The Intersection of Video, Assessment, and AI in Education: BrainPOP's Vision with Scott Kirkpatrick

Scott Kirkpatrick is CEO of BrainPOP, a leading brand in the U.S. edtech supplemental market whose learning solutions are beloved, trusted, and grounded in research and the science of learning. During his tenure, BrainPOP was acquired by KIRKBI A/S, the family-owned holding and investment company of the LEGO® brand. Scott joined BrainPOP from General Assembly, where he served as president and chief operating officer. Under his leadership, General Assembly experienced exponential growth and was subsequently acquired by The Adecco Group, the largest human capital company in the world. Prior to GA, Scott served as president of The Princeton Review and successfully facilitated its acquisition by IAC. He also served as executive vice president of strategy and marketing and president of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s technology division, Riverdeep. Prior to Houghton Mifflin, he was a strategy consultant at The Parthenon Group and The Callidon Group (now Oliver Wyman). Scott holds a BS in economics & management from the United States Coast Guard Academy. After graduation, he served as an officer in the Coast Guard as a ship navigator, financial analyst, and an aide to former U.S. President Bill Clinton. After his military career, he went on to earn an MBA from The MIT Sloan School of Management.

Recommended Resources:
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Transcript

Alexander Sarlin: 0:18

Scott Kirkpatrick is the CEO of BrainPOP, a leading brand in the US ed tech supplemental market who's learning solutions our beloved trusted and grounded in research and the science of learning. During his tenure, BrainPOP was acquired by Kirkby as the family owned holding an investment company of the Lego brand. Scott joined BrainPOP from General Assembly where he served as president and chief operating officer. Under his leadership General Assembly experienced exponential growth and was subsequently acquired by the Adecco group, the largest human capital company in the world. Prior to GA Scott served as president of the Princeton Review, and successfully facilitated its acquisition by IAC. He also served as executive vice president of strategy and marketing and president of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Technology Division river deep. Prior to that he was a strategy consultant at the Parthenon group and the Kelvedon group now called Oliver Wyman. Scott holds a BS in economics and management from the US Coast Guard Academy. After graduation, he served as an officer in the Coast Guard as a ship navigator, financial analyst, and an aide to former US President Bill Clinton. After his military career, he went on to earn an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Scott Kirkpatrick Welcome to EdTech. Insiders.

Scott Kirkpatrick: 2:54

Thank you.

Alexander Sarlin: 2:55

I am so excited to have you here. BrainPOP is one of the legendary edtech companies has really just journeyed through so many different phases. And you've had an incredibly impressive career leading various educational organizations as well. Can you share a little bit about your background and what brought you to BrainPOP and how it's been evolving under your leadership?

Scott Kirkpatrick: 3:18

Absolutely. First of all, it's such a pleasure to be on on your program, as well as being part of BrainPOP. It's been just an amazing, rewarding almost five years now. I actually started my career as an officer in the United States Coast Guard, and have really tried to dedicate my life to service and for the past 23 years, I've been an executive in education, and really seeing the full spectrum of education from pre K to college and grad school readiness at Princeton Review. And then adult learning at General Assembly, leading to rescaling and upskilling. And when I, you know, reflect on the future of work, the future of humanity, the impact of AI automation, I think the biggest need we have, and I learned that deeply at General Assembly is actually developing those higher order skills, critical thinking and creativity that we spent a lot of time at your assembly focusing on adults, but it needs to happen at kids. And instead of these drill and kill type programs, you know, kids need to be empowered to think for themselves. And I was lucky enough to find BrainPOP, who had been doing that for 20 years and was really lucky to join the founder, Dr. Avraham Kadar and lead him over the last five years. And now obviously, with the transition of ownership over that five years to the Christiansen family who is obviously the owner of Lego Yeah.

Alexander Sarlin: 4:42

So you know, I can't imagine many listeners to this are unfamiliar with BrainPOP. But I'd love to hear your description of sort of what the BrainPOP universe looks like, what is its role in education? What is it tend to do and how is it evolved? Because, you know, again, 25 years, it's a very long time for an edtech company. Tell us about the brain pops journey? Yeah,

Scott Kirkpatrick: 5:01

no, it definitely has evolved a lot in the 25 years, and I think that's what's so nice about BrainPOP it is one of the true pioneers of edtech. You know, selling subscriptions into schools 25 years ago, when you really think about 1999 What that look like we're actually selling subscription And our founder says all the time we were SAS before SAS was even. And so, you know, Dr. Kadar founded the company, he was a pediatric immunologist in New York. And he always believed that kids would have the best outcomes in their treatments, you know, when they knew what was happening in their body. And that was the inspiration for BrainPOP. And the BrainPOP characters, and the brand was built organically by educators and the products became one of the highest used and trusted products in schools in the US and, and outside the US. And you know what, for me, as I said, I always knew about BrainPOP, I knew this love, but I will tell you, I actually didn't realize the power of the brand until I joined the company. And I'll just say one of my first experiences, I went to one of the big ed tech conferences, and immediately went to our booth. And when I saw a line over 100, deep to get a selfie with Moby, I realized, okay, there's something really special here. And my goal when I entered the company, almost five years ago, was to really evolve BrainPOP, and it had significant evolution over its first 20 years. But I felt my role was to really take that just truly amazing video content and game based platform to a deep instructional platform with proven academic gains. And I will tell you, that vision is still ongoing, but it was really, it was actually delayed during the pandemic, where, you know, my entire focus was not about evolving the business, but to actually support our customers. And we, you know, that was a huge part of brain Pop's growth over the last number of years. But what it was all about was just being there for our customers. And I think when we had heard about back then Corona, we decided early February, because we heard a lot about this from our international customers, reopened up BrainPOP for free to everyone. And we did that the first week, our web traffic went up by over 4x. And then all of our investment was okay, how do we support teachers families through this, but as we've actually moved out and kind of gotten to a new normal, we've been back to our focus of evolving our platform to really focus on learning outcomes made some significant enhancements to our product, where we're now able to show real tangible growth, against essential skills with our core Cade offering, and then also launched a new product called BrainPOP science, where students are doing real science aligned to the standards. So it's been an amazing ride, you know, today, we have a presence in over two thirds of us school districts, and reach about 25 million students annually about the transit teachers are using BrainPOP. So it's, we're really, you know, we're really proud of supporting those teachers every day. Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin: 8:05

it strikes me that, you know, 2025 years in some of the students, they grew up with Moby and the BrainPOP characters are now very much adults. And they probably see that as you know, a big part of their childhood in their schooling. It's such a, it's amazing to see generations of people go through this experience. And, you know, it's interesting to hear that the founder of BrainPOP, was a doctor was an immunologist, I did not know that. And that, you know, and you have a background of military background and a background in adult learning, it makes a lot of sense, in a way even though BrainPOP is a very obviously student friendly brand. It's filled with colorful characters and games. And it's really fun. It strikes me that there's a sort of an essential seriousness and standards alignment underneath it, especially in this era, where it's going beyond the sort of fun and flash and saying, Hey, yes, we want to be appealing and engaging to kids. But we also want to be transformational, and actually help prepare students for the world that they're, they're heading towards. It's really interesting to hear that.

Scott Kirkpatrick: 9:02

Yes.

Alexander Sarlin: 9:02

Yeah. I'd love to hear your talk about that. And then I want to ask you about this acquisition as well.

Scott Kirkpatrick: 9:06

Yeah. And I think you said is so well, and I will just say, what's so special is the number of teachers that were BrainPOP users and kids. And now, you know, when you think about all of my new employees, most of them were BrainPOP users, which is such a cool thing and the importance of having an organization that can sustain you know, numerous macro or micro economic events to choke, always evolving. And I think it is always that balance of what you stand for, and what you pride yourself on and but then also innovating around it. And I think that's the balance we think about all the day because I you know, for us, we pride ourselves in being the best part of a learner's day. And that is always driven by the strength of our ability to connect with kids, our animated movies, Spark kids, innate curiosity, and they build knowledge and they make complex topics simple, clear, and thought provoking. And that that is really what we stand for. And our mission statement, which is why we exist is built around that and that is, our mission is to empower kids to shape the world around them and within them, and so that will never change. And so everything that we do that is foundational, but our vision of where we're going And that's where we're evolving. And our vision is to build and measure the skills needed to thrive in tomorrow's world, which as we know, is changing all the time. And new job types I can never imagine are showing up. And so that's that seriousness of that is that aspiration of actually moving towards that ambitious vision while never wavering from our mission. And I think when you think about the problems of education, they're big, and educators need support. But I think what we always want to do is do it in a way that brings joy. And unfortunately, in these days, joy is not as big as it shouldn't be in learning. And so whatever problem we solve whatever job we do, it is always going to be having joy as the way to succeed in that, versus, you know, pounding other ways to do it. So that is, I think that ever balanced that will always do to ensure that we sustain and expand for another 25 years. Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin: 11:16

I'm hearing joy and connecting with kids and engaging animated movies. And I think it's a perfect segue to, you mentioned, the Christiansen family, and how, you know, in this current era of BrainPOP, BrainPOP, was acquired by Kirk V, which is the Lego brand, you know, the legendary toy and, you know, media massive media brand. That is feels like a very natural acquisition to me, I think they, you know, both organizations are really dedicated to learning through play learning through joy, as you said, tell us about what that's been like, well, how has the acquisition influenced brand pops strategic direction, its offerings, how has the merger gone?

Scott Kirkpatrick: 11:54

Alex, I love the fact that you said, learning through play, because that is Legos. Vision is to be the global force for learning through play. And you heard a lot about I talked about BrainPOP. And it's a natural connection there. And, you know, we were acquired one and a half years ago. And I would say, the acquisition has been so much better than I could have imagined. And they absolutely had a huge influence on the company. And as you know, there's a lot of acquisitions, and not only education businesses, but everywhere. And, you know, the majority of them are not viewed as successes, and it's hard. And this one has been phenomenal. And I think a couple of the key reasons that has been really been great is it starts with an aligned culture. And you know, as we talked about, we have very similar values between our two organizations. And the way sometimes you tell that is, we actually use similar phrases and how we talk like, you heard me, I talked about connecting and speaking to kids at eye level, and respecting kids, like that's a lot of what we talk about. And when you go to folks from Lego, they talk about kids as role models, very similar values, as we approach is that to me is the number one thing, the second, that we're really fortunate that they have an absolutely long term outlook for the business, we're not going to be sold, right? Like, it's a very different, like, we are part of the business, you know, forever. And I think that's a pretty exciting concept where, you know, in good times and bad times, we're not thinking about the short term, we're thinking about what's best for kids, you know, how do we serve educators? And as I'm sure a lot of your pockets, were in a typical budget cycle after the COVID Money is leaving. And so we're thinking about long term, how do we support district schools, educators, families through this. And I think the third thing that has been really important, and I think a huge learning is they've kept us independent. So BrainPOP is not integrated into Lego. It has a separate board of directors that as part of Kirkby, which is the family office of the Lego brand. And we're focusing on executing our plant, ensuring that we are serving our customers, and will work where appropriate for both organizations. And so I would say the other thing that how they've really impacted us is they think very big. Their aspirations are, you know, they want us they have one single goal, to reach and impact all kids in the world. And everything that we talked about is around that. And if we actually move towards this goals, financial returns will come. But there's not a discussion around financial returns. It's a discussion about impact and reach. And they're very involved owners in our culture, and how we impact in our operations. And they're very thoughtful, as you said, they've built arguably the best brand in the world for kids and BrainPOP snacks. And we are well on our way, but we have some big aspirations ahead of us. But it's been a really amazing experience over the last year and a half.

Alexander Sarlin: 14:56

Yeah, I remember seeing that acquisition come through and saying that makes so much sense. And that's very, very exciting for both organizations. I think, you know, Lego massive, I think almost 100 year old brand, 90 years 90 or 90 year old brand that has, like BrainPOP evolved many times. I mean, you know, Lego used to be said in the same breath, you know, decades ago at this point. With Erector sets, and Lincoln lives and things, they was not. And now it's blockbuster movies and Lego Land and has video game franchises and incredible crossover, they've just done an unbelievable job of continuing to build. So that there along with maybe Disney would be the other brand that may compete for the biggest brand in the world. But it's amazing. And I can't wait to see what comes out of it. So speaking of which, you've mentioned that there has been some new new adaptations, new things happening at BrainPOP. But there's some new features coming. There's some new ideas, Brain Pop science, can you tell us a little bit about how, you know, in the wake of this acquisitions 18 months ago, but keeping the brand separate? What has BrainPOP been up to what are the new things coming out this year?

Scott Kirkpatrick: 16:03

There's a lot and I think, as I said, we have a brand new product line or BrainPOP science, but are the product line that most people know and love is our K to eight BrainPOP platform. As you can imagine, you know, everything that we're doing is in the spirit of the challenges that educators families, kids are struggling with it. And we all know the significant learning loss that has happened since the pandemic. And in response, the market has had a huge focus on implementing high quality instructional core curriculum programs. That's been the trend. And as a research based supplemental platform that promises outcomes, we absolutely agree that that is an important course for us school districts. And I would say that one of the pain points of high quality core curriculum is that, you know, kids come into class with a wide range of background knowledge and learning differences. This can make it really hard for students to even have an entry point into these high quality core programs. And this is where BrainPOP plays really well and addresses this, I would argue better than anyone of really amplifying your impact on core by giving kids access to grade level, background knowledge and vocabulary across standard aligned topics in building those essential literacy comprehension, critical thinking skills. So teachers can successfully implement these core programs. And so as we think about that, as the problem we're solving to make sure that kids do really well in their new core curriculums, how have we amplified BrainPOP to better serve that. And so this back to school, there's a number of new things coming that are additive one is grade level, high interest texts that are Lexile level. So build a little bit extra background knowledge, and actually have these embedded assessments to help those students. So adding to that, we've actually added a vocabulary builder, with interactive flashcards with grade level word banks to once again amplify that background knowledge, those essential skills to succeed and in those curriculums. And then we've actually enhanced a lot of our quizzes to go well beyond multiple choice to really show what you know, to more technology enhanced learning types to really mirror those end of the year state assessment. So a lot going on, as we kind of continue that road of our BrainPOP, three to eight program. But once again, never steering away from that joy. And then on science. You know, science is really our newest product, it's focused on Middle School, we are enabling students to do science through real world phenomena, and problem solving. So how it works is there's a dynamic investigation process. So students will obviously make claims, they'll gather the evidence and explain their reasoning. And they do that through multiple means we have 3d worlds that go into data manipulate a simulation, so they're on this journey. But as you can imagine, there's significant amount of argumentative writing going on in this program. And so a number of things that we're doing once again, to evolve that product this year, is we've launched our patented assisted grading process for open ended responses. And that's obviously where we're seeing AI come right into our product, which will save teachers time, but also gives students a more consistent grading experience, especially in the area of writing. So that's one big thing. The other real big thing for science and engineering practices are all part of the science standards. And so we've actually launched a number of actually ways that students are doing engineering practice, from bridge building to collisions to sustainability. So a lot of interesting things as we combine the science and engineering practices together. So really excited about what's coming out this this back to school with BrainPOP. Yeah.

Alexander Sarlin: 19:48

And it strikes me as I hear you list these enhancements. And the I mean, these are serious educational features. So this really is about learning loss and alignment. It's not about the glitz and glamour, it's about the learning but the glitz and glamour is already there. You know BrainPOP has already built this humongous library of videos and characters and games and is in as you mentioned, two thirds of school districts so it's not about trying to, you know, at this point trying to get people to notice you. It's about we're already there. How do we actually quell this? off the cliff learning loss We've had a during the pandemic that we have still come back from. So instructional designer, and it really excites me to hear the focus on assessment, the focus on writing the focus on argumentation, that's thrilling. And let's talk about the teacher side. So it sounds like a lot of things for students, including AI assistant grading all sorts of different aspects and science. What about the teacher side? How are teachers getting more support to be able to support you mentioned, you know, students coming in with different amounts of background knowledge? How can they support differentiation and decision making? New sweet? Well,

Scott Kirkpatrick: 20:49

that's exactly, you know, in fact, the, and we can go deeper that too. But that's the end of the, the assisted grading is one clear feature that is adding significant value for teachers in terms of saving them significant amount of time. But the most important thing is that giving them data at their fingertips that they can actually really make an impact in real time. And so we've spent a lot of our efforts really producing relevant reporting and dashboards for them. We all know that they're responsible for really students meeting grade level expectations, that's what they're responsible for. And which means they must be proficient in cross curricular literacy skills. And so over the past years, we've really, we had a lot of reporting for administrators, but this year, we're launching a lot more for teachers. And so at the topic level, teachers will be able to monitor student progress on a number of different even micro or macro, they can look deeply at a specific assignment of a topic how students perform their or they can go into a very micro activity to see where they are. So looking at student progress alongside with benchmarks on how the rest of the class is performing, so giving them that immediate information at their fingertips, we've also launched a new performance report for them, that shows insights on how they're performing against their literacy standards. And that will highlight, you know, really each student's gains in the area of ELA standards, the most essential one. So our whole goal is what are we doing to get teachers data that they can act on immediately.

Alexander Sarlin: 22:49

That's really exciting. And, you know, one of the things that's always struck me as very interesting about BrainPOP approach, and I believe it's still baked into everything you're saying here, you mentioned sort of that students might have particular gaps in vocabulary or background knowledge, or certain pieces of standards from the past that they have not caught up with, and then are causing gaps in their current learning. And BrainPOP has always provided a sense of sort of autonomy for students, which I've always found really fantastic. And also sort of aligned with that learning through play concept. It's not about just students going through a very linear curriculum or going through, you know, 12345. And then you're done. It's been much more of an exploratory that students have some choices, students have the ability to sort of identify things they want to go deeper on, I'd love to hear how you think about that in this new era. Because as teachers have more and more data, they can, you know, help support students making wise choices for themselves, you know, how does that sort of choice play into brain pops philosophy?

Scott Kirkpatrick: 23:46

Well, student agency is at the core of everything that that we do. That is what we believe in everything is about choice for us in student agency. And what our characters do is their whole job is to model a joy of learning. So kids can make their own evidence based conclusions. And so as we think about any enhancement we make, agency is absolutely critical to everything that we do. And I think one of the things that I'm very excited about for the future of education is the future of assessment. And really, when you think about assessment and AI, what I think we'll see in the future is, is no longer having standardized tests where kids will fill in multiple choice questions. And artificial intelligence will allow us to assess and measure skills for each student. And so when you have that, everything can be about agency. And then you start measuring different skills, such as creative thinking, critical thinking, computation, things that are so important, but been very difficult to measure over time. So that impact of agency is going to be more and more felt as we can actually have different assessment capabilities.

Alexander Sarlin: 24:58

I would love to double click on that point, because that is so interesting, and feels really a rich vein to think about what the future of AI and education really could look like. I think, you know, we're obviously in this moment where there's lots of debate, there's lots of confusion, frankly, about whether AI is going to be supportive or be a problem in terms of student learning, because it introduces all these additional capacities for students to sort of subvert and do their regular work. And what I'm hearing you say and I really find this very interesting is that there's been this concept and education for a long time of sort of self assessment or assessment through gaming or you know, all these different professors basically have been thinking about what how can we get away from standardized assessments with multiple choice and bubble sheets? and all that. And instead, actually look at what students are actually doing when they're actually doing work and actually collaborating and actually, you know, working in doing things in the classroom and use that as the assessment data. And that is, it feels like exactly the kind of vision you're painting here where students have choices, students have agency, and what they do with that agency becomes the data that can be used to support their learning, rather than having to stop and do summative assessments and regions area they used to do in New York or all these standards. Yes, I want to hear more about this vision. This is really exciting. You

Scott Kirkpatrick: 26:16

know, we can talk a lot about AI. And I can tell you how we're approaching it. But before I do, why don't I kind of dig a little bit into your question around like how AI I believe will be really the catalyst for real change and assessment. And what gets me so excited about it is a move away from drill and kill products are ones that allow students to choose their own adventure, especially knowing that they have such a variance and background knowledge and vocabulary coming into school. And as I said, it will allow us to really measure skills that we keep talking about, you know, I started, you know, earlier on around my work at General Assembly where we were not effective, because we taught people how to be software engineers, we were affected because we taught, we really help people succeed and be great employees. And it was as much about the technical skills as the higher order skills of creativity and critical thinking computational thinking, and, and that's what made us successful. And it's what employers want when they hire employees. And how can we make sure that that's something that is measured in the early ages, and AI is going to be a critical step in that. And I actually think a lot of the innovation that's happening in this space is happening with Pisa, which is the Program for International Student Assessment. I'm sure you know it well. But they've not only recently announced that they'll have AI in their 2029 tests, but they just recently came out with their first global measurement to measure creative thinking. And there's some really powerful insights in that I encourage you to, to look at that. And I'm really proud to say that our chief academic officer Udall Rosen was a key member of that team. And there's insights that in terms of, they found that academic excellence is not a prerequisite for excellence in creative thinking. But students need a baseline level of skills in their core subject areas, to excel in creative thinking. And so these are some of these insights, as we think about where assessments are going i i actually think when you think about the future of education in the landscape, assessment is probably where we will see the most profound change. And I think AI will be a huge driver of our ability to accelerate that we've been talking about it for so long. But I think we're now at a point where it truly can be personalized for the student. I

Alexander Sarlin: 28:40

really agree. And I mean, listeners to this podcast may know that I've been on somewhat of an apologist for standardized testing, I think, unlike a lot of educators, you have background in the Princeton Review, I have background in some standardized testing as well. And I've always said, Look, until we have a viable alternative to really measure where people are at standardized testing is the best we have, right, it's the it's the best thing we have, and we can't just throw it out and assume that it'll be replaced by something great. But I agree with you, I think AI can take the vast amounts of data and the subtle patterns that happen when students are operating within, you know, a simulation, for example, like a science simulation, an AI can actually look at, you know, 1000 different students doing that simulation and identify, you know, what students are doing either the skills that students are showing in that we've never had that capacity before in human history, we've never had it. And maybe we can finally get beyond the place where the the tail wags the dogs and the standardized test, determine what is happening in the classroom. And instead, get to a place where you can ask students to do virtually anything that's really meaningful and standards aligned at you know, in the far future, maybe we even get beyond that, but like get students to do things that are real, that are collaborative, creative, that our understanding of space in a really deep way. And the assessment data just comes out of that naturally. I mean, it's really exciting to imagine it really would change education pretty deeply.

Scott Kirkpatrick: 30:04

I agree with 100% of what you just said. And I think back to that point of, of agency, is that kids can pick their own way and still be assessed equally with us. Exactly.

Alexander Sarlin: 30:18

Which is incredible. I mean, it just changes so much of what we take for granted in the education system. Exactly.

Scott Kirkpatrick: 30:26

And I think that's why these things where you might not need the deep background knowledge, right, because you're based on what your knowledge already is. And right now it's as we started about the big problem is when kids come in with so much difference in background knowledge. It's really hard to make sure they all get to that same grade level expectation, right,

Alexander Sarlin: 30:43

and that's been some of the big complaints about standardized testing is that they have these sort of racial characteristics because students come in with different background knowledge. And some of the questions are based on, you know, particular sets of knowledge that ended up causing bias in the results. That is something that may, you know, in an ideal world be of the past, if we get to a place where students can pick and choose and actually go deep in the areas in which they are already interested in, they've already built their own background knowledge rather than something that they've only learned in school, or only learned from, you know, from a series of, of teachers is really exciting to think about. So let's talk about the gaming side of this, you know, we haven't mentioned brain pops gaming features, but BrainPOP had made a big push into gaming, I don't know, probably eight or nine years ago, I think, at this point, beyond this video. Yeah, let's talk about how the gaming features have evolved, and how you're using, you know, both the gaming and the video, in these new environments. And whether you're thinking about AI in the context of those types of media. Yeah,

Scott Kirkpatrick: 31:43

and I would say everything that we do at BrainPOP is to enhance where students and teachers are, you know, and games are a key part of BrainPOP. But they're still not the biggest go to for teachers and students. And so, as we think about where we're evolving to, the video is still the strongest feature with BrainPOP. And so, you know, for me, we can actually start evolving where we think people go or actually build on where they are. And we've really honed in on, okay, how do we innovate where students and teachers are gravitating towards, to build that background knowledge and that active learning? And so the gaming is, you're already having that active learning, but then with the movie, how do you make the movie much more accurate? And so I'll just give you a kind of a simple example and why innovation is so simple. As part of BrainPOP videos, for example, there was always great teachers would pause the movie at certain times to create discussion amongst the students, right. That's the act of learning that's needed. And as we thought about this move to outcomes, and making sure that we have the data to show where students are, we decided, how do you actually measure the power of a teacher pause and discussion. And so instead of actually thinking about, Oh, we're going to add all these new, you know, we did, we actually just put the pause point within the movie. And now these pause points are where teachers have discussion, and then we're collecting the student, understand their perfect times for checks for understanding. And all we did into a movie is allows students to actually show their understanding. And now we have all this student data to actually understand where each student is that we can report back to a teacher. And I think when you think about AI, in general, everything we're going to do is not AI for AI sake, but AI as an enabler for teacher capacity and, and student achievement. And so, you know, as I talked about earlier, this concept of our grading open ended responses, right, this was done to save teachers time and expand capacity. But as we think about AI, we also have to really make sure that this has to always be a teacher's in the loop approach, as we think about all of these innovations that we're doing, obviously, pause points on AI, but you can just see about how I'm, we're thinking about our innovation being, what's going to enhance where they are. And obviously, back to that argument and writing, okay, this is all this data is really hard for teachers, how do we actually ensure they grade it, but at the same time, this teacher in the loop like, you know, what we have to as teachers can basically choose to apply or override any of the suggestions we have, right? Students will only see the scores that are teacher approved, right? So we will make sure that that they're part of this process. And teachers can even opt out if they're like, you know, what I want to grade this themselves. And I think these are really, for us to basically make sure that we are thinking about AI in a responsible, equitable, and student centered way, we have to have these deep principles as we think about how it's applied to our product, as a trusted brand in this space, the stakes are very high for us. And we have to take it unbelievably seriously. And so every step we do, is really focused on that responsibility, the safety, the data security are so key to our approach there

Alexander Sarlin: 35:15

and giving teacher agency you know, into behind the student agency, making sure teachers themselves don't feel like AI is sort of coming into their world in an in a way that is not how they would want it to work. So I think that's a powerful stance to take as well. One of the things that's interesting about BrainPOP nai for me is that one of the things that BrainPOP has done so well over again decades, is create a huge amount of very good solid and engaging learning content, it's great. So I can't even imagine how many videos you have at this point BrainPOP library. And one of the things that is obviously really interesting about AI is that it can create content very quickly, including, you know, assessment content, but also images and videos. And I'm curious if you're, you know, envisioning a world in which you, you know, a student might ask about something in BrainPOP that you don't have an existing video for and AI could just create it and incorporate mobi and the BrainPOP style into that, is that on the roadmap, or is that science fiction?

Scott Kirkpatrick: 36:16

That is absolutely always on our thinking, and always potentially, on the roadmap, and there's not a time that I don't get asked that question, if I'm out in the field. School District is, when can students talk with Tim and Moby rice? You know, so that is clearly a potential opportunity for us that we are also extremely cautious on. And so there's a lot of tests. So for us, we believe AI will change everything in our lives. And as I said, we've kind of taken a three step approach to it. One is, we first have to start with our own internal staff and how BrainPOP errs handle AI and how do we use it responsibly in safety, and we have a very, you know, tight perspective on on how we are using it inside the company, to even things like, you know, build content, etc. So that's been a our first step, our second step was okay, well, we have a responsibility to educate kids on some of the toughest topics in the world. And so we've actually created an AI movie to explain AI to kids, what it is and what it isn't. I mean, we, we did that with a Coronavirus, right, is that, you know, like, these are complicated. So, you know, and how important it is to use AI responsibly. And think about it. And it's a really big part of our digital citizenship curriculum. So and then the third is, okay, how do we embed it into our products, and I think that's this teacher in the loop. Because, you know, as much as we believe in agency, we also got to make sure that if Tim and Moby are speaking with kids, we know exactly what they're saying. And teachers know exactly what they're saying. So there's a lot of work that we're doing to test that. But I will tell you, before we ever put that into our product, it will be significantly tested, with significant amount of teachers to make sure that any of those hallucinations, all those things we are really tight on because the stakes for us are so high, and I think in this world of AI, brands matter. And we hold that very seriously with us. Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin: 38:15

I imagine that's probably a conversation happening in many different strategy rooms around the world with people who have, you know, valuable intellectual property and amazing brands, it's fine to saying, you know, can we allow kids to talk to Captain America? You know, can we allow kids to talk to bluey and they're saying, oh, boy, Well, only if we know, they're gonna say, because it's the first time bluey or Elmo or, you know, or somebody says something that comes from a strange AI, you know, hallucinate of birth, then you're in trouble with your brand.

Scott Kirkpatrick: 38:45

That's exactly the conversations we're having in the testing that we're doing makes

Alexander Sarlin: 38:50

a ton of sense. It's really interesting to hear it in that way. Let me ask this sort of flipside of the same question. I'm very curious about your answer to this. One of the big advantages that BrainPOP has in the education space is that it has decades of, you know, a brand equity with schools and teachers and kids, partially because of the characters. And of course, because of the quality of the content, are you worried about competitors, because the speed of creating educational content is going down? And cost is going down? So fast? You know, is there going to be some YouTuber who's creates cute character and can create, you know, 10,000 videos with that character explaining everything you can imagine? That certainly wasn't a fear five years ago, but potentially it could be Now I'm curious how you think about that kind of thing.

Scott Kirkpatrick: 39:33

I always think about that. And because obviously, the cost of creating content has gone down significantly. And so to your question, Mike, we have 1200 videos, creating videos, those 1200 was extremely costly to build. And obviously now it's actually can be done so much faster. And so and so clearly, I'm always thinking about those things. And and all of us brain poppers are as well. But I would say, I think what it makes is that the stakes of quality are so much more importance. And all of the things we talked about the great leveling the all the things where the new features we're adding about the deep standards alignment, you know, I think that quality is going to win over quantity. And if we can actually keep that do what our mission is of driving that joy and speaking to kids at eye level, which is a human thing. And our ability to do that combined with showing them the outcomes, I think is what we need to focus on. And make sure as we bring AI in with that focus on really teacher in the loop process. I think we will navigate that and leverage AI where it can actually Make teachers live better help students with their achievement. As long as we focus there, I think we'll be okay. But we're obviously watching all of those, and how do we can leverage these technologies to really amplify the work that we're doing? Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin: 40:57

it's a strange, fast moving complicated space, but it feels like you're moving through it with a very ethical and thoughtful stance of, you know, keeping teachers in the loop, making sure student agency is centered, never, you know, letting AI sort of have a direct contact with the student without there being oversight and monitoring. You've talked about data and privacy and hallucination. So, as a company, in two thirds of school districts, I think you have a really, you know, have a moral responsibility to really take care of this. And it sounds like you're doing a really thoughtful job of it. Let's talk about one more aspect of AI, which I just think it's just such an open space, nobody knows exactly what it's going to do. You've mentioned that AI is that you're really focusing a lot on assessment, and that you have already some, you know, AI assistance in grading assessment, do you ever envision a world in which AI could sort of create that type of personalized assessment environment that we've sort of begun to hint at where students rather than taking the same questions and hitting the same, you know, moments in a video or in a in a test, where assessment can actually be sort of made in response to a student's journey, like if a student has watched, you know, BrainPOP videos about space and dinosaurs and, you know, photosynthesis could give them a quiz about that combines those topics?

Scott Kirkpatrick: 42:14

Absolutely. Again, and I think it can do even more is that if the kids not interested in dinosaurs, but interested in something else, and actually can write, what are you interested in, we can have an assessment on that, that's then aligned to standards. And so I really believe that kids will be able to choose their own adventures, standardized tests as we know it. And I love your you and I have been in the assessment industry, and I painted a number of years at Princeton Review, and you know, how to beat the test. And so, you know, this is the technology that gets me more excited about the future of measurement the future of assessment than ever before. And I think this is the biggest innovation that's going to come out, because we've been so focused on high quality, like content is, is will always evolve. But the ability to assess students, and especially at different levels of background knowledge, I'm just so excited about this opportunity, where kids can choose what they want to learn. And also the skills as I said before, the skills that we can assess, that we've never assessed before, that are going to be the real determinants of how a student will change humanity and will impact the world and impact their own lives. So I am so excited about what's happening in assessment. And it's something I'm watching deeply. Yeah, that

Alexander Sarlin: 43:32

creativity measure in the PISA, it really sticks with me, I'm definitely going to look into that I hadn't heard about that. And it feels like a real evolution of international assessment and just understanding of how of how the next generations are going to see the world, I really find that interesting. And I admire your ability to sort of use that as a metaphor for some of the things you're doing in BrainPOP. So we're almost at time here. And we always ended viewers with two questions. One is about what is the most exciting trend that you see from your particular stance, you've been in education and ad tech for a long time, and BrainPOP has evolved a lot in your tenure. What is the most exciting trend that you see right now that you think our listeners should keep an eye on something that is around the corner that might, you know, they might not know is coming?

Scott Kirkpatrick: 44:16

Because it's so exciting to me, I think I've integrated into our conversation pretty well. It really is the future assessment. I mean, that that is I think, a true game changer of learning, it will impact the type of ad tech products that come out. Once AI is fully integrated. Once we're measuring new types of skills, the whole edtech landscape will change. And I feel like assessment will lead to changes as we can do numerous things. And in a world we're only doing multiple choice standardized assessment at Tech is limited, because it's all focused on how to improve that specific outcome. And I think as measurement evolves, so will learning so our industry. And to me, that is the most exciting trend for me going forward. Yeah.

Alexander Sarlin: 45:03

My next question is about resources. But I'm actually going to inject a couple of my own resources in here, which I never do. But you know, when I hear you're talking about this future of assessment, it makes me think of Daniel Schwartz is from Harvard's amazing work about assessment, a sort of embedded assessment, and Valerie shoot from Florida State University has studied the concept of you know, self assessment and how might we assess students through what they do rather than stopping them and giving them questions and making it feel high stakes and anxiety producing? I would definitely recommend if anybody hasn't seen their work, that would really add a lot of color to some of this idea of what the future of assessment might look like. So back to you what What is a resource that you would recommend it can be one or more than one for anyone who wants to dive deeper into the topics we discussed today that could be, you know, books, newsletters, blogs, Twitter feeds, videos, anything.

Scott Kirkpatrick: 45:55

I mean, I would say, from a kind of global industry, I'd really look at some of the work coming out of Pisa. I don't know if the US people look at that information enough. But there's some real innovation happening there. And the reports that they had, in fact, I can, I can send you a link to the latest one and creative thinking after the call as well, that you can put on the on the blog. And then you know, for a lot of the topics that we discussed about BrainPOP. And what's coming there, we also put most of our information on our blog, we have a whole blog on back to school 2024 for both our K to eight product as well as our science product. So love to point if you want to go deeper into some of the things I talked about love to point you to the blog, but but those are the two resources that I'd love to point people to as thinking about where assessments going. And then also think about where BrainPOP is going. Fantastic.

Alexander Sarlin: 46:45

And as always, we will put links to all of these resources in the show notes for the episode that includes this creativity report from Pisa. I am really curious about that one. And everything happening at BrainPOP on the BrainPOP blog, which sounds like a lot happening at BrainPOP. Thank you so much for being here with us. BrainPOP is a legend of edtech. And it has been so amazing to see its evolution of past and present and future. And it's really exciting to hear all these plans in the AI era. Scott Kirkpatrick, CEO of BrainPOP. Thank you for being here with us on At Tech insiders.

Scott Kirkpatrick: 47:20

What a pleasure, Alex, thank you so much. What a wonderful time.

Alexander Sarlin: 47:22

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