[00:00:00] Matt Tower: It's so easy to say no and say, oh, that's bad. And you know, the quote that I I refer to often is from Dilbert, and it's, change is good, you go first. And I, I get a lot of it, the taste of that with all of this sort of anti-tech sentiment and it, it's not that I think tech is a panacea. I'm not arguing that schools should be eight hours straight of screen time, but I just like, I struggle to understand what anybody is for at this point.
Like what type of education are you actually? Advocating for
[00:00:39] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry from funding rounds to impact to AI developments across early childhood K 12 higher ed and work. You'll find it all here at EdTech Insiders.
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Hello, EdTech Insider listeners. It's me Ben with one of our all time favorite regular guests, Matt Tower. Now Matt is with Whiteboard Advisors, but Matt, really, you're always in our hearts. Thanks so much for joining us here today at EdTech Insiders.
[00:01:35] Matt Tower: Thanks, Ben. I always love the chance to chat with you and Alex.
It's one of my favorite activities.
[00:01:40] Ben Kornell: Well, you just got me today. And man, do you have a week of news? In this Week in EdTech, we are going to cover Google guaranteeing AI readiness and instruction support for all its teachers. We'll cover the screen time controversy. And breaking news. We'll also talk about the FBI raid in LA USD.
But before we dive into all of those things on the podcast this week, we have Ariella Racco, and she's talking about teacher professional development. We also have our webinar coming up. We have a Starbridge webinar, which is around government procurement, and next month we have on March 27th, a webinar about AI and efficacy.
So many other podcasts, Dan Meyer, Dr. Rachel Book, and Charlie Thayer, Cuny. We've got Josh Jones. I mean, the list goes on and on. It's been a really, really hot time for people coming out with brand new products using the latest in AI. So before we go too much further, where do you wanna start? Matt, do you want to go with a feel good?
Google, hug every teacher. Are we going straight for FBI probe? Choose your adventure.
[00:02:55] Matt Tower: I think we go FBI prob just
[00:02:57] Ben Kornell: to get it outta
[00:02:57] Matt Tower: our system.
[00:02:59] Ben Kornell: Let's do it. So just to give the, what we know today, this all happened today as of recording February 25th. The FBI apparently rated the L-A-U-S-D headquarters as well as Alberto Carvallo, the superintendent's personal residence in LA and they also in Miami, I'm not sure whether it was a personal residence or it was the district office, but there were raids in Miami as well to take documents and get information.
Lots of speculation out there given that it's so early and lots of moving pieces. What's your early take?
[00:03:35] Matt Tower: Yeah, I, I think maybe some context around what we know, right? And again, we are definitely in the realm of speculation here, but here's what we know. We know. And to your point about Miami, that's where Carvallo was prior to LA USD.
So that's, that's sort of why. Those would happen at the same time as they're, depending on what they are looking at, that's where those records would, would sit. It's kind of interesting that they're looking at Miami too, which suggests that it, what they're looking into goes beyond the sort of recent. Set of activities in LA that are, that are close to the border with Mexico and related to the immigration fight that has been happening in southern California, which was sort of my initial guess was that this had to do with immigration and sort of posturing that it goes to Miami.
And, and, and I think you had mentioned that at least some one person had had tweeted or or mentioned that there, there might be some relation to the all here chatbot scandal that happened in, gosh. Like 20 23, 20 22, 20 23, where the founder of a well-funded ed tech startup all here, whose name her name's escaping me, was indicted for embezzlement.
[00:04:53] Ben Kornell: Joanna Smith. Griffin.
[00:04:54] Matt Tower: Yes. Thank you. Thank you. So she was indicted for embezzling funds from her investors to spend them on like her wedding. And I think she buy, I think she might have bought a house too. It was, it was like one of the most non-I Jews egregious uses, uh, or of founder fraud in, in EdTech that I'm aware of, you know, up there with Frank and, and Bai Jew, although at a slightly smaller scale, I think she had raised 20 or 30 million and not 200 and several billion.
So I think the question for me, and, and I don't know the answer is, you know, is this a earnest attempt to defend taxpayer spending on a technology tool that. Had significant fraud behind it, or is it sort of posturing around all the different points of conflict between a traditionally sort of left-leaning liberal LA and LA USD district and the federal government?
And I think what was sort of most fascinating to me is that this was an FBI raid a federal raid and not like a local law enforcement raid or even a Cal State state raid by California law enforcement officials. So that to me was the most surprising and, and confusing, frankly, part of the sequence of events.
[00:06:07] Ben Kornell: It's partly why it leads to the speculation that this is tied to. More political endeavors around La USD's, you know, strong anti-ice stand. There's been a couple people, and I've talked to folks inside the L-A-U-S-D, like inner circle. There, there has been a sense that something was coming. I think they felt that an ice raid was coming and that's really what they were preparing for, whereas few campuses being kind of under siege and they had made it really clear to the administration that they were not going to cooperate.
And then, um, just last week there was a, a federal case brought by the DOJ of discriminating against white students in L-A-U-S-D. 10% of students in L-A-U-S-D are white. Something like 60% are Latino. So I think there was a sense that from the Justice Department that they were going to fly on that front.
So it does stand to wonder, is this. Really about the all here case? Is it about other things? Are they using the all here case in order to prosecute a vendetta against a political rival? The all hearsay side, it is, I looked it up. It's securities fraud, wire fraud, and aggregated aggravated identity theft in the Southern District of New York.
Is where the jurisdiction is for all here. And given that agreements are across state lines, maybe that's why the jurisdiction is FBI. But I think the shocker here is that, you know, for all intents and purposes, the victim has been considered to be LA Unified School District and Alberto Carvallo, and let's be real, this is one of those things that many people did not know if he would survive this controversy.
So the idea that he was doing something complicit in in it feels a little farfetched, frankly, given how caught off guard. I mean, they were like really promoting this thing and the rug was pulled out from under them. And I think they're still trying to figure out how to move the work forward that they were kind of left with in shambles.
So I, this is one of those stories we talked about by Jews, I don't know, three or four years ago. And it was like, when there's smoke, something else is going on. We thought we had seen the whole flame of this one and now the embers keep, are coming back. And I, I think it's really unfortunate because it's going to be yet another headline that takes away from the credibility of public education for, you know, those who want to use it politically in that regards.
[00:08:48] Matt Tower: Yeah, I, I think just as like a a, a final note on this is Carvallo is certainly a, a really, he's, he's sort of a celebrity superintendent at this point, and I think what's interesting is, I haven't seen him say this publicly, but I wouldn't be shocked if he was looking for, you know, a pretty senior position in a future federal government.
And, you know, what we saw with West Moore in Maryland, whatever it was a week or two ago with the sewage pipe and the spill into the Potomac. Maybe this is, it'll be interesting to see whether there's a similar reaction by carvallo of like, you know, either taking a stand and saying, no, you know, what you're trying to do is wrong and fighting back and letting that be the narrative or, you know, if there is something smelly here.
How that plays out is, is certainly interesting with regard to the 2028 race. So that's in the back of my mind, something I'm thinking about.
[00:09:42] Ben Kornell: I also think this is one of those where if this backfires on the FBI. Carvallo could come out even more politically powerful and more of a hero because the way that it it's coming across is like political persecution.
And I think if you look at anybody who has consistently been on the side of immigrant rights, consistently been talking about the innovative potential of AI and education like this is, it would be such a shock if behind the scenes there was untoward things going on. Because he'd kind of put himself so far out there on the all here situation and on the immigrant side where he knew that like Trump and the federal administration would be looking for any opportunity to nail him to the wall.
So I think that's why people are so incredulous right now about. Where this is coming from.
[00:10:41] Matt Tower: Yeah, totally, totally agree. No notes.
[00:10:44] Ben Kornell: Yeah. Meanwhile, let, let's talk about the other controversies going on right now. I mean, hot Newsweek, there's a bunch of chatter about screen time, kind of three layers of, one is article in the Economist that was basically saying like, EdTech provides no value.
It's lots of screen time, pretty poorly researched if you come from an EdTech perspective, but maybe I have no interesting
[00:11:06] Matt Tower: quotes.
[00:11:07] Ben Kornell: Like was, but maybe it does reflect a growing zeitgeist out there, which we should pay close attention to. And then there's also, uh, article in the New York Times today about how basically kids have figured out how to hack these yonder pouches.
And then, so that's the cell phone side of it. And then there's a number of states introducing legislation to ban or minimize. Actual minutes of screen time, especially for K through five students. But generally, like there's a growing, growing, growing anti screen sentiment that moved from social media and like online screen addiction all the way into schools where, you know, I think people like Rebecca Winthrop are who, who's been on the pod and is a great friend of ours, but who are, um, suggesting that the kind of school laptop is the gateway drug to all of this online stuff.
As you've seen this cacophony of stories coming out, what's your thought? And by the way, as EdTech listeners, what are we to do as we're thinking about all of our efforts to really move the needle for learners and especially for kids? Getting wrapped up in this like huge anti screen conversation.
[00:12:24] Matt Tower: Yeah.
And I, I think it bears saying that the actual headline of the Economist article is EdTech is Profitable, period. It is also mostly useless. It's like a 250 word essay that does not feel, uh, on par
[00:12:40] Ben Kornell: with, and the picture in the article is literally just a middle finger. That's all it
[00:12:44] Matt Tower: is. Yeah.
[00:12:45] Ben Kornell: Yeah.
[00:12:45] Matt Tower: So I, you know, frankly, I was a little disappointed in the, it does not match the quality I would expect from The Economist.
I have, like, I. A pretty, I feel pretty strongly about this, that it is really easy to be against something. Like, it's so easy to say no and say, oh, that's bad. And you know, the quote that I I refer to often is from Dilbert and it's, change is good. You go first. And I, I get a lot of the taste of that with all of this sort of anti-tech sentiment.
And it, it's not that I think tech is a panacea. I'm not arguing that school should be eight hours straight of screen time, but I just like. I struggle to understand what anybody is for at this point. Like what type of education are you actually advocating for? Like, I get that you wanna take away phones.
What is your like actual vision for what a classroom looks like? Because like the implication of taking away phones is that we're going back to textbooks and, and like Norway, literally I think it, it's either Norway or Sweden is going back to textbooks. And I'm like, that wasn't a particularly great era of education.
Like I don't think anybody's writing notes home about how awesome it was to learn from a textbook. So I wish that there was more discussion around. I'm fine limiting screen time to certain periods of the day and whatnot, but I, I just want there to be like a unified, a unified theory of learning rather than just like taking pot shots against, you know, tech.
[00:14:20] Ben Kornell: Yeah, I mean there's this maybe nostalgia driven thing of like, wasn't it great in the old days when we just used textbooks and so on? And what they don't realize is how many students that did not serve. We had access issues, we had personalization issues, we had quality and implementation challenges, and I do think that.
There's nuance here where there's a lot to, to critique around the implementation and rollout of EdTech tools, but the idea that the EdTech tools are in the same exact bucket as TikTok just feels like a vast, vast oversimplification. I think this points to one of the biggest challenges we have in EdTech in the US is that we don't actually have like an industry voice or industry lobby where we are putting out collective messages and collective guidance and research around what's effective and what's not.
Most parents don't know what to do with their kids' laptop when they bring it home, and so it can become this like wide open portal to the open web. Why aren't we as an industry, or why aren't we equipping our school partners or university partners or whoever? With the right kind of advice, talking points, playbooks, you know, guides so that parents don't feel like they're lost in the dark.
And I think this is where the decentralized nature of our industry, the fact that we have so many small players, makes it really hard to organize. And if you look at what they're doing in Europe, because most, uh, in Europe, uh, most of the countries have a centralized department of education that approves all of the technology tools as well as curricular tools.
They create centralized guidance on implementation use cases and parent home use. And we also have the EdTech alliance there that is making sure that, you know, laws around student data privacy are. Written in a way that allow ed tech companies to be successful in serving students and force them to follow the, like, the best, uh, practices of the law.
So, I don't know. Uh, to me this is almost signals, it's really demonstrating the gap that we have here.
[00:16:44] Matt Tower: Yeah. I, I think you're spot on and, and I would extend my challenge to founders just as much as parents and commentators and district leaders about like, what are you for, what is your vision for that classroom?
And like then part and parcel of that is how does your product actually contribute positively to that vision? I think there's too little of that. The company that came closest to it was Alpha School, and even that, their team, I would critique is saying, you focus so much on AI rather than the fundamentally new modality.
That, like it sounds really fun to be in an Alpha classroom. You do lots of cool projects. I wish that they had focused on that rather than two hour learning AI, et cetera. Like that's what I'm, I'm certainly looking for from all of those constituents, ed tech founders included.
[00:17:32] Ben Kornell: Yeah. And back to the Alpha School, I think there's a way in which it has also captured a Technocentric vision where if you actually, like you said, um, you know, McKinsey Price was on a podcast with Michael Horn.
It was just, it was the perfect messaging because she actually focused on what happens the rest of the day. The truth is like using a blend of IXL and some of the online reading programs and creating your own kind of wrapper to create incentives and reward systems is actually not so revolutionary. I mean, I remember going to Rocket Ship schools in the San Jose area, uh, over a decade ago and seeing a lot of this personalized learning time happen, or in Central Valley, you know, clever had kind of launched the clever tools and they were able to track the number of minutes and the progress reports on everything, and people were doing an hour to two hours of online learning because kids from a skill level needed to go to the learning gym and do their workouts, but.
McKinsey Price really effectively talked about what makes it not only a great learning experience in the afternoon when you're doing all these projects and it's exploratory and there's themes and reading, writing, and math all applied. It's also what a great place that is to teach because we're spending the highest value resource.
We have teachers doing a bunch of drill and kill over here. My fundamental issue with the system is that actually, are we drilling and killing on the things that really matter? I believe we need to build those base skills, but there's almost like a, you need to get the test score in order to have the right to do whatever you want the rest of the day.
And I think they just said, how do we shrink that into as small a package as possible? Okay. It's the two hour day. And you know Jennifer, Carolyn just posted online, she is a fan of Alpha schools because it's pushing the innovation. But when you have this like tech forward narrative and then you contrast it with.
You start getting this polarization in our space, which isn't helpful with the nuance. That's, that's all in between.
[00:19:49] Matt Tower: I just wanna like highlight, 'cause I think what you said was really important. This, like, you have to get the test score in order to have the right to do what you want with the rest of the day.
I think that to me is, is a really, really important point that I, I hope somebody, anybody takes home, uh, and, and really encompasses what I am looking for. And another thing, I don't know if you, you may or may not have read John Danner posted, so, and he's, he, John Danner, one of the founders of Rocket Schools or Rocketship, posted like the question like.
Should schools, we, we talk in, especially in tech, about like scalability and scale all the time. He's like, I'm not, he wasn't actually convinced that schools should be scalable. It might actually be better if schools are operating on a smaller student base environment to get this type of, you know, innovation and, and excitement from students about what's going on.
So that's another thing that sort of triggered me in a positive way of like, oh yeah, like maybe that's, I, that's an important note of a school. Maybe it shouldn't be a thousand students or 2000 students, 3000 students, et cetera. Maybe we should be thinking about making our school smaller so they feel like they have more room to explore and innovate and, and treat students as individuals.
You know, whether or not tech is included. I, I'm actually pretty agnostic, but like that sounds like a pretty cool idea.
[00:21:07] Ben Kornell: Yeah, and I feel like we, we are in a space where we should be talking about things that are truly innovative. Because age old problems are now in the zone of what AI Plus humans could solve.
We were just had a great dialogue at our webinar on AI tutoring and we had Arena from Google and James from OpenAI and Arena from Google was talking about, well, here's all the things a human tutor does and here's how we use AI to mimic supplement support, but here's what the human does. And James Donovan from OpenAI was like, okay, so you've said let's treat this as the human tutoring paradigm and let's find opportunities for efficiency improvement and so on.
We took the opposite approach and said, let's look at cognitive science. How do people learn and let's start there and then build up. What an awesome way to, for us to radically rethink education. Both of those strategies I think are exciting and yet we're in this like. Screen or no screen, like binary and
[00:22:13] Matt Tower: Right.
[00:22:14] Ben Kornell: That's just,
[00:22:14] Matt Tower: which is too simplistic. Yeah, it's too simplistic.
[00:22:18] Ben Kornell: The cell phone band stuff too feels like schools are throwing up their hands and saying, we literally can't do this. It's the, you know, the yonder pouches are breaking. These geo-located solutions require so much implementation support and the educators are just saying, I am too overwhelmed with all the other things we have to do to like manage your kids' devices.
And yes, they're distracted all the time. So I also think we're cell phone addiction versus like learning on a screen. Like these are also getting super conflated as well.
[00:22:55] Matt Tower: Yeah. The only thing I don't, it's a little puzzling to me that there hasn't been anybody who like wanted to take on just like the hardware for young people market.
Maybe it's not a venture backable tam, but like sort of shocking to me that none of the like philanthropic folks or no constellation of, or constellation of philanthropic folks has just said, you know what? Let's just like buy the factory space to make something that is actually fundamentally limited in terms of what it can access.
[00:23:31] Ben Kornell: I mean, there are a ton of kids cell phones. There's Bark is the most well-known one, gab and Pinwheel, and these are all phones that basically don't create screen addiction. The challenge is that the phones don't have the apps that the kids want to have. So we also have a problem with like parents training their kids to be on screens from the time they're like three years old at the restaurant table.
Like when you go into a restaurant and you see the. Behaviors, you're like, this is pre, this is before school preschool that kids are getting from a dopamine standpoint, like super tied into their digital device worlds.
[00:24:15] Matt Tower: Obviously you're never gonna be able to control like what goes on in the home, but it seems like schools are still buying relatively standard Chromebooks and or iPads.
I don't know. I, I, I like, I don't pretend that there's an easy solution to it.
[00:24:28] Ben Kornell: Yeah. We're certainly not gonna solve it here on our podcast today. I will say it dovetails with things about like. If we have no screens, then will we do AI literacy? How does one do AI literacy without it? On that front, I teased at the beginning, Google has made a pretty extraordinary commitment to basically train 6 million teachers.
They're partnering with is D-A-S-C-D to provide free AI literacy training to 6 million K 12 teachers and higher education faculty nationwide. This is also above and beyond I think, a lot of, uh, training that we see done by A-I-E-D-U AI for education. There's also, um, common sense media initiative, so lots of thinking about teachers and their enablement, but this feels like the largest and biggest play ever and it also is a great window into how Google is thinking.
Google's thinking. AI is for educators first and foremost. Students are secondary users. They've really turned into a B2B company rather than a consumer company. And they're thinking about the employees and helping them be efficient and be more successful rather than the end consumer. And I think it's a great move for them.
It also, they have such a large suite of offerings, they almost need training. Like how do I use Gemini? How do I use Notebook lm? How do I use it in Google Docs and slides? How do I use it with my email? How do I use it in Google Classroom? Like there's real value here, but this is, I think, the biggest play in K 12 we've had so far with an AI company saying, look, this is our space.
We are really investing in it.
[00:26:17] Matt Tower: Yeah, I think what's always sort of fascinated me about. Google specifically is they've taken much more of a stance on education than any of the other major providers. Right? And that started with Google Classroom, which you correctly have been saying for years is, is the biggest ed tech product in the world.
But strategically, what makes it interesting, and we should call out like OpenAI and Microsoft announced their teacher training initiatives last year. I haven't seen or heard anything from them since those announcements, but presumably something's happening somewhere, hopefully, but. With Google, they're saying in a very public way, like they're putting themselves out there of saying like, education is a hot button issue.
And if you mess up, an education error is magnified in a way that it's not. If you're doing this in like energy, right, or you know, communications or venture capital or whatever, it's like if you mess, if a, if a student's academic progress is messed up by a big tech company, it is a huge deal and like all the major media outlets will cover it.
So in addition to just like the employee resources and the technology resources that Google has put into education, it, it's really meaningful that they continue to develop custom. Things rather than just saying, this is our out of the box stuff. Like we take No, we hold no responsibility for the outcomes that the users have, whether they're education or not.
So that's always sort of delighted me that they probably don't have to do that to be successful, but they've chosen to.
[00:27:50] Ben Kornell: Yeah, I think it's such a smart choice for them, given that they already have the distribution here. It's also if they're aligning themselves with the teachers. It's a much more sympathetic AI play than aligning themselves first and foremost with the end users, the kids, just because there's all these, you know, moral hazards with student use of AI.
So it feels like both a bold move and a safe move. I think one thing that I've been watching is how's Microsoft gonna play in our space? You know, Microsoft, besides Google actually has like pretty tremendous channel. A lot of districts use Microsoft products. They use Microsoft Teams, which by the way, whenever I get a teams invite, I'm just like, oh God.
They're doing a lot with sovereign AI. I don't know if our audience knows as much about sovereign AI, but this idea that you should control your own LLN, your own data and that, so they're launch, they've launched this new product called Sovereign Cloud. Where basically I've got my information layer and then it interacts with the AI layer, but fully anonymized where my data is protected.
I feel like they're making some really smart infrastructure moves for their AI that could play out in education due to data privacy, things privacy, but everyone else and love what Anthropics doing, love our OpenAI friends, they are a little bit more hesitant to play deep in the K12 direct space.
[00:29:23] Matt Tower: Well, I think the context of Microsoft sort of sleeping giant, Google, like fairly public stance, OpenAI in favor of like enterprise type deals, OpenAI fairly aligned with the end user.
Like even their enterprise deals are clearly structured to support the individuals more so than the sort of power user admin and the instructors. Philanthropic. I don't, maybe you know better than I, I haven't, like they've done like country level deals to provide access that feel more open AI ish. But as a company, they're certainly more enterprise oriented.
So I don't, I don't have as good a sense of what their education go to market. Is is sort of built around.
[00:30:09] Ben Kornell: The initial read that I've had is that opening eyes push is get users that are students to become lifelong users. Kind of like the, this was the original Google Gmail strategy, I think is just get people in the ecosystem and then you can go out new products.
And that's especially effective with, um, university students 'cause that's when they're actually using code building products with AI coding. Like, you know, heavy users of AI and you want to imprint that you are the preferred platform. I think the challenge has been that Claude and Cloud code has been one step ahead and is really, it feels like they've caught the breakthroughs over the last couple of months.
You know, Chatt BT from a usage standpoint is still tops, so they've been basically going on a consolidated market one, uh, play. But I actually think globally speaking, when you have these verticalized education systems with the Department of Education that controls top to bottom the whole thing, it is actually an easier sell and an easier partner to work with.
And you can do a lot more in terms of guard railing because of the centralized authority, maybe us being a little bit Amer centric. Clouds are views on how these things could or should roll out because in other countries, the fragmentation that we're experiencing may not be quite so profound.
[00:31:34] Matt Tower: Yeah, I think that's a really important point.
I certainly am always curious. I think OpenAI had a deal with like the country of Greece and philanthropic had one with like the country of Ghana. So I hope more details about what those deals look like come out.
[00:31:48] Ben Kornell: All right, so we've reached our lightning round here. And we're down in our education section.
Any business deals or EdTech deals that caught your eye this week?
[00:31:59] Matt Tower: Great question. I think the couple of deals that have stuck out are nation graph just raised their additional round. It's sort of interesting to see them and starbridge both competing in the sort of like procurement space. It feels like there's been a step change improvement in the accessibility of like government content or the ability to aggregate government data, which feels like it probably will be a good thing, net net, not just for vendors, but also for interested stakeholders like you and I to be able to understand what's going on at the school level and aggregate that data into interesting charts and graphs to share with our readers.
That definitely caught my eye. Um, doing a quick scan. I don't know if there were any deals that stuck out to you.
[00:32:41] Ben Kornell: Yeah, that was the big one. There was the labor department announced 65 million in grants to boost community college workforce training. I feel like federal government is, you know, a year ago we thought this is gonna be all dismantled.
Now they're doing stuff and it seems like career and workforce is the big winner here with this administration. It seems like a deregulation push for K 12, but for workforce, this pressure to generate jobs is driving things. The other news that really caught my attention has just been a number of articles about.
The South and states like Alabama making big investments in elementary math, reading and writing, and they've had incredible gains. And yet if you look at the absolute level that they're at, they're still not on track to be at college level. So there is a question around what of these strategies are enduring that will help students reach their full potential and ultimately be college and career ready?
Or are we in a space where kids are just so far behind that any little thing will move them forward? I think it is a real look yourself in the mirror, in the blue states kind. Moment where actually these governors and departments of education in, you know, particularly Louisiana and Alabama and Mississippi, have shown real movement on issues of learning loss that seem to be intractable.
[00:34:13] Matt Tower: I feel obligated to call out too. If you look in aggregate, the South certainly has more uptake of sort of private initiatives or pushing public funding towards private sources, ESAs tax credit, scholarships, et cetera. I don't think, at least I haven't seen data yet that says that the two are tied, that like outcomes improve as you increase sort of fungible funding for these types of things.
But it certainly stands the reason that there'd be more experimentation per our earlier conversation that you'd see more. New types of schools emerging and new types of learning models that maybe that does get them to the point where they're passing those tests that we were talking about earlier and can start to do other interesting things with their days.
So I haven't seen data that has the two tied together, but that's certainly the other theme that is emerging from the south.
[00:35:04] Ben Kornell: These are all trends. I, I feel like we have had these sensational headlines this week, but these are the underlying trends that actually over time. We're gonna, are gonna basically tell the story of what education looks like.
Are we gonna have blended public private funding? Are we gonna be able to turn around these kind of endemic learning loss trends? And what is the role of AI screens ed tech in our space? Like, gosh, it feels like we've had this like crazy week, and yet we're touching on pretty enduring themes that we've been covering really since the pandemic.
So with that in mind, we will totally bring you back again, Matt, to hit on all of these. Um, just before we go, can you say a little bit about what Whiteboard Advisors does and, you know, if people want to reach out to Whiteboard Advisors, the best way to reach y'all?
[00:35:58] Matt Tower: Yeah, I appreciate that. So Whiteboard is a strategy, a boutique strategy consulting firm, mostly focused on policy related to education.
So we talk to a lot of investors and company leaders and nonprofits about the regulatory environment that EdTech companies operate under. So even if you're dealing with private market ed tech, you, you still probably have some regulatory overhead to think about. And so we, we try to sort of qualify and quantify that risk, whether it's positive risk or negative risk for an organization and for many companies.
We also do communications related to the, the education market. Again, helping. Company leaders, investors, and, and others understand how to communicate in this complex regulatory environment that we find ourselves in, in the, the US ed tech market.
[00:36:50] Ben Kornell: Yeah, when you call whiteboard advisors, I think what the, the ideal is that you really have like this entire team that you're, you know, outsourcing your pr, your policy, your like data research insights, and you've worked with Whiteboard and Ben Wallerstein for a long, long time.
So thanks so much for repping them and for being here on the show today. If it happens in EdTech, you will hear about it here on EdTech Insiders. We will now go to our interview with Ariella. Enjoy and thank you EdTech Insider listeners. We will see you all soon.
[00:37:25] Matt Tower: Thanks, Ben.
[00:37:27] Ben Kornell: Hello, EdTech Insider listeners.
We have a special guest today. Ariella Racco is a former middle school teacher, turn founder who spent over 10 years in classrooms before building CoLab Education, the first professional collaboration platform for the entire K 12 education ecosystem. Now, trusted by thousands of teachers and growing into over 12 countries.
She has left the classroom to build what teachers have never had dedicated infrastructure to connect, share, and grow together. I am so excited the middle school teacher in me is, you know, jumping up and down. Welcome to the show, Ariella Racco.
[00:38:05] Ariella Racco: Thank you Ben. I'm very excited to be here and yes, connect with another fellow middle school teacher.
I think it takes a certain type of person to love working in that messy middle. And it, it was one of my favorite parts of my career is working with those kids. So lots.
[00:38:20] Ben Kornell: I always say that I kind of, my maturity stopped growing at middle school. So we connected when I was teaching, we connected at our same level of maturity.
Oh
[00:38:29] Ariella Racco: yes,
[00:38:29] Ben Kornell: who is the best? Um, and that being said, it was also incredibly hard. So it's great to see that you've been working on building that infrastructure for teachers to be successful. In in the past, you've said that as AI transform education, the real bottleneck isn't access to content, but the lack of collaboration infrastructure for educators.
I mean, collaboration between educators has been a long time studied fact in professional development that if teachers are collaborating, they're going to be more successful, and yet the profession is more isolated than ever. So what, what is your vision? What should it look like on the ground in schools today?
[00:39:07] Ariella Racco: Yeah, I mean, I'm glad that you noted the importance of collaboration. I think a lot of people know that they feel it, they've seen great examples, but they've also seen and experienced poor examples of what is called collaboration, where it might be, you know, a haphazard PD day where your principal says, Hey, get together and collaborate on this thing.
And it's really not true collaboration, and you're not really set up for success. And so that can sometimes turn people off of the idea of collaboration, but. Where I, when really going with this is, of course right now we have so much access to information and content more than ever. You can search, find, create, and build new lessons and learning experiences in this wonderful world of AI.
But what makes it really difficult is you have all this stuff that you can work from a lot of different choices to make as a professional. And it is really important that that collaborative infrastructure is there to make the best choices for you, your class, your students, um, and align it to the goals.
Where are you trying to go next? And does this really fit in at the right time, in the right place? Right now it's in schools. It, I think we are in a little bit of a, a space where the dust has been kicked up, right? There's, people are figuring a lot of things out. People are experimenting and I actually think it's a very, although it overwhelming, exciting time to make some changes that probably have always.
Or should have always happened, but now there's a bit of an excuse to make those changes to systems, um, and structures. So, for example, when it comes to collaboration for teachers in schools, right now, they're having conversations that they've never had before. For example, we worked with, um, teachers in a school who were all tech integrators at their school, all working to support AI usage with staff and students.
And working together in a collaborative environment was one of the first times that they actually turned to each other and said, and discussed their shared goals. What, why is it important that we're taught having these conversations about ai? What is this looking like?
[00:41:16] Matt Tower: Hmm.
[00:41:16] Ariella Racco: Where are you trying to personally drive this?
Like what are your motivations as an individual, as an educator? And they hadn't had those conversations to date despite being on a very small and cohesive collaborative team. So I, I think it's an exciting opportunity to break the mold a little bit.
[00:41:35] Ben Kornell: So this has been a challenge for a long time. I mean, when I was back in the classroom, there was this power of shutting the door.
It's like, don't mess with me. This is my kingdom. I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do. And I remember trying to collaborate on grade level teams, and they're like. You're a rookie teacher, like good luck. You know, the rest of us have our mimeographs that we're still using and things like that. You were in the classroom for a decade.
What was the spark that made you say, okay, I want to take action. This is the problem that I need to solve. Where was that inspiration point for CoLab?
[00:42:10] Ariella Racco: It was both from my own challenges, but also the successes that I was finding working in the collaborative environments that I had in my schools. That pushed me because, for example, I always worked in small schools with amazing collaborative teams, and I'm not just saying that I, we worked.
Truly cohesively. We co-planned. We had amazing structures to plan what's coming next, make sure we were aligned. And generally the team was really excited about that. It wasn't a push and pull of, oh, my ideas aren't getting through to my students in the class. It was actually, we have a really cool shared vision and we know that if we put our heads together and build this together, it will be better.
It'll lead to better outcomes for our students. So I experienced that personally and it was one of the favorite parts of the role for me. But when I talked to my friends and colleagues in other schools and other spaces, that was simply not the reality. Just as you described, people felt like. I would much rather close my door and put my head down and do my own thing and not attend meetings and not work collaboratively.
Sometimes it meant more work. Sometimes it meant compromise. Like my, my grand vision of what I want to do with my students isn't going to be fulfilled. If I work with 2, 3, 4 other people, it's gonna, it's going to look different and maybe I'm not comfortable with that. Right? These are realities. So I, once I realized that the unique experiences I had collaborating that were successful, um, I realized, hey, more people need to taste what it's like to be on an awesome functioning team to build learning.
Because once you feel it and you see how much better the outcomes are, it's super motivating as an educator to find those people who you wanna work with, who are going to push you, who are gonna make you think differently and critically. And sometimes you don't have those people in your school. And that's where I think.
The, this problem really spanned from where people felt, Hey, my network is super limiting. I have a few people that I work with in my school. We, and sometimes it can feel like an echo chamber of the same ideas and the same perspectives and the same challenges. And when you get out of the class and you go to a conference or an event, or you find something cool online that connects and resonates with you, then your, your mind is, is unlocked.
You've got all these cool opportunities, but that's really, really hard to do on an everyday basis. And that was really what we were trying to solve for is can we more efficiently and effectively connect teachers together so that these collaborations can happen so they can do what they love to do best.
And that's really the driving force for, for what we're trying to do.
[00:44:56] Ben Kornell: Yeah, I mean, it's incredible. Teachers are one of the largest professional groups in the world, yet they don't have a dedicated professional network built for how they actually work. Why do you think that need hasn't met, been met? Why haven't platforms like LinkedIn or Facebook groups truly met the need of K 12 educators or maybe professional associations?
Why do you think this gap has persisted, and how are you thinking about it uniquely in the perspective of what educators need?
[00:45:25] Ariella Racco: LinkedIn is such a funny space. I still see principals and teachers who I'm connected with sometimes a, a peer here and there on LinkedIn and their profiles are, you know, 20 years old and they say they're still a student university or they're working at a school that they're not working at.
They don't even have a profile image. Like there is no real strong K 12 educator presence on LinkedIn. And from all the feedback that we've gathered, it's really just because they haven't felt like it's a place for them to gain anything super valuable. It seems like a space where people are networking to do business, to buy and in exchange and sell services and products that they aren't relevant to them.
And so
[00:46:06] Ben Kornell: are they on TikTok? Are they on? Oh yes. You know, I, I will say that TikTok and Instagram, but especially TikTok with just like. You know, here's two minute hacks that I can use tomorrow in my classroom. Seems to be really, really followed by educators.
[00:46:25] Ariella Racco: Absolutely. Yes. TikTok is huge. Instagram is huge.
Facebook groups are still pretty active and were were wildly successful. Even what was, Twitter was a place where people were going and sharing thought leadership all the time. And a place to find those two minute hacks, quick ideas, links out to resources. And in many cases, these social spaces are still being used.
And obviously the, the short form video is kind of reign supreme. This is what people are really leaning towards and it's resonating with them and they're able to connect with more people that they wouldn't otherwise be able to connect with. All very positive. But what people have shared is that it's such a messy space to find the exact types of people and resources you need because there, it's not purpose built for education.
So if I wanted to find. Another educator in this teaching in the same grade level with the same strategic goals in play, and maybe the same alignment on strategies and maybe a similar demographic of student. How am I supposed to find that? Through TikTok, hashtags and filtering and my algorithm, right?
You're getting people come to you in these social spaces because of past videos you've liked, and they're connected to your social personal profile. So if you're checking out recipes and you're connecting with your family and you're buying, you know, cool sneakers on Instagram, that's affecting who's appearing in your feed.
And that's supposed to be a space where people are finding professional or trying to find professional resources. So it's, it's a super messy. Sort of space and more and more, we've had a lot of educators, especially younger people, say to us, we don't wanna be clocking in to Instagram for professional reasons.
We wanna have a dedicated space that's professional where we can find the people and resources we need specifically in our education context, where we can get in, find what we need, and get out. Ultimately, when we want to have a break from work and do something different on another social app and connect and have fun and be creative in another space, they don't need to be merged.
There is no value in them being together. But the value of separating them is now you have a dedicated space where you're going to find the people that are there for the same reasons and beyond just the networking side of what we've tried to build with CoLab is there's a lot of functionality that educators need that aren't connected to these spaces.
So Facebook groups, you can send links and share things with each other, and then they're just lost. And it's really hard to take those resources or those two minute TikTok videos and then do something with it. Apply it into teaching, mash it up, share it with your colleagues, save it for future reference like.
There's a lot of pieces missing. So teachers end up spending a lot of time taking these great ideas from awesome sources and compiling them and making them actionable. And that's a lot of wasted time. That could be better spent building new things, iterating things, connecting with people, growing in new spaces and and ways.
So we're really trying to find that happy medium, but we aren't looking away from these things that have worked well in the past because there's a lot of power that comes when you've got mass network effect of educators together and excited about being in one space.
[00:49:57] Ben Kornell: Yeah. You know, we've had networks like this before around things like content teachers pay teachers was a powerful one where people exchanged lesson plans and so on.
I think the critique there was really around quality control and like, where are the, where's the efficacy around some of these things? And now with AI generated lesson plans and units and modules, there's even more concern around AI slop. Yeah. How do you think about like a community that's sharing professional resources and the need for people to have authentic, open connection with also moderation, you know, content moderation to make sure that it's high quality and that like what is actually being shared is, is really efficacious for kids, for learning, for teaching and instruction.
[00:50:50] Ariella Racco: Yeah, absolutely. I think that is the, the ultimate goal is there are these spaces where, and like I said, flood of resources being exchanged, but that human piece is really important. Having that ability to take your professional lens and judgment and see is this something that will work and be high quality and, and, uh, appeal to my students and drive the outcomes that we're looking for.
And that's something that maybe AI can get better at, uh, deciphering over time, but there's so much nuance. And also just the practical reality of you could create something that you think is gold, but when you actually apply it in a real world context, it doesn't quite work the way you thought it was going to.
How many times has that happened for us as teachers? When you've got, you spend a lot of time planning this awesome lesson. I was a science and math teacher. I would create these amazing labs and then. Students would be in it actually experimenting and playing with these tools. And then you see, oh, that didn't work the way I thought it was going to.
I really needed to see this in action to see how I can adapt and iterate it. And so having people in collaboration with some of these AI tools in play, I think are really becoming more important than ever. And enabling what we're trying to do is enable educators to be able to indicate what's high quality and why better than ever.
So the typical functions we used to have are things like liking things, saving things, and that's very basic commenting on things saying Thanks. Uh, thanks for sharing this resource, Ben. That was really helpful. That is great, but that's a tip of the iceberg. We wanna get below the surface and understand in which ways and context and practical implications or applications is this resource working or not working?
Or how can we improve this and iterate it? And so we have a lot of different ideas in the works right now, but we're actually. Putting a call out to a lot of the educators we work with now to figure out how that can look better and different. An idea we have now based on some of the feedback is this idea that you could mark a resource as a gem and then indicate why is that a gem?
This was highly engaging for my students who, um, English is not their first language, or this was connected to these specific strands of curriculum that I've been trying to target, or this really moved the needle for my early literacy learners in understanding this piece of phonics, um, and, and how it applied to their life.
So we're really trying to figure out how can we make it easy for people to collaborate, share feedback, and iterate existing resources to be better. We don't need to start from scratch and just wipe out all the resources that we've ever used. That's all really overwhelming. We need to figure out. What works that we wanna keep and as the world continues to change, do we have systems in place to alter and, and adjust our sales?
Because the worst thing is feeling like you've done all this work to get to the, the peak of quality for this one resource, and then have everything fall and change the next year or the year after. Um, we want people to be in this builder state, this iterative state that learning, teaching and learning is always adapting and always changing.
And we have the tools. As a community of professionals to be at our fingertips, to be able to do this work collectively, to take off some of the load, uh, to make it fun and to ensure that it's aligned with, uh, the needs and outcomes that, again, will continue to change. We, we don't know what in 10 years will, will need to be driving in schools.
I, we're still trying to figure that out right now in this new AI world, new-ish AI world. Right?
[00:54:58] Ben Kornell: Yeah. I mean, what's interesting to me is that it's actually we have more access. To new tools, to content information than we've ever had in human history. And yet how to sort it and understand what should I use, what shouldn't I use, and have trust in the materials, curriculum, content strategies, everything.
I think trust is the part that's really missing. And at the same time, I'm, you know, as educators are struggling with that, I feel like education providers, whether they be ed tech or curriculum or whatever, they want authentic connection with educators too. They don't want something that's top down, that never gets used that sits in a corner or something like that.
So they're also struggling with how to authentically engage. So it does feel like the problem set that you've. Identify is a huge one that's only likely to grow coming forward. In terms of what's getting you most excited about where the traction that you're having, what are some bright lights and in terms of challenges or, or headwinds, what's the biggest challenge that, that you face?
[00:56:08] Ariella Racco: Yeah, I think bright lights for us have been, when we share what we're working on, what we're building and, and the direction we're going. It's speaking to almost every single corner of the education ecosystem. We have educators who are so excited to finally have a professional space to connect, but we, like you mentioned, we also have these other types of solutions providers.
We have EdTech companies who have shared, if you are building a space where people are coming together and sharing best of resources, peer vetting tools, and sharing how they work and why, why they're, you know, excited to bring this to their class. They are wanting to be in this space and see a connection.
And when we talk to all these different folks, we're starting to become the, the messenger between people who haven't otherwise had a chance to connect. So a PD provider for example, who's trying to build out really high quality professional learning to move the needle for educators, they're always looking for validation on what's actually going on in classrooms right now.
Where are your challenges? What do they really look like? We have a team of experts who can put our heads down and get this work done so that we can deliver something to you that is effective and engaging and motivating. And, and, and for educators, they love to hear that people are taking their feedback, applying it, and building better products and better solutions.
So. That's one of the most exciting things that we're seeing. And to give a couple kind of concrete examples, one of the, uh, people that we reached out to was surprisingly Harley from Shopify, who obviously, you know Shopify. What does that have to do with K to 12 education? He actually put a call out to action, um, at an event here in Toronto saying we want to bring entrepreneurship into schools at the, at the earliest stage.
We think it's super important that the career of being a founder and a builder is something that people know is viable and that they build the skillsets to have an entrepreneurial spirit, whether they become an entrepreneur in the purest form or in different variations, right? And I was sitting there thinking, wow.
This is really cool because we've got teachers who wanna build resources and are building ways to incorporate entrepreneurship into lessons and units and learning experiences. But we've got these other organizations who are really excited and have resources, industry experience that they can bring to this.
What a collab of all collabs, like this could be huge. So I reached out to Harley and Kind and did a funny sort of public video that he responded to, and we're going to have some conversations to see how can we work together to enable educators to have the resources in place, the time, the space, whatever they need.
To work with industry professionals to build these resources. Something that hasn't really been easy to do before. If you had a great idea as a teacher, I wanna teach about entrepreneurship in my class. It was a solo effort. You had to just put your head down and get it done. But I think what people are excited about with CoLab is that we're unlocking these opportunities to collaborate with people across the education ecosystem and beyond.
To work with you, to play with you to build things that are awesome for your students that, again, wasn't previously possible. So that's definitely the bright light and something that I, I welcome anybody who has awesome ideas for collaboration that we can help facilitate to come forward. We are, we're always down to jam on that.
And then when it comes to challenges, I think one of the biggest challenges is we're building a place for professional networking. We have a few thousand folks already in there working together, giving us great feedback, but we're still in early stage and everybody needs somebody different. Everybody needs their perfect collaborator match, and the more people you have in there working and collaborating and building their professional profile and sharing, the more likely you're gonna find that person or that resource that resonates with you.
So the biggest challenge for us has just been how can we get this? To scale quickly as a small startup who's trying to get the word out about what we're doing and build that momentum and that network effect, and there's no one right way to do it. I mean, we can look to examples like LinkedIn for how they built the largest professional networking platform, but I think there's something different and unique about the education space that we're still trying to crack, and it's something that we're not backing down from.
We're going to figure out how can we make sure that every educator from every corner of the world knows that CoLab exists and is a place for them to join and find people that can collaborate with them. We're a free tool for teachers, so we try to make that barrier non-existent. But it's hard when you're a small team.
So that's been the biggest challenge and something that we have a lot of creative ideas to solve. But. I'm excited to connect with other folks who are passionate about this and see ways that they can come in and collaborate and contribute in this space. Truly, truly an open call to get more minds on this.
[01:01:38] Ben Kornell: So, if people wanna find out more about CoLab Education, what's the best way for them to do that?
[01:01:43] Ariella Racco: You can definitely first just create an account. Don't even go to a regular site. Just create an account and join it's app dot CoLab Education. We have an Instagram at CoLab dot ed. Um, you can also go to our website, CoLab Education, find us on LinkedIn.
Um, you can connect with me personally. I would love to hear your feedback and thoughts. Really always excited to have those types of conversations. So, um, really truly appreciative Ben, of this time and opportunity to share because again, the more people who know what we're doing, the more likely we are going to be successful in building this for the education community.
[01:02:22] Ben Kornell: Well, given that we've spent five years building the EdTech Insiders community, I can relate to kind of the opportunities and challenges that you face. And so folks, please be sure to check out Ariella Racco, CEO. She is on Instagram, she is on LinkedIn, or you can go to CoLab Education and check out it out more.
We also have in our show notes links to the website. Thanks so much for joining us today, Ariella and wishing you a lot of luck and can't wait to have you on in another year to hear how things are going.
[01:02:55] Ariella Racco: Thanks so much, Ben. Take care.
[01:02:57] Ben Kornell: Bye-bye.
[01:02:58] Alex Sarlin: Thanks for listening to this episode of EdTech Insiders. If you like 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 EdTech Insiders Newsletter on Substack.
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