Edtech Insiders
Edtech Insiders
Crafting Dynamic Educational Experiences: A Deep Dive with the Minds Behind Story Xperiential
Elyse Klaidman, after 22 years at Pixar leading creative and educational programs, is now the CEO of X IN A BOX, where she leverages her background as an artist, educator and leader.
Prior to co-founding X IN A BOX in 2020, Tony DeRose led the computer graphics research group for much of his 23 years at Pixar. He is passionate about project based learning and has been very active in the Maker Movement.
Brit Cruise, Chief Learning Officer at X IN A BOX and creator of educational content and products, launched his career with the YouTube channel Art of the Problem, leading to working at Khan Academy and partnerships with NASA, Google, and Disney/Pixar.
Dennis Henderson, VP of Education and Strategy at X IN A BOX, leverages his role as Executive Director of Manchester Youth Development Center to drive social justice through project-based education, promoting social mobility and economic opportunities.
Recommended Resources:
📖 Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull & Amy Wallace
📺 Art of the Problem Youtube Channel by Brit Cruise
📖 The Children's Machine: Rethinking School In The Age Of The Computer by Seymour Papert
Welcome to Season Eight of edtech insiders where we speak to educators, founders, investors, thought leaders and the industry experts who are shaping the global education technology industry. Every week we bring you the week in edtech. important updates from the EdTech field, including news about core technologies and issues we know will influence the sector like artificial intelligence, extended reality, education, politics, and more. We also conduct in depth interviews with a wide variety of EdTech 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 Edtech Insiders substack newsletter. Thanks for being part of the Edtech Insiders community enjoy the show. Today we're talking to the founding team behind X in a Box, an Xperiential platform launched out of a collaboration between Pixar and Khan Academy veterans. Elyse Klaidman after 22 years at Pixar leading creative and educational programs is now the CEO of x in a box, where she leverages her background as an artist, educator and leader. Tony DeRose, prior to co founding x in a box led the computer graphics research group for much of his 23 years at Pixar. He's passionate about project based learning and has been very active in the Maker Movement. Brit Cruise, the chief learning officer at x and a box launched his career with the youtube channel art of the problem, which led to work at Khan Academy and to partnerships with NASA, Google and Disney Pixar. Dennis Henderson, VP of education and strategy at x. And Abaqus leverages his role as executive director of Manchester Youth Development Center to drive social justice through Project Based Education, promoting social mobility and economic opportunities. Elyse Tony, Brit and Dennis, Welcome to EdTech insiders.
Elyse Klaidman:Alex, thank you so much for having us. I've been a faithful listener to this podcast. And so it's really exciting to be on it now.
Tony DeRose:Yeah, I'm really happy to be here. Thanks, Alex.
Alexander Sarlin:Let's get started. So you do something so unique and interesting in the ed tech world. And I want our listeners to, you know, get a little bit of the background of how you came into the ed tech world from very different and very interesting backgrounds. So let's start with you, at least, you know, how was your background in art and leadership and animation at Pixar shaped the educational philosophy of experiential,
Elyse Klaidman:I always love hearing how people got to where they are right. And so for me, I feel like it always starts with the household I grew up in, I was really fortunate to grow up in a very creative household with a mother as an artist and the father of journalist and writer. And so the creative mindset was just something I almost took for granted, right, we had a house full of people who were always thinking outside of the box, solving problems exploring the world through creative endeavors. So I saw it, and I lived it. And then I got to live it in a whole different kind of environment at Pixar. You know, in between that I worked as an artist, I worked as a teacher, I ran a gallery, so all kinds of different things. But at Pixar, you know, really being able to see the power of creativity as a skill and a tool, with technical artists, with animators with story artists, but not just that, but in the leadership, right and in the whole approach. And I was super fortunate to have Ed Catmull, founder, president of Pixar as the person who hired me and one of my greatest mentors. So we kind of had a front row seat to the development of a creative culture, and the complexity of maintaining that right through growth and challenges. So I think one of the things at Pixar that was kind of most influential for me and really is applied to what we do is the connection between art and technology. And that creativity is critical to both right creativity isn't just painting, dance, music, creativity is problem solving. And it's involved in every skill set. And it is more important today that we bolster up those skills than pretty much anything else I can think of creativity
Alexander Sarlin:is such a universal way of seeing the world and I think Pixar sort of brought the creative mindset to a totally different level of exposure globally. And it's just really amazing to have that kind of mindset and that kind of background being brought into the EdTech world. So Tony you also have A really interesting background at Pixar, especially from the technology side, tell us a little bit about that background and how you bring this convergence of computer graphics and technology to education.
Tony DeRose:Sure. So I've always been interested in science in physics, also in programming. And so, for me, computer graphics was kind of the perfect discipline, because you need a lot of physics to make things look real, you need a lot of mathematics to do the physics and you need computer science, you know, to do the programming and make it visual. So that was kind of the way I fell into it, it really is the perfect discipline for me. And then you know, how it intersects with education and learning is really interesting. And I kind of like to look at it from the perspective of brain science, and what we know from research. So we know from 100 years of learning research that you know, people learn best by doing, you know, if you just read something or listen to something, your understanding of that concept is pretty superficial, and it fades quickly. But if you do something, if you get your hands on it, and really kind of grapple with the concept in a active experiential way, you're learning really deepens and it gets burned into your memory. And then the computer graphics angle, and brain science is that, you know, something like between 40 and 60% of our brain is devoted to visual processing. And so computer graphics, really, you know, taps into that visual part of the brain. And you know, you can bring to life, especially with generative AI these days, you can bring to life kind of any animation that you can imagine to illustrate, you know, complicated concepts. And we're starting to see a lot more of that now and online learning. So it's really an exciting time to be doing what we're doing. All sorts of doors are opening,
Alexander Sarlin:it really is, you know, Brit, maybe you can tell us a little bit about so you have a background at Khan Academy, maybe you can tell us a little bit about how you from your Khan Academy background, first connected with Elyse and Tony, from Pixar, to create some of the amazing educational experiences that we evolved into experiential and x in a box. Sure
Brit Cruise:thing, when I was at Khan Academy, I was in charge of the partnerships at a certain point. And literally one day, Tony and Elise knocked on the door and someone from Pixar was at the office, and I jumped in, put my hand up and said, Oh, I want to go see what they want to do, and work with them. So it was very much right time, right place, put your hand up and jump forward and volunteer to get started. That's really how we met. So
Alexander Sarlin:that sounds like an amazing start. And you raise your hand and jump right in and tell us about what you started creating and how it evolved into what you're doing today.
Brit Cruise:What we initially created was something called Pixar in a box. And the instinct there was let's create a window into Pixar, so people could see how those movies get made. And what goes into the kind of the process of creation and creativity. And what we loved about that program is the scale. So through Khan Academy, millions of people got to see that content, we hear about people at studios, including Pixar, who saw that and it kind of gave them a little bit of a leg up in having the mental model to do this in their career. And so once we left, and I left Khan Academy, Tony and Elise left Pixar, when we created experiential, our new learning platform, we really wanted to take that to the next level, and turn that window into a pathway people can walk through and as Tony mentioned, actually create something and actually create something in the way things get created in the real world. That means you're creating with others, that means you're getting feedback on your work, that means you're looking at other people's work evolving alongside your own. And that especially means your work is exhibited, and you know, consumed by someone at the end. And so we weren't really wanted to take it to the next level. And that's why we pushed forward with this experiential learning model.
Elyse Klaidman:One of the things that's really cool that's happened in recent years is new hires at Pixar. When they're telling their stories. They're saying, I found Pixar in a box. And that opened up this world for me. And now some of them are our industry experts on our experiential storytelling program, right. And so to be able to extend what we started in a way that's going to be much more impactful and reach much further and have this truly making creating learning component in a community. That's the magic that we're trying to do.
Alexander Sarlin:That's amazing. And I mean, it's such a fascinating origin story. And it is such a beautiful thing when education comes full circle, and you sort of meet people whose lives were changed or enhanced by the educational opportunities You've given them it's so amazing. And you know, so flash forward, you did Pixar in a box had reached millions of learners, some of whom are now your experts, as you've mentioned, and experiential annex, and a box is now a edtech platform being used all over the country and the world. Dennis, let's bring you into the conversation. It's an active learning platform. As Tony mentioned, it is all about collaboration and creativity. As you've mentioned, both Brit and Elyse, how is Xperiential, also working to contribute to bridging the opportunity gap to getting this incredible type of education to students who otherwise would not usually be able to access it or not ever be able to access it?
Dennis Henderson:Yeah, well, just our mission and the spirit in which we got together, we have this kindred spirit in regards to opening the door or moving the curtain aside so people can see what it is, within just my background within education, I did not step into education within a traditional path. I was one of them, young people that grew up in what you consider a marginalized community in which the opportunities that you see around you were limited, not my capacity to learn on my capacity to dream. However, the capacity to actually experienced things so that I can navigate my strengths that was limited. However, I can say I was fortunate to have some great mentors along the way. But how do you do that to scale and that's the pathway that we created with experiential in which we have the scalable mentor ship. And you know, when you have this direct engagement with mentors, and then there's this engagement in which you're actually creating something, and you're creating this within a cohort, with other learners that's participating what you now you create this sense of belonging that might not exist in marginalized areas. And, you know, when we talked about just, you know, underserved communities, as an educator, I'm an educator that, you know, I kind of left from traditional started in charter, and now I stepped in and out of school space, I'm still an educator, but how I look at it is the vast majority, I'm gonna say 99% of our students are when it comes down to just the education beings don't like to use the word subpar, but preparing them for the real world, 99% of our students are really being misguided when it comes to not having the opportunity to truly learn what skills is necessary to transition into the real world. So we provide this opportunity for it's to not just so much to learn a concept, but you're actually practicing, and then you're practicing within this community. And at the same time, I'm always pleased to look at our exhibition in which their work is being displayed to the world, not theirs code, not their ethnicity, not their social economic status. But the products that they have created within his community, which speaks for them. I
Alexander Sarlin:totally agree the idea of being able to provide educational opportunities to those who are in situations where they just maybe aren't getting enough guidance about how to actually succeed in the post school environment, in a college environment in a career environment. And something that I really admire about what you're doing with experiential and excellent books is this combination of creative and active learning, and also very sort of professionally oriented learning. It is not just about having fun, being creative, it's about the creative profession, and really practicing and getting a sense of what it's like to be a creative professional and what that actually means. So, you know, we've gotten this far in the conversation, but I realized that I wonder if people who have not yet experienced experiential might not know the full scope of what you do. So at least in Tony, I'd love to hear you talk through the experience of a learner. With experiential, it's such an interesting and unique experience. Can you just talk us through from the beginning to end what a student actually gets to do in your platform? Yeah,
Elyse Klaidman:sure. I'll jump in. Really, in many ways, what we're doing is simulating an internship and apprenticeship, in this case in a storytelling organization, right. So story experiential, which is our first experiential program on the platform allows you to do what a storyteller does, which is create an original story. And we've broken that up into eight steps. And each step has something you are creating something you are making, right. So that, you know that happens in other places as well. We've done it with using Pixar as approach to storytelling. We have industry experts, we have like, you know, really the most extraordinary people, they're sharing their stories. They're sharing insights on how to approach these steps. But really where the magic happens in this platform is that we've created a community and each time you are Upload your work at each step, you both give feedback to other participants in the program and receive feedback. And then an entire gallery of work of creators at the exact same place of creation that you're in. You can see what they're doing, you can learn from their work, you can ask questions, and communicate and really go through a process. That is a professional process. This is how work gets done. You do something, people tell you stuff about it, you redo it, you think about it. Again, this is what we do every day. And so that creative community, that iterative process, industry experts, and really clear step by step creation process is what's at the heart of our platform. Yeah,
Tony DeRose:I'll just add that it's very experiential in the process that Elise just talked about is underneath that is kind of a model of online learning that we've developed, that we're really excited about. And just to back up a little bit, you know, if you're trying to learn some new craft, or some really difficult set of concepts, you know, having a mentor sit next to you and help you through it and coach you through it is really just amazing. The problem is, if you're going to have 100,000 students, which is not a big number, really go through a program, you can't find, you know, five or 10,000 really qualified mentors, and even if you could, it would make the program so expensive that nobody could afford to participate, or very few could. And so an aha moment for us was, well, suppose we use the mentors, the industry experts, for the instructional part, we can make that scale by recording a video or doing online sessions. And then let's break the coaching part out and not use mentors, but instead rely on peer to peer learning. And so that peer to peer learning is what's happening in the gallery. And we've developed some mechanisms to really help people get good at learning from others, and having others learn from you. And we believe that model is going to work in lots of disciplines. Beyond storytelling, we're going to do an experiential and video game design, we'll probably do one on entrepreneurship and startups, music fashion, ultimately, domains that people generally don't think of as creative, but actually are very creative, you know, mathematics, biology, climate science. So we feel like we're in a good position to really test that thesis that this peer to peer learning model is going to be very effective,
Brit Cruise:I would add a way I knew me personally know that this will work. When I went back before Khan Academy, when I had a YouTube channel, one of the first things I learned when a video gets popular is the community is so good at answering each other's questions often much better than I would. And then when I went on to Khan Academy, which is even bigger scale, it was just even more of that the most brilliant help in the message boards, that the more people you pour in, the better that help gets, that essential thing is always on the periphery, at least in my experience with online platforms. And so with experiential, we said, let's put that at the center and assume that and then see what else is needed.
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, and that combination of expert guidance from professionals, peer to peer at scale, mentorship and feedback. And then a structure is you mentioned, at least right at a structure that takes you through of professional sort of internship, like experience, that combination is very, very powerful. Because it provides structure, it provides support, it provides motivation, it provides feedback, a lot of very specific feedback. And you get to learn from incredible professional experts. And of course, with all of your backgrounds, you have access to unbelievable people, some of the best in the world. So it's a killer combination. And it's really great to hear all of you talk through how the pieces came together. So let's talk a little bit about this, the distribution, the gallery part of your model, because I know it's such a key aspect to what experiential does people are doing active learning they're creating, and then they're giving and getting feedback in this gallery. So Dennis, let me start with you. And Britt, I know you have a lot to say about the gallery as well tell us a little bit about a student's experience in the gallery. How does the community support one another when they're, as Elise says, at the same phase of their creative journey,
Dennis Henderson:the gallery is powerful because of that similarity, or that phase that they're walking through together. It's always very intriguing to watch when the gallery first starts in the initial feedback and responses and you see the reservation sum and within the initial feedback, but then you start seeing it grow. And when I say grow, you're talking about the dialogue and you're seeing this, the back and forth and you see the richness of the feedback growing and this comfort of being vulnerable with putting yourselves out there. And not only putting ourselves out there and you know, initially looking for the feedback, but it grows into wanting the feedback, which as an educator It is very rare commodity to come into a room with a bunch of sins, I cannot wait for your feedback as an educator, but within this community thrive for the feedback from one another. And as others have mentioned, the learning that takes place within that community goes well beyond what the experts bring to the table. And we know this, I mean, again, I still work directly every day with kids, and they keep you up to speed with a lot of the latest and greatest when it comes to technology. And this is what you see in the gallery. They're ahead of the curve on education, when it comes to what's relevant for what they need to get done. And they share that information. So the gallery, it becomes this beautiful creative community of individuals from diverse backgrounds, diverse walks of lives, but finding the appreciation for one another, through this process in which they all have this shared vision of telling a story, and they're supporting each other, no matter what the story is. They respect each other's process that they're going through together. Yeah,
Elyse Klaidman:I'm gonna just jump in for one second and say, because I'm listening to Dennis, and it sounds like utopia, right? I mean, it really, it is kind of, it's the the ideal situation we want to create in our companies, right? We want to be able to find talent from all the zip codes and all the four corners of the earth because the talent exists there. And so this gives people an opportunity to see themselves and even discover, become aware of what these professions are. And so the one thing that I wanted to mention as well, you know, online, like stuff can go awry online and not necessarily function. So well. One of the things we use from the very beginning, we've been AI first forever, we have an AI mechanism that moderates the content, right. So you know, the concern was what if somebody says something that's not great in terms of their feedback, we could moderate it. The truth is, the community itself is so beautiful, that we've rarely had any issues with moderation. I
Alexander Sarlin:agree, there is something really utopian and beautiful, as you both said about the idea of a creative online, diverse community of people who, as you mentioned, Dennis, you know, they may come in with a little trepidation. They're not sure if they're comfortable sharing, you know, their stories or their work in an environment. And then over time, they start to realize how supportive everyone is. And to your point, Britt, the feedback they're getting from each other, and from the community is so powerful, and it's so meaningful, that they start to really build that mutual trust. It's really exciting. So, you know, one of the things that's powerful about edtech and technology is that you can create the platforms that have the features that make the community actually work. You know, Brad mentioned, the YouTube or Khan Academy forums where people can support one another. Tell us a little bit about how you think about this at experiential. Tony, how do you build mechanisms into the platform that support the kind of peer feedback and work that you want to see from your learners? Yeah,
Tony DeRose:so a couple of mechanisms. One is everybody needs a deadline. So what we've done is created three exhibitions per year, and each have a deadline, you can pick whichever exhibition you want. So you can do the program as fast or as slow as you'd like. But there is that deadline in order to have your your work be seen publicly and be eligible for pure awards. So that's kind of the, you know, that's a driver that's really pushing people forward. And then at each of the steps, when you finish work on a deliverable for that step, you upload it into the gallery, and then you can't move on to the next step until you provide feedback. And so the way that works is you upload, and then the next step is to visit the gallery, we present you first with three or four other submissions that need feedback, you provide feedback to those, and at that point, the gallery unlocks, and the next step in the program unlocks. And so we've kind of gamified things in a way that ensures that everybody's work, gets multiple pieces of feedback. And then as Dennis was mentioning, that feedback, the quality of the feedback tends to get much, much better as people work through the steps. Initially, many people including adults, you know, aren't you know, great or practiced and giving and receiving feedback. But when they start getting, you know, higher quality feedback from others, they start learning and we model it, we talk about feedback a lot. And so the quality of the feedback increases as you move through the program. And we hear from lots of users that even after they finished the program, one thing that sticks with them is their ability to give and receive feedback in other contexts, either in other classes or just in everyday life.
Alexander Sarlin:It's really, really interesting and I think it exciting sort of byproduct but a very important byproduct of this type of learning experience that is relevant to both creative work and to professional life where, you know, the giving and receiving feedback is sort of key to any kind of job and success right now. And it's really nice, I think that's a real benefit of the community approach to learning is that you learn how to work alongside others in a supportive and meaningful ways and to give critical feedback in a way that doesn't shut somebody down that actually is constructive and gets them to, you know, step up and do something even better. So Brett, I want to jump to you, because one of the things that is obviously on everybody's mind these days, and it's on your minds as well, is the role of artificial intelligence in any type of edtech. And I know that, you know, because experiential is all about active learning, and you're really, really intent on having human feedback from, you know, people getting feedback from each other, and not just from an AI, you have very specific ideas about what AI can do. In your context. Can you talk to us a little bit about AI, you also happen to be at AI expert and know a lot about the field. Tell us a little bit about how AI enhances the experience in experiential now. And what do you think it'll do in the future? Sure. One
Brit Cruise:specific thing I'm excited about, again, going back to our goal, which is we want to put peer to peer learning at the center, we don't necessarily want to put technology at the center, because that's, that's a cool hot thing. We want to put human to human interaction at the center. And so when I think about the percentage or a pie chart of what you did, going through our program, I want the slice of that pie that is working with other humans, whether that's your partners, or people in the program to be as big as possible. And so looking at specifically how AI can enable this, I'll give one example of something we've kind of erode. We've went down a little bit, Tony mentioned that, again, what's cool about our program, our galleries versus say, a platform like YouTube is, you know, a small percentage of people get all the attention. Well, we want to equalize that attention. That's step one. Step two, though, is, you know, not all people give the same quality of feedback. And so the first thing we need to do is equally distribute the quality feedback throughout the program. And that can be done easily, for example, by measuring new users measuring the quality of their feedback as they come into the program. And then making sure when I look at another user who uploads work, I want to make sure not only did you get, you know, four notes from other people, but I want to make sure one of those four notes came from a user that I know gives high quality feedback. So that's a baby step towards equalizing quality feedback invisible in the background, the AI does this, you don't need to know anything about it. But you know it, that's easy to do. So that's a baby step. But I think we can go so much further. And I do feel it's kind of like a rabbit hole. And so where my mind goes next is, you have this gallery of content, it gets very big, you as a user will never see it all AI can use now to probe that gallery, probe all the work and maybe surface work that's very relevant to you, in the same way that YouTube algorithm now is mean, absolutely incredible at recommending the next piece of content to show you to keep you engaged, we know how well that works across basically, every platform, I want to do maybe a more narrow, more niche approach to that where I say, given the story, you're telling, at the level, you're telling it, I want to decide the most appropriate other project to make sure you see, or the next or a person who's potentially telling a similar story, I might want you to see them. So there's a lot we can do on the recommending and community members to each other. And AI doing that very quickly. And automatically, that kind of excites me. And it's not a fully formed thought yet.
Alexander Sarlin:That's great, though. I think, you know, I appreciate how all of you have a very thoughtful take on the role of AI in edtech. In general, and in your particular really important use case, which is experiential, peer based learning. Because it's very easy, as you said to just AI is the new hot thing and just sort of peanut butter, smear it on whatever you're doing and say, Well, we're gonna have AI and everything we do, and we just have to figure out where that lives. But I think being really thoughtful about as you say, keeping the peer to peer human interaction at the core of the experience is obviously key to your learning philosophy. At least I wanted to double click on something that Tony said earlier that I think is really important to you to the X in the box and experiential story, which is that you know, you're in Tony's background is from Pixar, and you have a deep deep network in the animation world and in the creative world. And that obviously gives you a head start on this storytelling product, but you also have so many dead Different things you're planning on doing with extra bucks, some of which you've already started. And it's not just about storytelling or animation, this is really a learning model that can be applied to many different subjects. And I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about what that might look like.
Elyse Klaidman:Sure, yeah. I mean, honestly, I think it's a learning model that applies to everything, right. I mean, as we've all talked about, we know how we learn best as human beings we learn best by doing we learn best by mentorship, mentorship, from peers, hearing from experts seeing what's possible. And so we really want to approach this by thinking about the industries that excite and inspire people. And help them understand that there are many pathways into those industries, right. So, you know, with Pixar, in the very beginning, we would think people would think, well, I have to be able to draw really well, or be a computer nerd, right. Like, those are the two things that can get me into Pixar. But the truth is, you could be excellent at science, math, communication, music, editing, right there, all these different paths. Imagine being a young person who's completely inspired by by basketball, right? And that you're, very few people are going to make it into the NBA. But the sports industry has a wide range of roles, and they all take different skills. So the idea is that we build awareness and learning of possibility potential, through doing projects that are authentic to those industries, and bringing the possibility forward and helping you recognize your own passions, skills, what are the skills you need to learn. So imagine, you start this right, you start doing an experiential every summer, every semester, starting at age 13, by the time you're ready to go off to college, or to whatever your next endeavor is at 18. You know a whole lot about what's out there in the world, how to do it, what your skills are, what you need to learn, and you have a portfolio full of incredible stuff that you've made. And just kind
Dennis Henderson:of piggyback on that vision of having a variety of experiential, and you merge that to what we were just talking about when it comes to incorporating AI. One of the things that I'm excited about is opportunity to individualize students learning paths, utilizing AI a lot more targeted and specific. And a program such as experiential, where the platform such as experiential, what that allows students to do, based off of where their interest is, and where their skill sets are even looking at their academic proficiencies. It allows them to go ahead and apply that to opportunities and career paths that's aligned to who they are. And again, I think when you incorporate AI in this, again, as Britt was alluding to, how YouTube knows that person, and it caters videos for that person, to cater various experiential, to individuals to dive into, again, it puts learning at the forefront. And you know, again, as an educator, within a traditional setting, many of my colleagues and you know, you just see it in schools cross country, a teacher, as a teacher, a teacher, goes to school, they lives they go to school to become a teacher, and they go into the classroom, and they teach school, when it comes to these real world experiences, their passions are in the right place to academics, but they cannot let students know what is upfront, or what opportunities are within workplaces and how that works. So again, for us to truly customize education, or utilize AI to customize education, and these learning journeys through experiential, that is what gets me excited that you can truly make learning individualize lifelong journey. And it's not just simply going through various, various content areas.
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, that exposure to different industries, and actually getting hands on experience in different potential, you know, futures for yourself is something that just doesn't happen nearly enough in the traditional classroom. So it's really, I love the idea of the individualized and sort of personalized pathways as well as you know, that idea of using AI to help people sort of navigate through this massive gallery of stories. And as you're saying, at least, it's really exciting for young people to sort of have their eyes open to realize that if they have a passion, they can have that passion be part of their life for their entire lifetime. But that doesn't, you know, they shouldn't feel like if you don't make it to the NBA, or if you don't make it as a Pixar animator, that you are suddenly thrown off of your dreams you there's so either that's not how any of us really have lived our lives. And I think students don't always, you know, get exposed to that concept. So with that in mind, Tony, I'd like to ask you a little bit about you know, this the book business model of x in a box, we haven't talked that much about who your users and learners are and where they're coming from. But you've done some really interesting work in actually making experiential tools available to students in school to adult learners to students in individual, you know, families and households. Tell us a little bit about how people access experiential and what your business model looks like.
Tony DeRose:Yeah, well, as you mentioned, experiences are really flexible. We've designed them to be, you know, either used in classrooms facilitated and facilitated. And after school settings, summer camps, homeschool, or just an individual who you know, wants to learn more about, in this case, storytelling, the business model is we sell licenses. So a license will get you access to the program for a year. And during that year, you can you know, any of the three exhibitions that I mentioned, you could get in do the entire program in say, two weeks and submit to an exhibition, but then you still have access for the rest of the year, we have two age groups, one age group is ages 13 to 18. And that's completely separate in the galleries and communication from the adult cohort, which is 18. And up. And we both sell directly to consumers. And so there's a licensing fee for individuals. And then for institutions, we offer group rates. And so an institution might be a classroom, it might be an entire school building will eventually work up and start selling district wide, and we give price breaks, you know, for bulk orders. Those two revenue streams are kind of complementary in the sense that the institutional market is attractive, because one decision maker like a, you know, a principal or a district superintendent, that one decision maker can result in many licenses for an entire school or an entire district. And typically, those licenses will be renewed, year after year as new students come through go through the institution. But those relationships take a while to mature, it can take you know, a year or two for your principal or district superintendent to decide to buy into the program. So the timescale is a little bit longer there. But recurring once once established, the retail, the direct to consumer revenue stream is much faster, we generally do digital marketing there. And those digital marketing dollars turn into licensing revenue really quickly. So we can recycle those licenses, we can dial up we can dial down the digital marketing spend, and so kind of evened out our revenue stream that way.
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, that's really a terrific explanation, I think, very interesting to our listeners, who are, you know, many of which work in the tech field and are thinking about these different models, I think you've done some really innovative work in the sort of business model space to be able to reach different audiences. So we're coming on our final questions, but I wanted to do if you're all open to it a quick lightning round. You know, we've talked a lot about the student experience, we've talked a lot about AI in the creative industries. But we haven't actually zoomed in on, you know what the work is like in the experiential. And I know that sort of what brings us all to work every day is seeing people, young people, especially, you know, eyes light up, because they've done something they sort of couldn't imagine. So I'd love to do a little lightning round. And if all of you could just tell us a story that's come from the experiential platform that sort of stood out to you and sticks with you as like, wow, this is really something exciting to see, I think that would help our listeners really see you know, what it's like to be in this type of creative community. Is it possible to start with you? Sure.
Brit Cruise:I remember a great one, which is when we were about to run our first pilot of this program. And again, back then it was it was very scary. It was like taking off in a plane that wasn't built yet. had no clue if people were going to go through steps, feedback, you'd submit to an exhibition. We didn't know how it was going to work. But I do remember having a gut instinct that if this community thing would work, I bet you 90% of the students will finish knowing that in my Khan Academy days, massively open online courses have single digit percent completion rates. And I'll never forget the program marched along. You know, people started trickling in towards the end. We weren't you know, I think 20 34% submitted and that then exactly on the day of the exhibition, by the time we hit midnight, we were at somewhere above 90% completed. And it was incredible. That's
Alexander Sarlin:amazing. So yeah, people show up. And I think the deadline is, as you mentioned, Tony brings people to so they were actually able to finish their stories right at the core time. That's great. How about you, Tony, is there something that stands out to you from the student experience that be could be a particular story or something that really just jumped out to you and you remember,
Tony DeRose:well, I think for me, it's the way story You know, gives students a voice to, you know, talk about what's really important to them. And it can also change lives. I remember one story that was submitted from a participant named Mason, the story was about a slice of pizza that couldn't eat cheese. And the story went on. And there were some very kind of specific, well researched scientific facts as the as the story unfolded. And we started wondering, you know, is this a personal story, and the story real ended with a short biography of the author, Mason, who was dealing with a severe digestive issue, and he was, he was creating the story from his hospital room. Wow, this was a way for him to kind of share his journey. But you know, also it was cathartic, because he was able to, you know, communicate what he was going through to everybody else in the program. That's
Alexander Sarlin:beautiful. I'm, like, choking up a little bit hearing that that's really that's really, really nice. Dennis, how about you? Is there a particular story or a student's student experience that jumps out to you? Yeah,
Dennis Henderson:following up on Tony's story about Mason, no, that was, you know, that was one I'm not, I'm not wanting to shed a lot of tears. But that one definitely hit home. But then, you know, there's, what I find amazing is just, when you see the levels of talent, when you see the variety of talent, these young young people exhibit, I'm thinking to the very first exhibition we did, and the story array, and just kind of just in disbelief, looking at the story reel, as it was going through this process, just how simple of a story it was, but also how beautiful well crafted it was. And to see that this was coming from a student in school. And then to the point while watching it, and watching it go through the process, it was narrated all the way throughout it until the very end, the final exhibition, there was no words and the see the story come to life by a student, who gives credit that this process is what helped bring this out and actually pushed him to be bold enough to put it out with no words. And it was so powerful and impactful. You know, that's what I sensed that we were on something that really give this platform for the students that have so much in them and have been looking for an outlet in the community to share this with. So I think that first round of young people that we were introduced to the see the scale of talent was amazing. And you know, just to get to know many of them afterwards. That's another thing I love is that, you know, a lot of the alumni of the program, they don't leave us, either they do it again, or they offer themselves up to make the program better. And, you know, just looking at the talent pool that's out here that we have exposed to the world. That to me is just so rewarding. Overall,
Alexander Sarlin:that moment where you put your creative work out to the world without that that disclaimer, or that explanation or that VoiceOver is such a scary moment, I think we've all been through that where you're like, I'm gonna let this work, speak for itself and cross my fingers that people get it or like it. So I love that. I love that that moment. And that story, I think really evokes that very specifically. And Elise, last but not least, tell us a little bit about a story that sticks to you sticks with you.
Elyse Klaidman:I want to start first by saying why we started with story. And that's storytelling. Yes, of course, we come from Pixar. And we have a storytelling background. But story is core to everything. It's core to our humanity. It's what helps us become empathetic understand each other. But it's core to the work world, right? It's, you need to be able to tell a story to succeed. So I just wanted to make sure to put that out there. We think of storytelling as almost the precursor to every other experiential we're going to build. So what I love the very first step in this program is called What If? And what if, is about dreaming? What if is about possibility, what if is about everything and anything that has been and could be, and every single time I see these what ifs, I'm blown away by the talent, the creativity, the ingenuity that comes from the world. So you know, some I'm trying to think off the top of my head, some what ifs, there was one the other day I saw that was, what if we could literally reshape the world? Well, that could mean so many things. Right? And that's a really interesting place to start. And then in the galleries, the probing about that starts the questions, right. And that really helps form what that story is going to be. I saw one the other day, that was what if boring was exciting. You know, like, and there's an endless number of these, right? It's not like oh, okay, I ran out of what the what is our magic, right. So I think that Seeing the possibility and the unbelievable ingenuity and creativity around the world. That's, that's what that's about. Yeah, so
Alexander Sarlin:wonderful. And speaking of what ifs, but I think that's a good segue to our final questions. So, you know, we always end with two questions. One is, what is the most exciting trend you see in the ad tech landscape right now, from your perspective, that you know, where your prospective ad X and Vox ad experiential doing this specific, amazing work that our listeners should keep an eye on? At least? I'm curious how you think about this?
Elyse Klaidman:Yeah, I'm really glad you asked this, obviously, everybody's talking about AI. Right. And, and I would be foolish not to be aware of AI. What I love about the fact that AI has burst onto the world in this way, is that it's actually going, I think, has the potential to revolutionize education. In a way it hasn't been revolutionized in more than 100 years. And what I mean by that is, a lot of the traditional old school methods of teaching, or of what happens in classrooms are not going to be relevant anymore, what you content and creating content, information related content is easy now, right? You just go to GPT, you just go sitting in a classroom with a teacher speaking at you writing a paper that's just going to deliver a certain kind of content. That's not really, you know, it's not going to work in the same way anymore. And so I think AI is forcing us to go back to, and to create an educational system around what we've all been saying in this podcast is the most relevant way of learning, right? It needs to be relevant, it needs to be experiential, it needs to be engaging, it needs to have creative, it needs to help you solve problems, right. And so I'm excited about that. You
Alexander Sarlin:mentioned experiential, active, you know, hands on learning, and the tools that young people are starting to get to be able to create incredible things, just from what ifs from ideas are just astounding. It's really, really exciting. And I totally agree, I think education, it really is going to have to change finally, it's gonna have to change in the face of this technology. And finally, what are some resources that this team would recommend for somebody who wants to dive deeper into any of the topics we discussed today?
Elyse Klaidman:One that I think was mentioned earlier, but just barely mentioned, Britt, has a YouTube channel called The Art of the problem. And it's one of the best resources for understanding things in the world. And speaking of AI, he has an incredible one on AI and the history of and how we got to where we are, that makes it understandable, even for novices like myself. And the other one I would mention is Ed Catmull. 's book creativity, Inc. So Ed, mentor, extraordinary person. And creativity Inc, really dives into the issue of how do you maintain, create and maintain a thriving creative culture. And that culture that we got to be a part of at Pixar is something that profoundly influences how we are creating the culture inside our experiential platform. I
Alexander Sarlin:love both of those resources. And yeah, I've seen that a video that you've made, Brent, it's incredible. And I love the creativity. And but one thing that always jumps out to me from that book as he talks about how the Pixar campus was sort of designed so that people would have to bump into each other have to have conversations, no matter what department they were from no matter what. And it was really very similar to what you've been saying in this podcast about how bringing people together and having a supportive community can just take everybody's work to the next level. Are there any other resources that anybody wants to recommend?
Brit Cruise:I'll throw in one, which is Seymour prepare, he's kind of an early pioneer in how technology would play a role in education. And all his books are amazing, including Mindstorms, or the children machine.
Alexander Sarlin:Yes, classic absolute ed tech legend. As always, we will put all of the links to the resources mentioned here in the show notes for this episode, as well as links to where you can find out more about x and a box and experiential. Thank you so much, all of you for being here with us today. Edit tech insiders.
Elyse Klaidman:Thank you, Alex. It's always a huge pleasure to talk to you and also to listen to all the amazing guests that you bring to this podcast.
Tony DeRose:Thanks, Alex.
Brit Cruise:Great day.
Dennis Henderson:Thank you, Alex.
Alexander Sarlin:Thanks for listening to this episode of Edtech Insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the tech community. For those who want even more Edtech Insider subscribe to the free Edtech Insiders newsletter on substack.
