Week in Edtech 01/11/2024: GPT Store Opened, Districts Considering Closing Schools, new FAFSA and more! Plus Special Guest, Anna Iarotska of Robo Wunderkind

politics, and more. We also conduct in depth interviews with a wide variety of Ed Tech thought leaders, and bring you insights and conversations from ed tech conferences all around the world. Remember to subscribe, follow and tell your ed tech friends about the podcast and to check out the Ed Tech insiders substack newsletter. Thanks for being part of the Ed Tech insiders community. Enjoy the show.

really enjoying that. And you know, we've also just put out a couple of really fun podcast episodes, we put out our year end episode on New Year's Day about everything that happened last year, and everything happening next year with a lot of amazing guests giving their

predictions. And then this week, we had one with Louise begelman from story shares, they're making this high low content where they do, you know, readings that are books, whole novels that are low reading level, high interest, it's so cool. So I'm getting inspired. Again, as I get back into the mix. That's

partners at Cooley. This will be a Great Day of Dialogue breakouts, but also our famous round robin dinners, where you get randomly matched with eight perfect strangers that will become your new best tech buddies. So we're really excited to see you look for more information about that coming out soon. All right, well, let's jump in, there's probably no better place to start than with AI. What's at the top of your AI agenda or banner this morning? Well,

quite a powerful tool. And they're clearly trying to make a push into being the App Store for AI. I don't know, if it's gonna work. I haven't been always super high on open AI as the as the company that's going to lead the AI revolution. But I definitely love the idea of opening things up to user generated content. So early, because I think people are doing amazing things already with chat

GPT. But it's hard to find that there's no one place to see, you know, specialized tool, so I'm pretty pumped about the GPT store. How about you?

website? And what you saw with the App Store is basically people tended to do both. And part of it was that Apple controlled the hardware ecosystem, so to get an app on the phone was a like a hardware utilization play. I don't think chat G peaty Intel, there's the phone that Sam Altman is working on with Johnny Ives. Until that happens, they don't really have like a hardware play. But that's

where Microsoft comes in. And I write one thing, I would just, you know, caution everybody, when we're talking about open AI in 2024, let's remember, we're also talking about Microsoft, this is Google versus Microsoft, open AI is becoming a proxy. And this GPT store could be a incredible winner for the Microsoft ecosystem. So I've already talked to three or four nonprofits where they're like, We never are going to have the capability on our own to build on top of an LLM. This GPT

format is way lower left. And from a functionality standpoint, we're getting everything we want. From a monetization standpoint, it's not our core. So like, why wouldn't we just do this in the GPT? Store? I think this is going to be a real leader and accessibility to unlocking AI. I don't think that this is going to be you know, where the next 100 million or billion dollar company comes from is a GPT. App. And that's what's going to be so fun to watch. That's

question. So by sort of tying their UI advantage and their growth advantage to and lending that to users who let's say that you're doing a nonprofit, you know, teaching teachers in rural Kenya to do something, you can do that. And you can upload all your training materials and have them be able to ask any question and anytime it's, it's pretty enough they can do it on a mobile phone. It is pretty

exciting for access. So one other thing that caught my eye this week, and it is just a passing story, but South Korea put out a GPT a math GPT. That said, apparently set a new world record surpassed Microsoft's record in math. And you know, we talk a lot about how ChaCha Beatty doesn't know how to do math, you know, but there are IGBTs that are trained for math.

The only reason this sort of is is interesting to me from an ed tech standpoint is that I you know, I think South Korea has a lot of tech advantages that we are have yet to see in AI. And this is maybe a little bit of a canary in the coal mine of you know, it might be that some of the big new AI based edtech tools come from South Korea. And so I just think that's

interesting. And seeing that they've already surpassing Microsoft, with their basically co developed with their leading AI startup, which is called upstage, what did you make of that? I

education. It's shifting, and it's shifting to Southeast Asia, potentially China, although there's a bunch of regulatory challenges there. But if you think about it, I've talked to a couple people who went to the conference in Singapore, which is really around AI future wasn't an ed ed tech conference at all. They said like 90% of it was about education. Wow. Because if you think about like culture priorities, in that part of the world, education is a top priority. And it's super scarce.

And so creating abundance through AI is really powerful. And then if you look at the ring of developing countries there, the path to develop status really goes through some sort of education, infrastructure. But it's not a brick and mortar infrastructure. It doesn't have to be now it's a 5g six g infrastructure that then powers this AI. On that same note, you know, us is worried about getting surpassed by these countries. And so Congress just introduced an AI literacy bill.

So there is actually one thing Congress agrees on, which is we are falling behind in education, and we need AI literacy. For those of you in this space, April 19, is the AI Literacy Day. So if you're in a school or a school district, or you're an AI company, this is the day where there's kind of a national campaign that's about to be launched, where kids across the country are going to be doing

lessons on AI. You know, I think this is a great first step, but it just goes to show how far we as an education system have to go Well, when other countries are releasing math GPT as their like, leading example of what AI can do, they're focused on education. And we are kind of lagging. And by the way, our tech companies are staying away from kids under 18. Because it's a liability. So I think it, you know, this is going to be a big story of 2024 is, where is the hub for AI and education going

to be globally? And right now, I wouldn't bet on the US.

same everywhere. And, you know, it's interesting, this bill from Congress about AI literacy, it reminds me a little of like, you know, the early days of the Internet, where people were trying to figure out, like, what does it mean, to understand how to use the internet, and they talked in these incredibly hand wavy, super high, high term, you know, high level terms about, you know, it can access information, we think, and there's communication there, I think, and they're everybody's

sort of learning what this thing was. I mean, I'm glad that this that this bill is out there, I hope it passes, I think there's, you know, basically allows there to be lots of grants for universities, for schools for professional development, it's worth reading the bill, because it actually goes into some pretty good detail about how this would manifest in different areas of education. I hope it

passes. But I also hope that it's, you know, quickly followed with, you know, a little bit more sophisticated thinking about, it's not just about like, how does AI work, it's about how to use AI to do like, things that we've never been able to do before, which is where a lot of the rest of the world is focusing. So it's gonna be an

interesting journey. But I think what people do agree on is that they don't want to do the same thing that they did with computer science years ago, which is just false, so far behind and sort of hobble. And you know, even now, students are kicked out of their computer science major, because they're overcrowded, even now, you know, decades after we could have seen this coming. So it's kind of not the best. Yeah,

how do we respond to it? And I think the days of the kind of fiscal, let's say, yes, and everything, those are clearly over the SR cliff, which was basically the package that was pushed out during the pandemic, to support schools, that is basically dried up. On top of that, we've seen trends of declining enrollment, and the teacher shortage, and the teacher shortage has created a inflationary environment for

teacher salary. So I think you and I, Alex, we can agree, that's good, because we need to pay teachers more. But it's also putting real strain on schools and school districts budgets. And so an article came out this week, we'll put it in here. It's an Education Week, around all sorts of districts, large and small, are considering school closures, because of this trend of an enrollment, and also the challenges of managing multiple

sites. What this does is kind of what they call creates a perfect storm for many districts, enrollments and budgets. And it creates a political storm, where anytime you're trying to change pedagogy, you're trying to change, you know, evolve the thinking and teaching and learning. On top of it, you're going to have the politics of school closures, that is really going to be distracting for

schools. And so if we're trying to sell ad tech products into schools partner with those districts, one thing you have to realize is their budget is squeezed but also their attention span, to think about, okay, which ad tech product do we want is squeezed because there are these larger,

fundamental issues. And I'm on a local school board, as many of you know, and, you know, California has had year after year of surplus in our budgets, and now we're standing staring at a 50 to $60 billion deficit. So you know, not only could that be really bad, but it creates an uncertainty, because the state doesn't release his budgets until you know, July. So you can't really count on the same funding that you had in years past. So I just think this is a story we'll want to follow for

the rest of the year. And, you know, we won't spend much time on it here. But this idea of people opting out of public education, you know, either low attendance or alternatives. It's probably a sub bullet, but it's also clearly making a dent for some schools in some districts. That's the case. 12 B, how about on higher ed?

quick addition there. I mean, there was a really good article in ProPublica, this week about absenteeism, and how it's, you know, basically doubled in the pandemic era and has not actually gone down that much since the end of the pandemic, amazingly, and talking about how, similarly what you just said, even though that's obviously a fundamental issue in education, their schools still don't actually have that much budget to address absenteeism, there's not something they're

used to having to focus on this hard. And so there are some people trying to solve it in various ways in edtech, I think could have a pretty good role in that there are everyday labs, and there are companies focused on this. But I think that just adds to your point about you know, the school system still has not, rebounded truly at all, from the pandemic years, even though it you know, it starts to feel back to normal, but we're gonna still see fallout for a while. On

a year in jail. It's worth reading the article, because normally, I think our edtech motion is to say, How can schools or ed tech fix this, but there's also seems to be a rising frustration with parent accountability. That I wonder how that will play out? Yeah.

And the right wing political movement in the US that sort of now has gotten to Ivy League presidents to resign is really licking its chops and feeling very excited about their success so far in attacking, you know, elite higher education. I know you have lots of thoughts about this so and know some of the things is sort of happening behind the scenes with the investors involved. So tell me what's going on? Yeah,

students well. And, you know, I think they're enjoying it, not only because it makes good headlines, but there's also a donor base that's been alienated by the campus protests, largely Jewish donors who are feeling like wait, you know, my higher ed institution doesn't seem to have my back. And so I think that that is a way in which Republicans feel they can split off what would traditionally be

Democratic support. The second is really around campus culture, and where we are in our, you know, in our higher ed environment, it is really, really hard to create an inclusive culture right now with the extremism. And it's getting in the way of teaching and learning. And it's also causing kids to rethink their choices on higher ed. And, you know, a telling stat is Harvard had a 17% reduction in early admission applications. That's just a really rare thing for Harvard to

announce. And I talked to investor friend of mine, who's that, that'll totally bounce back after this blows over. But the fact that it had such a profound dent, you can imagine how that has a follow on effect to all the other universities that are watching that statistic and thinking about it. And then I think the third one is ROI. You know, it keeps coming back to like, what is the point of university? Is it to get a job?

Or is it to create citizens, it doesn't have the ROI on getting a job because it's overpriced. And there's other pathways on creating citizens. It's doing a pretty awful job from like a writ large perspective. Now, of course, you and I know students who are at campuses are having incredible experiences life changing, and it's shaping their world and they're becoming

engaged citizens. But if we want our universities to have a citizenry mission, we really need to start leaning in on that, because we've been so focused on the career one, and that hasn't been going well. And this one doesn't seem to be going well. At least from a public perception standpoint, and so I think it's exacerbating the crisis in higher ed. And what does crisis create? It creates opportunity for upstart edtech companies that want to

disrupt the space. But you've actually been working in this space for so long. How do you see it? You know, this politics playing out on Ed Tech?

sort of business bottom line. So that it's really can sort of choose what to focus on from a abstract moral and ideological standpoint, and that it's basically getting to a point where the political divide is so strong, and we've seen stats, we've cited stats on the podcast

about this. And he has a quote in this, like, basically, the political divide is so strong, that higher ed and especially elite, higher ed is basically considered like a pure enemy for the right wing in America, like left wing, you know, media outlets, or so they have a quote in here, you know, universities are to Republicans, what guns are the Democrats? I think that's a very telling righty, they say it's the root of Great

Evils, right? There's something very wacky happening that is deeply political coming out of this sort of public perception of campus culture being, you know, quote, unquote, woke. But I think it goes beyond even the concept of what can mean almost anything, I think it's just the combination of factors, including ROI, that are making a lot of people in the US not want to go to higher ed is really going to have a major effect on our competitiveness as a country on our continuing polarization.

I mean, we already have a sort of educational divide. That's like the core piece of our politics already. And basically, whether you have a college degree or not, and now it's coming full circle, where people who do not have a college degree and are Republicans are coming back and not wanting their kids to get college degrees, because the colleges are seen as the enemy, and they're going to

continue. So I mean, what's crazy, and I think we've mentioned this as prediction in the past is, what I think it actually opens up room for from an entrepreneurial standpoint is right wing education, which is like I don't want to, you know, say that that's necessarily an

exciting opportunity. But ROI based, really action oriented, higher ed that doesn't look or feel anything like you know, what people imagine Harvard and Princeton look like, I could imagine there being some pretty serious space, whether that's online or in person, universities for that kind of like, right wing place, I don't know if that would be a good thing, if that really took off.

But it's also feels like a vacuum, because there is economic, you know, there are still economic benefits to college that are not being reaped by everybody who sees these who you know, sees these colleges as inaccessible or,

closed doors. Now we're seeing it play out in the public sphere. And I think that that one really hurts the integrity of these schools and universities, because it forces the school or university to take stances, rather than create the container in which, you know, faculty can have flexibility. And second, it just overall makes universities less trustworthy. When you see these

debates out in public. I would also say I'm following a string of conversations in the African American community around quoting gay in particular, and the kind of rationale around her scholarship being very, very thin. And what they point out is one, like, if you look at the presidents of Harvard past, actually, realistically, how many journal articles did Neil Rubinstein he was president when I was there, you know, publish, and how many citations did that

have? And there's a sense of like, double standard and nitpicking. So you have many in the Jewish community feeling, you know, like outsiders or feeling like university is no longer a safe place. You'll also have many African American leaders and community members and students feeling like there's systemic racism at play here. And so the net is groups that have traditionally

supported higher education. You know, full throated are backing away, and it's kind of leaving the door open, like you said for these alternative models, which may actually go in way even more extreme directions. Yeah. One other.

were not able to access it. So there was over, you know, there, I don't know exactly how many, but in the hundreds of 1000s of people at least who weren't able to access the FAFSA, I think that the core story for edtech here is just that, you know, even our biggest federal tech projects, sometimes don't have their tech, you know, infrastructure in place, and it's a little bit, uh, this was way delayed, and it's continued

to delay everything there. So it's obviously just bad for students seeking aid, but also, you know, shows that they need tech help. Ben, you know, you wrote a terrific article into this week's newsletter about venture studios, do you want to just give a little bit of a headline about that, before we go to our interview with Anna? Yeah,

And we also wrote the article on micro companies where, you know, new upstart companies may not need as much funding, because the kind of ability to build a product and launch it, the cost of it has gone down by 10x. And the time to build one has gone

down by 100x. And so I think it's an important area to cover, which is who are the enabling organizations that are helping entrepreneurs go from idea to launch to scale that may not follow the traditional, you know, seed a B, funding formula, and so into the space steps, venture studios? And you know, the question that I've been hearing from people on LinkedIn, is this just a rebrand of

accelerator? Is this a rebrand of incubators is a is really a venture studio, like a sign that we can't decide what we want to be. And we just want to have the flexibility to be all things. You know, David foo, and I, my co author, we really believe that this is a new type of organization that is really focused on enablement. And it's less focused on its own structure and some repeatable

formula. And it's more focused on how do we get ideas, to scale and to bright, and there's a lot of excitement, enthusiasm, because once you do that for one enterprise, then once you do that for 10, enterprise, and then once you do that, for 100 enterprises, there's a way in which that motion gets easier both on distribution, but also on product development. And there's no doubt that this emergence of venture studios coalesces with AI and

technology. And so we're seeing, you know, studios that are funded at 10 million, 2 million, like small dollars in the scheme of things that are essentially enabling tremendous numbers of entrepreneurs. And we see for profit and nonprofit models. So I think this is one, you know, check out the article, we provided links to many of the

studios. In the comments of our LinkedIn posts, we've learned about three more that we didn't even know about, I think this is one with an entrepreneur, if you're thinking about starting something, or even an existing company and thinking about launching a sub product. This feels like the go to move to find, you know, minimally dilutive capital, a great team of people who can help you support and a catalyst to get to scale. So that's why we covered it. And that's why we're

excited. Any reactions that you had, as you read the article?

felt very informed. And it's interesting how many of them spun out of larger education organizations like Teach For America or learning Collider, or teaching lab or, you know, Robin Hood Foundation, I feel like it's an interesting move, where organizations that especially nonprofits who have been in education for a long time can now start these venture Studios is sort of part of their strategy, and they can help, you know, try to make the change they want to see in the world

and enable companies to really take off we've started WG labs do some interesting stuff. Yeah, that was a great article. So with that, I think we can go to our interview with Anna right?

interview for week in edtech. We have Anna Iarotska, the CEO and founder of Robo Wunderkind, we've known Anna for a long, long time, it's so great to finally get you on the pod. Welcome.

this product idea. So we kind of like of course, it's going to be successful, because it just like this awesome and powerful thing to think about that will give tools to young children to build their own robots. Kickstarter loved us, they included us, of course, TechCrunch Disrupt was huge help, because they included us in their newsletter. And when you signed up was went out, I was already back to Europe. And then I'm just wake up in the morning. And we're like, at 120k

overnight. I'm like, what happened? And then I realized that, like, we had supporters from Fortune 50 countries, because you know, like, Kickstarter crowd is so international. And it just felt this magic. So we ended Kickstarter 250,000. We were like, great, amazing. And this is what's the start of our journey. And then we went of course, we first were focusing on b2c market. So we were thinking of our products as an amazing product to place into

homes. With time, we realized that we have actually so much larger impact in schools. And just to give you an example, in like having it as a, you know, as a product that a family buys, like you reach one, two children, like if they pass it on maybe three, four, but then we saw that when schools buy our product, we reach like hundreds of children with one robot if they keep sharing through the grades over the years. So we decided, and this was like our

big pivot. So we initially we sold 25,000 robots to b2c Market. And then with time, we focused on selling to schools and like we started with selling to schools in Europe. And then we also because we had a demand from us, we had first users in the US. And then we look to depend, like made some market analysis, spend some time here and realize that actually, there's a huge opportunity for us on the US market. And that's where we moved. So like I'm now based in DC area. And we

launched in 2022. So like after like almost four years to like Kickstarter product development, three years and b2c market. And now like since 2020, to like mid 2022, we focused exclusively on the US market, we got our first paying customer for subscription in June 2022. Now we had 20,000 students using our product this school year. And we're just super excited about it.

European country. Can you tell us a little bit about how you made that leap from the European market and from Austria, all the way to the US and even relocating the company

different, and so is us school system. But then you have states that are also different. So I think like big change for us was at some point to say look like we need to focus. And let's focus on the US market. And let's think about what product would work best for this market. And actually, it's helped us and like it was like we did a couple of pilots. And then we saw that, like we changed our whole business model like we went from producing being a robot building company to being a solution

provider. So now we see ourselves as we provide a service program, which provides robots, apps, curriculum, teacher training. And like that was a couple of those iterative sessions, pilots talking to customize. And also, yeah, like big, brave decision to focus, which, in retrospect, I think it is brave, because you need to kind of like give up on

something. But without that, like, it's very difficult to progress and also to seriously speak about being successful in such a huge market as you as K 12.

like a mandate. So how do you imagine, you know, the next five years playing out? And what are the trends that you're watching?

physical things. And that was something where, like, we saw also a lot of interest in our product coming, because, first of all, it works best for younger children to have something physical in their hands, it just more engaging, it keeps their attention, it gives helps them imagine what it helps him see what actually they are creating, or they're building.

And then also find methodic skills that are very crucial in early stage of development, because they're connected to spatial reasoning connected to success and math. It's all connected. And like, that's why we do see, like, we were like a bit scared as well, like, oh, my gosh, is everything gonna be no virtual, but we stick to our guns and like, we're happy to do so because we saw a big swing back to getting physical things into schools, and especially for

young children. I think like that's, that's a big focus on our USP in that case. And then five years is always exciting. And like, there's actually like, so much on product development side going on. And of course, now also with the proliferation of AI tools we're integrating in our products to in our

assessment part. So we're working like integrating assessment in the product, because that's where we see also educators, I think it's like it's a constant challenge for all to how to keep track where like every student in my class is doing. But then, in our case, when we focus on coding, robotics and computational thinking, actually evaluating computational thinking is like it's one, it is a challenging

channel, like. So that's something we're working on with our product development team, but then also integrating AI in to help us do that. So that's something on the product development side, which I'm super, super excited about another thing, we're launching this year Robo bridge device, which creates local Wi Fi network, which allows robots to talk to each other, and opens the possibility for students to work on collaborative robotics

projects. So they are not just coding their robot, they're coding their robots to collaborate with another robot of another team. And this is possible in K five and that's yet so this is something which was our user bases very excited and as and then for as a company. So right now we have 20,000 users and 70% of those are in Title One schools, which was amazing development for us. Like we, of course, we wanted that but like it was unclear, like we'll be have budget for

that. And we're happy to see that like it, will it be a priority and we are happy to see that it is a priority for so many Title One schools and they're using they're also title one budget for, for bringing STEM and STEAM to the students. So we really want to grow this category of our user base and we want to learn how to support them more because yeah, like our ambition is to really help children to make a positive

impact on children's life. And I believe that in Title One schools, exposure to our product can really change trajectory of some of the students lives. Amazing.

development for teachers. And I think that that's a really important, you know, pivot or a really important expansion for a lot of edtech companies where, you know, it's not just about giving them the tech and hoping they'll figure out how to use it, it's about really, really holding the hands of the educators to make it happen, I'd love to hear, you know, how you decided to do that, and how you sort of grew that part of the business.

stops there. And then also, you know, like, of course, you can try to simulate a teacher in a software environment, but then it's, you know, like, we're also schools are places for social learning and social interaction. And I think that the role of the teacher and of course, you probably know, like we are, in a way, like our industry is also transforming the role of the teacher from you know, like, being a coach and supportive person like being on the side

there to support them. And that's what we definitely want our teachers to do, like we want our product user experience creates more place for self exploration and self guided learning by teaching. Like, we really want to choose to be

there if there's a question. And like, they can guide a discussion, they can help answer the question, and they can create amazing and actually, like, they're our goal, and that would be supported with the curriculum, we want to have, you know, a discussion in the classroom about projects students are building about the purpose of them, what is the connection to real life? And that's like, how do we get teachers? There was the question, and we saw that, yeah,

like we need. If we want to solve this problem, if we want to bring those type of experiences to students, we need to work on getting teachers to that level. And that's what we do with our teacher training. And then what was also kind of natural, yeah, so we're not any more disruptive builders, we provide the solution. And like we made the step from one off price tag for a robot to a subscription to our program, which is also from business side

is a big change. But I think like very natural one, because if you're speaking about bringing technology in the classroom is like, I can't Yeah, like I don't think there's many technologies where you just solid and you leave it there, right? Like you need to stay in touch, you need to provide customer support customer success. And so like this, yeah, that was part of our journey. It was customer insights. And also just understanding like our work only starts with drinking robots

into school. And that's reflected in the subscription model.

wunderkind.com Wonderful. Thanks so much for having our first podcast interview of the year go so well. And thank you listeners for tuning in. All right, that wraps up our first week in edtech of 2024. It still seems weird to say it. But we're so glad that you joined us here because if it happens in edtech you'll hear about it here on EdTech Insiders.