Edtech Insiders
Edtech Insiders
Year-End Special Part 1: 2024 Reflections and 2025 Predictions by Alex and Ben
2024 was an incredible year for EdTech, filled with transformative shifts and groundbreaking innovations!
In this special year-end episode, Alex and Ben dive into the defining trends of the year—from the ESSER funding cliff reshaping K-12 strategies to the rise of AI-powered learning tools. They also look ahead to 2025, making bold predictions about the future of education technology, including the potential of gaming, assessment overhauls, and micro-company innovation.
Stay tuned for Part 2, coming in January, where Alex and Ben will share predictions from thought leaders across the EdTech space to kick off the new year!
✨ Episode Highlights:
[00:00:43] 🎄 Kicking off the year-end special with reflections on a transformative 2024.
[00:01:38] 📉 ESSER funding cliff and its implications for K-12 EdTech investments.
[00:02:17] 🚀 The Cambrian explosion of AI and its impact on innovation and startups.
[00:04:02] 🤖 AI in K-12 education: challenges, successes, and lessons from the field.
[00:06:24] 🗺️ Big Tech’s growing influence on education and learning models.
[00:08:03] 🎉 Reflecting on EdTech Insiders' major milestones and community highlights.
[00:11:46] 🎮 Predictions for AI-driven gaming and real-time multimodal learning tools.
[00:13:21] 📊 The coming assessment revolution and its transformative potential.
[00:18:55] 🎓 Higher education’s pivot toward career-focused, practical learning models.
[00:23:20] 💼 Workforce learning shifts: upskilling for productivity in a competitive market.
[00:27:02] 🤔 AI agents and their transformative potential in education and beyond.
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🎉 Presenting Sponsor:
This season of Edtech Insiders is once again brought to you by Tuck Advisors, the M&A firm for EdTech companies. Run by serial entrepreneurs with over 25 years of experience founding, investing in, and selling companies, Tuck believes you deserve M&A advisors who work as hard as you do.
[00:00:43] Ben Kornell: Happy holidays, EdTech Insider listeners. We are so excited to bring our special predictions episode to you. I'm Ben Cornell, co founder of EdTech Insiders. Joining me today, co founder Alex Sarlin from South Carolina. We've got the East coast. We've got the West coast. We've got the higher ed. We've got the K 12.
We've got it all here on the podcast today. And we're really going to be looking forward before we do so, though, uh, we have a couple exciting episodes coming up. Um, some of the things that we've been, you know, uh, conversation we've been having over the last couple of months, but also a series of predictions for our montage prediction episode, that'll be hitting YouTube.
the first week of January. Without further ado though, um, Alex, as you look back at 2024, what were some of the salient themes and what do you expect to endure as we head forward?
[00:01:38] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, it's such an interesting year in head tech. I can't believe how much we, uh, we've sort of been through as a, as a sector. I mean, you know, obviously there have been some major Pitfalls for the sector this year that we've all had to sort of navigate around.
One is the beginning of the Essercliff, the beginning of the reduction of stimulus money, which is, I think, making the whole K 12 edtech sector a little more Cautious and thoughtful and trying to make sure that they are in good positions moving forward. Um, there is some potential that next year that cliff will actually compound a little bit and maybe even more of a financial stressor.
So that was, that was something we all talked about a lot this year. Um, another is the, uh, the, the, the funding landscape, which has been a sort of a tricky situation, right, Ben? I mean, we, we saw in, you know, coming continued. Coming down from COVID times where generalist investors were coming in where the ed tech specialty investors were doing really big rounds.
And, you know, it picked up at the end of the year. We saw some really exciting big rounds at the end of this year, but for the most part, it was a relatively quiet year for ed tech funding. And, um, and the overall funding was, was much lower than it has been even in the past couple of years, which is way lower than it was in 20, you know, 21.
Um, so, and, and 2020, so those were sort of the, the, You know, the downsides of this year was a little bit of a muted year from that perspective. I think from the upsides, you know, we've continued to see what you and I have said is that, you know, the Cambrian explosion of AI and EdTech. We've so many new founders, new companies.
Still happening all around the world, even in this tricky funding environment and lots of underserved founders, lots of people coming from different spaces into education. Lots of people seeing a I come and say, I have an idea of how to use this in a new way for students or learners or workforce development.
And so I think there's still a huge amount of Energy in the space. And I'm always encouraged, you know, when I travel or when I talk to anybody in the education space, despite some of these headwinds, people are always still very optimistic about the ability to continue to move things forward. And that's both within larger companies that they're starting, they're launching all sorts of big stuff and within startups.
So that was how 2024 mostly felt to me. Yeah,
[00:04:02] Ben Kornell: I know this is like a therapy session. Uh, 2024, you know, uh, we predicted there would be a lot of M and A in 2024, a lot, maybe an unlock of the ed tech winter. And what we found is actually like the pricing, the transaction costs, you know, people who had raised in 2020 didn't want to sell at a reduced rate.
And it reminded me a lot of the housing market. Yeah. Where people kind of got locked into a house at a low interest rate with evaluation in mind, and they just aren't excited about where the market is today. Um, I think the other theme that we talk about all the time around AI, one element was a whiplash effect where we had, um, you know, in the early days of AI, this would be 23, there was like fear of cheating and fear of fraud, but then the, like an unabashed.
Enthusiasm. And I think 2024 was the year where the pessimists kind of, uh, stepped in to say, well, what are the real use cases and how will this be effective? And, um, we also saw, uh, examples of fraud, uh, or companies falling apart. I think the debacle in LA unified with ed and, um, you know, the subsequent, uh, prosecution of that founder, uh, Uh, really put a Paul over K 12 AI.
And then you see what happened with 2U and, uh, their bankruptcy that had largely to do with, uh, the debt that they had taken on. But you could look at Chegg as, as a clear example of, you know, AI. Uh, really taking market share on the upside, though, I think a big theme that really came out of nowhere. Is that big tech or tech tech is here to stay in the education and learning space?
What happens at Google? What happens at Open AI? What happens at Anthropic? Has profound implications for what is going to play out in our space. And those folks are thinking about these models, um, business models, not just the LLMs, but in fundamentally different ways that aren't constrained to our market dynamics within ed tech.
And so I think it's been a year of founders kind of riding that wave. But sometimes getting crashed on by that wave. And I think that's something that will be enduring into 2025.
[00:06:24] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, that's a great point. And you could add by Jews to that list. We, you know, we had Matt Tower, the eternal realist slash pessimist, predicting that by Jews was going to lose all its valuation for a long time.
And it really did happen.
[00:06:37] Ben Kornell: Yeah. The smoke turned into fire. Yeah. And You know, ultimately, I would just also say reflecting on our, our pod and our community. What a year it's been for EdTech insiders. You know, we started the year doing a special episode on by juice with Matt Tower. Then we had the Sam Altman interview, Hillary Clinton, Sal Khan.
Uh, we had over a thousand people sign up for our happy hour at ASU GSV. As we move through the summer, we were approached by Lawrence and Jacob to kind of catalyze their generative AI map, which we launched just last month. And, uh, we've gotten so many great engagements, feedback. Support. And so I would just say, you know, thank you to all the ed tech insiders, community members for making 2020 for such a special year.
And, um, you know, shout out also to our ed tech insiders, plus members who are all in our, uh, WhatsApp channel and, you know, financially supporting us. We wouldn't be able to do it without you. Uh, that leads me to 2025. You know, Alex, you and I were both like, we're just natural optimists, but given the look back on 2024 and some of the like, you know, pros and cons and the sobering results, how, what are you looking for and what themes do you anticipate for 25?
[00:08:03] Alex Sarlin: So I have, I have a few, but before we just close the wrap for Ed Tech Insiders, we also had some amazing events, many of which you, uh, you really put together both at some of the big conferences like ASU and ISTE, but also, um, happy hours, local events in all sorts of places. They were great. We did a bunch of online events, which were really exciting and successful book club for a Sal Khan's book.
Oh yeah, that was really fun. Showed up and got to got to introduce the book. That was really amazing. A couple of hundred people for that EdTech book club and a number of really, really awesome webinars from different experts in the field, just trying to help build community. So it's been a really great banner year for EdTech Insider.
So looking forward. I mean, the number one thing that is on my mind right now, and people who listen regularly will not be surprised by this, is that I've been talking all year about how everybody should anticipate that video, gaming, interactives, simulations, created entirely by AI, are right around the corner, and they're going to come a lot sooner than you think.
I've been saying that. Over and over, and I think right at the end of this year, we saw OpenAI do its, you know, finally released its SORA model. We saw Google release a really sophisticated video model. We have seen all sorts of things start to accelerate, um, in the competition between these big tech companies.
To your point about big tech and edtech intersecting, we, Google has done a ton of launches. Um, that is really amazing. Anthropic has done a lot of interesting thinking internally about how its models actually think and trying to break everything down into into its reasoning. Um, it's a really amazing moment for AI, and I think everybody sort of starts to starting to really feel that also for creative tools.
But I think that's really going to spill over into education a lot faster than, than people might think. Um, real time translation is now possible. YouTube videos can be dubbed into nine different languages pretty much automatically. So anybody who's teaching in, you know, Chile, um, can be teaching in Japan as well.
It's, it's just like this stuff is, is coming into our everyday life in a really, really intense and thorough way. And I really think that there's going to be a huge An explosion of, um, exciting use cases for AI generated content in multi modal formats. It to put it kind of formally, uh, that's automatic, you know, video generated on demand.
That's real time conversations with very realistic humans, um, about any topic in any, in any way, including any kind of human you want. We're going to see, um, learning companions that, that are, that are. In any format you'd like that can hear and speak to you very realistically what Google did with Notebook LM with its podcast feature.
We're going to see that with all sorts of different formats very soon. The ability to just take a page of your textbook and turn it into any format you'd like. It's almost already here, but the the types of formats are just gonna get more and more exciting. I'm personally super excited about games. I think that that is something we've been trying to crack in ed tech for a long time.
I did my master's thesis on gamification and education before it was really a thing. And the problem has always been games cost too damn much to make and test and to make good. And, um, Yeah. And education and gaming have always been trying to reach for each other, but it's, it's, it's been really hard with few exceptions like the Duolingos of the world that's very gamified or Big Brain Academy or a few things, you know, in the past, I think we're finally on the verge of good educational games.
Um, so I'm really pumped about that. That's my first prediction. Yeah,
[00:11:46] Ben Kornell: just to react a little bit to your predictions. I mean, we've been talking about the omnimodal. We've coined that. That's the EdTech Insiders coined phrase with Sam Alden. But it really is true. And what I love about your prediction, too, is that this idea of gaming, of interactive experiences, that's not at all a new thing.
So it's a trend that's been growing over time. And like, if you separate learning and education and you think education is the systems and institutions of learning, and then where learning is really happening, you know, even more of a trend. And, but I agree with your fundamental principle, which is. We're at an intersection point now where the technology is finally meeting the moment to deliver more rigorous learning experiences and, and more, uh, immersive experiences that leverage all of that incredible thinking, uh, that's been done in, in games and experiential learning, et cetera.
[00:12:52] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. And just one sentence about it. Just don't limit your own thinking. I encourage everyone out there. I mean, Think of the things you actually want to watch and do with your free time. The reality shows on Netflix, the thriller novels, the podcasts about true crime. Anything you want. Any format in any way can now be made educational.
Like really let it sink in because it is, it's a big deal. I think,
[00:13:21] Ben Kornell: please. I can't wait to see real housewives education version. Juliana and I, that's what we, when we, when we need some mindless entertainment, that's what we're flipping on. Um, okay. So for me, 2025, I think there's, uh, some trends on the business side.
There's some trends on the product and technology side. There's some trends around global societal policy, but when I bring it back to education and what we're really about, it's about the teaching and learning experiences. And I I'd say three things that are coming up. One is that. We are on the precipice of an assessment revolution.
The assessment revolution is, um, based on very foundational principles that have lasted a long time around formative and summative assessment. And this, uh, curve of, as we assess students, we understand where they are, and then we can feed them the right next learning to meet their needs and, and so on and so forth.
And, uh, you know, personalization may have flipped into an out of word. But the, uh, whole concept behind that was this like, uh, no do reflect assessment paradigm where assessment is kind of exploding is not just in moving from summative to formative because of these efficiency plays around. It's just much easier to get through the assessment, but also who is assessing.
So it could be self or peer. Uh, it can be the teacher or it can be AI with a teacher in the loop. The second is around what the data can tell you. And there are people building knowledge graphs and predictive analytics. You know, much of it previewed by Duolingo in terms of how they, their engine works around zone of proximal development.
And then also in terms of outputs or outcomes, adjusting your curriculum or content based on that assessment. And so the assessment loop is really, I think the fundamental, uh, like piece that needs to change. For our entire system to evolve to totally competency based to kind of learner driven to, you know, every child reaching their full potential.
And and so then that leads me to my second one, which is a really a shift away from just focusing on remediation and a move towards raising the ceiling. And I think that that is primarily to be very fair coming from parents. So in the choice space, which has really opened up, especially in red states with education savings accounts, parents learn during the pandemic.
This is what schooling is. And a fair chunk of them were saying, I'm not happy about this. And so whether through school and advocating at school. Or whether through supplemental programs or through homeschool, the parent engagement has ratcheted up and it's all about my child reaching his or her full potential.
In contrast schools have often been saddled with population management of I've 150 students. I've got to worry about the segments that are behind and the segments that are ahead will be just fine. But this is where the assessment and AI evolution can really take those barriers off. And so I think there will be school districts that figure this out.
I think there will be parents. I think there will be programs. And I expect to see new B2C models and also, um, B2G models that take full advantage of kids reaching their full potential. And then last, I would say, um, I'm really excited about the, uh, era of entrepreneurship, uh, that we talked about in the micro companies article, there has never been a time that has been better to start your own product or company.
And I say that for good reason. You don't have to have a company. You can start a product and a team of. One to three people can launch successfully today a product that scales to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of users, if they want to build that flywheel and create a business too, you can have micro companies of 10 people that grow to 10 million in revenue.
I think that's going to fuel a couple of things. One is entrepreneurship and continue this Cambrian explosion, but I do think consolidation is. He's coming to the market because distribution is so critical. And so I think we're going to see M and a, maybe not in the way that we've predicted it before with big deals.
I think people are going to be looking for micro companies that have the tools, products, and skills. And there's just going to be a number of smaller deals where you can pick up a team of 10 people that can accelerate your AI writing app or your AI reading components. And so I'm looking towards a barbell.
We're going to have very large companies that have distribution in scale and very small companies that have light, nimble, but really agile products. And then the MNA going across those, uh, channels. So 2025, of course, I'm, I'm going to lean a little bit more on the optimism side. But I do think these are fully achievable and almost, uh, inevitable to happen given the momentum that we see heading in the end of this year.
[00:18:55] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, that's a great point. Um, so building off a couple of these ideas, but especially the ones about assessment, I think one thing that I'm excited to see in the higher education space. Um, let me think of how to, how to phrase this exactly right. It feels like the, there are very few people left in the ecosystem sort of trying to maintain the status quo in higher ed.
I think there is a, we've said this for years, there's been movements as people have voted with their feet. There's been a lot of political polarization. And this year we saw, you know, the Ivy League, uh, presidents get booted out very publicly in a, in a really, some really, that was this year, right? That was beginning of this year.
Yeah. Right. So it feels like a long time ago. Um, I think we're getting to a place where. Higher education is not only, you know, received the memo that they, that people are really upset with them for a lot of reasons they, you know, they, they're, they're just not seen as this sort of glowing beacon of opportunity that they're used to being seen as when they get the, you know, they're starting to be seen as semi predatorial or irrelevant or, you know, Ivory Tower or, you know, caught up in political movements in ways that other people don't trust.
Like, I think there is going to be a very defensive Um, crouch for higher ed and what I hope that it translates to is that the types of things that they end up funding and types of programs they end up really leaning into are ones that, um, actually use assessment to bridge the gap to work outcomes.
They're actually really more focused on career outcomes and getting the students the things they actually want. Um, and the parents the things they actually want. I don't think they're able to bend the cost curve as much as. They might want to. I just don't think they can. But if they can't bend the cost curve, they have to add more value.
And the fact it's been become very clear to I think everybody that the value that people are seeking is practical value. So I think you're going to see colleges start incorporating all sorts of offerings into their Um, into their degrees. I think they're going to be all sorts of alternative credentials packaged in.
I think there's going to be all sorts of partnerships with technical technology companies or other hires or local hires. I just think there's going to be a print, you know, embrace of apprenticeships or work based learning models. Um, I just think there's very few people left to sort of balance the other side.
But even within faculty sentence, I don't think they're going to be people saying, No, college is about becoming a well rounded liberal arts, like that, just that, that, that perspective, I think, has really now lost pretty much all credibility, even within the higher ed sector. I believe I'm not in those meetings, of course, but I think, I think things are finally ready to change.
And the other one, and then I'll pass it back to you, Ben, to close us out. The other one is, you know, we've talked a lot about the, the capacity for. Sort of the A. I can change the trajectory on how you make content, how you assess content to your point and just sort of the landscape of who can do what.
And I think we're going to see a major shift to more local control, more, you know, personalized. I use the word precise, you know, less one size fits all movements in education than ever before. And I, you know, people use that phrase. But I mean, less reliance on the same national players. I think people are going to start to say, you know what, we can do some of this ourselves, given the power of some of these tools.
And I think you're going to see a lot of, um, curriculum suites basically create authoring tools, uh, or enhance their authoring tools where instead of just selling content directly to, um, you know, to districts or to schools or to educators, they'll say, well, yes, we have content, but we also are going to give you the tools to make the content you want and to make it the way you want it to be made.
And I think that's something that's going to be incredibly interesting to see how that fall, how that unfolds. You've had people asking for that for a long time when you, they actually have the capability to make their own content. Will educators do it? Will districts do it? Um, I think this is a year where maybe they're going to start to really try at scale.
[00:23:20] Ben Kornell: Yeah, I think this tension is going to be a big one to watch high quality instructional materials versus do it yourself. And the, the probably sweet spot is like 80 percent high quality and a 20 percent layer of like customization. And so who's going to get that right. I think the second thing that you talked about, you know, my view is that the hardest thing in ed tech is customer acquisition.
That is the hardest thing. And so back to my barbell, uh, kind of point, I actually think that the big players will remain entrenched because that is such a hard thing to dislodge. Um, and then as you kind of climb the ramp from You know, K 12 into higher ed, which I totally agree with you. Like whether they are having the conversation or not, the economic forces are becoming even more profound on higher ed institutions to change their model, but especially as you go up into workforce, how will generalized AI actually create.
Real learning opportunities for adult learners who can self structure or who have, uh, a motivating, uh, motivating learning goal based on career and job. Workforce has undergone a shift in 2024. We were in this scarcity of talent period where most of the learning was an incentive or a benefit to employees.
Now, today, most workforce learning is. I'm not going to get more head count. How do I help the people who I've got get upskilled so that we can do more with them? And so I think that there's a pragmatism in 2025 that is a nice, Evolution from the optimism, but the theoretical of this kind of last two years of the AI wave.
Yeah. Last thing on the ed tech insiders front, I would just say, um, you know, many of the people in our community have self identified as AI. I'm K 12 or higher ed or workforce, but now I am seeing a bunch of blending where people are playing in between the lines. And so I think, um, they're seeing real opportunities in these transitions of learning phase and on the technology side.
Um, we started with the gen AI map thinking about, okay, these use cases, but there's this rise of this generalized platforms. That's an AI everything shop. And I do think, um, 2025 may be a harder landscape to navigate just because all the lines are blurring, you know, AI as a technology naturally crosses over where others, you know, kind of respected that line.
And so you could see like. Um, someone who started with a reading differentiation app like Diffit could end up becoming a AI integrated LMS because it just so happens that the features they needed to create for the reading differentiation actually spilled over to writing and math and so on. And so, um, for me, I'm not willing to go all the way on 2025 that that will, that will totally flip, but that will, will be well on that way by 2026 All right.
So we do have to wrap here, um, for all of our listeners, please check out edtechinsiders, uh, sub stack. You can also go to edtechinsiders. ai for our gen AI map. You can check out our pod. We would love to have you as edtech plus, uh, subscriber members. Parting thoughts before we let our audience and our team go for the new year.
Any last thoughts, Alex?
[00:27:02] Alex Sarlin: Um, I would just say keep an eye on the agent space for AI. That's the other big thing that's going to happen. I think by this time next year, we're going to really have, legitimately have AI agents do a lot of our work for us. I really think it's coming. I think there's going to be a chat GPT moment.
For agents. Um, but yeah, that's my last thought. But yeah, enjoy your holidays and come back after the new year and you can hear predictions from some amazing thought leaders. Across the space, which are really interesting. Uh, thanks to everybody for sticking with us through the year, the ed tech insiders, we have had a real banner year and we really appreciate everything the community has done, uh, and everything we love seeing you all.
So see you more next year.
[00:27:46] Ben Kornell: Thank you all so much. Thanks for listening. Have a great 2025.
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.
