. And so I in that third year of teaching was looking for opportunities that I

could sort of pivot into. And Stanford had a grad school program, it was a year long program called Learning Design and Technology. And so I applied to that program, part of the program was that you had to have a mentor at the university identified and an internship. And I was hoping both of those were going to be Sam Weinberg, and they're at Stanford History Education Group. And I was lucky enough to like send him a cold email and basically beg him to like just volunteers

organization. And that coupled with like, navigating all the bureaucracy of actually applying to grad school, I was lucky enough to get in and I don't want like the name Stanford can sometimes seem intimidating, like education, grad schools, a lot of times do not have the same intimidating like admissions base like paywalls, or things like that, that can be scary. And so it was very, very eye opening, or like, the warm

in terms of the reception. As far as people with all different experiences coming to this program. I, in my time at your phone, and I'm sorry, this is such a long, rambling answer. But in my time at Stanford, I had to do two internships. So the first internship was with Stanford History Education Group, but for part of your program, you had to have a second internship with a

different organization. And for whatever reason, the beautiful person who is now my boss was a guest speaker at a D school class I had Sarah Romero heaps, she's amazing. And I knew I was like, I gotta get a second internship somewhere. And this person was speaking to us about like, issues that she was facing at the instructional ed tech platform she was working out and I again, just like cold outreach, hey, I can I please intern, I'll write lessons for you. What do you need me to do?

And I was lucky enough to get my foot in the door that way. And so this grad school program is only a year long, and I'm getting towards the end of the year, and ultimately trying to figure out like, what do I want to do after school and kind of deciding between? Can I work for Stanford History Education Group, should I go try to pursue a full time career at Nearpod?

Frankly, like the cost of living in San Francisco coupled with Stanford History Education Group was only going to be able to afford like a nonprofit salary meant that that didn't seem all that sustainable for me. And so Nearpod was a more compelling opportunity to like build a family with my had gone to grad school with my wife as well, that position was only offered if I moved to Miami, which was a fun, like little dilemma to deal with. But ultimately, we decided

that was worth it. And that's where I had spent the last three years was living in Miami and working out of the Nearpod office there until the pandemic happens. And they say, We're closing the office, you can move wherever you want. And that's where I why now live, we moved back to Houston, which is where my wife's family's originally from. And I work remotely for Nearpod. Okay, gotcha. How long journeys? Oh, that's fantastic. So tell us a little about your role at

Nearpod. You mentioned that, you know, you love making curriculum, love this reading, like a historian type of curriculum, what does it mean to be a Senior Product Manager of content at a K 12? platform like Nearpod? Great question. And it's frankly evolved over time. So just to give you a little bit of Nearpod history, it's a platform to teach interactive experiences with like think you can upload your PowerPoint and add a few

activities inside of it. And it began as a really popular platform for teachers to create their own materials with, but you only reach a certain subset of the teacher universe, if you're asking them to create all

the time. And so when I had joined the the idea was that by providing this library of materials, either built by in house experts are in partnership with institutions that make curriculum and want to see it activated on an interactive platform, we can encourage more teachers to take advantage of the power of a platform like Nearpod. And so at the onset, my career was really like building lessons itself to exist in the Nearpod library, as we called

it. And that was, frankly at the start more of a quantity over quality endeavor. But as time has gone on, we've gotten much more rigorous as far as the type of materials we release. And I've gone from actually authoring the individual lessons within those within the Nearpod library, for example, to being more strategic and high level visionary as far as we're going to bring this selection of lessons to market or we're going to create an entire creation.

One program, and I am shepherding the creation of the materials within that program. But a lot of times, it's teams of subject matter experts and graphic designers and folks collaborating to bring my vision to life. Whereas back in the day, it was me actually authoring every individual piece we were putting live into the Nearpod library. It's fascinating. So I'd love to hear a little bit about some of the transferable skills that span both classroom education

and your work in edtech. So I'm hearing some already in your answers about, you know, curriculum design, in the classroom transfer to curriculum design, and Nearpod, where you're adding content to a K 12 platform nationwide. Are there other skills that you bring from your days teaching history or working at Stanford, that you bring to your edtech career every day? Yeah, absolutely. I think, in its most basic sense, teaching is really valuable, because you are essentially prototyping and

iterating. Every day, you are confronted with your planning failures on such an immediate timeline, it sharpens your understanding of like, what's going to trip you up in the future, but also like, helps you recognize the value of you can't predict whether something is really going to be successful,

you have to try it first. And that's frankly, what I do a lot as a product manager now and what I try to encourage my peers to do, and it may not come naturally, for folks who haven't had experience in the classroom is you cannot possibly predict how a learning experience is going to exist in a true classroom, as opposed to the vacuum you're probably thinking of, until you put it in one. And you see the ways that students are going to pull at different like you didn't tie up that

transition very well. And that's going to be a real headache for the teacher to go from one

activity to the next. Being able to understand that context, in that sense, is good in a proactive sense, in terms of designing learning experiences that are really, with a cloud, like a living classroom in mind, but also just the mindset of like, I'm going to be putting stuff in front of people to play around with and the eagerness versus the reticence of doing things like that has really made me I think, a more valuable asset to the Nearpod team.

And that makes sense. So a recent survey in the beginning of this year, during the pandemic found that almost a quarter of classroom teachers indicated a desire to leave their jobs at the end of the previous school year at the end of last school year. That's much higher than average. And it just shows some of the burnout that you've been mentioning for

classroom teachers. I'm curious if you have any additional advice that you give to educators who are maybe looking to career switch, or maybe start working within the ad tech industry, instead of in a classroom? What would you say to a teacher like that? I think there are a lot of different opportunities to leverage your teaching experience outside of the classroom. So the first piece of advice I would give you is that you are not locked into one career for the rest of your

life. And teaching is such a broad range of skills that you are going to be unable to pursue a myriad of different verticals within edtech or within just generally light life, you're not sort of limited to ad tech either. In that sense. Being able to speak to like upset customers is very similar than I to like speaking with students and parents. But I think the advice that I typically give is to really put some intentionality behind the direction you want to pivot in and make sure it aligns with

your interests. I think a lot of teachers that I've spoken with, who look at my job and say that I want to do that. How do I do that grad school is not a blanket like, enable her to do that grad school is great for me because it gave me more time to pivot and to think about what I wanted to do. But it was not the like Wonka golden ticket that's like, Okay, I got my grad school degree. Now, where's my job in

edtech? In a lot of ways, if I wasn't going into curriculum design specifically or like product management, a grad school degree would have been

counterproductive. I think like there are great positions within Nearpod or within other edtech institutions in lanes like customer success, or in District strategy consultation, where your empathetic point of view towards teachers is such a valuable commodity that you can learn all of the other like you don't need to be a Salesforce expert or something like that before trying to pivot into head tech, your authority of voice it can carry you through a lot of those conversations while you

learn some of the mechanics specific to whatever industry you end up working inside of.

That's a great answer. You know, the empathy with teachers feels like another skill that classroom teachers can bring to roles working with other classroom teachers knowing what it's like to have to do lesson plans every day iterate prototype, like you said, and actually work with both teachers and students allows you to sort of work with larger districts work with schools and move into a different career that still uses some of that same empathy.

Yeah, exactly. A couple of my friends who I taught with at the same time pivoted into careers that are not in education, but are in like, professional training within a larger institution, things like that. It's really flexible, you just have to break out of your own functional fixedness or biases as far as what you can and can't do.

I want to talk a little bit about near pods model, you mentioned that Nearpod started by offering the ability for teachers to create their own interactive lessons, and then began to create off the shelf lessons that teachers could borrow, adapt and use that are made in house or with partners. What do you think is the appeal for teachers of offering both authoring tools where they can make their own curriculum and a library of ready made content and lesson plans.

I mean, it's so many different appeals, I would say as far as like Nearpod, at least specifically, they're just really pragmatically our teachers that have a treasure trove of PowerPoints sitting on their hard drive somewhere I

being one of them. And if we can offer you a solution that helps you make those experiences more pedagogically sound, that's a really powerful way to do it, especially if it's like, efficient way to go about creating it, because there are plenty of platforms out there that are really taxing to build with. And so the example I always give is that, like, I was a social studies educator, my first year, my evaluations always said the same thing. We

love, your passion. But we'd like to hear from students a little bit more. And after I got over my own defensiveness towards that question, which I think was natural, I realized they were right. And like I was the classics, just like John Green's style, I'm gonna be really excited at the front of the class. And they'll get it because I'm so excited about it. And that's just not a pedagogically sound way to

teach. And so giving that same lecture in Nearpod, where I've injected at specific points, there are going to be formative assessments in different formats. The platform itself is holding me accountable to be being a better teacher and teaching with it is like imbuing pedagogy into my instruction in a way that I often neglected

because I was so excited. But that's a specific type of teacher, that's me, who was like I was really high ownership over what gets in front of my students, I did not like using off the shelf curriculum for US history. But I did love using it for government and economics, actually. And one of the institutions that I use their curriculum for was i Six iCivics makes a fantastic civics curriculum. But it is kind of cumbersome in terms of translating their lesson plans into actually like ready to

launch learning experiences. And so the value of building out their content into the Nearpod library, for example, which was one of my first projects is just that teacher who's like, I teach iCivics. I love iCivics, it's a lot of time for me to adapt it into an interactive platform, so I'm probably not going to do it. Well, if we did that for you, you're going to win in two ways you're not doing as much

planning. And when you go to launch those experiences, and you realize that students are able to participate more, and it's more of like a connected class, you're active classroom, you benefit in that sense, as well. And we benefit because you're seeing the value of Nearpod, you're using more frequently from a pragmatic

sense. But you're like understanding that like formative assessment can be scalable if I do it in a platform like Nearpod, as opposed to distributing 150 half sheets of paper and collecting them all back in the same class period. Yeah, so it sounds like teachers are able to choose between which aspects of the curriculum they want to fully create from scratch, and which they want to customize. And there's a huge

efficiency advantage. If when they're able to get pedagogically sound materials from a platform like Nearpod, and then use their particular teaching style to deliver them with their own flavor. Exactly. The last area that we've been trying to sort of thread the needle or fill in the middle of that spectrum with is through banks of sort of component activities within your mods, you could imagine where you're a teacher. And now I'm going to get into some of the platform specific vocabulary.

But there's an activity called Draw, for example, where you can upload something to a canvas that students draw on top of, or you can create a matching pairs activity that are really great activities, but can be really time consuming to create. And if you're the teacher that's creating your own lesson What if, when you go to create a draw it we have an example set of templates for you, or some existing matching pairs activities that you can just kind of put in on a component

basis. We also have like a huge library of interactive videos, which was a big build out within Nearpod in the last year, and so we're trying to meet you on all those levels of needs from the teacher who's in touch Creating everything from scratch and wants nothing to do with

anything pre made. So there's you do want everything pre made off the shelf, and then in the middle, you're creating but you want some help, or some scaffolds to make it more beautiful or rigorous or like a better application of certain features. So yeah, yeah. So you mentioned John Green style teaching, John Green is the, you know, one of the hosts of the very popular Youtube Crash Course channel. And, you know, one of the things we hear a lot in edtech is the idea that educational content is

increasingly commoditized. You can find educational videos on YouTube or Tik Tok, or go to Khan Academy. And there's a lot of free and inexpensive content. But Nearpod takes a different approach and sort of curates content, and then aligns it to teacher needs and to classroom needs, and a searchable library of 15,000 lessons and videos and components. As you mentioned, I'd love to hear you talk from your product management standpoint about sort of the

role of curation in edtech. You know, how can edtech companies use curation of existing content to really add value? Yeah, that's a great question. I think you're spot on as far as how we want to be able to leverage this huge library we've already made and help teachers see the different ways they can go about using it. And curation is, is exactly what we're trying

to do. In that sense. I think one thing that I think makes Nearpod unique in this specific context is that anything a student sees in Nearpod, is launched through the teacher or distributed through the teacher, it's not student directed discovery, like you might find on other platforms like your Khan Academy, or on YouTube in general. And so there has to be some intentionality in the first place for a teacher to share something with their student and for the student to participate.

But with that being said, it's still really hard to convince a teacher why they should use your content on a consistent basis versus a one off basis. And just historically, in Nearpod, like, our content was more to support at its inception, or Nearpod. Library, teachers were often using content to support niche types of instruction, like I want to teach a current events lesson, I'm gonna go to the Nearpod library and find

something great. Or I want to teach something for this holiday, I bet Nearpod has a great lesson. And we absolutely did. But to support teachers in using more consistent and sort of like a through line for how they're teaching something like a playlist. And curation is necessary to imbue a scope and sequence within the materials you're creating, to show you how those materials are mapped onto the standards that you're capable are sort of bestowed

with it's twofold important. One is that it helps the teacher conceptually understand this is the journey this content is going on. And I can see how each component piece contributes to that ultimate endpoint that

you're going towards. But I think frankly, too, from a business perspective, those are kind of table stakes for the district administrators and decision makers, they expect your content to map on to their state or district initiatives, either in the form of standards alignment, or mapping into a curriculum, they're harder using the degree to which you can articulate or sort of custom align, whether it's in the form of a playlist, or sometimes like in the form of a spreadsheet,

even show how you can mobilize content, that's going to be table stakes for getting in the door. And then it's also like, encouraging usage in the sense that you're making discovery more efficient for those teachers who are saying, I'm deferring to the standard database or to this textbook in the first place for what I want

to teach. So if you're encouraging me to use Nearpod content, you better streamline how I can see the connections between that content and the trajectory I'm supposed to go on. Right? So getting larger and larger playlists or scope and sequences that actually cover multiple lessons or allow a teacher to teach in a continuous way gives even more flexibility to the teacher. Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the things that product managers do

is speak to users a lot. And in your case, you have you know, both teachers and students as users. I'm curious from what you have been hearing from your teacher, users, your teacher stakeholders, what do you sort of see as some of the possible futures for K 12 platforms like Nearpod, and others what gets you excited about the next five years of a K 12 platform? So I think let me couch this in like a dichotomy I see is like the two ways that Ed Tech is developing, and I'm all for one

of these two opportunities. I think the pandemic especially catalyzed teachers willingness to try edtech solutions. But typically, to me, they fall into one of two buckets. Are they empowering a teacher? Or are they marginalizing a teacher hmm, and the ones where kids are getting ported into an adaptive algorithm that is deciding their every next move based on their previous move, I got something right. So I get to see the harder problem, I got something wrong. So I get to see the

easier problem. And never looking up looking around you speaking to your peers, hearing from the teacher feeling connected to the material, that is the type of edtech usage that I want to inspire teachers to go away from. That's frankly, what I see Nearpod as being like, a pioneer and like a thought leader as far as like, it doesn't have to be that way. It can be teacher driven with technology, where the teacher still feels like they are absolutely the general of the

classroom. And technology is informing and making more effective things that they were already trying to do. And the analogy I gave is, like I used to in the state of Texas, we had TEKS. And in the district I taught at, we had to demonstrate two thirds mastery to move on to the next standard we were about to teach. And that meant at the time distributing the 150 half sheets of paper and collecting

them grading them at night. And then when I get home, after I've graded them deciding, okay, I need to go back and reteach tomorrow, if you deliver that same exit ticket Nearpod, for example, you're going to not have to actually physically pass

them out in the classroom. But you're also going to get that data in real time and be able to make interventions or pivot from class to class on a much more nimble basis, without undercutting the sort of educational goal of that endeavor, which was exit ticket

to prove mastery. And to understand on that granular, and the whole class level, who's done well, when I think about the future of Nearpod, I think about endeavors where teachers are trying to do more robust types of student demonstration or application of knowledge, still in a curated way from the teacher. So like, the power of Nearpod, at its core, is that you are seeing what I want you to see as the teacher, but what if, instead of and for the most part in Nearpod, the activities

are sort of individual input. So if I asked the class an open ended question, the class will be able to individually respond with their open ended question responses, and the teacher will see everything they can share

out those responses. What gets me really excited is, what if we could give tools in the moment for teachers to assemble small groups, and then once they platform assemble those small groups, facilitate collaboration within the platform, those inputs and outputs are all available from a one to teacher perspective. But we don't yet have the like the cloud computing capability to do it on like, a really quick basis.

Okay, got 20 Kids, a teacher, what if we separated them into these groups of four, and then these groups of four are all gonna get poured into the right screen so they can all collaborate on this drawing together? That's the type of instruction I think we're gearing towards. And it gets me really excited about like empowering teachers with technology versus marginalizing them. That's a great answer. And I think you're addressing one of the the common critiques of

edtech. And that some people believe that it is out to replace teachers or to teach students with no input from a teacher without the teacher being respected as a sort of professional or as you say, like the general of the classroom, and sounds like near pods firmly in the camp of empowering teachers taking care of some of the logistics to make sure that the classroom runs smoothly, like handing out exit tickets through technology, but not teaching students directly maintaining the role of the

teacher as the general the sort of lead in the classroom and making sure every student's attention is on what they want them to be on. Exactly, I think like, and I don't want to come across as like being the biggest cynic of all time. But there is a time in place for like Adaptive Practice platforms, students just need a chance to go in and repetitively apply the same skill over and

over. But I think what scares me is that those platforms are so powerful and so convenient, and almost so tempting as a teacher to defer to that, if we give them the ultimate power of like, now they're the pedestal at the front of the room. And the instruction is a video that this algorithm has decided to play for the class. That's what scares me and inspires me to like, we can still move levers to like keep us from going towards dystopia. It's just moderation in that sense.

Yes, we all want to avoid dystopia. I definitely I definitely agree. So, you know, we're at a fascinating time for edtech the pandemic, as you said, has increased education technology usage in K 12. In higher ed, almost every edtech company has seen massive growth Nearpod itself was acquired in February 2021 by one Renaissance Learning. And there's all sorts of interesting news items

happening in edtech. I'm curious if any current news item or any current event in the EdTech space has particularly caught your eye, if there's something you're thinking about either from your professional standpoint or just your interest? It's a great question. I think there's like, I'm trying to think of where I'd most like to speak to I just from personal experience in terms of Nearpod becoming part of a larger, we call them solution Suites is, we're not unique in that sense.

So Renaissance, you're absolutely right, acquired Nearpod in March of this year, and we became one of many products within the Renaissance portfolio. So we exist alongside freckle, or Mayan, which is a great set of adaptive texts. And as far as I can tell, we are still a piece of a portfolio versus a vision where it's like, we're going to forcibly merge these competing platforms together into one, a morphus blob of a edtech company.

Instead, what it seems like to me is, is that they are portfolios of companies that have friendly integrations with each other, but allows like a larger go to market team that is operating under Renaissance to say, you've got all these different instructional or technology initiatives within your district, we have a few that work great together, which one works good for you. And it's sort of like a menu of options that they can flex in that

sense. I think there are plenty of other suites that exist out there you've got your like Kahoot buying clever and whiteboard when dragon box or your by Jews buying epic and a

few other coding companies? I think too, I think my big question, and this is not like what gets me excited, but like what gets me philosophically like into a rabbit hole is these companies set out as far as I can tell to disrupt the big publishers of your Pearson's or your HMHS, which are now like, kind of considered like dinosaurs in the spaces without being too value oriented. But like they're definitely like, the people that the startups I've been a part of were trying

to disrupt. Now that I'm a part of this huge Solution Suite, I think like, you get the question of the Batman or the Dark Knight question where it's like, are you going to become big enough to become the person that you were trying to avoid? And like, how can we allow these companies within bigger suites to remain capable of responding to user needs in a really agile way? I think that's something I've been so proud of at Nearpod is like, our product map is so responsive

to actual teacher feedback. And my hope is that that continues to be the case. And my faith has been restored in the sense of like, that's been my experience. So far. With Renaissance, I've been really encouraged with how my company has been shepherded. In that sense, I think I'm just curious of like, what am I going to say about that same question. 10 years from now, that's a really good answer. And a really interesting rabbit hole to think of you have these

legacy systems in edtech. And then a huge and growing suite of startups and disruptors, and small companies trying to fill gaps. But then when bigger companies buy the smaller companies, it becomes this interesting, no man's land or you know, that sounds negative, but it becomes a choice where to stay responsive, stay agile, keep that sort of entrepreneurial spirit, or to become a division of a larger company. I've been part of

acquisitions as well. And I think that's true of every acquisition people sort of question where it's gonna go. So it sounds very positive. From what I'm hearing so far. Yeah, for sure. And I've been really appreciative with how Nearpod has been treated and like me as a representative of Nearpod. In that ecosystem, too. I think something else I would mention, if you'll indulge me is like, to what degree can be to be within

edtech still be innovative. And what I mean by that is, the ability to sell to school districts in the United States requires so much manpower, and so much bureaucracy navigation, that I think that's what ends up bloating a lot of the big companies is that they have to develop such a nuanced and complex sales motion to sell to a district in the first place. That all of that resources that have been invested to be able to do that could have gone into potentially product development,

or content development. And I just I wonder, because I would plug there's a great Buzzfeed News story that came out today, or yesterday. I can't remember when I read it, but it's about Edgenuity, which was a big platform during the pandemic for facilitating courses for K 12.

And it was like a great learning opportunity to realize like, the incentives within especially within b2b ed tech can perverse the product and to what degree is it necessary to be b2c to be truly innovative in terms of when I say b2c, I mean selling a product directly to teachers, so that you can respond to the actual teachers needs versus the

market or the sales needs. It's something that constantly challenges me, because the cost benefit of that is that if you're b2c, that means the teacher is paying, that means you're taking money from a teacher's pocket that you could otherwise be getting from a district. But if the money is coming from the district, the needs are coming from the district, and the support required to selling is way greater. So it's an interesting dilemma.

It really is. And I think it's one of the deep complexities of K 12 ed tech, for many years that the big companies build these enormous sales teams to go to districts all over the country. And that's where their money goes. And it means that they have less to spend on user research on product development on some of the things that companies that are selling directly to teachers spend a lot on and think a lot about. But there's benefits to both sides.

Because as you mentioned, with Renaissance, having the ability to sell into large districts and build those big contracts, allows companies to reach many more students and to make more of an impact. Yeah, it's a really thin line. We're dancing around it every year. So we're coming to the end of our interview, this has been

absolutely fascinating. The questions I always ask at the end of of any interview is, first off, what is one book or blog that you would recommend for somebody just breaking into edtech? For somebody new to the field? What's something they should definitely read? Ooh, great question. Let me think, because a lot of the books that I've been given aren't necessarily edtech specific. But I can plug a couple that I I've loved one. It's not even like product

management or anything. It's called orbiting the corporate hairball. I really loved that book as like a way to approach sustainable life inside of a for profit company. Because I'm somebody who values like creativity and operating maybe outside of like a sales goal and things like that. That was something that like, allowed me to find faith and passion in what I'm doing. Given it's part of like a capitalist endeavor.

measuring what matters is another great one that helped me get some more pragmatic skills as far as product management and analytical frameworks to bring something to market hooked was another great one, although I think it like rightfully has come under a little bit of a critical lens of like, are we kind of perverting what we're exploiting Inside Education tech not having like injection sample of that one? struts hackery the great blog, too. I'll stop there.

Now, that's fantastic. Orbiting the corporate hairball is an amazing title for a book that's very intriguing. I'm definitely going to look that one up. And then is there any book or blog or resource of any kind that you would recommend for people who are already in the EdTech? Space? Something that maybe is a little bit of a deeper cut that people may not have heard of? Hmm, I haven't heard of some of

what you already said. But you know, honestly, like, I am more of a Twitter guy in terms of getting curated resources from there. So in that sense, like, there are people I love to follow Jen, Carolyn is like an amazing follow. She's like a VC at the reach Fund, which was added previously invested in Nearpod. And I think it's like seeing those who they follow and just like blanket following that

list. And just going on twitter, and like searching platforms you like to use and following teachers who use those platforms, because they are very much bragging about what they're doing on a daily basis. And you can get a better sense of like the pulse of edtech in the world as it's really being used through Twitter. I love it. I know Twitter can be a hellscape for some people. But if you curate it really intentionally, you can carve out a nice little safe niche for yourself.

I love that. So follow investors and venture capitalists, but also the teachers who are using your product on a daily basis. That's a fantastic way to get multiple views of the industry. I love that answer. Adam Franklin, thank you so much for your time. It's been an amazing episode of edtech insiders. Thank you very much. It was a great conversation. I really appreciate you having me on. Thanks for listening to this episode of the EdTech insiders

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