Week in Edtech 6/26/2024: Prosus Exits BYJU's, K-12 Digital Tool Surge, LAUSD Challenges, Chegg Workforce Cut and More! Feat. Elyas Felfoul of WISE, Arijit Raychowdhury of Georgia Tech and Lindsay Jones of CAST

Join Alex Sarlin and Ben Kornell as they explore the most critical developments in the world of education technology this week:

🤑 Prosus Zeroes Out Its 9.6% Stake In BYJU’s
📊 New LearnPlatform by Instructure Report Finds Increases in More Unique Digital Tools Accessed by K-12 Institutions, Students, and Teachers
🏫 LAUSD/Allhere issues
💬 Speak raises $20M - US, Language Learning - Buckley Startup Fund, OpenAI Startup Fund, Khosla Ventures
🧠 MEandMine raises $4.5M - US, Mental Health - K5 Global
📉 Chegg cuts 23% of workforce, 441 employees

Plus special guests, Elyas Felfoul of WISE, Arijit Raychowdhury of Georgia Institute of Technology, and Lindsay Jones of CAST

Don’t forget to subscribe to Edtech Insiders for more updates and insights from the forefront of educational technology!

This season of Edtech Insiders is once again brought to you by Tuck Advisors, the M&A firm for Education Entrepreneurs.  Founded by serial entrepreneurs with over 25 years of experience founding, investing in, and selling companies, Tuck believes you deserve M&A advisors who work just as hard as you do.

Transcript

Alexander Sarlin: 0:26

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 an in depth interview with a wide variety of EdTech thought leaders and bring you insights and conversations from Edtech 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.

Ben Kornell: 1:17

Edtech Insiders listeners summer is upon us. It is the joyful time of year where we all take a break or if you're an ed tech and you're a product leader. This is the time when you're doing your sprint. So we're so glad to have you here with us this week. Lots and lots of news. But before we dive in Alex, what's going on with pod?

Alexander Sarlin: 1:39

We have some really cool interviews coming up many of which you've just finished Ben there's some awesome ones. We finally after much chasing and back and forth got to talk to AI and Edtech thought leader and really, you know, prolific writer, Ethan Mollick, Ethan and Lilach Mollick talk to them just this week, it was really fascinating conversation. I was sort of a fly on the wall for it. But you know, he just has a lot to say and sort of was one of the big keynote speakers at ISTE which just ended. That was a great conversation. We also talked to the head of PBS Kids. Yeah, which is an amazing talk and the CEO of BrainPOP, who is absolutely fascinating and had so much to say about AI and assessment. So amazing interviews, always keep an eye on even in this the dead of summer they will we will continue to publish really, really cool interview. So keep us on your headphones as you're mowing the lawn or, you know, lazing on the raft in the pool.

Ben Kornell: 2:36

I will just say, Alex, it still blows my mind that these people even want to come on our podcast. It's amazing. And you know, Sarah has been at PBS Kids for 20 years and changing the game in digital education. So you know, definitely must listens. Speaking of must dues. It sound is like st was the must attend conference of the month. You were there. You were there with 800 of our best friends, all playing video games at the AI arcade. Tell us a little bit before we dive into the news, some of the highlights from the SD happy hour from the conference. Everything

Alexander Sarlin: 3:17

is just a really unusual ed tech conference in that it is actually a very conference, the conference, it's held in a convention center. It's absolutely massive. There are 1000s and 1000s of people. There are a huge exhibitors hall this year, you had a lot of big tech presence in the exhibitor Hall, you had people like Microsoft and Adobe and Google presenting Gemini and Canva and figma. And all these big companies sort of with these giant booths, Lego for education had a giant booth. And then you have endless, endless other ed tech vendors in every different you know, things from physical systems to AI to curriculum to cameras to I mean, just anything you can imagine to a lot of VR was there. So it's just overwhelming. I don't think any one person can sort of like truly make sense of SD. But it was really interesting. I felt like there was obviously a lot of AI buzz, you couldn't go anywhere without hearing somebody do, you know doing a professional development about AI or presenting how their district is using it. The conversation is very rich there even though I don't know if anybody's quite landed on a full clear policy. We got to talk to Pat young private from Teach AI he had a really cool session with a number of different thought leaders, including from Khan but also from a number of different districts talking about you know, AI policy and how that can go. It's more than you can possibly take in and then of course, you know, the happy hour was a ton of fun. We had our Monday night event with brisk teaching and deferred for education and Screencastify at an arcade bar filled with pinball machines and video games. And yes, hundreds and hundreds of people. There are many, many educators, mostly educators. It was a lot of fun. So I got to talk to Sunil Pandaria from age of learning and Karl Rove tennis and a number of different, you know, wonderful ad tech thought leaders comic tennis whose learning platform was bought by Instructure put out an amazing report this week. So you know, I'm still digesting and we'll write something up about some of the different pieces of SD but it is such a different experience than you know then New York ed tech. We Record the ASU GSB or then South by Southwest edu and that is just overwhelming. It feels almost like a like a consumer tech conference where you're just everywhere you go some really something's just like taking off and there's this somebody's yelling, some, you know, presenting some PD and some really loud way with 200 people around them. It just feels like it's like Ed Tech sort of showcase conference. So a lot of fun. But you know, hard to exactly say what the takeaways are, I think we still have to do some work there to figure out what the core ideas are.

Ben Kornell: 5:52

Yeah, you know, it's the one event on the calendar that is really for educators. And right, yeah, it creates this chaos, where you have this carnival barker style floor, where people are trying to attract the flies to the light of their booth. And really what we all know, too, and so many circumstances is educator is not buyer but educator is user. And so there's real energy around trying to get new users, but also users who love products connecting with the team and the products that they love. And so it just it creates this really interesting dynamic of a bazaar. And I think that that's one of the exciting parts about it in our annual edtech calendar. You know, we have things like ASU GSB in New York edtech week, which is about the industry itself, and the buyers and the product people and the investors. This one is really about the educators. Well, with that I think we should jump in. And when we're talking about the educators, we're talking about the buyers, there's no bigger headline than news that just dropped about Los Angeles Unified School District's partner for their ED project. All here having major layoffs, their CEO, Joanna has reportedly stepped down. There's reports of furloughs for the team, which, you know, technically is a furlough a layoff, or is it not? Basically, it's a way of suspending your costs. And in the article and the response after the article, it sounds like people are trying to rush together to get a deal to get all here acquire. But it is certainly a bunch of smoke, if not a blazing fire. It is the implications I would probably say are not huge on a day to day student learner standpoint, in that we really hadn't gotten to see Ed fully rolled out to every everyone. But in terms of the implications for edtech and AI, and education and school districts doing both things. It really, really raises huge flags and concerns. First, like when you heard the news, what were your initial thoughts? And then maybe even rewind Alex's, you've been in several conversations with Joanna and and the superintendent Carvalho, Dino VGC. See this coming? Was this out of left field, like I just love to hear your mindset as you kind of digested this this news? Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin: 8:56

so So first off, you know, this news was sort of ablaze in the ad tech insiders plus WhatsApp community, and you know, really fresh, hot off the presses, as we're recording this very, very recent, I was floored by it for a variety of reasons. You know, in retrospect, some elements of it do begin to make sense if you sort of piece a piece together the history of this situation, but it was couldn't have been more of a surprise to me. And so just for listeners who may not have been following this issue, so basically, you know, Alberto Carvalho, who is this very sort of forward thinking very tech centered superintendent has been doing this really innovative AI project in Los Angeles. And I got to sit down with him and with Joanna Smith, Griffin from all here at ASU GSV literally sit at the table, talk to the two of them, and they're sort of representatives and some of the other folks involved in this project. It was one of the most if I say it was it is one of the most ambitious AI projects that we've seen anywhere in the US. And they're basically the plan has been to offer this home solution that allows parents and students to be able to use AI to get personalized learning resources on a daily basis. So kids can actually get resources fed to them from a variety of different partners based on their their current school status based on how they're doing in their current subjects. They get, you know, additional resources essentially then, which are optional. It's not required for school, but it's something they can do to you know, it's something very specific that families are told, Hey, based on what your student is doing in school right now, here's some things that should definitely help them from vetted providers. And it's all fed through AI. And it has this chatbot element, which is what Ed is, you know, Ed quote unquote which is this son who basically son meaning you know blazing sun looks like a little son with with with a smile. And whether you're a parent or a student you can ask Ed for anything to do with your with schooling they've been putting athletic schedules in and school bus schedules and holiday schedules and things you want to know about the school academic programs or after schools that basically they're trying to make the entire school ecosystem transparent. It's a really ambitious project. All here has been doing AI and home to school communications for years since before ChaCha btw landed, they've been doing AI for several for many years, I think since the I mean, mid 2010s. And they were really always ahead of this idea of using AI to close the gap between school and home. So sitting with them, I mean, they're all spin a very, very rich story about how exciting this is. And as somebody, myself and you, Ben and most of our listeners who really are excited about the potential for AI in education, it's it's a really wonderful potential use case of showing how one of the biggest districts in the country can use AI in a really innovative and smart way. I even got to talk to a family that they brought to ASU GSV that is in one of the pilot districts and that said, Yeah, we absolutely love Ed, it tells us every day, I think the son was six years old, or six or seven, you know what our son should be doing, how to keep up with his schoolwork, what, and he earned stars through the work he does at home. They were really, they were hand picked, of course, but they were really bullish about it. So this news is a shocker for many different ways. One, it puts a very negative, you know, cloud over this entire concept of a large school district rolling out a humongous ambitious AI project, because the underlying vendor here is now hitting some kind of financial skids. The fact that they're hitting financial skids is a huge surprise, because this is enormous contract. I mean, it goes without saying that all here is a multimillion dollar contract just for this one implementation. And they've been deeply involved with the development of the platform. They've been deeply involved with all the partnerships. So the idea that they're furloughing employees, and having monetary issues, when they're in you know, when they're working with this huge district is not only a surprise, it's just even now just hard to even get your head around. And you know, it's brand new news. And it's a surprise, because Joanna Smith, Griffin has been considered. And I've worked with her in other ways as well. She's a terrific CEO, and has been a really forward thinking edtech leader for many years. So this it's feels a little bit like all here is getting the media brunt of this issue and sort of being blamed for one way or another. I don't even know how to read it. But yeah, I thought this was this was poised to be a huge success story. And now it already feels like this smoke, if not fire as you said, What did you make of it?

Ben Kornell: 13:40

I will just say like, first off, it's tough times being in edtech, in general anyways. And I've been a part of turnarounds myself, so periods of time where we had to do layoffs and where there were furloughs and there was bad PR and all of that stuff. So, you know, my first reaction was just empathy. For the people in this situation, including the all here team, the LE USC team, you know, my mind immediately goes to Are there children that are negatively impacted? And I was kind of like, No, I don't think this is going to be like a detrimental, like near term consequence. When you think about what happened here, though, there must have been my spidey sense basically goes to something's not adding up here. There's more. And there must have been some, like, critical failure point here, that is not being currently told or reported, because you don't see things like this fall apart this quickly. This immediately. And, you know, typically when this kind of stuff happens, there's like three or four potential causes. One would be an accounting error that happened or financial misstep. And often, what you'll see in ed tech, but also in charter schools and so on, is you've got cash accounting, and then you've got like your normal financial accounting. And when you have your, you know, GAAP financial accounting, you count revenue, and like income and expenses in the periods in which you're accruing them, but that may not be actually reflecting your cash balance. So the acuity of this, to me suggests a cash flow crisis that may not have been adequately foreseen. Second thing that could be part of this is a breakdown with the board and with funders and the operating team, because if you are headed towards a cat crisis, the like normal thing to do would be go to your board or go to your funders and get a bridge to get you through that period and land the plane. And even if you're not in upside scenario, most often than not your supporters, it's been reported that all here raise $12 million, are we going to be able to do a month to month cash flow bridge to help you get to the other side, while you get acquired or while you, you know, await things. The third one is major customer payment issues. And that would not be unheard of with Los Angeles Unified School District. But let us just say that, as a leader, you really have to anticipate payment delays and dilemmas. And, you know, as Ian in our tech insiders plus chat pointed out, July one is the beginning of the new fiscal year, so often, funds are withheld to deploy July one, because of fiscal year accounting. So is there a way in which like, you know, payments were either being delivered, or there was a sense of default on payments, or a sense of you haven't, you know, delivered what you said you would deliver, and so we were withholding payment. All of that said, there's a lot of shark ish, you know, debt people out there that will do receivables, factoring. And, unfortunately, you and I probably know more people doing factoring right now than we would like to admit. But when you've got contracts that are signed contracts, and you've got deliverable and timelines, people will let you borrow against that at a rate of, you know, 10 to 15% discount. And so all of this tells me that something, you know, would lead me to believe this is all speculation I really is called edtech insiders, where we have any insight or knowledge around this, that there was something unforeseen or something acute here that really happened. And, you know, I believe that there's a very low probability chance of turning this around. This is not the kind of thing that is easy for somebody to step into if someone else has been the product team and been leading it. So the real best chance here is that somebody acquires all here, brings back the team on furloughs them, and leans in and tries to clean up the mess. But who is that person and who wants to take that on. And the first kind of people I'm looking at are the people in the boardroom for all here. Those folks made a commitment to that company and to the work of that company. That's probably where it starts. But still probably, you know, I'm not a betting man. But it's looking single digits to low double digits, probability that this thing is going to pull out of the nosedive. We

Alexander Sarlin: 18:39

should mention that, you know, we sat down at ASU GSB. With both of these folks with Alberto Carvalho and Joanna Smith, Griffin, we've had both of them on the docket for the podcast for months. And it's kept canceling. Because this is such a huge story. I mean, ed by itself without this chaos is a huge story in in edtech, it's one of the things that was meant to show the value proposition of AI in a very Oh, it also was in 100 languages, which is actually really relevant in LA, right, in LA, you actually have students speaking 100, you know, 100 different languages. And this was another thing that was happening in AI. I mean, but there's some things that really stink about this, right? I mean, Joanna Smith's Griffin LinkedIn page was taken down the all here page, that's the about us page was taken down, like things about this feel incredibly loaded, and sort of like, there was some kind of, you know, elimination of her in particular and the company, it is worth mentioning, I don't know if you didn't say this directly, Ben. But it is worth mentioning that, you know, he was not a very large company. And it was a little bit of a surprise, I think, to a lot of observers that LA was giving such an enormous contract to a relatively small ed tech company to execute this incredibly high visibility project. So I can imagine that if things started to go south for any reason, it's very clear that LA would have just rolled over onto all here very quickly. And I have a feeling that some it's part of what happened. I don't know what went out. There might be financial, it might be a product issues, who knows, but it feels like they're being made the scapegoat, it's pretty easy to see that no matter what instigated it. You know, I

Ben Kornell: 20:15

think what we strive to do on Ed Tech insiders is to make this about this space of Ed Tech, not this is not like a gossip column or something. So part of why we felt it was so important to cover this breaking news, even though we don't have the full story is that the vast majority of people paying attention. This is all they're going to hear. From here on out. It's going to be details and bullet points that Alex and I the two of us we care about, but this is is a political nightmare for any superintendent trying to do meaningful transformation. By leveraging AI. I will say a broader techno skepticism that we're seeing. Also shout out to tech insiders plus chat where we've been talking about this. We're in that part of the hype cycle where there's a lot of anti AI sentiment. And meanwhile, AI as product or AI as feature is a meaningful debate. And, and yes, open AI has an AI product, but what about all those other products that use lol third party l ons as their core engine? Are those actually just features or are they products in and of themselves. And so I think the implications of this will be a AI going from foreground, to background. And I think that may be a healthy evolution here. Because we've been talking too much about the tech and not enough about the ED, it's called ed tech for a reason, Ed comes first. And in this case, Ed is the name of the tech ironically. So you know what to make of this one, we need to find out what really happened here. So that we can learn from it and so that we can avoid these situations in the future. Number two, we need to understand how to better position AI, not as a solve all but instead, position solutions, like a parent communication tool, or child personalized Assistant, where the Tech is a little bit in the background, and the what you can do with it is in the foreground. And I think Third, we do need to reconcile the kind of purchasing patterns that have plagued ad tech. And, you know, when this partnership was announced, I think there was a lot of like, holy cow, that's huge. And, you know, people are like, who's all here and tell me more about this. I could have also seen them doing that kind of a deal with a open AI and also being like, wait a second, do they know education well enough to do this well on all of these things. So you know, we're in an innovative landscape, but really finding high quality partners, and meaningful RFP processes so that people can select the right partner? I think it's really, really important. What do you think are the long term ripple effects of of all this, Alex?

Alexander Sarlin: 23:14

Yeah, I think that's a fantastic point about sort of, this could be a moment where it's one of the first visible, sort of an insider, but visible blow ups with AI. I mean, we've been predicting on this podcast for a while that there are lots of ways that AI can blow up and embarrass people or scare them off from the technology. It's just inherent in technology this powerful, but this is one of the first ones where it's really sort of inside baseball in that other superintendents, to your point who might have been thinking about following in Caballos footsteps and doing some, you know, sweeping AI move within their district are gonna look at this and say, and have at least one more reason, if not, you know, one big new reason to step back and say, Well, hey, we just don't know enough about the tech. We don't know enough about what type of partnership and we need to get in place to make this happen. So I think it is going to slow things down. And I love your point about it might take make AI a little bit of the backseat. I mean, we saw a Google rollout, its Gemini model to Gmail this week. And we've talked on this podcast a lot about how they're putting Gemini inside most of their products, including Google Classroom. So in terms of AI being a feature like it's coming, it's inside the LMS is it's inside the curriculum providers, it's inside the student information systems inside places like Google Classroom. So it is going to come no matter how negative the press gets about it. But it does mean that I agree with you that I think people may be a little if not a lot more nervous about sort of AI Initiative, where AI is like the headline, which like we're doing something with AI, it might be we're doing something with this partner, or we're doing something for project based learning, or we're doing something for you know, math intervention, and you look below the headline, and you realize, oh, it's actually an interesting thing with AI. But yeah, might not be the headline anymore. I think that's a very good call. I mean, I remember, you know, the LA iPad fiasco from years ago. Do you remember that one? God, this

Ben Kornell: 25:07

just feels so close to that. And we know that people lost their jobs and like big, big changes occurred because of what a fiasco it was.

Alexander Sarlin: 25:19

Yeah, you shouldn't be punished for trying to embrace cutting edge technology for the learners. I mean, let's just say that like, that seems so obvious for those for listeners to this podcast for you and I, you know, for you and me today, you know, trying to move quickly to get great technology, great, hopefully very, very effective technology into the hands of teachers, and ideally, students and families is a good initiative. Something we want. So every time one of these things happened, like the iPad fiasco, you know, and there's this backlash, we just we take a big step back, we've seen now LA and other districts start to try to ban cell phones in schools. And you can sort of imagine why they're doing that cell phones are a huge distraction. There's lots of cyber bullying happening on them. At the same time. The cellphone is the most sophisticated ubiquitous piece of technology in the world right now and taking them out of students hands, and forbidding them from being able to access basically all mobile edtech, as well as lots of other things. I don't see that as progress. I see it as reactionary, very, very sort of well served as

Ben Kornell: 26:25

where you're going to have with all of these issues. It's worth taking the other side of each of these. I mean, if I'm channeling my inner Dan Meyer, I'm saying yes, someone needs to be held accountable for a $4 million AI initiative that was doomed to failure from the start is how someone who's I'm not saying that Dan says that, but that somebody who's skeptical would say, I mean, I think this announcement was not met with initial universal like this is going to work. This is amazing. I think there was plenty of people who said, Wait a second, what is going on here, and the district's talking points, which I think were effective were like, these are dollars that are non operating dollars that we would not have been able to access in any other way. And therefore it's not a distraction. It's not a cost. But I think the let's actually move into the cell phone ban. So Governor Newsom of California is even proposing a statewide cell phone ban, New York City Chancellor also changing to before it had been like personalized learning and your own device in your own hand. And now I think there's definitely this techno skepticism crescendo is leading to this sense of bands. Anytime there's this binary of do we have it? Or do we band, I often look for what's the middle ground, and I There are distracted driving solutions that companies across the country use so that their, you know, forklift driver or semi driver aren't scrolling the internet on every single thing while they're operating a vehicle. But they have access to key apps that they might need, or music or whatever it is that they're allowed to have this idea of distracted driving and distracted learning. I actually think there's some real parallels to that. But at the same time, I do wonder whether an outright ban is freeing for kids. And I just wonder whether children would benefit from an excuse to not be on social media to not be on all these things, and maybe giving ourselves a break and saying, Okay, what's the worst that can happen? Like, parent can't reach the school? Okay, let's find a workaround for that. But if you told me that my son's middle school had a ban on cell phones, and we're going to try it for six months, I'd say let's try it. Let's see. And if a high school wanted to do that, let's try it. And let's see. I actually think interesting

Alexander Sarlin: 29:07

point. Yeah, I mean, Florida, Indiana, South Carolina have also done bans. Please keep keep going. I

Ben Kornell: 29:13

just think we're at a point where we're not sure that the net benefit versus the net cost is really worth it to have 24/7 cell phone access in schools. I'm curious, because you were like, This feels like going back to the future. Yeah.

Alexander Sarlin: 29:29

I mean, I think the theme of this conversation, I think is about babies and bathwater, right? Because, yes, I mean, I am not a fan of social media. I'm not a fan of that many, many hours that young people spend on line and I agree with, you know, Jonathan Haidt just came out with a really influential new book about called the anxious generation about how young people are like all this mental health crises have been really spawned by cell phones. We've had a number of other writers talking about that over the past few years and studies and we saw, you know, this horrible stuff coming out of meta about them knowing that Instagram was bad for people, but continuing to do it anyway and actually trying to do a sort of kid's version of it. There's lots to be upset about about social media. That said, and I hear your point I do hear your point that there is something simple about just saying no phones you say no phones you get rid of not only social media, but lots of other things that may be negative like kids playing you know games in class rather than listening to the teacher or you know, cyber bullying behavior, all sorts of things go out the window, but there's also some good things that go out the window and I personally believe that mobile learning and access to information and all the things that you get and and a lot of edtech products, which are meant to be mobile in class, there's a number of products like that, just throwing them all out is I think it's still throwing out a baby with the bathwater. And I mean, how much is it for those sponsibility of schools to protect children from things that their parents have bought them, which is what the cell phones are right? Something about, it just feels so confused. And meanwhile, we had the instructor report come out this week, saying that there now 2739 is the average number of edtech tools used per district that's 250, higher than we had last year, it continues to go up, even though everybody was predicting that there will be a calling and people will be canceling contracts post pandemic, it's even higher than it was it was 2500. For the last two years, it was 2200 to two years before that. So you have just these crazy currents happening this huge backlash, we saw the Surgeon General in the US talk about how basically, you know, social media companies should come with warning labels. These are powerful messages. And I think they're right. But the social media and the phones are not the same thing. And I just I worry that the idea of trying to separate kids from technology itself, as the solution just misses something fundamental about the world we're trying to train them for. Yeah,

Ben Kornell: 32:01

I think great points, Alex. And I think this is where we're in a world that has lost its ability to handle nuance, that's for sure. I think the one thing that I have learned from Ed Tech and from product development to though is, you know, it's worth a try for a lot of ideas for three to six months, like do a sprint, see what pops up. And then if it turns out that the pain points are greater than the benefits, then you can always revert back, or you can always, you know, mitigate those risks. And the last thing I'll say on this one is I do think that there are some interesting legal issues with schools and property rights and personal property, and what schools can ban and cannot ban. And if it is a parent, owning that device, giving it to their child to say I want you to be able to be reached during the school day. Is it lawful to prohibit that? Right? And my best guess is that it actually is lawful because the school is essentially acting in lieu of the parent for the child's best interest at school. But I wouldn't be surprised to see that get challenged and wouldn't be surprised to see a new front of governance, open up around liberty in schools, partly because I think kids are smart. And if they want their phones, they will activate that. And then, too, I think there's a big fear of state takeover of like kids lives or kids things. Well, boy, we've been on a roll here and I will just say, between the hall here, LAUSD, that stuff, the kind of ban of phones in school, and just the overall like techno skepticism around AI. Like it does feel like we're in a bit of a trough on the optimism front. Let

Alexander Sarlin: 33:56

me throw one more floor. Slop into the trough really quickly. And then a positive one and that looks so so one is that yet another have by Jews, major investors has zeroed out its stake basically saying that it's it is his process, which is a European investment firm, basically saying that it's 10 percents taken by Jews, it is now claiming as having no worth by Jews, yet another company that has sort of been a poster child for dysfunction and confusion in the EdTech space. And we saw ETS make another big round of cuts, and check cut 23% of its workforce over the last week check another one of the few public ed tech companies. I know you want to talk about that one. So why don't we quickly talk about check, and then I'll give us a little bit of hope. Before we get to some of our guests. Yeah,

Ben Kornell: 34:49

I mean, on the Check one, I think Nathan who is the new CEO, I've met him before, longtime Chegg team member, they've really just left a lot of tough decisions on his plate to figure out how to navigate the company forward. And I think, you know, our listeners will remember when Dan rose wig, who was the previous CEO talked about the implications of chat GPT essentially, the stock has never recovered from that investor call. And that has created cascading downward pressure on the check brand. And you know, Chegg had already been plagued by claims and concerns about cheating. So when you have aI stealing your lunch, and concerns about cheating and AI coming together, it really created a crush. Meanwhile, like cigs user base is a tool Half the user base because the switching costs for kids, you know, for students, college students to switch between one thing or another, the switching costs often for the suppliers or vendors are very, very low. And so as the marketplace ascends, when you have a double sided marketplace, and you've got this scaling technology, and you've got all of these supports, and it's growing, it really has an accelerating effect. But I think we're seeing like a rapid deceleration in a way that when you're, you know, riding high, it grows faster. And when you're going downhill, it just seems to pick up velocity. And so I'm hopeful that Nathan's able to stabilize and kind of get back to the core, but I think this kind of, when you see a cut this big, what it signals to me is that they're not doing the cutting around the edges. They're saying, Okay, we're cutting all the way down to the bone to prepare ourselves for a march back up the mountain. And so hopefully, that March will commence now.

Alexander Sarlin: 36:48

It makes sense. I mean, Chegg is a valuable brand and has a lot of things to offer. We've talked on the podcast about how that comment of Dan Rosensweig, that sent the check brand falling was really, I think, taken far too heavily as a doomsday scenario for check. I've heard nothing but good things about the new CEO. So I hope so. And that is a bright spot.

Ben Kornell: 37:09

So we've just had this cascade of bummer news. Let's go back to one of the things you were talking about before, Alex with the report. And this has become like an annual ritual learn platform for all the CEO sold learn platform to Instructure. But we're thrilled to continue to have this annual ritual of the Learn report. And it just shows how deeply ingrained consumer apps and big tech companies are in classrooms in America. And so, you know, my, in addition to even more apps being used on a daily basis, you know, my big takeaways were Google is the number one ad tech company in the world like, yet again, proof positive. Number two, we are seeing crossover of very consumer oriented products that are essentially, you know, making the crossover into the classroom things like Canva, or Encyclopedia Britannica. I mean, how cool was that on the list? You know, I also think there's some stalwarts like Kahoot there, which has really had a long standing run in the classroom, quizzes and Quizlet, the competitors side by side, what I'm not seeing is any singular AI newbie, kind of cracking that list. So that will be interesting to see. And this goes back to our is AI a product or is a feature, but I think, you know, at the top 40 ad tech is alive and well. And then you see the preponderance of apps, you know, we still are in that Cambrian explosion of edtech. So, you know, very, very great report and definitely worth reading. They even break it down into kind of categories, and who the leaders are in different categories. And, you know, just excellent data from learn platform team yet again,

Alexander Sarlin: 39:05

agreed. And, I mean, you do see Khan Academy peeking in there, it's the fourth supplemental platform on the list and one of the top 40 Of course, you see epic as the top supplemental platform, which is interested in given their you know, by Jews issue right now, and where they're going to sort of land i ready, I excel amplify, you know, a lot of the household names in edtech. Of course, making the list as well as some ones that you know, aren't household names, but are still incredibly popular and used everywhere. I always laugh about how cool math games is on this list every year. Because cool math games is the most budget old school site you can find on the internet. It's been around for decades, and yet, it's free and open and has all these great math games. And people use it all the time. It's sitting there below YouTube and above PBS. On the most popular sites have resources in schools, this site cool math games, I someday we'll get the cool math games guy on the podcast because I'd love to meet him. It's also interesting to me, there's a category here about classroom response and assessment tools. And the top four on here are code book it which is a sort of game based response you said made by a high school student and you know a guy who was a high school student when he started but it sort of has some Kahoot like nature quizzes which is good like but has expanded a lot to other things as well. And gym kid which is also very much who'd like so you basically have four tools in a row that all share some of the same DNA when it comes to sort of making classroom assessment into something very gamified and fun and engaging and, and social. And they're the top four in the whole thing. So you see paired they're on there as well and mastery connect but, and Breakout EDU, which is also games. But it's really interesting. I feel like gamified assessment has sort of run the table at this point. Almost everybody doing classroom assessment is doing it in ways that are gamified. So that's interesting. The only last thing I would add about this week, it's been a kind of a downer week. It's not fun to talk about, you know, all here getting in this huge, you know, mess. It's not fun to talk about by Jews, and Chegg, and ETs, laying people off. But one thing that is was kind of nice to see, we saw a couple of interesting funding rounds. This week, we saw speak, raise $20 million dollars, that is definitely an AI first language learning company. But we also saw a company called Poc, poc, raising$6 million. And that's all about making students screentime safer and better for students. And we saw a company called me and mine that I just contacted them just sort of learned about them at st this last week, which is a mental health platform for elementary students raise $4.5 million. So even though schools are trying to ban cellphones, and people are really worried about the impact of technology, I think ad tech can really be part of the solution, right? Because we are people who know education. We know kids minds, who care about mental health and some of these ad tech tools around mental health and sort of getting away from social medias negative impact, I think are gonna have a really strong run right now. Yeah,

Ben Kornell: 42:09

totally. And, you know, the big takeaway is that tech is alive and well. And what is a tech at this point, and tech is Tech Tech, Ed Tech is education. Technology has become such a universal part of classroom experiences, that while we might talk about the highs and lows month to month, quarter to quarter or year to year, anybody from like 1952 today would say, Oh, my God, there's been a tech revolution in the classroom. And so I think it's just always good to have this as an annual drumbeat report to say, what is the current state of utilization? And where are things?

Alexander Sarlin: 42:50

It's a great report, anybody who hasn't seen it yet should absolutely download it. Just it's, I think it's one of the clearest insights into what is the state of edtech, as it actually pertains to usage in the classroom, what is being used, and in what categories and in what scale and it is a very bright spot. It's always fun to see this report come out each year.

Ben Kornell: 43:11

Awesome. Well, let's wrap and go to our interviews. Who do we have next?

Alexander Sarlin: 43:17

Yeah, so we have a series of amazing interviews today, you can see this episode a little longer than usual, because we have amazing people. We have LIS fell for who is at the y's foundation out of Qatar, which does really interesting edtech acceleration from such a global lens. We have RG re Chowdhury, a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, otherwise known as Georgia Tech, who's making an AI makerspace. In collaboration with Nvidia, basically giving, you know, enterprise level AI to undergraduate students to be able to do almost anything they want with it. And we have a great guest, the CEO of cast, the Center for Applied and special technologies, Lindsey Jones, who is here to announce a really amazing coalition of education organizations coming together to basically define what quality ed tech looks like. So check these out. These are some really cutting edge initiatives in the EdTech space.

Ben Kornell: 44:17

And in the meantime, thanks for coming to EdTech Insiders. If it happens in tech, good or bad, you'll hear about it here on Ed Tech insight. Hello, EdTech Insiders listeners. I am so excited to have Elyas Felfoul director at WISE joining us today. Elyas, welcome to the pod.

Elyas Felfoul: 44:37

I'm very happy to join you, Ben, thank you so much for inviting me.

Ben Kornell: 44:41

Before we go too far, I'm sure a lot of our listeners haven't heard of wise, can you tell us a little bit about your program, what you do and how it's grown over the years? Absolutely.

Elyas Felfoul: 44:52

WISE stands for the world Innovation Summit for education. It's an initiative that started started life as a summit in 2009. And initiative of Qatar Foundation. The objective of wise was to create a global platform for thinkers and doers to come together to at a high level think what is the next you know, what is the future of the learning experience? That's at a super idealistic level. When we took over the leadership of wise, we wanted to create a platform so we emulated things that existed in other sector but did not exist that necessarily in education. So back then, I think we were among the first to create something similar to the Nobel price. And again, with the objective of elevating the conversation and amplifying exceptional individual that have done exceptional work, work in education at a global level once again, and then we got inspired by the Oscar And we created the Oscars of education, which we call them the wise awards. And these are the smaller monetary. So the prize is used to be half a million. Now we just revamped the program. And I can talk a little bit more about it later, a million dollar today, but used to be half a million, and the awards are $20,000 each for six winners. But more importantly than the amount of money is really the capacity to give a global visibility to really, really beautiful projects happening across the world in different communities that are trying to, you know, offer a level of education in sometimes very challenging contexts. And then we wanted to understand the intersection between technology and education way before at Tech was a sexy topic, we started the program, I think, in 2014 2013 2014, our ambition was to try to find, again, amazing founders from the Global South, connects them with founders from the global north, and give access to these founders to the you know, the the kind of the best of the best that are happening usually in different hubs, either London, New York Silicon Valley before the pandemic bank, Beijing has been has been an important hub for ad tech. And our objective was to offer to founders from the global south access to these networks, to either create partnerships or raise capital. And the idea, of course, is to scale and grow their projects. We also have a pillars of research, we also have, of course, the pillar of advocacy. So we still do those big summits every two years in Doha, but we also take our summits to different cities in the world. The last one we've done is in Medellin, Colombia, and we've been collaborating pretty much with with a lot of, you know, entities from across the world, we're very pragmatic when we approach partnerships, we do work with government, but also with non for profit with universities, and so on.

Ben Kornell: 47:37

Yeah, it's really amazing to see how it's grown and expanded from like this biannual. So every two year anchor event into a pretty year round program, with both the entrepreneurial community that you're supporting, but also this thought leadership, as you're looking across the global south and thinking about, you know, what's working, what's not areas of optimism, areas of pessimism, what's giving you the most hope, and what's giving you the most concern,

Elyas Felfoul: 48:08

I am generally speaking a very optimistic person, I have been a very lucky person who benefited from immigration and education. I was born in Tunisia, I moved to Canada. And my parents, when they moved to Canada, they have the very, very clear objective to give us access to better education, because that was the best way to better our life. And thanks to that I am talking to you than today. So I am a huge believer in education because it changes life. And I see this in the Global South. I told you before the beginning of the conversation that I've just returned from Morocco, actually, I went over the last month, I went twice, just to say how much I really enjoyed that place. And you see what's happening in a place like Morocco is, again, very pragmatic approach. They don't have the same level of money that the GCC have the country of the of the Gulf because of you know, the oil and gas, but Morocco have managed to keep a level of political stability and that political stability have, you know, managed to say, Okay, what do we need to do now that the whole region had been in into some important tension. So they invested in education, they invested in innovation, they invested heavily in higher ed, if you look at their brand, they have a new university called UMC six P, which stands for university, Mohammed six Polytechnic, I mean, the benchmark is not the Arab world or the African continent, the benchmark is us campuses. And I think more and more people need to understand that things are changing fast in this emerging world. So add to that a massive youth population that is hungry for for change, because they have access to internet because they have access to what's happening in the West, which is a great benchmark. So those people are dreaming of creating a better future in their own countries in all societies, because they're opening up now. So I have been I am optimistic from this point of view, because when I see societies, investing in education, that's the best way to say in 10 years, these places are gonna go place are gonna go to the next stage of their development. You add bigger projects, this country is going to host the World Cup this country's so so they have 10 years in front of them where they can do very important transformation. But everything start with investing in innovation and education and in I've been witnessing this in places like Morocco and places like that part of Africa is moving. Once again, I have to put in context because our viewers are mainly focused in the US and there is something very important to evaluate there is when things get better, even if those things are very little, but it's getting better, you have a much better ambience overall in a society, compared to what's happening right now in the West, there's, you know, there's a lot of B polarity, there's, hopefully there's a lot, the ambience is not great right now, right?

Ben Kornell: 51:02

The hope that you get from young people, if they see a future is critical to the viability of that government, that society, that community, and, you know, when people are seeing positive change, they're inclined to believe in that future. And when they see negative change or erosion, then they, you know, the kind of cultural headwinds go more towards disruption and undermining stability. Exactly.

Elyas Felfoul: 51:34

So my optimism is also happening, because we could have potentially what we call the LeapFrog of situation because AI and the level of skills assessment we can do through these new tools, the level of personalized learning experiences, we can we can create, I think, could get us much faster, they could develop these, these countries much faster than anyone have been projecting. And that's where it gets exciting when you when you see if you see places that can implement properly, these new tools, which I think some of these countries that I've been to in the global south are very, very, you know, very keen to implement these, these new tools to get to the next level of their development, then we're going to see, we're going to see beautiful changes and in less than 10 years, one

Ben Kornell: 52:22

thing that people need to understand is that first, like global connectivity by 2030, you know, we expect 99% of the world 99.9%, to be internet connected, and that's to the satellite internet, and lots of investments in infrastructure. But that's going to be here before we know it. And COVID, frankly, was an accelerant around internet connectivity. So at the infrastructure layer, things that weren't true before are now true, which is accessibility, the World Wide Web. Second, we're seeing with AI, the accelerated development, meaning that a phone can hold your own personal LLM. We're seeing examples of this. And this could be at large scale adoption in developing countries, in in six months to a year, that creates a real power of technology in one's own hands. And then third, I think it's the competitive forces. So you know, in the United States, when there was cell phone adoption, you were competing against wire telephone systems, in the developing world, you are competing against nothing, because there works, you know, telephone wires late. And so it does create that leapfrog moment that you're talking about. And just, you know, because I think there's a fair amount of skepticism of what AI can do. There's a great study released by the learning agency, just last week around students in Ghana, who had a reading tutor that was an AI reading tutor, and having, you know, significant improved outcomes versus kind of status quo. And, you know, you can actually do experiments where you have a control group and a subject group with AI, in developing markets is because such a massive number of learners, but also the ability to have treatment and base case is actually quite powerful. So I'm also very excited about efficacy and understanding what's working in the global south. So clearly, you and I are both excited about the future. What does give you pause? What does give you concerns as we roll this out? And what should we be mindful of as we think about the next decade of attack in the Global South,

Elyas Felfoul: 54:37

I'm a believer that education should prepare us to be a good citizen, but also get us ready for the market, generally speaking, I think we're failing both of them. So at an immediate level, the world is facing a challenge, at least in the West, we're facing a challenge of aging population, and we're not training people generally speaking, to enter the job market properly for for the gap that's going to happen. So I'm a bit concerned about this aspect. I'm a bit concerned in the global south that yes, there is a huge amount of talents. Yes, we are training people much faster than before. But we are not creating jobs opportunities at that same rate. In my view, that's gonna create a massive people movement, but massive people movement is going to happen for multiple reasons, the conflict, we're living the climate change issues, but also people move for economic reasons. And I don't think the world is ready for that. So so now I'm talking to super, super high level right. And I do believe that everything goes back to the foundation of this, which is, can we make sure that upskill and rescale people either to move or to find jobs in their own countries or to enter the market to close the gap of the ageing population center places. And yeah, short term I'm concerned. Long term, I think we're going to find solution for it. We're made to find solution where human being made to find solution. I think both of us had the chance to interview actually Sam Altman. And he's been also very bullish on on, you know, generally speaking on the future, and how the new technologies we're bringing to life are gonna solve some of the perennial issues and problems we're facing. Yeah.

Ben Kornell: 56:12

Well, we've talked a little bit in this conversation about the foundation, which is, you know, what you're giving out our grants, they're not really investments. And then the conference that you have is really around thought leadership and kind of supporting the ecosystem. And then we talked about government investments, like, for example, in Morocco, what do you think is the role of private capital? And how do you think about your work in relationship to seeding the kind of invest stability? Because I do think that's one thing that has held the global south back is there's not access to private capital? Because the TAM is too small, or the revenue per student is too little? How do you think about that relationship? And how do you hope it will evolve?

Elyas Felfoul: 56:58

I really love this question, Ben, because I've been thinking about this, in my current role of, you know, leading the wise accelerator, I think we need to redefine or create a kind of a group that thinks together, how do we rethink about the investment in ad tech, I think ad tech is not necessarily any tech, it has to be followed by patient capital, the exit strategy for attack are much more challenging than any other deck. And we have to make sure that we invest in company that have an important learning outcome linked to it. I think I love to encourage, you know, people who are solving problems to make profit, it has to be this way. But it has to be linked to learning outcome. So in my view, easy way to channel some capital into the ad tech investment, is philanthropy. Philanthropy is putting a lot of money in global south is the outcome. You know, I guess the outcome of the philanthropy money is questionable. Right? So can we create a way to divert some of these investments in what we used to call impact into, you know, to work with people who are solving problems? And then in the case of today, people who are solving problems are in many cases, founders. Right. So if we can kind of redesign these framework and change a little bit the mentality and involve more investor who believe in this more from a much more higher societal impact? I think we can get better results. But I'm a little bit yeah, we haven't been very successful in in having more money in ad tech. Yeah. COVID was was a very illusion. You know, if you look at Holand IQ work before COVID, and after COVID, I, something happened in between, and the trajectory is not at all what everyone have have thought of.

Ben Kornell: 58:47

And yeah, no, I mean, if anything, it's reverted back to pre COVID. And potentially worse, I think, you know, the way that a lot of folks in our space think is that on education, entrepreneurship is a means to developing and then scaling, novel solutions to age old educational challenges, which include access, quality and outcomes, what we find is that philanthropy often is that essential part to get ideas up and off the ground. But then you need a viable business model, payment model, and ultimately, investor capital, to kind of create the flywheel of scale. And I think that that's an area where there continues to be a need and work. I know, several people working on this. But it's amazing how just a little bit of capital in developing countries can really generate tremendous scale. So just had a presentation with the Endeavor Catalyst Fund, their returns are phenomenal. And if you look at the kind of social entrepreneurship angle that they've taken, it's been quite a successful impact story as well. So there's really great models that we can follow and lessons learned. But I'm really excited to introduce you to the EdTech insider audience who may not know about why is and will is it 2025 That we'll see you in Doha.

Elyas Felfoul: 1:00:19

Yes, sir. The next big summit is end of 2025. We will make the announcement before the end of this year.

Ben Kornell: 1:00:24

Wonderful. And if people want to find out more about your research and your convenings and the work you're doing, where can they go?

Elyas Felfoul: 1:00:31

They can reach out directly to me on LinkedIn, which is easy with my name or otherwise, if they Google WISE on Google, they can find it easily wise-qatar.

Ben Kornell: 1:00:39

Great? So it's wise dash qatar.org? Correct. Great. Well, thanks so much for joining us, Elyas Felfoul, Director of WISE, great thought partner, visionary and optimist, as well as you know, a practical friend and trying to transform education for all. Thanks so much for joining us today on the pod and we look forward to hearing from you again quite soon.

Elyas Felfoul: 1:01:05

Such a pleasure. Looking forward to seeing you again. Bye, bye.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:01:09

We have a terrific guest Arijit Raychowdhury is the Steve W. Chaddick school chair in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, also known as Georgia Tech. Welcome to the podcast.

Arijit Raychowdhury: 1:01:25

Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:01:28

It's great to have you here. You know, this is a really interesting initiative give us a sense of what is this AI Makerspace tell us what it is and why Georgia Tech is investing in the future of AI for its students. Perfect.

Arijit Raychowdhury: 1:01:40

Yeah, I think this actually mentioned that this is really a very interesting and innovative initiative from the College of Engineering. But we anticipate that the impact of this will be felt all across Georgia Tech, and even beyond Georgia Tech. So as we are all aware of you know, AI is everywhere today. And you know, and it's not just students in computing, or computer science, we need to understand AI. But AI kind of cuts across the physical world today as well, in terms of you know, the intersection of AI with every aspect of societal life. So we understand that, you know, we have to kind of embrace AI and make sure that we give students the necessary tools and infrastructure to be able to learn AI. So it's not just about research, but more about education, because we need to make sure that our students who are the leaders of AI for tomorrow are AI native, that's what we would call them. The main thing here is that, you know, if you look at the typical way that engineering, many engineering schools work, in terms of their lab work would be to create makerspaces, where the students would have access to all the tools and infrastructure, and they would be able to work on various kinds of projects. For AI, the tool for AI would be computing, and you need massive amount of computing to be able to solve at scale, real world problems. So we partnered with Nvidia and Penguin solutions to create what we believe is probably one of the first makerspaces, which is student run and student driven. It will be used for teaching a bunch of our courses undergraduate and graduate, but also students would be able to access some humongous amount of computing power with Nvidia clusters to just do self study or use it for senior design capstone projects and other kinds of projects. So it's more about democratizing and giving access to students and making sure that the students are at the front forefront of this AI revolution that we are we are anticipating. So

Alexander Sarlin: 1:03:25

a Makerspace in the past would involve you know, 3d printers or, or physical machines, as you mentioned, in the AIA are it's compute, it is GPUs. And Nvidia is, you know, we just recently became the most valuable company in the world because of their compute power. And because of their GPUs, this makerspace is going to be powered, at least in its first phase by 20 HDX, H 100. Systems, housing 160 tensor H 100. Tensor core GPUs. I don't know enough about tech to know the details of that. But I know that is a lot of compute. And that is incredibly powerful for your students. Can you give us a little bit of a perspective about how much compute power that is and how rare it is to have access to that kind of power outside of the MakerSpace?

Arijit Raychowdhury: 1:04:10

Yeah, I think this is definitely at the same scale as a medium sized company or a research lab would have, you know, with the kind of capacity that we have. So just to provide a perspective, in a very layman's terms, this compute cluster that we have that you mentioned that 20 GX machines, they can solve problems in one second, that would take 50,000 of Georgia Tech's current students about 22 years to solve. So that's kind of the scale that we're talking about. I mean, this is not just compute power, but also a large amount of memory that's needed to solve any of these problems. So we have paid attention, not just to the compute, but the things that are often not considered would be how much memory we provide, and also how much bandwidth we provide between the GPUs and the clusters. I think we have been working with Penguin solutions and Nvidia very closely to make sure that we pay attention to all those details as well. And we designed the the cluster and the data center to be capable of both scalability as well as in assault, solving problems for a lot of students. But the numbers that you mentioned are actually just the phase one. So, very recently, we placed orders for phase two, which will also have the very similar capability. And by the end of this year, we will have both H 100. And hopefully H 200. Machines, GPUs and all the students integer take both graduate and undergraduate will have access 24/7 to the to the cluster,

Alexander Sarlin: 1:05:33

and it's really incredible. And so Nvidia is to Silicon Valley company. It's in Northern California, Georgia Tech, of course is in Atlanta and Georgia and you know, one of the top computing schools in the nation. What is the relation In shift between Nvidia and Georgia Tech, is there a reason why Nvidia is particularly investing in Georgia Tech's student body and professor, faculty to make sure that that Georgia Tech is really aligned to this AI world?

Arijit Raychowdhury: 1:06:00

I think that the relationship with Nvidia for us, you know, goes back many many years. There is a lot of research connection with Nvidia. Many of our former students are currently in Nvidia as engineers, and in leadership positions, Nvidia as well. So it's not like Nvidia and Logitech have never worked before. So we have been working on the research front of things for many years. The initiative in education is kind of new and interesting. And I think that's why I think we have to give a lot of credit to Nvidia for understanding and recognizing what we are trying to achieve. And we have been partnering with the last one and a half years to kind of bring together the AI makerspace. So this is again, other I think about it as the next step in our relationship where Nvidia understands and we understand that we need to not only, you know, push the envelope of AI, but also make sure that our students who are our undergraduate students, freshman students, sophomore students who need to learn AI as a tool as as computing was 20 years back. So that's where AI is. So no matter what you do, whether you are working in computing or engineering, it can be mechanical, biomedical, whatever it can be, or it can be a student in design or humanities, and you will be using AI in the next few years. So we have to make sure that we provide access of AI compute resources, not only to our Engineering and Computing students, but all students. And that's what the motivation was. And I think Nvidia and VG tech leadership and resonated on that. And now we have what is potentially one of the largest makerspaces in AI in the country at the moment,

Alexander Sarlin: 1:07:26

I can imagine, it strikes me when you mentioned that the AI makerspace is going to be student driven. That's a really interesting idea that can be used for student projects. What do you envision students are going to want to do with it? It feels like the sky is the limit AI can do so many different things, as you mentioned in so many different fields. What is sort of your dream as a professor about what these undergraduate and graduate students at Georgia Tech might be able to create? In this? makerspace?

Arijit Raychowdhury: 1:07:54

Yeah, that's a that's a great question. Because I think the first of all, I think I should not speculate because students always surprise us, I think they'll use it in ways that we cannot think of a good point. But to ask me, I think there are three aspects where I would want to have an impact. The first one is classroom and curriculum. And many of our classes are already using this AI makerspace. So problems that they could not solve in the past as a part of their project final class project, they are not being able to solve very complex problems just because of the access to the MakerSpace. And if you just look at some of the numbers, so there were problems, like an image segmentation that they were not able to do in the past, because they were using, you know, small GPUs, and would typically take about three to four days for for them to solve a small image classification problem on a single image. Now they can with the makerspace, in the same class, they are now solving image classification on video streams real time, wow. So you can kind of understand the difference in complexity. So from an education and from a purely classroom environment and classroom education perspective, I think that there are lots of, you know, very positive impact we're going to have. The second aspect would be sort of self study and research, I would not call it research as much as you know, more like capstone projects and senior design projects, where they will be able to use AI in areas where they were not able to use AI before, because our AI makerspace is now connected using our computing network to all the physical makerspaces. So anyone working in robotics can use the AI Makerspace as the brain, someone working on data analytics for drug discovery, are they taking a class on molecular biology, and they can use the makerspace to kind of work on very complex problems. So I can clearly see the boundaries of research and senior design and in a VIP projects that the students would do getting pushed into more and more. The third aspect of it, which I think is the part where I'm very excited about is I think this will also seed many interesting ideas that have commercial potential. So makerspaces have always been the place where interesting ideas get, you know, prototyped, and then eventually students would take off and build a company around it. So I expect that to happen as well. So I'd say education, sort of research, slashing, pushing the envelope, and then entrepreneurship. So these are the three aspects where I see a very positive impact that the amicus briefs can have.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:10:08

That's a great answer. And I also appreciate how you say, you know, the students are always going to surprise, surprise us and do things we can expect. But that's fascinating that it could connect to all the different physical makerspaces, and fuel all these different things. One other question for you, which is, you know, as if this isn't already, you know, speculative and futuristic and sort of science fiction enough to be able to access this incredible amount of compute and memory, you know, a higher ed environment. You're also planning on setting up an AI Makerspace Omniverse, which is a sandbox for augmented and virtual reality applications. So there's going to be a whole 3d side of this in the next year or two. Who as well? Can you talk a little? I know we're early in this. But can you talk a little bit about what you expect that to look like?

Arijit Raychowdhury: 1:10:51

Yeah, I think that's definitely an that's something that we are seeing more and more in manufacturing. So when you look at semiconductor manufacturing, or even, you know, just manufacturing, there's a lot of AI that is getting infused with the manufacturing processes. So building things like digital twins is becoming super important for at least engineering disciplines and for bringing a lot of the manufacturing onshore as well. So this has been a focus of the steps and science act, for example, I think there's a lot of activity in that space, even in the corporate side. So we understand the potential there. And also the need for making sure that our students understand how to work, you know, in this virtual reality environment, particularly not for you know, for training, I think that's one area where there is a lot of scope. And also for understanding how very complex engineering manufacturing processes work. I'll give you an interesting anecdote, which is the idea of this creating this Omniverse actually predates our idea to create the AI makerspace. And the idea actually came when we were all stuck at home, you know, are in the lab isolated during COVID. And there were students in the AEC lab who are supposed to work together in a clean room machine where they could not because they had to mention social distancing. So one of our faculty members actually started with an AR glass and created a very small program for the students to be six feet apart, see what the other person was doing kind of in a virtual environment and work together. So that was a very small prototype, which kind of drove us to thinking about, you know, how do we create this in a more scalable manner. And that's why, you know, the some of the early motivation for creating a nominee verse as a part of an educational experience came from, and we hope that in the next couple of years, we'll be able to take it further with the compute that we now have with the MakerSpace. We can create, you know, potentially digital twins and sandboxes for students to kind of work on interesting 3d renderings and renditions of whatever is going on in the virtual world. So, super excited about it. We'll see how this all

Alexander Sarlin: 1:12:43

It's, it's fascinating. It really feels evolves. like Georgia Tech, as as it has for many years is pioneering the future of what technology and technology education is going to look like. In this new age of AI. I really appreciate you being here with us on a tech insiders. This is Dr. Arijit Raychowdhury From the the Steve W Chadic, school Chair and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech and creating the AI Makerspace and the AI Makerspace Omniverse. A completely new way to learn for undergraduate and graduate students in AI. Thanks so much for being here with us today.

Arijit Raychowdhury: 1:13:21

Thank you so much for having me. It was great talking to you. Thank you,

Alexander Sarlin: 1:13:24

you too. For our deep dive today, we have a very special guest, Lindsay Jones, who is the CEO of CAST the Center for Applied and special technologies at a Massachusetts one of the absolute premier learning science organizations in the US. Welcome to the podcast. Lindsay.

Lindsay Jones: 1:13:42

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:13:44

So the big news out of cast this week is that cast is one of seven major education organizations that came together, they announced this at ISTE, to basically help schools define education quality as it comes to EdTech. So people can actually make really informed decisions. This has been something plaguing the industry for a long time. Tell us about the organizations that you're working with for this, and what are some of the initiatives you're planning to do as a group?

Lindsay Jones: 1:14:12

Absolutely. Well, I think, as you know, better than anyone, right, educate our schools are overwhelmed with great education, technology, some moderate, some not so great. There's so much coming at them, it's hard to determine what's good, what isn't. And so the purpose of this is to help cut through that noise, right with some really seven really trusted organizations that have looked at this issue for and from a variety of different ways. And try to provide some simple, clear guidance for educators in how they select education tech tools. So we were really excited to join with the other seven organizations. I think you know, them ISTE one ag tech, Sita Kosan. Innovate edu, digital promise, digital promise, yes. And so we all have that all of us have been working together for years in many, many different ways. And like cast, we have a UDL product certification that lives on digital promises marketplace. And there are several other groups that have similar types of validations and credentials that can help people cut through this noise. So it made a lot of sense for these organizations, all of whom have looked at this all of whom work with educators to come together and say, Can we agree on some high level good information for schools and get it out there around what were some of the products we've already created to help schools make these decisions?

Ben Kornell: 1:15:43

So your organization is famous for UDL, can you tell us a little bit about how you brought the UDL principles and approach to this work and UDL stands for a universal design for learning. And I've worked with countless UDL schools who are so passionate about it. How does your UDL perspective play into this group?

Lindsay Jones: 1:16:05

Yeah, well, it's so great that you asked that question. So we did cast, we're celebrating our 40th anniversary this year, we're excited about that. And we've for those 40 years, have really developed Universal Design for Learning. And now we promote its adoption and implementation. And we continue to work to make it even better. But it started out of really, you know, in 1984, when many people were just getting personal computers, and did those weren't widely available, it was the founders of caste who looked at those and said, Wow, we could do some cool things with the education environment to make it more usable, and inclusive. And their primary theory was like kids aren't broken systems can be better designed. From that, right, we then develop universal design for learning. So that framework applies. You don't need technology for the framework. But technology is something you can use the framework to evaluate and to build into learning experiences to make them more flexible. One of the key components of the framework is multi modalities, right presenting information in many different ways. Knowing that science tells us that learners are variable we all brains are as different as fingerprints. That's overwhelming. If you are an educator looking at a classroom of 30 students and thinking, oh my gosh, how do I reach 30 Different Brains, right? Typically, we segregate them into different groups and try to attack that issue that way. But what UDL tries to help educators do is intentionally design before that they are really interacting with the students and technology can be really helpful in that regard. The Universal Design for Learning principles, when applied to education, technology, can help the people creating that technology and using it ensure that it's accessible for everyone. And that it's designed in a way to maximize and optimize teaching and learning and our ability to reach all those different brains.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:18:13

You mentioned inclusivity, and usability, which happened to be I'm sure this is not a coincidence, two of the five ed tech quality indicators that this group of organizations is using as the basis of their recommendations that you have the recommendations or the tools be safe, evidence based, inclusive, usable and interoperable, we hear innovative to use voice in that one. Can you tell us a little bit about these indicators? And what you hope to be building off of these as foundational pillars?

Lindsay Jones: 1:18:44

Absolutely. I mean, I think it doesn't surprise anybody that we start with safe, right? Obviously, that's a huge concern around digital privacy, we've got a lot of federal laws that are kind of working with that. And every company needs to be ensuring they're keeping that data safe. Evidence based. Absolutely. One of the reasons we created the product certification, I think I mentioned is that everyone kept coming to us and saying, with this product, it's stamped and says it's UDL, it's aligned to the principles of UDL, is it, we had to kind of weed through that. Inclusive is really important for us and all school districts. And I do want to highlight, it's always been important, right? It is covered. But in April of 2024, the Department of Justice issued a final rule on title two of the ADEA. And that states that all it requires state and local government entities to ensure that web and mobile app based digital learning resources are appropriate and usable by students with disabilities. So every school district must ensure any web or mobile based digital learning resource is accessible and usable by students with disabilities by 2026 or 2027. So that inclusive and usable, those are absolutely essential for us moving forward. So you know, I think an interoperable as you mentioned, right, that's just a way to really help districts make sure all their tech is working together in the most seamless way. So I don't think these principles will shock anyone? I hope not. No. But I do think it needed to be said and we do need to help cut through the noise to help districts and schools make good choices.

Ben Kornell: 1:20:27

Yeah, I will just say like one, the fact that none of it is so out of the blue is really a coherent coming together of principles, which is so interesting, because Design for Learning is what cast is known for so it's really cool that in a meta way you're out actually living your principles and values, and building coherence around this framework. And number two is, so many of us in the education space with incredibly great intention are doing independent work on these issues. And it can be very hard as a district to be a consumer of all of those different frameworks and all of those different papers. And so I also love this model around how do we get the people around the table that have 95% agreement, and maybe 5% of variance. And let's just establish what we can all agree on, and move forward from there. And so I just, you know, applaud you all for doing that. I think the last question that I have, you know, we've seen a lot of negative headlines in the news today. And this framework, sets an aspiration, but also shows how we may be falling short, what's giving you the most inspiration today? What's making you excited and energized about the work Cass is doing, and about what's going on in the greater education space. Wow.

Lindsay Jones: 1:21:50

I mean, I have to say, I think the fact that we came together with great partners, and this is I mean, I've been working on this for a long time. And in policy, in particular, in my background, and I will just say it's rare that you we only ever get anything done in collaboration, right? In coalition, it's the only way to do it. And too often in those coalition's we can, we can fight over that 5% that you just identified. And so I think what gives me hope here is that here, you're seeing really powerful groups that have really, you know, years of research and work behind them coming together to agree and say, all of our mission is to get more kids better education. Right? Yeah. And that was pretty inspirational. I was really excited by that. And having been through many kind of battles in the past, I think it really, it's a pretty important step forward for the field. And it's going to help schools and districts clarify some of this stuff. So those things, I think, are really powerful and important, and they're needed. And so I feel pretty inspired by that.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:22:55

interesting part of this, and that multiple modes of representation, multiple modes of expression, you know, technology is enabling the type of inclusivity and optionality that we've sort of never had before. So I hope that the cast crew who are all so passionate about education and accessibility are are excited about the future. Thank you so much. We'd love to have you on for a longer conversation at some point. But this is just great news for the field. And I'm hoping there'll be a sort of a certification that combined some of these we'll see if that manifests, but Lindsay Jones, thank you so much for being here with us CEO of CAST, the Center for Applied and special technologies, hugely influential in education and edtech. Thanks for being here with us.

Lindsay Jones: 1:23:41

Many thanks to you both.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:23:44

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.