Postcards from ASU+GSV 2025: On the Ground with Google, OpenAI & EdTech Changemakers

In this special episode, EdTech Insiders hits the floor at ASU+GSV 2025—one of the world’s premier EdTech conferences—for rapid-fire conversations with the leaders reshaping learning. From AI-native campuses to multilingual agents and human-centered R&D, we go behind the scenes with the innovators driving the future of education.

🎙️ Featured Guests:

1. Siya Raj Purohit, Go-to-Market Lead for Education at OpenAI @ [00:01:25]
2. Maureen Heymans, GM of LearnX at Google @ [00:19:16]
3. Brandon Hurter, Chief Strategy Officer at Element451 @ [00:31:19]
4. Auditi Chakravarty, CEO of AERDF @ [00:39:21]
5. Jim Van Voorhis, VP of Education at Glean @ [00:45:09]
6. Summer Long, Co-Founder & CMO of Cathoven AI @ [00:54:10]
7. Yasmin Barkett, CEO and Founder of ROYO @ [01:02:47]
8. Mike Yates, Senior Designer at Teach For America’s The Reinvention Lab @ [01:08:12]
9. Julia Kelleher, Head of Market Development at WorldQuant Learning @ [01:18:09]
10. Adele Smolansky, CEO and Founder of AI-Learners @ [01:25:08]

🎥 Watch these Interviews on YouTube: LINK HERE

Special thanks to Matthew Millstein and his team at Old Soul for capturing all the video content live from the AI Show floor. 🙌

😎 Stay updated with Edtech Insiders! 

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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.

Chapters

• 1:43 Siya Raj Purohit, Go-to-Market Lead for Education at OpenAI
• 19:57 Maureen Heymans, GM of LearnX at Google
• 32:00 Brandon Hurter, Chief Strategy Officer at Element451
• 40:02 Auditi Chakravarty, CEO of AERDF
• 45:50 Jim Van Voorhis, VP of Education at Glean
• 54:51 Summer Long, Co-Founder & CMO of Cathoven AI
• 1:03:28 Yasmin Barkett, CEO and Founder of ROYO
• 1:08:53 Mike Yates, Senior Designer at Teach For America’s The Reinvention Lab
• 1:18:50 Julia Kelleher, Head of Market Development at WorldQuant Learning
• 1:25:49 Adele Smolansky, CEO and Founder of AI-Learners

Transcript

[00:00:00] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry from funding rounds to impact to ai developments across early childhood, K 12 higher ed and work. You'll find it all here at EdTech Insiders. Remember to subscribe to the pod, check out our newsletter, and also our event calendar.

And to go deeper, check out EdTech Insiders Plus where you can get premium content access to our WhatsApp channel, early access to events and back channel insights from Alex and Ben. Hope you enjoyed today's pod.

Welcome to a special series from EdTech Insiders recorded live at the A-S-U-G-S-V 2025. We're bringing you rapid fire interviews with the biggest thinkers and builders at the intersection of AI and education. I'm your host, Alex Sarlin, and in each of these short conversations, we'll uncover bold ideas, fresh insights, and the future of learning direct from the innovators shaping it.

Let's dive in.

We're here at the AI show with Siya Raj Purohit. Uh, she is the go-to-market leader for open ai. You may have seen her 'cause she's everywhere, she's travels the whole world and is at all of these amazing events. Talking about in the incredible things that ChatGPT EDU has been doing. Welcome to the podcast.

[00:01:25] Siya Raj Purohit: Thanks so much for having me. It's kind intro. 

[00:01:26] Alex Sarlin: No, no, really. So first off, for people who don't know about chatGPT EDU, which is, you know, a whole segment of the chat GPT ecosystem, tell us what it is and what are some of the sort of main pillars of the strategy. I. 

[00:01:37] Siya Raj Purohit: So chatGPT EDU is our enterprise product designed for universities and school districts.

So it brings a lot more privacy and security to like that kind of workspace setting. And it lets professors create solutions only for their classes or administrators create things across the campus and enable a lot of AI touchpoints. Our aspiration is that in the future we'll have a lot of AI native universities and school districts, and what our current thinking around that is, is that there'll be multiple AI touch points that guide the student faculty journey across their campus.

So they're able to converse with the knowledge of that campus much more deeply through like an orientation GPT or a classroom GPT that lets them engage with that content. So we are currently working with a number of universities and school districts to deploy this, and that's been a lot of fun. 

[00:02:23] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, I, I know there's a big California state University deployment, which is a humongous system.

Tell us about that. 

[00:02:30] Siya Raj Purohit: So, California State University, um, bought 500,000 seats for their faculty stewards and staff. It's the biggest deployment of chat GPT around the world. Like even when you compare to enterprise and others. And it's like really powerful because CSU has been such a like cornerstone of economic mobility for Californians.

Yeah. And now we are bringing AI literacy to them, which is like so exciting. And these tools to be able to build more. So, um, we have been rolling this outta the past couple of months now. 

[00:02:56] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, it's really exciting. And you know, California pioneered the sort of tiered college system with the community colleges, state colleges and the university system and the community colleges are embracing AI right now, and the state colleges are embracing ai and I think it's going to be a real, uh, you know, har harbinger of things to come in the college world because California's always been ahead in, in this way.

There's sort of been models of it, so it's really exciting to see. I think you also rolled out to Estonia. Did I get that right? 

[00:03:21] Siya Raj Purohit: That's right. What, 

[00:03:22] Alex Sarlin: what was, what's. 

[00:03:23] Siya Raj Purohit: 11th and 12th graders all across Estonia are going to get access. Amazing. Similar to California, Estonia has always been a leader, like first to start doing digital elections and things like that, so I'm very excited that they're gonna be rolling this up for students.

It's gonna be one of our first K 12 deployments as well. So thinking a lot about how to enable educators in the K 12 system to engage with students and make sure that the work output, um, like helps them build new skills. 

[00:03:49] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. And you know, for observers of this space, you know, higher ed has been a pretty natural, sweet spot for the education.

Entry point for a lot of these, uh, providers, but the fact that already K 12 we're starting to see K 12, uh, you know, deployments is, is surprising to me, frankly, because K 12 sometimes can be a little conservative or there's a lot of, there's a lot of compliance in it. It's really exciting to see it, uh, you, you guys really taking it on and trying to get these tools into the hands of the next generation and absolutely read them.

Um. Other things that have launched recently, open AI Academy. Tell us about Open AI Academy. 

[00:04:21] Siya Raj Purohit: Open AI Academy. Is this a big bet that we're taking from our global affairs team? Led by my colleague Alex Novar, and basically the idea is how do we increase AI literacy for different groups around the world? I.

The early focus is groups such as students, K 12 educators, older adults, and we are creating content and collaboration with partners to help them learn how to use AI more effectively. So our student, um, series has a bunch of videos on how to use chat GBT for your campus. Like how do you do research better with it?

How do you do career preparation better and how do you actually use the tool like in a more sophisticated way than just writing emails and correcting like language that way? So, great series. We're gonna have a lot more content there and it's a free academy for anyone to join online, 

[00:05:04] Alex Sarlin: free and open. It just makes a lot of sense.

So it's really exciting. I mean, there's, there's just more and more and more. Oh, there was just a, an announcement that chat GT plus the, the normally behind a paywall model is free for college students in, in the us I think through the end of this academic year. 

[00:05:18] Siya Raj Purohit: Um, through the end of May. Yes. 

[00:05:19] Alex Sarlin: Through the end of May.

Tell tell us more about that decision. That's a, that's really interesting. I. 

[00:05:23] Siya Raj Purohit: So what we realized is our largest group of users is between 18 to 24. Mm-hmm. So Prime College, your age when you're trying to discover like, um, what kinds of subject matters are interesting to you? You dive into new areas, you build new projects.

A lot of unicorn companies come out of college dorms. True. So I think to enable that at audience, we've enabled CHATT Plus for free. Any student with a.edu email in US and Canada can sign up for that. And it runs for the next two months. So until the end of May, which is also the most busy time for students on campus.

It'd 

[00:05:56] Alex Sarlin: be great for studying for finals and doing dissertations. And yeah, it's a really interesting moment and, and same moment has mentioned, you know, he's expecting the first, you know, single person, billion dollar company, you know, any day now. I don't know exactly what the quote is, but uh, you can see that, you know it, it's very possible that those will start in college campuses around the world.

Alex, one of the 

[00:06:14] Siya Raj Purohit: interesting things I heard recently was Jeffrey Busque, who's a professor at Harvard Business School. Yeah. Said the people used to come to HBS to get a job and now he's like, we encourage them to only come to create a job. 'cause the MBA employment has the MBA employment scene has obviously changed a lot.

Yes. But he's like, your ability to build a company while you're here has gone up a lot too. So providing the frameworks and the tools to kind of have AI via co-founder and actually scale that up, find product, market fit yourself, 

[00:06:41] Alex Sarlin: have ai, be your co-founder. I love that. What an interesting phrase. I'm gonna get that, that one's gonna stick with me.

I love that. Um, so one thing that I've been playing with a lot, uh, and and posting on LinkedIn about but it's just so cool, is the, uh, open AI's new image generation just came out last week, I believe, maybe a week and a half ago now, and it is, uh, very quickly sort of establishing itself as best in class or if not, you know, the sit very most in class.

It's created this sort of worldwide. Gili studio jubilation of, of everything. But it also is an incredible tool for educators. You can create good charts and graphs. You can create, um, I mean, you could just do anything you can imagine really in a lot of ways with stylistic input and with reference images.

It's really quite amazing. Tell us about. That. I mean, I'm sure that inside the open AI world that I'm sure you're tickled and, and, and all the things that our people are, are making with the image generation. And you know, in the past it's been sort of sending out to diffusion models elsewhere, but now it's all integrated and it's, it's really exciting to see what, what do you see?

It's a very smooth experience, 

[00:07:42] Siya Raj Purohit: I feel really is, and it makes it like very, like, cute and like rewarding to get that. I think you're just like, there's like a connection you feel with those images. Um, because at some point they're kind of, a lot of times they personify like the human images that you share, which is nice.

Some people say it's like a privacy layer on top of your photos, which is an interesting way to think about it. I never 

[00:08:03] Alex Sarlin: thought of it that way. That's fascinating. So a 

[00:08:04] Siya Raj Purohit: lot of people, like, I think Sam Altman shared a picture of this baby and it was just like a privacy screen for them, but also being able to share that magical moment.

[00:08:11] Alex Sarlin: That's really interesting. 

[00:08:12] Siya Raj Purohit: So I think in education what we're starting to see is that professors are able to create images for their lectures and their online content much more easily than ever before. As we know, they had instructional design teams that would actually have to create all of this, and now professors can kind of rip up anything that they imagine very quickly.

So I think it's gonna bring a lot more like flavor and culture to classes because you're gonna be able to visualize that content in different ways. So like the early ones I've seen are obviously the, the solar system and different pieces around that. Right. The biology elements around it. Mm-hmm. Being able to like visualize these things in a very fun, creative way, which resonates with Gen Z.

Exactly. Um, what I'm hoping to see more of is like ways that we can kind of combine all of like the different, like, I mean enable multimodality more in education. Yeah. And let professors engage with students the way that they learn the best. 

[00:09:02] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. Well, so, so let me push you on that. 'cause I think that's, I, I agree and I think there's some really interesting, uh, opportunities there.

I mean, do you see a world where you go to. Chat to BT on your phone. Ask it a question, invo in a voice input. And what comes back is the voice output combined with images that they're creating in real time. So you can learn a whole thing without literally ever reading a word. 

[00:09:22] Siya Raj Purohit: I hope that's the future. Um, it feels like it's going to be just 'cause our models are kinda coming together.

All of this technology is becoming like embedded together. Yep. I used to work at Udacity about 10 years ago, and at that time we were trying to build a Hollywood of education. It was an expensive endeavor for us. We spent a lot of money per ano degree. We built because of how high quality it had to be, and now the cost of doing that has just gone down so much.

I. Like, exactly like you said, you can have a conversation. All of these different videos and images can come up and together and create this kind of like fantasy journey for you to learn an educational concept. Yes, 

[00:09:56] Alex Sarlin: yes. And of course, Sora, which is also, you know, which is the opening eyes. Video creation is also part of the mix there too.

So, you know, it, it, it, it feels like when we're here, sitting here a year from now talking there, there may be some version of, teach me about this. And it uses images. That create, you know, graphs, but also stock footage and all these different stock images, then video out of those images and voice. And you can just have this entire learning experience, maybe even immersive at some point.

But, you know, this incredible experience that is just so distant from what we think of as the current, you know, chat bot, conversational text experience that we're all starting to take for granted as, as when AI looks like 

[00:10:37] Siya Raj Purohit: basically it feels like personalized movies could come up. Yes. Um, for each of the concepts you're looking to learn.

Yes. And when you think about like the soft skills we're trying to teach the next generation, yes. It might be a phenomenal way to do that. Yes. How do you teach empathy? How do you teach the ability to inspire and how like better can you get than like having this kind of interactive video and that you might be a character in as well?

Yeah. 

[00:10:58] Alex Sarlin: You know, you and I both came from the, the MOOC world. You know, I was at Coursera, Udacity. We used to look at the, the, the Hollywood of Education. Your videos were totally amazing. Um, you know, but one thing that I think has been a, a complaint and very reasonable complaint from learning designers, instructional designers for many years, is that.

Um, you know, video and text and, and, and even audio content can be, it can be incredibly powerful, but it's also a very solo experience, right? The idea of like, oh, we'll learn by, I'll ask it and it'll create this amazing movie or something. Just for me, it's really a beautiful vision, but learning can also be collaborative and I, uh, yeah, it can be used to build relationships.

I'm curious how, I'm sure this comes up a lot and people ask you a lot about it. I'm curious how open AI thinks about, you know, ensuring that the future is not. Person and computer in a, you know, windowless room together. Uh, 'cause I don't think anybody truly wants that to be the future, even if the tech is incredible.

[00:11:48] Siya Raj Purohit: And one thing, I think a lot about it in terms of the future of education, especially in K 12, we still want the social clustering. Yes. Like we still want our children to be with other peers around their age socially, to be able to build those skills, even if they're learning at different paces with AI tools, I.

Um, coming back to how AI can enable social collaboration, right now our early foray into this has been through tools such as like, uh, custom gpt where you can have multiple editors in the workspace. Mm-hmm. So you can kind of collaborate with your, like, colleagues on building these custom gpt. Canvas is like an interesting collaboration tool and it kind of edit the docs together.

Yep. Um, so I think the idea is that we obviously know people work very well together, and AI initially was a solo experience. How they bring that closer so you can collaborate, see the same types of videos and outputs and experience that journey together. 

[00:12:37] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, yeah. I can imagine people working in, in sort of on a, on a joint project where they're all doing inputs to the same set of tools.

I. You know, in, whether it's in real time or asynchronously, but working together to, and then with the power of AI to generate answers and be a part of the group, uh, as your co-founder, as your colleague, or you know, your teaching assistant. And 

[00:12:56] Siya Raj Purohit: tweak and prompt together Exactly. 

[00:12:57] Alex Sarlin: Tweak and prompt together.

That sounds like a dance move. I like that. Um, um, it's an incredibly exciting time. So, you know, you've been talking to colleges about, you mentioned this idea of an aa AI native university. Yeah. Um, can you just tell us a little bit more about what that vision looks like? I think that's something that University world and the higher ed world is probably very curious about what it would mean to be AI native at this point.

[00:13:19] Siya Raj Purohit: So we work very closely with provost, presidents and deans to define that for their campus. And each campus is taking a little bit of a different flavor to it. Some campuses are like, oh, the problems we need to solve 'cause we are major like state school is our navigation. And being able to help our students find the right tools and support, even if they may not have human access at that time.

Other campuses, like small liberal arts schools are like, Hey, we have figured this part out. Like we have a lot of student support, but we wanna be able to help them dive more deeply into knowledge and conversations that matter to them. Like how can they debate different types of issues on how society should look, for example, with ai.

So each campus is in a little bit of a different flavor to it, and what we are trying to do is figure out where AI can fit to enable that vision. And how to make that experience much more seamless and deep for people who are on campus so they can converse with the knowledge of the campus more deeply.

[00:14:11] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, that's really exciting. So one more question just about other pieces of the AI ecosystem open. AI has just been moving so quickly. Um, deep research, I. Incredibly important education tool and um, uh, it's 4.5, uh, and, and the sort of future of the underlying LLM model. Uh, I'd love to hear you talk about, you know, both, 

[00:14:32] Siya Raj Purohit: so deep research is an, obviously a very powerful tool to get, um, very interesting insights on anything you're interested in.

What I'm most excited about for deep research though, is that our early models faced a lot of problems and hallucinations. We all know this, right? Like early AI models across all companies did, and that was because they were really agreeable in nature, right? They wanna please you as a user, right? And they agreed with you.

Now, our models have become like less agreeable. They push back more. They like reference right sources, but deep research takes that to the next level. Showcases all the sources, it collated, it compares different sources, kind of makes its own inference on what is most relevant for you to read. Yeah. And I think it provides a very good, unbiased picture of like whatever subject you're looking to learn in.

So I think it's a great tool, especially for people in education. Yeah. Um, I love like going down the rabbit hole of just learning about new concepts and deep research. Yeah. So that's been powerful. Uh, 

[00:15:27] Alex Sarlin: go ahead, please. No, 

[00:15:28] Siya Raj Purohit: and 4.5 just brings a lot more emotional intelligence to the game. 

[00:15:32] Alex Sarlin: So 

[00:15:32] Siya Raj Purohit: much smarter, much more cultural nuance.

So when you compare and like compile these kind of pieces, it just gives you a nuance understanding of the world. 

[00:15:39] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I, I agree with the deep research. I was just gonna say, I've done it as well when I'm researching a topic for an interview or just wanna learn more about something.

Um, you can just ask it a question and it takes long. It's, it's a different kind of model. It takes a few minutes, 

[00:15:52] Siya Raj Purohit: takes over 10 minutes sometimes. Yeah. 

[00:15:54] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. But, but then it comes out with the, it's like we've searched 25 different sources and every single thing is cited and it's like basically writes a research paper for you in, in real time.

Um, it, it is quite incredible and I can imagine, you know, it just takes learning to the next level. Anything you wanna learn more about? Instead of having to sort of figure out all the prompts and have it as a conversation, you can just be like, give me the executive summary. Gimme the download. Who's talking about this?

Who's saying what about this? Let's put it all together. It's really exciting. And then, yeah, 4.5. Uh, you know, obviously the underlying models are, are the, the, the engines behind all of it. It's incredibly exciting to see that the competition is on among the big frontier models, but it's also really, really, um, it's just continuing to move very quickly, which has been a thrill.

[00:16:35] Siya Raj Purohit: And as far as cultural changes go in education, I hope it also shows that like these AI models are not just placed to get quick answers, right? We can do very like, deep thinking with these platforms. And I think my aspiration for students right now is to help them see how AI can help elevate their thinking more than just like, get small wins in terms of assignment.

[00:16:55] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. I, I always say when I talk to people about, uh, who are new to ai, that people bring the sort of web search paradigm to it. They're like, because we're all so used to web search, you think, oh, ai, you can get answers. I'll ask it a question, I'll get an answer, and that's great. And it's like, that's really just the scratching, the tiniest bit of the surface.

It can, it can give you feedback. You can use it for reflection. You can use it for deep, deep research. You can use it to create enormous projects over time. 

[00:17:20] Siya Raj Purohit: A lot of exploration in life can happen with 

[00:17:22] Alex Sarlin: design. Totally. And you can argue with it. You can debate it, you can, you can ask it to, to role play. I mean, it's the, the, the possibilities are so endless and I think people.

You know, as soon as they sort of break through their existing paradigm, sort of unlearn how to use a system like this, they're in, they're off to the races. It's been really amazing to see more and more people do it. Have you seen more with students? That's like my last question for you. I'm curious, you've talked to students who use OpenAI, uh, you know, power users all the time.

What, what does that look like? 

[00:17:48] Siya Raj Purohit: One of the things I keep talking to students about is how they need to push back on AI more. Exactly. A lot of students say the first or second output and just use that. Yeah. But I'm just like, no. Like I tell it to be like less salesy. Be more strategic. Think like the COO for rocket ship company.

Think like a noble laureate in the field. Right? Like just help it, like push it harder to do better work, to have you become a better knowledge worker. 

[00:18:11] Alex Sarlin: That's a, that's a great point. And you can inject your own ideas too, and you say, oh, you just to said this, but I would've done this. Can you help me understand why this, you know, compare these two ideas in which one would be, might make more sense.

It'll, it'll follow your prompt. And it's less Shan It won't just be like, oops, I'm sorry. You're right. That's what it, that's where it started. But it'll be like, oh, oh, okay. Let's put it together. Let's think it through. It's amazing for like a sort of thought partner. 

[00:18:33] Siya Raj Purohit: I love telling it like, this is my personality, this is my manager's personality.

This is my outfit I'm looking for. 

[00:18:38] Alex Sarlin: Exactly. So like how craft. 

[00:18:40] Siya Raj Purohit: That narrative together. 

[00:18:41] Alex Sarlin: Exactly. Yeah. You mentioned how you've become like a superpower user, just use it for, which makes total sense. It's really exciting. Raj Prohi is the Education go-to market leader at Open ai, doing really amazing work all over the world.

Uh, follow her work at Open AI and um, and check out Open AI Academy. Thanks for being here with us at EdTech Insiders at the AI show. 

[00:19:02] Siya Raj Purohit: Thanks, Alex.

[00:19:03] Alex Sarlin: Hi, we're here at the AI Show with Maureen Heymans. She is the general manager of Learn X at Google, uh, launching learning products across the Google ecosystem. Incredibly exciting. Welcome to Attic Insiders. 

[00:19:16] Maureen Heymans: Thank you folks. 

[00:19:16] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. So the last time we got a chance to talk was in, I believe, November, right?

Yes. Uh, at the Google's incredible AI learning in the age of ai. Of these, yes. Um, and it would, it's, you know, Google's just been making continuous strides towards building out and launching education products, education, LLMs. What is top of mind for you in the time, since November to, to April that we're here now about how the strategy has been evolving and continuing to grow?

[00:19:41] Maureen Heymans: Yeah, so what I always say is that, you know, if you look at Google's mission, it's so close to learning, right? Organizing the world's information. And so, and, and we already see so many students coming to, um. To our products, whether this is such, uh, or YouTube and Gemini. And so we have really been. Thinking of how we can evolve that learning experience from, um, from what it is today, right?

From, from like answers to making it more engaging from passive consumption to interactive, but also from like transactional to, to like, um, you know, stateful learning journeys that really help you on your goal. And so the way we've been thinking about it is in different areas. The first one is, um, you know, how do we improve our foundational models to be great, um, at learning, right?

And, and so it's pretty, been pretty exciting to see the progress on those foundational model like Gini 2.5 is. There's a big milestone for this, you know, from being able to, to answer harder and harder STEM problems and, and getting better at STEM reasoning, um, to being able to better understand multimodel input.

Like, um, always see when I look at my kids handwriting, I'm like, oh, I got, can anyone understand this? Uh, but also to, uh, to be able to, uh, to generate, uh, multimedia, uh, content, right? We have seen that with the, uh, audio overview, but then now we see this with image and video generation and, and I think that can really help.

Um, I. Bring learning to the next level. So these is the foundational models. And then we look at, um, how do we improve our core products because we get billions of users coming to Google for learning, whether this is for, for, for school, for work, or for life. And uh, and there we also had a lot of exciting, uh, launches recently.

Right from, if you look at Gemini, you have the launch of Canvas. Yep. Uh, deep research, uh, audio overviews, bringing some of the cool feature from notebook lamb and Yes. And all of those that are pretty amazing in like, helping you deep dive into topics, you know, building critical thinking, um, you know, getting feedback, but also, um, really consuming content, different forms.

So that's exciting. Uh, then search, I think, um, it's of course one of our biggest products, right? And, and, uh, and recently we announced, um, AI mode, which is, um, in labs. So you can sign up in labs? Uh, yeah. Oh, okay. Soon. Soon we'll be open to everyone and, uh, and, uh, yes. And so it's exciting to see how we can bring conversation to search, because search has always been such a.

Transactional experience, right? You get, you go for a question and then we give you the answer. But we really wanna encourage students to, to um, to ask question, to deep dive, to, uh, encourage, like exploration and, and spark curiosity. And I think that's super exciting if we can do that in such. And then you also have project like learn about, uh, which we discussed, uh, at the last podcast, and where we keep innovating and really seeing what we can do and, you know, really infusing, uh, learning sciences, right?

And just to launch some new feature where you can upload your own content so it can be grounded and more personalized to you. Also able to, to go back to your history so that you can continue on those journey. Nice. Um, and then you have Notebook at Lamb, which is still, um, super cool. Uh, project and, and one of my favorite one because it allows me to, to consume a lot of content.

Uh. While, uh, in the car, uh, thanks to audio overview. 

[00:23:08] Alex Sarlin: And, 

[00:23:08] Maureen Heymans: uh, and again, I think they've, uh, innovating, uh, they've been innovating with, um, mind map, which is a cool concept where you can see how different topics are connected, which can also help you really, you know, um, build your, your knowledge further. Um, but also like being able to interrupt the, um, the audio overview and ask clarifying question, which is.

Also pretty cool. And, and so yeah, just a lot of innovation. And so it's been exciting to see how Google is really embracing, um, the opportunity across those products and, and um, and, and really bringing learning to, uh, to the next level, which is super fun. 

[00:23:46] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. And across the products, I think is the core term there, because there's so many different areas.

Google has so much surface area. You know, these things are coming together. I know that Google Canvas, which launched recently, you can get, use the Google Earth APIs inside Google Canvas to make, you know, incredible geography applications or you can use, uh, you know, this just everything's very interconnected in a way that I think is really rich and very exciting for learning.

And, and with the video generation, YouTube and video generation are obviously an incredible combination and I think we can expect to see incredible educational videos. And then 

[00:24:19] Maureen Heymans: exactly right there. I'm a huge fan of the, the YouTube creators. They're like kind of the, you know, the best teacher often because they, they really know how to speak to students and, and the amount of learning that happens on YouTube is, is really impressive.

And so, yes, it's making it easier. For them to, to generate that content. 'cause like I know they spend a lot of hours to get the content, you know, like with the right pedagogy and being engaging and finding that balance. And so if we can help them do that, I think it's pretty amazing. 'cause we'll see even more content.

Yeah. Great. Uh, learning content on mission for 

[00:24:49] Alex Sarlin: sure. Yeah. I, I mean you mentioned sort of this. Almost this layered structure of, you know, going all the way to the base, LLMs, making them better at teaching and learning, and then building infrastructure, building integrations, and up to all the application layer, the actual end user experience, which is it's Gemini and with gems and all the different things you can do in Gemini.

It's ai. Search, it's YouTube. Um, it, it's really an incredible ecosystem. And one thing that has struck me, we talked about this a little bit at the conference, is that Google is a humongous company at this point. And sometimes huge companies have, you know, moved slowly. And I, I, we have not seen that with Google, with ai.

There's been a really rapid, constantly new things dropping. I tried the mind not feature that's in, in a notebook the other day, and it was just like, you know, the. Things are launching very quickly, and there's a real, there's just a real momentum in the Google AI for learning ecosystem that has been incredible to see.

I'm, you're a long time Googler. I'm curious how that you've experienced that. 

[00:25:46] Maureen Heymans: Yeah, no, I, I think this is super exciting time. I mean, in general for, for ai, but I think, uh, even more for education. It's been pretty amazing to see across the board, right? I mean, again, like you see, Google is a big company, so sometimes it's hard to align everybody to the same priority, but the amount of, uh.

Assignment there is in, in leveraging the technology to really advance learning is, is pretty, pretty amazing. Right. And I keep joking that, yes, I been at Google for 20 years, but it's been kind of the busiest I am in my but fun busy because everybody wants to help from, from deep mind and research to, to search YouTube, you know, classroom.

It's just so, so much ship. 

[00:26:23] Alex Sarlin: You didn't even mention Google Classroom. It's, he obviously pulls this all together. Yeah. And uh, 

[00:26:27] Maureen Heymans: and, but it's just like, uh. You know, and it could be classroom is of course an education at the product at the core, so that's natural. But to see all those other products like search and YouTube and Jim and I really embracing education as, as a key vertical for gene AI is, has been super, super exciting.

And, and like how people are really sharing knowledge and, and, and really also again, leveraging, uh, the strong. Pedagogical expertise we've built within the team and, and making sure that we are really driving learning outcome. 

[00:26:57] Alex Sarlin: That makes sense. It's really exciting. And yeah, I mean one thing that's so been so interesting about the, the notebook and audio overview and audio overview is now in Gemini proper as well, um, is, is that it sort of humanizes the AI in a way.

It really feels like real people talking. You can listen on your car, um, you know, Google Reacquired or acquired character.ai a couple years ago. A year ago or so, and which is one of the leading, you know, creators of personalities, of sort of AI personalities. I'm curious if that is on the radar of learning this sort of development of AI personalities for learning, if that's something that is, is part of this ecosystem.

I know you haven't mentioned it and I don't wanna, you know, get ahead of our skis here, but it's something that, it seems like it could be a natural extension. I 

[00:27:41] Maureen Heymans: mean, I think it's important to, to, to find the students where they are. And, and I think every products will probably have a slightly different personality because I think that expectations are, are different.

But you definitely want, um, a tutor that is encouraging, right? That, that is fun, that, uh, that, um, makes you wanna learn and encourage curiosity. And so all dfi are going to look at how to do that and how to encourage, um. You know, those type of sales set that we wanna see in every students. But I think every product is going to be different because YouTube is really this curiosity platform, right?

People come to YouTube because they wanna, they wanna watch some content and often it's not because they have to do a homework. And so there, I think you can, you can have a much more like, uh, fun, engaging tutor. Oh yeah. Instead, you know, after they come for, because they were help on the homework, right?

It's, it's a little bit more oriented, but we can. Still try to encourage them to stay for, for, for curiosity to explore to, to kind of, uh, dive much deeper. And, and, uh, but I think again, the tone will need to be different, but that's also something we, uh. Super, um, excited about. Yeah. 

[00:28:47] Alex Sarlin: Um, so I mean, there's so much to talk about here, but one question I have for you that is, uh, you know, Google is, especially Google Classroom is so deeply vetted, and Chromebooks are so deeply embedded in the education ecosystem.

I bet everybody here is use, uses them on a, you know, daily or weekly basis. Uh. So I, obviously the Google education ecosystem is really well connected. Really, it's sort of looking from a very 10,000 foot view. Um, do you see a future, you know, where the, the sort of touch points for educators Chromebooks and, and, uh, and classroom are sort of, you know, keep absorbing all of this incredible functionality that's being developed, whether it's, you know, learn, lm.

Whether it's video creation, whether it's, you know, ability to customize and personalize, whether it's AI search, um, do you see that as one of the main ways into the classroom? 

[00:29:37] Maureen Heymans: Yeah, definitely. I mean, we have been partnering closely with classroom and, and, uh, of course this Gemini for education. And so the classroom team is really trying to, to bring all those features to, um.

To teachers, and again, this is a different context, so you want there to, to have the teacher in the loop, you know, the teacher should be the one deciding what's going to be seen, uh, by, by student. But yes, like integrating notebook lamb in, in classroom, you know, is, is a nice step because we actually already saw a lot of teacher going to notebook lamb to create, you know, study guides for, for the students or even to create an audio overview and to ask them to, to, to listen to it before.

The classroom. And so, you know, it's already happening naturally where, where teacher goes to, to those different tools. But we, we completely agree that if we can integrate them deeper into, um, a classroom, into, uh, the, like, you know, the yeah, the, the Chromebook, I think it can become a even better experience.

And then also making sure that, you know, as you deal with students data at it remains, you know, secure and private and, and, and all of that. And, and so, um, so yeah, think, you know, connecting. Um, you know, all those consumer products into the classroom world has, has huge potential. It really does. 

[00:30:48] Alex Sarlin: Google vids, we didn't even mention, that's another amazing product for educators.

Yeah, it's incredible. Yeah. So, wow. We could talk all day. There's so much going on in the Google system. I really love it. Um, but I, I, I know you have a conference to get to as well. This is Maureen Haymans. She's the general manager of the Learn X Team at Google. They're really doing incredible work for the Educat education ecosystem.

Thanks so much for being here with us on EdTech service. Yeah, 

[00:31:11] Maureen Heymans: thanks for inviting me. Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure.

[00:31:13] Alex Sarlin: Of Element 4 5 1, which is a higher ed CRM and student engagement platform. Uh, 

[00:31:19] Brandon Hurter: how are you liking the show so far? We love it. A lot of energy. We were here last year for the first time, so second time, uh, sponsors and, uh, we're loving the action we're getting, so it's fun. 

[00:31:29] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, it's busy. It feels really vibrant in here right now, so, yes.

To tell our audience, people who don't know about O 4 5 1, we don't always cover as much higher ed as we, we should. Uh, tell us a little bit more about what you do for schools and what is the sort of a life cycle you 

[00:31:42] Brandon Hurter: support. For sure, for sure. We have over 300, uh, institutions that we serve primarily in the United States.

We're an AI powered CRM and student engagement platform. So what that means is. Institutions will use us to, um, ensure that they have a technology forward way of engaging their students. Everything from a, a prospective student that is going through the application process through a current, current student and needs support and advice as they are, uh, excelling in school all the way through alumni.

So I powered with agents and we are. We're here to launch today and tomorrow our agent platform for higher ed. Yeah, so tell us about what that is. What's an agent platform for higher ed? So it's a digital workforce, so imagine if you could use the platform to spin up a digital agent that could perform the same jobs or tasks as your human advisor would, or your human marketing assistant plan.

So our, our, our customers today use the platform to do that and to integrate AI into their workflow. 

[00:32:45] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. And that includes for prospective students. So that way would that be outreach to potential 

[00:32:51] Brandon Hurter: aspiring Yes. High school. High school seniors. High school seniors. Yeah. 

[00:32:54] Alex Sarlin: For sure they can 

[00:32:55] Brandon Hurter: engage with a, with an agent workforce, they can we engage with an agent, um, uh, admissions advisory, right?

That will help them navigate the application process. Do I have the right paperwork in? Can I talk to somebody about financial aid? And, uh, can it also speak to my mother who's. Needs to speak Spanish 'cause she's a native Spanish speaker. Right. So all those things that, uh, a human might not have the 24 hour cycle to be able to do.

Uh, an agent can do it 24 7 and then a language and never complains about it. Right, right, right, right. 

[00:33:30] Alex Sarlin: And doesn't need a whole lot of training. Or you train once and trainer once and it's the same thing every time. So higher education is obviously in a very odd, it's just a crazy moment for higher ed.

There's a lot of funding changes. Regulatory, you know. Confusion. Um, but I imagine that one of the things they're thinking a lot about is how to, I mean, you know, keep all the things they're doing running but keep costs down. Observation. Yeah. So I, I would imagine that that's kind like when, when you go and talk about this agent workforce and be able to expand your capacity with, you know, less, uh, I'm sure it's there.

You got a receptive audience. 

[00:34:03] Brandon Hurter: Yes, yes. Paid. Essentially, you are able to, like you said, scale and expand, especially at times where you're going into application season. So typically you would hire on more staff to read applications, to score 'em, to get everybody. Through the admissions program, but now you can just scale up an AI agent and do that for you.

And it's not about replacing the human, but allowing the human to do the high touch stuff that the students really need and value, and all the repetitive things that AI can replace and do it in a scale. That's what you would spin up. So it's, it's amplifying the human 

[00:34:42] Alex Sarlin: staff rather than replacing it. It makes sense.

So we, we, when you talk about spinning up an agent, I think, you know, everybody is starting to think about their agentic strategy. I we've heard that a lot here. Um, is an agent sort of spun up from scratch on any role? Or is it that you have sort of preset like an admissions counselor, uh, of financial aid like.

Some of them more common. Yeah. I'm curious how you're treating it. So 

[00:35:05] Brandon Hurter: in 

[00:35:05] Alex Sarlin: our 

[00:35:05] Brandon Hurter: platform, we have pre-bill agents, so we have student success advisors, admissions advisors, career coaches, et cetera, et cetera. Yes. Yeah. You would take them and so you actually wouldn't spin 'em up, you'd just call 'em on the phone.

Right. You would hire 'em, hire them, turn 'em on. Yeah, you hire 'em, turn 'em on, and then give them a goal. And give them a segment of students to go support. Interesting. They do it. And they do it until that goal is, uh, or that objective is obtained. Right. And then they go to sleep and wait for you to hire. And, 

[00:35:36] Alex Sarlin: and what do they need to be trained on to be able to work in this particular university's capacity?

I'm sure they have a, a generalized skill set and then specific Yes. You know, depending on the school. 

[00:35:45] Brandon Hurter: So the nice thing about the platform is it has a whole set of. Skills, appointment setting, uh, surveys, uh, campaign building, email communications, SMS, it can tap into all those skills to be able to, uh, custom personalize outreach to the student when they need them.

Yep. And it also can tap into the full history of the student's interaction, so it can tell. Hey, this student really doesn't open emails until after eight at night. Right. So it wouldn't send an email until after eight at night. Right. And, uh, it can do that at scale. 

[00:36:21] Alex Sarlin: Interesting. So sort of learn about user behavior on a granular level as needed.

Yeah, it's really interesting. So. La last question for you and then I just wanna ask you about the, about the show. 'cause it's just an exciting space. You know, we've covered the sort of mega university, excuse me, we've covered the mega university trend for the last few years, the, the WGU and Southern New Hampshire.

And, and you know, the, the, the idea of certain schools. Purdue, you know, have been able to go really, really big by sort of streamlining their academic offering, but expanding their student success supports because they're for non-traditional audiences. Yep. And I'm curious, just with Element 4, 5, 1, you know, it feels like you, there's a, a natural match to that because you're basically creating all of this additional support system or Potentially, yeah.

Um, are, are I, I, you know, I know that I just named a couple of SPOs, but I'm curious how Element 4 5 1 meets. This sort of somewhat, somewhat alternative or challenger university status. 

[00:37:15] Brandon Hurter: Our, our vision is to, to fulfill the full student life cycle. Yeah. So whether it's recruiting and trying to enroll more, uh, to your point, all institutions really now are shifting from an enrollment conversation to a retention conversation.

Exactly right. So how do I ensure that the students that are enrolled, that we believe will be successful, remain in school, remain tuition banks? Students. And yes, there's a huge focus on our platform and the agents that, that you could deploy as well as our 

[00:37:46] Alex Sarlin: customers on figuring out that retention equation.

That makes sense. And it could be sort of a stack where there's different kinds of outreach. Yes. And a human would be involved when you really need to, you know, help For sure. 

[00:37:58] Brandon Hurter: The agent can hand off to a human. So if, if a human advisor is really needed to provide that. TLC that the student requires, they can easily, seamlessly hand off.

That's fantastic. 

[00:38:09] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah. So, um, so just last question. What are you, what has excited you most when you sort of made the way around, talk with potential clients, talk with other vendors, or just walk the floor? What has sort of sparked your interest at the AI show this year? 

[00:38:21] Brandon Hurter: I think everything kind of does it.

It's. It's amazing how much energy there is around ai. Yeah. Uh, last year it was mostly about adoption and how do I think about it and what should be my approach and strategy. This year we're actually seeing really people do it. Yeah. And a lot more vendors providing solutions. Yeah. Like the momentum and the energy around.

AI and higher ed is tremendous. Yeah, it's wonderful that you guys put on the show every year. Um, but yeah, that's kind, that's, that's essentially what we look forward to coming here for. Yeah, 

[00:38:54] Alex Sarlin: we, we don't really put on the show, but we, we cover it. It's a big undertaking, but it's, it's a fun place. This is Brandon Hurter.

He is super marketing officer of Element 4 5 1. It's a student engagement platform and CRM for higher ed. Thanks for being here with us on EdTech Insiders. Thank you.

We're here with Auditi Chakravarty from iff, uh, doing incredibly important work in EdTech research, and she was just named one of the leading women in ai. Congratulations and welcome 

[00:39:21] Auditi Chakravarty: to the as. Thank you, Alex. 

[00:39:23] Alex Sarlin: So, what's your experience been like so far? I know you're just, just showing up at this amazing space.

[00:39:27] Auditi Chakravarty: I know. It's incredible. It's my first time coming to the AI show. I've been coming to A-S-U-G-S-V for years, and this year I said, let's come and. See what it's all about and it's incredible. It's so great to be in a space where there's so many educators walking around and seeing folks with all their school district badges and, and also all the organizations and of course.

Really amazing to be named to the Yeah. It, it's an 

[00:39:49] Alex Sarlin: amazing group that people all around us are. Yeah. Absolutely. Superstars in the space. Lots of founders. It's just an amazing group. Yeah. So, um, tell us about aifs. Like what's the, what's on your mind, top of mind with the Aiff world? You already have so many fingers in so many different pots.

What's, uh, what's on your mind right now? Yeah, 

[00:40:04] Auditi Chakravarty: yeah. Well, I think one of the things that I'm really thinking about when it comes to AI as we're here is how much AI is, seems to be like in everything that we're using and talking about. And one of the questions that comes up is like, what, how are we using it to do research?

How are we learning more about pushing the boundaries and edges? And also really thinking about human-centered AI and what that means for learning. One of the things that we, you know here is that we know a lot about ai, but we don't know as much about the intersection of AI and learning science. Very much so.

So we're really interested in digging into that. We just announced our fourth ative program earlier this year, augmented, which is going to be all about. Understanding what does the classroom of the future where AI augments, uh, the, the teaching and learning experiences and teachers are still very much the orchestrators of that and learners are very much at the center.

But what does it look like? Yeah. And how do you really advance the use of AI to do that? It's very interesting and AI is a strong component of all of our other three programs as well as it is of anything, right? How do you, you know, build better content using AI and build better capabilities, personalization, all of those things we're, we're working on.

But augmented is gonna be our first. Really deep dive into pushing on the learning science and the technical capabilities of ai. That's 

[00:41:18] Alex Sarlin: huge. I, I feel like we're learning more about the learning science in AI than we did with the learning science and the first generation of online learning. I feel like it's, yeah, it's, it's top of mind right from the beginning.

We're still in the very early innings of ai, and already people are thinking about how do we actually get the learning science in there? Well, hopefully we, so you're at the forefront of 

[00:41:34] Auditi Chakravarty: the mistakes because we haven't talked about learning science enough, right? And so now we're benefiting from, wow, let's actually lead with that a little bit more.

Not that. You know, we're already a little bit behind, but at least we're starting early. At least we're starting early. Yeah. Relative to what we've done in other, well, 

[00:41:47] Alex Sarlin: people often replicate the commercial space when they're doing B2B or they're doing education products and they don't always think about, okay, actually there's something fundamentally different about everything in education.

You have a purpose here. It's not just to keep people using it. That's not the end goal. Yeah. There's a third purpose, and the learning science is so key to that. 

[00:42:03] Auditi Chakravarty: Exactly, yeah. 

[00:42:04] Alex Sarlin: And for those, those who aren't. Super familiar with there to just give the, the quick overview because it's an amazing place and it's a very unusual player in the EdTech space.

Yeah, 

[00:42:12] Auditi Chakravarty: yeah, yeah. The, so we are an advanced research and and development organization, so that advanced is really key. It is about really pushing to the edge of what's possible in what's known in science and technology, um, and, and classroom practice to. Discover new knowledge, new research, new solutions. So each of our programs are focused on a problem or an opportunity area, but they're asking questions about what if.

Yeah. Right. What if you could really better, um, measure executive function skills in mathematics and what does that look like? What if you could assess students', um, capacity to learn in completely different ways from the way that we do that right now? Yep. And then they're doing research and. Technology development, and it's, and it's an iterative process, right?

So r it's really r and d where the R informs the D, and the D informs the R. And um, the goal is solutions. So each of our programs is leading to either new products, um, new products that are in the market or will be soon in the market, right? But also a lot of new research and findings and capabilities that we want.

The rest of the field to pick up and benefit. 

[00:43:21] Alex Sarlin: I love that. You know, r and d and r and d sort of loop. Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And that's been my experience with everybody connected to, they're developing, they're putting things out, but they're also learning as Yeah. You know, they're doing research as part of the core of what they're doing.

Both user research and Yeah. Formal research. Yeah, because 

[00:43:35] Auditi Chakravarty: Exactly. 'cause you've, um, talked with Rebecca Coler, who leads. Reading Reimagined and who was also on the list of, um, the top 200 women in ai. Yeah. And her program is a great example, building a, a literacy tool that is critical right now for building foundational literacy.

But every time, you know, she and I talk about what they're learning next. There's so much new learning that they're now channeling Right. Back into. 

[00:43:56] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. And, and Mac Pilot literacy is literally built into its product, though, a way to collect the cycles. 

[00:44:01] Auditi Chakravarty: The cycles 

[00:44:01] Alex Sarlin: to learn very quickly and test new things, which is really great.

It's 

[00:44:04] Auditi Chakravarty: very much about those cycles. Um, 

[00:44:05] Alex Sarlin: amazing. Well, what's, what are you most excited about, about the show? Lemme just end with that. What, what are you most excited to learn as you walk the floor here and go to sessions? 

[00:44:12] Auditi Chakravarty: Well, I'm actually, I am excited to walk the floor and see some of the cool things. I'm hoping to see some cool new tools and maybe meet a few people.

I already have met a couple of people who, especially as we're doing the work of Augment Ed, we're gonna be looking for. Educators who wanna lean in and partner with us and for interesting scientists and researchers. So really looking forward to making some connections while we're here. Um, and as always, this is a great place to catch up with folks like yourself and others that we see a few times a year at these kinds of events.

Exactly. So definitely looking forward tos. So fun the it to see 

[00:44:42] Alex Sarlin: all the familiar faces that connect with people. 

[00:44:44] Auditi Chakravarty: Absolutely. Absolutely. I did 

[00:44:46] Alex Sarlin: Tobar from, uh, iff, A-E-R-D-F. Check it out, doing really interesting work. Thanks for being here with us on the Arctic Insiders AI show floor. 

[00:44:53] Auditi Chakravarty: Thank 

[00:44:53] Alex Sarlin: you so much, Alex.

Hi, we're here with Jim Van Voorhis. He's the VP of Education for Glean EDU. Uh, GLE is a really interesting AI unicorn in the B2B space, and they're just making MA waves and moves into the education space. Welcome to the podcast. 

[00:45:09] Jim Van Voorhis: Thank you. 

[00:45:10] Alex Sarlin: So tell us, first off, tell us what Glean AI is. 

[00:45:13] Jim Van Voorhis: Yeah, yeah, so GLE is a work AI platform, so imagine having your own internal Google search plus a chat GPT component, but it's integrated into all of your enterprise applications.

So we become. The knowledge base for all of your corpus of data. We also understand who your users are, so users can comprehensively search for information and glean. They can also disseminate that information using the AI assistant, and they can automate their workflows using our agentic platform. I.

[00:45:39] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, and, and that means it integrates with things like Slack and Zoom and Google Drive, Google Drive, 

[00:45:44] Jim Van Voorhis: oh 365 Box, Dropbox, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and the list goes on. Right, right. So the value proposition of Glean is really in the breadth of data that we can collect and present to users in a digestible way.

Yeah. So 

[00:45:57] Alex Sarlin: you can imagine that is a very useful. Useful, uh, capability for not just businesses, but also educational institutions, especially higher ed institutions, very big complicated places with lots of internal data. So yeah. Tell us about the higher ed offering. 

[00:46:12] Jim Van Voorhis: Yeah, so first and foremost in education, they're facing a lot of complexities with how they get access to information.

And a lot of them are thinking about, well, how do we get information from the internet? But they're just now starting to pivot and think about how do we get access to our internal data, right? Right. And so, you know, we're solving a really human problem here that everybody runs into where. It's hard to find information.

It's hard to make use of that information, and it's even harder to automate your day with that information. So what we're doing is we're engaging strategically with the education community to talk about the use cases that Glean can support, whether it's teaching and learning, or administrative or research base or healthcare focus, right?

There's a lot of ways that GLE can be applied to allow users to do more with less and essentially improve efficiency and productivity so that they can focus more on their day to day versus. Accomplishing remedial tasks. Yeah, so it really comes down to that partnership that we're enabling to allow universities and colleges to fully deploy GLE across their entire campus of faculty, staff, and students.

I. Um, and really kind of gathering the use cases from there and helping to evangelize that through the community. Yeah. I mean, we've entered 

[00:47:13] Alex Sarlin: this information environment where it's very easy to make new information. It's very easy to send Slack messages, make Google docs, make, make things in box, put together all sorts of new documents.

Yeah. But then there's this information overload. They're all buried. You have to look for that doc when somebody leaves an organization. Yeah. They have. A thousand documents that have created our work on. Mm-hmm. Um, and one of the things you mentioned is permissioning, which I think is a really important part of this.

So, you know, you glean knows who a user is. Yeah. So if they're a student or a faculty member or an admin or somebody in a particular department, they'd have access to certain types of information and maybe not other information like financial information or, or you know, inside. You know, the conversations between the executives or the, the provost and the deans, uh, the students wouldn't have access to that.

How do you make sense of that information ecosystem and make sure everybody has access only to what they need? Yeah, they should have access. 

[00:47:59] Jim Van Voorhis: Great question. And it's one of the common concerns that we're hearing about the most when it comes to AI adoption, right? There's a lot of excitement around ai, but there's also a lot of fear.

And what we need to do is we need to kind of alleviate that fear by one, starting with the product design. So first and foremost, GLE is built to inherit existing permissions that already exist, right? So, mm-hmm. Whether that user is a student who, you know, should have access to course curriculum, but not the answers to the test, right?

Right. They're not permitted to access that already. So Glean would never present that information to that user. So from a data security and governance perspective, GLE has kind of already stepped ahead of that by. Creating that permission aware structure as well as allowing the universities to actually host it in their own VPC.

So they have full control of the data. They also have full control over the permissioning, and so that, you know, there's no issues around improper access to information. Yeah. 

[00:48:52] Alex Sarlin: And I would imagine that one of the complexities, but sort of also the value propositions for university is these are sprawling, they're almost like cities, right?

Like there's thousands and thousands of people, they're in different departments, lots of administrators, lots of faculty, lots of re, you know, researchers and graduate students, all these different populations and different populations of data. When you go work with a higher education institution, I imagine there's an onboarding process that basically says, let's find all of these pockets of data.

Yeah. And where they are throughout, you know, whether they're. Transcripts from calls or whether they're, you know, huge sets of curricular data or syllabi. Um, how does that work? How do you work with universities 

[00:49:27] Jim Van Voorhis: to organize their data? Yeah, I mean, I think, uh, I think honestly like a lot of that work is work that they're already focused in on, right?

So like our job is more to present that information, but also work with them strategically to understand like. You know, from a data security perspective, like what do you want to expose? What don't you want to expose? Right? Like there's really sensitive institutional data that they can't, you know, allow users to get access to.

Yeah. In certain groups, right? So, you know, it really does come down to that collaboration and education that we provide to our customers about, Hey, here's what you're exposing your users to, unless if you. Implement X, y, Z governance policy. Mm-hmm. So it really, you know, it's, it's obviously institution by institution, right?

Like if you talk to a healthcare focus, university of California health system, for example, right? Like. They obviously care a lot about their PHI and, you know, sensitive data like that, whereas like a, a college that's just focused on research is gonna have different compliance standards. So it really just depends on, uh, the, the customer that we're working with.

But it, it, what it comes down to is that collaboration, right? Like the understanding of how the platform works, how to deploy it, and how to secure it. Yeah. 

[00:50:36] Alex Sarlin: So, so last question for you, and just to make this really concrete, because I think it's, you know, seeing your demo and how you work, that you've thought about a lot of use cases for this type of information, sort of internal information search.

Give us sort of a walkthrough of a sort of, if you, if you have an institution, a higher institution that's totally gify, where everything's interconnected. What is a day in the life of a student? Where, how, how can they use all the data they have access to, and what's a day in the life of a faculty member or administrator?

[00:51:01] Jim Van Voorhis: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I, I just think about all the things that, uh, uh, you know, being a former student myself, right? Like all the things that I used to wake up and do to prepare myself for my day, right? Like, tell me all the classes I need to go to today. Tell me about the, the homework assignments that I need to complete.

Tell me about the curriculum that I need to figure out. Tell me how to get access to. All my campus resources like Student Health Center or Campus Bookstore. Right. Resources. Yeah. And, and so all of this information is a public is available within the database. But you know, again, back to the human element of things, like if I can't find something fast, then I might just give up altogether.

Uh, or express frustration, some more submit, submit an IT support ticket. Right? So like really like. It's about that. It's about getting that access information fast and easy so that I can plan my day and my week and my month accordingly, so that I can get access to the resources that I need to, you know, uh, complete my curriculum.

Yeah. Efficiently. Right? Like that's, that's really where I see glean stepping in is becoming almost like. The best executive assistant that everybody has ever had. Right? Like somebody who knows everything about the college or university environment and can answer questions like that and provide information very fast 

[00:52:14] Alex Sarlin: would include work, study, and study abroad.

Oh yeah. Financial aid. Exactly. Athletics schedules and practice schedules. And I mean, I can imagine those a huge amount of 

[00:52:21] Jim Van Voorhis: differences. There's probably hundreds of use, if not thousands of use cases that. Can potentially be supported with Clean. And 

[00:52:28] Alex Sarlin: what about the faculty admin side? What would, what would that look like?

What are some of the things they would Yeah. 

[00:52:31] Jim Van Voorhis: Think about, uh, curriculum development. Think about, uh, administering policy. Think about onboarding employees and students for that matter. Right? So like, think about all the work that goes into all that, all the information that it's exchanged as a, as a result of all that effort, right?

Like, imagine being able to streamline those processes. You know, every time you onboard a new employee, they don't have to go to their manager to ask them questions about every little thing. PTO policy leave policy. You know, this and that, right? Like, it's all available at your fingertips, right? It kind of reduces the amount of, you know, questions that I would need to ask my manager, um, so I can get onboarded a lot more efficiently.

[00:53:07] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, that makes sense. Uh, it's really exciting. So, uh, what do you, what have you made of the show so far? There's so many different, you're in the higher education zone. Yeah. A bunch of different really interesting vendors and people doing things in higher ed. What, what has been stood out 

[00:53:19] Jim Van Voorhis: for you? The show's been fantastic.

Um, I love that the show represents. You know, a mixture of higher education and K through 12 and education tech companies and, you know, big companies like Google and Meta are here. Yeah. A SU obviously paving the way, right? Yeah. Um, you know, I'm, I'm very impressed by the show. This is actually gleans first year at the show.

Um, I can almost guarantee you that we will be coming back next year in a bigger and more supportive way. Um, you know, we, we kind of dipped our toes in this show. We like what we see, so we'll most likely be back. 

[00:53:49] Alex Sarlin: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much. This is Jim Van Bore. He is the VP of Education at Glean ai.

Just launching Glean EDU. Thanks for being here with us on EdTech Inside. 

[00:53:58] Jim Van Voorhis: Thank you for having me. 

[00:53:59] Alex Sarlin: I'm here at the AI show with Summer Long. She's the CMO and Co-founder of Kaaten AI, which uses AI for English language learners. Uh, welcome to the podcast. 

[00:54:10] Summer Long: Thank you, Alex. Thanks for inviting me. 

[00:54:12] Alex Sarlin: So, tell our audience about what Catn does and the amazing origin of your name of Catn. Oh, 

[00:54:18] Summer Long: okay. Yeah. Kaen is Cat Plus Beethoven.

Yep. Not cat in the oven. So we help language educators and learners. To do the grading evaluation on their writing and speaking. 

[00:54:30] Alex Sarlin: Yes. And you, you've done, uh, B2C for a couple of years. Yeah. But you're also now expanding to offer to businesses Exactly. 

[00:54:37] Summer Long: Schools. Yeah. Yeah. Tell us about that. Uh, we are doing B2C to two and a half years.

Yep. And now, and now we see some signals because, uh, we got, some customers introduced us to the companies and then companies come to us. So that's why we're also expanding to the B2B sessions. 

[00:54:52] Alex Sarlin: Fantastic. Uhhuh 

[00:54:53] Summer Long: like Renaissance Learning is one of our clients. Yeah. 

[00:54:55] Alex Sarlin: Mm-hmm. Giant tech company. We do. So tell us a little bit about how, what's sort of unique and special about what you're doing.

I know you just launched, uh, the speaking side of the house, which is really cool, Uhhuh, and we were testing it out and playing with it so you can speak into it and it gives you granular, you know, word by word feedback about your pronunciation, fluency, uh, vocabulary, all sorts of idiom, idiomatic expression.

Yes. Tell us about what's, especially what framework you're using to do this kind of really. Detailed, uh, feedback. 

[00:55:22] Summer Long: Um, so it's based on for second language learner, we use common European framework. Yeah. CFR. Um, and, uh, all of our grading system is based on this. This is our proprietary model, self-trained model.

Um, and when we grade the se, it's based on that. And also we break down to different rubrics, like what you just mentioned, fluency, lexipol, grammar and pronunciation. What we do better, um, than other companies is that we also break down. Each of the rubrics in small granular mm-hmm. Like, uh, standards, like fluency.

We also talk about cohesive devices, topic development and with, with the scoring. So, you know, nothing is more transparent than scoring. It's like a marable goals. Students want, just want to know where they are and where they want to go next, where they can improve. So if you just tell them a generic feedback, they're like, okay, got it.

Uh huh uh, and also our feedback is not like giving you a laundry list. Overwhelming. We don't correct everything. For example, right now you are level 6.5, right? Um, and we will only help you to give, go to seven and then we'll not help you to go to nine. So, which means that when you see the feedback on the feedback session, um, we will see that.

I will say that I'll fix this score to go to the next level, to go to score sevens. Yep. Um, and then you will, yeah. Yeah. So we'll not get exhausted. 

[00:56:50] Alex Sarlin: Right. It's, it's, it's very targeted feedback to sort of get you to the next level of your assessment readiness. Correct. And you do an interesting combination of, you know, there, there are some English language, uh, AI platforms out there that are about sort of just general speaking or public speaking or, or accent reduction.

We talked to not a Lara from Bold Voice a couple of years ago. Yeah. But you do something interesting, which is it's a combination of practicing your writing and speaking. And assessment preparation, especially for the I-E-L-T-S 

[00:57:15] Summer Long: exam. Yes. I ls. 

[00:57:16] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. The I Ls tell. Tell us a little bit about how that, you know, that it feels like you have a additional granular rubric because students are really preparing for a very specific Yeah.

Assessment that makes a big difference in their life career. 

[00:57:28] Summer Long: Because every year there are 4 million students are taking aisles. Yeah. Um, and this is a need. Yeah. They need to pass the test. And going to the courses is around a thousand USC dollars to 10,000 U US dollars is too expensive for independent learners.

Yep. For international students. Um, and they need AI tools. Yeah. But AI tools need to be accurate. Yes. And the feedback need to be consistent as well. So that's why we are doing this tool. I used to be an E ES L teachers for six years. Yeah. So I, that's why our feedback is totally like, fit for the students' mindsets.

Yeah. As psych psychology and pedagogy for the. English learning. 

[00:58:05] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. So, uh, your international students, what areas of the world are you seeing a lot of traction with, with your B2C? 

[00:58:11] Summer Long: Can you guess? 

[00:58:14] Alex Sarlin: I don't wanna assume anything. What, what do you think? Oh, yeah. 

[00:58:16] Summer Long: India is the top one. Yes. And then Southeast Asia.

[00:58:21] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. 

[00:58:21] Summer Long: And then China. 

[00:58:22] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. 

[00:58:22] Summer Long: Uh, no, that's the top three. Yeah. But you ask because they are, there's so many immigrants. We also got, um, a huge portion of the, the users from that. 

[00:58:31] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. Yeah. Does that correspond with the largest, uh, segments of people taking the test? Generally, yes. 

[00:58:36] Summer Long: Yes, correct. Uhhuh. 

[00:58:38] Alex Sarlin: And, and, and the lower price point, I think I'm sure makes it much more viable and usable than traditional assessment.

[00:58:44] Summer Long: It's really interesting. We had interview with the different students and then, uh, we have many students come to back to us because, uh, after they take the test, we have interview with them. They said that, uh, uh, catch up and help them to, uh, get the band from seven to eight. And they are from different, like probably.

A thousand USC dollars tuition fee too high. But Petto is very affordable for them and most accurate. 

[00:59:07] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. 

[00:59:07] Summer Long: Accuracy is the key. 

[00:59:09] Alex Sarlin: That's right. 'cause you need to know exactly where you are and where you're going if you're assessing yourself very carefully. 

[00:59:13] Summer Long: Yeah. Yeah. Um, 

[00:59:14] Alex Sarlin: so tell us about the Vita, the Vita School, like the, the working with businesses in schools.

How are you fitting into other people's offerings? 

[00:59:21] Summer Long: Uh, with, we are also expanding with AED tech companies actually. Yeah. Interesting. Uh, because ad tech companies, there are many companies, uh, helping to, uh, pro provide materials for learning. But the assessment part, this ability, they don't have it. Right.

So that's why they just implement our API and publishers especially, uh, they generate a lot of assessments com. Uh. Coming with their books. Yeah. But then, um, they needs the our as assess, uh, needs assessment tools to track the students. We, we, we do have a dashboard to track the students like progress.

[00:59:58] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. 

[00:59:58] Summer Long: Yeah. In a granular level as well. 

[01:00:00] Alex Sarlin: And I can imagine that the feedback that they get could, could help them in a sort of micro level, but it could also be used as a publisher to see what, what to do next with that student. What to assign to them, what. Worksheets or what a Yes. Correct. Creating, so it's becomes a differentiation.

[01:00:14] Summer Long: Yeah. 

[01:00:14] Alex Sarlin: Like, uh, input. 

[01:00:15] Summer Long: Yes. Correct. That's really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. 

[01:00:18] Alex Sarlin: And so, so we're here at the AI show where you can see thousands of people are in front of us. Uh, what has been most exciting to you about the show so far? What have been, what is your, what are your goals here and what have sort of surprised you?

[01:00:29] Summer Long: Uh, finding clients will be the top goal for sure. Sure. Um, I'm really excited to see so many because all of, many of the booths, they, their founders come, so I talk to them and we share the, the, the, the insights about a tech. Yeah. And oh my God, I learn a lot. I have to say that it's, it's fast paced in the tech role.

Yeah. And um, I thought that, I know a lot. I did the research every day, but then when you talk to co-founders and and founders for different companies, then they share more. Yeah. Yeah. From different perspective. So it helps. Yeah. Help each other to grow. 

[01:01:05] Alex Sarlin: A hundred percent. 

[01:01:05] Summer Long: Yeah. Some companies said that, oh, are we competi?

I said, no, I, I've never seen competitors. I just see collaboration or, that's nice. Yeah, 

[01:01:13] Alex Sarlin: I like that. I, I, I like to, I, I think the EdTech world is such an amazing collaborative environment. People are very willing to share and, you know, I feel like people aren't as secretive or. Yeah, trying to sort of out outsmart each other.

It's a lot more of, everybody has the same like, overall goals. Yeah. Right. So I find it a very collaborative environment. Yeah. It's about education. It's about education. Right. And, and uh, you know, after doing three years and hundreds of interviews, I still feel like I have so much to learn. Yeah. It's so funny.

Me too. I never like. Oh, I think I get it now. I'm like, oh, there's a whole new area. Me too. That haven't knew nothing about. Yeah, and the, the, uh, the IEL exam in the English language world is one that I, I wish I knew more about. I'd like to know, I'd like to learn more about it. What you're doing is really interesting.

[01:01:51] Summer Long: I will send you the report. Yeah. You can read more about your report. I, 

[01:01:55] Alex Sarlin: I can find out about my own pronunciation issues. 

[01:01:57] Summer Long: Yeah. 

[01:01:58] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. 

[01:01:59] Summer Long: Grammatical rest. 

[01:02:01] Alex Sarlin: Just to, to wrap up, go right back to the beginning. So Kaen is Cat and Beethoven, but why? Why is it Cat and Beethoven? What is 

[01:02:09] Summer Long: Who doesn't love cats? And Beethoven is because we want language learners and educators to learn language like Master Beethoven.

[01:02:18] Alex Sarlin: Gotcha. Right. You have musical notes. It's sort of the Yeah, I like it. Yeah. Thank you. Well, thanks so much for being with you here with me. This is Summer Long, the CMO and Co-founder of Ovn. That's Kat plus Beethoven ai. Thanks for being here with me here. Thank you, Adam. I'll take insiders. Thank you.

We're here with Yasmine Barkett. She's the CEO and founder of royo, which is a literacy product that uses all sorts of ai, and she's one of the 80 women in ai. It was just named at the AI Show. Congratulations. And, uh, yeah. How, how, how did it all go? It's an amazing group. 

[01:02:47] Yasmin Barkett: Thank you so much. Yeah. We just launched in September, actually.

Oh, wow. We're so excited to be here. 

[01:02:52] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. So tell us about what Royal does. 

[01:02:54] Yasmin Barkett: So Royo makes personalized decodable books using ai. Uh, teachers are able to input the phonic scale and sight words for each individual student, and students are able to create an avatar and select the topic they wanna read about.

And all those things come together to make a personalized decodable. And students read the book out loud and they get feedback as they read, as if they're reading one-on-one with the teacher. 

[01:03:19] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. It's incredibly powerful stuff. So, um, decodables are like now the go-to. I mean now with the science of Reading movement, people have realized the power of decodables that you actually have to have.

Reading at the level of the students' understanding, uh, tell us about how you incorporate that sort of science of reading into the product to make sure that it's, uh, working. 

[01:03:40] Yasmin Barkett: Absolutely. So I actually was a former teacher. I taught kindergarten and second grade and finding decodables for all my students when their abilities range so much in one classroom was one of the biggest things I personally struggled with as a teacher, which is what inspired this.

Um, and my co-founder, Laura is, has been a teacher for over 20 years as well. She's, uh, or Gillingham trained. And so she really is the one who makes sure that we are aligned to practic and practices with science and reading. And she's really our science and reading master. 

[01:04:13] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, that right. It's a incredibly important part of this world.

So, let's talk about the voice recognition part. 'cause this is a, you know, we, we've seen Amira learning in the space for a few years, uh, acquired by Houghton Mifflin and they do sort of voice recognition, but it's. It's a tricky space and people are all trying to figure out how to do the underlying technology.

It sounds like you guys have have cracked it. So tell us a little bit about how you're planning on doing the voice recognition part of the, uh, of the AI learning and reading experience for kids. 

[01:04:38] Yasmin Barkett: Yeah, the voice recognition is an ongoing process. I think we're always going back and trying to refine it as much as we can because one of the biggest challenges was making sure that it understood children's voices and not adult voices.

So that was one of. Honestly, our biggest challenges in the development process was making sure that the voice recognition adapted to children's voices and also the, um, classroom noise, which yes, is just inevitable, but we are slowly improving the more we go. Yeah, 

[01:05:09] Alex Sarlin: no, I mean it's really important to, to figure out, I mean, we at Tech Insiders will know the Soapbox Labs, which was one of the B2B leaders in this space got acquired by Curriculum Associates.

I think a year and a half ago, something like that. Mm-hmm. So, which ha the rest of the space has been figuring out how to crack exactly those issues. You know, how do you get phoning level kids' voices in a noisy classroom environment? And it's, it's, it's incredibly important. One of the things we do that's really unique and very interesting is that you kids create their own avatars.

Yeah. I'm just learning about it now, but I think that's a great idea. You know, we've seen these commercial products where you can make kids books featuring the kid. I have some for my own kids. Tell us about what you've seen in the classroom when kids get to sort of put themselves into the stories. 

[01:05:48] Yasmin Barkett: Yeah.

Kids are obsessed with the avatar feature. Yeah. Like teacher cells all the time. They're like, my kids just wanna make avatars all day. 

[01:05:56] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. 

[01:05:56] Yasmin Barkett: But, um, I think one thing that also really inspired us was we know kids are way more engaged when they see themselves in stories, and that also is a big problem with finding culturally relevant decodables right now.

Yep. And, um. I think like in writing curriculum, students are always encouraged to write about themselves, right? But in reading, they're just reading about. These random characters named like Sam and Meg, and they can't relate to them. And so we thought like, why not have the children be in the story? Even though the words are so simple, it just helps drive that engagement.

[01:06:30] Alex Sarlin: Can kids cross over and have the other kids in their stories as well? We want it 

[01:06:34] Yasmin Barkett: actually. It's a great idea. We call it pick a pal, so they're gonna be able to take a friend to be in their book. Yeah. 

[01:06:39] Alex Sarlin: That's incredibly exciting. I mean, when people talk about personalized learning in B AI era. This is what I mean for, for younger kids, this is exactly what they mean.

Not only is it personalized in terms of the phonics and the standards and, and exactly what sound the kids are at, but literally interest based, it's about, the story could be about whatever you'd like, I'm sure. Mm-hmm. And it's about you and your friends. Uh, it's a really exciting vision of the future. So, last question, um, as you walk around the AI show, I know you're here presenting the work to, to educators and others, what are you, what's this sort of getting you most excited about being in this particular space this year?

[01:07:11] Yasmin Barkett: Um, honestly, I think just seeing how people are using AI in different ways. Like it for Laura and I, like it was so clear how we wanted to use AI in education, but there are, there's so many. Different companies using AI in such innovative ways, and it's really exciting to see like how creative people are and what they're doing with it.

[01:07:33] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, it really is. IEE. Every conversation I learn, you know, somebody has a different way of sort of injecting AI into the education experience or taking an existing need and education and finding a way for AI to enhance it, like the decodable issue. Yeah. Thank you so much. This is Yasmine Barkett. She's the CEO and founder of Royal doing personalized Decodables.

With ai, thanks for being here with us on anti ticket silence. 

[01:07:57] Yasmin Barkett: Thank you so much. Thanks.

[01:07:57] Alex Sarlin: We are here with Mike Yates. He is a senior designer at TFA Reinvention lab. We have previously called him the MVP of AI conferences because he tends, he knows everybody. He's an incredibly good observer of everything happening. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, 

[01:08:12] Mike Yates: thank you so much. Happy to be here. 

[01:08:13] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, we're here at the AI Show.

Um, first off. Tell us a little bit about TFA Reinvents Lab. For people who don't know, you'd have a really interesting mandated umbrella and you do all sorts of interesting events yourself. 

[01:08:23] Mike Yates: Yeah. Uh, teach for America's Reinvention Lab. We're the r and d arm of Teach for America. Our job is to build new products and programs to figure out where learning is going in the next 30 to 50 years.

And push Teach for America in that direction. So we don't like, we don't exist to challenge the core model of sending teachers in the classrooms, but we do exist to find other avenues for impact in the 

[01:08:43] Alex Sarlin: field. Yeah, yeah. And you do incredibly interesting things in collaboration with lots of different companies.

So I. What is your, uh, what is your feeling about the AI show this year? What's different than last year? What is sort of your main takeaway so far? 

[01:08:55] Mike Yates: Yeah. There, there were, there were some times where this year felt a little bigger than last year. Um, I did feel, I do feel like there, there were intentionally more students this year.

More educators this year? Uh, I think I, I've seen a few really interesting things out on the floor. Uh, one of them being like, uh, gyp Pro, which is like, kind of like right behind us. Um, ity, iss interesting because they've taken like what Rept does and what lovable does, and they brought it down to the level of a student in a really interesting way where the goal is not just to learn to prompt, but it's like prompting for the sake of learning to code.

Uh, but also like. In a way where you build things that are interesting, like a snake game or a, you know, a Super Mario Block game. So I think the way that they're sort of hiding the, the, the learning in a way that makes it feel invisible Yeah. Is really interesting. Um, I had this fascinating interaction with a two hour learning and I was, I essentially helped develop that model.

Um, and just seeing how far it's come, seeing like what they're, uh, what they're doing. I think they're. One of the more interesting products because of the choice that they're making to play with the public school. You know, two Hour Learning came out of Alpha, which is this flashy private school. Um, and I, I, I just remember working a hundred hour weeks on that project for years, trying to figure out if you could actually outsource direct instruction to learning apps.

Mm-hmm. And not only did we like figure that out, they then took that and turned it into a product. That they're now trying to make acceptable to everybody. So I thought that was really cool as well. 

[01:10:24] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, that makes sense. And that pattern is something we've seen a few people do that's sort of what the charter School growth fund is all about, right?

It's like taking models and trying them and sort of figuring it out and honing them within an individual school or school system and then productizing it and putting it out to the world. And um, we saw that with big picture learning. That's right. Yeah. It's been a really interesting model. So as you walk the floor, you know, do you feel like the, the, the sort of take on what AI can do for schools has shifted and are, are, is there an expansion of, uh, some of the use cases that we're, you're seeing on the floor here compared to previous years?

[01:10:56] Mike Yates: Actually, I don't think so. I, I would like there to be sort of like a more. I don't know, more a, a more aggressive picture of like everything that AI can do. What is really good though is that there is a focus, like people are finding the lane that they wanna run in. Yes. Last year everyone was sort of like stepping on everyone's toes.

It was like, I think we might have talked about this. We were like, there's like eight of the same company here and this year there's not really that same feeling. Like people sort of figured out how not to bump into each other. Um, they figured out how to. Like literally run with each other without bumping into each other.

So I think, uh, I, I've really enjoyed that. Like I, you know, you have. You know, my village, uh, academy, which is like a very, like, very culturally centered, culturally rooted solution. Mm-hmm. And it's not that there are not more out there, but at least here, uh, they, they seem very distinct. They're, they're doing very different things than like what Uprooted Academy is doing.

Um, and it's like very clear this year. So I think everybody's sort of running in their lane. Yeah, I 

[01:11:55] Alex Sarlin: think that's a really good insight. I've noticed that in the, there's a number of career. You know, career path startups here, but they're all doing sort of different parts of the ecosystem, right? They're not like right on top of each other.

And even, you know, brisk and Magic School and Brain Freeze, which is a new entrance that started in January, and quizzes are all here, they're all potentially huge competitors, right. But it doesn't feel like they're, it feels like they're staking out different parts of the ecosystem more and more. 

[01:12:18] Mike Yates: Yeah.

And I, I, I also think maybe this is because the founders are becoming more familiar. Yeah. Like. Risk is a great example. Like I remember when Armand was like just starting Brisk and nobody had seen an LLM attached to Google Classroom yet. Right. Um, but watching the way that he's continued to tell that story that is uniquely him and very distinctly like I.

Like Brisk has champions now. They have like super users and Magic school has super users and school ai. While they're not at this part of the conference, they just showed up today, like they've got super users. So I, I think it's a really good, really good point. 

[01:12:50] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. They, they, they're, there's some overlap, but they're really starting to find what their niche is and, and how they're gonna play and how they're gonna grow and they're all growing.

I. Uh, really quickly, which has been really cool to see. One thing I've been a little surprised about, and I'd love to hear your take, is that, you know, in the AI system in general, we've seen open AI launch image generation. We've seen Google and open AI launch video. We've like, there's all this incredible multimedia, there's a lot of game generation now.

Um, I. Yet, I haven't yet seen the EdTech system sort of embrace that. Yeah. Quite yet. I'm not seen, I, I, I, you know, there, there's a few companies that are about it, but not as many as you'd think given how student friendly all of those media are. Exactly. Uh, 

[01:13:25] Mike Yates: yeah. What do you think about that? I mean, that, that is kind of like, I.

What I, what I was getting at earlier was like, I wish we were pushing beyond chat bots by now. Like everything is a chat bot assistant right now. And I would love to get to, like, I just did a video and posted it on our TikTok, uh, where I was talking about, uh, FX labs from Google and they have like a DJ tool.

Like I don't see anybody teaching kids how to mix music. Nobody's teaching sneaker design, right? No one's doing like AI for the sake of poetry. Movie making. Movie making. Exactly. Yeah. I mean the video tools like. As a person who loves to edit videos. Yeah, I just, yesterday I went into caption the Captions app and I uploaded one of my videos and it like erased some edits and created new edits and I'm like, nobody's talking about that in the conference.

Exactly. But like what that can do for a kid who loves filmmaking or who likes filmmaking, I have a friend who's a doctor. Who last year was, he was at the adjacent medical conference. Yeah. And, uh, we both create content and he's texting me like, dude, I finally feel confident about my videos because I'm using this AI tool.

Right. And I'm like, how much more could we inspire the next generation of movie makers and producers Because, and, and content creators. 'cause it's impossible to do it all. Well. Um, so I, I do wish that game designers exactly. Website designers, I, everything, yeah. I wish all of that multimedia was making it into, into detail.

Now, now I, now I have to do something about it. Now 

[01:14:55] Alex Sarlin: I gotta do it. Check out his TikTok and ai. See, uh, a longer, uh, take on this. Um. It, it's, I mean, it's really exciting to be here. I, I do feel like it's the finding, I love your comment of finding, find people, finding their lane. You definitely feel that here.

I feel like it's a more mature ed tech ecosystem around AI than it was last year where it was just sort of like, AI's here, let's, let's do something cool with it. I see a lot more sort of systemic, uh, thinking, longer term thinking and sort of biting off pieces of the, uh, of, of the ecosystem that, that really need, really need work.

There's a lot, there's assessment tools here. There's a lot of interesting stuff in the higher ed zone Yeah. Here this year. Um, but. There's still, yeah, there's still a lot of ways to go and I, I, I'm excited to see it develop every, you know, startup founder I've talked to here, especially the really small ones, is just, are so heads down, they're just like, we are moving and moving, moving.

I'm curious, you spent a lot of time talking to the smaller boots here. I, I know this is part of your, uh, you know, your mandate, sort of how you think about it. Are there, you know, how do you see the sort, the new entrant seeing the space? Do they, are they already feeling like some of the bigger companies have sort of.

Dominating, like there's already market leaders that they're a little bit afraid of or do, is there still lots of room for new, you know, one, two people, companies that are pre-seed to just leap right in and find, uh, find their, their lane? 

[01:16:07] Mike Yates: I, I think there's still a lot of room for, for those smaller companies.

Like what, what I'm, I'm starting to notice is that like the pub, both the public, and maybe, I don't know this for sure, but I would imagine. Funders are also looking at smaller companies now as well. Because you know, like last year at the same time I had this thought where I'm like, you know, there's 50 companies and of these 50 companies, like 30 of them are probably doing the same thing.

And it's probably a good thing that some of them pivot. 

[01:16:35] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. 

[01:16:36] Mike Yates: Because there was, there was like funder fatigue. They were like, oh, every, and I was interested to see like which companies would rise to the top. Yep. And. I mean, I, I am incredibly biased because this is my friend and we used to work together, but PlayLab is a tool that like the, the ED world just can't quit.

But like this time last year, PlayLab was the small tool that was like hoping to break into the market and that was like one of the people helping to do that. Two years ago we had this tiny booth and we were having people walk up. Yep. And we were like, Hey, are you a lawyer? Come try. So it, it's been really fun to be at the smaller booth and see like.

Like the next play lab AI is like sitting at one of these booths. Yes. And I think the, I think funders are also looking for that. Um, it was interesting. I was at a, a dinner with XQ last night. Yeah. And it wasn't just big players at the table, it was like. Hey, this person's 22 and just getting started. Yeah.

And so I do think like there's a ton of room for new players in this space. Yeah. Which is what 

[01:17:35] Alex Sarlin: makes this exciting. EE. Exactly. And, and I mean, just month by month you're starting to see the, the shifts. It doesn't feel calcified at all yet, which is really great. Yeah. And there's so much space to cover, right.

That's the thing. It's not like that. There's gonna be one winner in EdTech for ai, like not even close. So many areas to cover. Um, thanks so much for being here with us. Great insights. This is Mike Yates. He's a senior designer at the TFA that Teach for America Reinvention Lab. And just a, a great person to know, just an ed tech connector, follow him on TikTok and uh, and and LinkedIn and he's always has interesting things to say.

Thanks for being here with 

[01:18:07] Mike Yates: us. Thanks for having me again. Appreciate it.

[01:18:09] Alex Sarlin: Hi, welcome to the AI Show. We are here with Julie Kelleher. She is the market development lead at World Quant Learning and, and World Quant has been a world quant university for a decade and she's just launching a whole new product line called World Quant Learning. Welcome to the podcast. 

[01:18:25] Julie Kelleher: Thank you so much.

[01:18:26] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. So first off, tell our audience about World Quant University. She's been around for a while, but it's international. A lot of people may not know it yet. 

[01:18:32] Julie Kelleher: Absolutely. So, world Point University ha uh, was launched by Igor Tosky, so he founded World Point University. Because he really wanted to. Deliver on a belief that talent exists everywhere and opportunity does not.

And so he wanted to provide access to quantitative skills and degrees for free in a fully online university. So since its inception, it is a, it's an accredited university. There is a master's of Science in financial engineering. I. There are certificates in applied AI labs and data science labs. And uh, John En, who's our CEO, he joined in January of 2024, and he has really helped continue to deliver on that mission.

So we have over 14,000 students on the university side. There is a very ambitious goal to get to a hundred thousand students and the majority of the students come from Africa and India. So really, really delivering on that, that belief that. Talent does exist everywhere. Opportunity does not. So let's provide it to them at no cost in these really high demand fields.

[01:19:24] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. High demand and, and high, you know, the intensive fields. Oh, absolutely. Financial engineering is about as intensive as it gets as data science as well. So now world Quant learning is sort of spinning out of this. Tell us about what World Quant learning is and why this would be really interesting for the EdTech community.

[01:19:38] Julie Kelleher: Sure, sure. So, um, so yeah, one thing I'll clarify. So World Qua University is a, is a nonprofit entity, and then World Point Learning is a totally separate entity. We just happen to have a, a similar kind of, um. Connection at, at the top with our founders. So Igor Tosky also founded World Qu Learning in 2024, and we officially launched last week.

Yeah. And, uh, so World Qu Learning launched and also we released our first product World QU Labs. And the, the goal of World Qu Learning is to really help. Close the, the gap between education and employment in these really high demand fields, so data science, business analytics, machine learning, computer science, et cetera.

And so World Plant Labs, our first product is a purpose-built labs platform that really helps. Instructors deliver, deliver courses and uh, and projects in data science and related fields. And it's very instructor centric. Learner centric. And uh, and what I really love about it is that it integrates with the learning management system and it has, uh, it has proved to be scalable in very large implementations.

And, um. And we're super excited to bring it here to this, this event. And also, uh, we have a roadmap that is also very exciting. So we're gonna continue to deliver on products that we believe really address the need to close the gap between education, employment, and these, these high demand fields. Also, to accelerate the ability for institutions, K 12, and organizations that offer learning and development to.

To basically deliver skills and curriculum to students that need it most at an accelerated pace. 

[01:21:14] Alex Sarlin: Fantastic. So it's scalable, it integrates with LMSs and because it's, uh, designed for sort of high demand fields, it also probably incorporates lots of high, you know, Python and Oh, absolutely. All sorts of languages that are useful in these fields.

I'm so 

[01:21:26] Julie Kelleher: glad you brought that up. Yeah. So it actually gives students. Hands-on project-based learning, experience it using the tools that they'd use in the workplace. So Jupyter Notebooks, Python, Julia, R uh, sql, et cetera. And, uh, it's, it's very, very learner-centric and I, I really appreciate that as a former teacher.

[01:21:45] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, that makes sense. And it's exciting to, I mean, obviously the idea of free university degrees in really high demand. Fields going all over the world is really exciting on the university side. Um, it feels like the learnings that have come from the university, I'm sure are being baked in about how to engage students, how to give them the tools they need to really make sense of it, and how to do teaching and learning at scale.

That's, this is what we all wanna do in ed tech. Yeah. Ab absolutely. Yeah. And you're a learning person. Tell us about some of the things that are baked into the platform from a learning perspective. 

[01:22:12] Julie Kelleher: Yeah, absolutely. And I, I, and just one quick comment on that Please too. So, world Point Learning, while we're a separate entity from World Point University.

Every, all the technology that we, that we build and deliver and implement, we provide to the university at no cost. So it really is this, you know, it's, it just continues to kind of perpetuate on this vision and belief that, uh, you know, we want to increase access to knowledge and skills for learners everywhere, no matter their starting point and no matter and really where they need it most.

Um, so, so in the platform itself, so. It is, you know, it integrates seamlessly with the LMS. We, you know, we have it in production with Canvas right now, but through LGI, it'll integrate with all of the Sure. You know, the main LMSs, uh, it can be used in high school, it can be used at at university level again, and, and kind of corporate or nonprofit learning development.

And, uh, it is, it is very learner-centric in the sense that. An instructor can deliver an assignment. Students go to the assignment in the labs platform. It's, you know, at the get go, it's browser based. So it's easy for students to access. Yep. Uh, it's easy for instructors to assign from the LMS and there's grade focusing.

So students take an assignment. It could be, you know, homework, it could be an assessment, it could be a quiz. And the grades get passed back to the LMS. And so, yeah. Uh, and then from a student perspective, I actually have an intern right now who is a high schooler. Yeah. And, uh, he, he takes a data science course and he uses a different tool, an open source tool.

And he actually told me that, um, you know, the, the labs platform that we offer is something that would've helped him kind of get up to speed as he prepped to take his first data science course. Hmm. So just kind of it the, they're ready to use projects. I should have mentioned that too. So they're ready to use projects that an instructor can choose from.

So there's a catalog of. Over 200 projects. Oh wow. And they could say, okay, I wanna take this project and, you know, teach students machine learning using these, these popular tools. Or if the instructor wants to modify it, they can actually author that project and, you know, kind of make it their own. Yeah.

So that provides a lot of flexibility for an instructor too. Yeah. So out of the box. Or kind of customize. 

[01:24:00] Alex Sarlin: That's fantastic. So project based, hands-on learning in high demand technical fields. Uh, and then the platform is designed for teaching, learning, and to integrate with LMSs. It's a very, it's a, it's, I mean, I've been in EdTech for a long time.

That hits a lot of the boxes that you need. Same, to be a really exciting product. Yeah. 

[01:24:16] Julie Kelleher: I mean, I've been in EdTech for 18 years. I taught for five years before that and I'm like, this is like the best thing to be working on right now. 

[01:24:21] Alex Sarlin: So, super exciting. That's really exciting. So. Uh, so check it out. Check out World Quant Learning.

It's just launching last week. And here we are at the AI show and they, they do it. They've done AI labs, they do data science labs. It's a really interesting product. Uh, this is Julie Kelleher. She's the head of market development for World Quant Learning. Thanks very much for being here with us. Thanks so much for being here with us at at Tech Insiders.

Thanks 

[01:24:41] Julie Kelleher: so much, Alex.

[01:24:43] Alex Sarlin: We're here at the AI show at uh, A-S-U-G-S-V, and we're here with Adele Smolansky. She's the CEO and founder of learners.ai, which is taking a really innovative approach to AI focusing on accessibility for all learners. Welcome. Thank, thank you so much. It's great to be here. That's, it's great to see you here.

So tell us a little bit more about learners.ai. We've talked a little bit on the podcast, but you continue to build it out and you care so much about accessibility and have a great backstory as well. 

[01:25:08] Adele Smolansky: Thank you. Yeah. Uh, so I started my company, um, AI learners in. Um, 2021 officially. Um, and it's a company that's focused on special education, so we use ai.

Um, to personalize learning for students with disabilities. Um, but before the whole AI revolution, uh, we really just are focusing on the visual interfaces and really trying to make sure that students see visuals that are accessible to them with digital learning. Yep. Um, and then we supply resources for teachers as well to.

Keep track of progress, um, and be able to create content that is really beneficial and individualized for each student. 

[01:25:40] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, it's fantastic. I think I said learners ai, but it's AI learners. Yes, AI hyphen learners. Right. Fantastic. And, and you know, you come to the accessibility world from a very personal perspective, which is great, and you are bringing it into the world where, you know, people talk about AI all the time, but this is an area of it.

People don't always really address. They talk about bias and hallucinations, but not just pure access. So tell us about your story and why accessibility is such an important part of. 

[01:26:06] Adele Smolansky: Absolutely. Uh, so my younger sister, um, she has a disability. Her name is Laura. Um, and she'll be 16 in a couple of weeks actually.

Uh, so really exciting to see her grow. Um, but she's really my inspiration for the company. Um, it was mainly during Covid where I was working with my siblings, um, and trying to help out with their education. Saw just how hard it is for students with disabilities to physically access digital learning solutions.

Um, so she uses something called an eye gaze assistive technology device where her eyes will act as a computer mouse. Um, and she was trying to click buttons on existing ed tech softwares and she was with her eyes, she was clicked on two buttons at the same time. Yep. Um, because of just like that difficulty with access.

So that was when I understood, okay, there is a need for something new in the accessibility space. Um, and I started working on what now became AI learners. But it's incredible to see now just how important accessibility is. And I'm really glad that other companies are also thinking about it. And I think that at AI learners we have a really unique edge where we focus on that learning and accessibility mindset.

First. 

[01:27:04] Alex Sarlin: Yep. 

[01:27:04] Adele Smolansky: That's so important. As opposed to just launching on accessibility at the end. 

[01:27:07] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, I agree. And you're, you're at Stanford, you're a Stanford ecosystem person, so you're right at the center of a lot of the AI development and a lot of the AI investment. What, what advice would you have for the AI community as they think about growing out and making sure that there is equitable access and they're not sort of moving so fast they forget about?

Um, making open access for, for all learners. 

[01:27:27] Adele Smolansky: Yeah. So I think with AI, sometimes we're always thinking about, okay, how can we get the most amount of data? Right? And with sp students with disabilities, there's not the most amount of data with them because they don't have, like the numbers aren't there. Yeah.

Um, but at the same time, it's like with students with disabilities that really have their individualized learning needs. Yeah. Um, and where we've seen such a high impact with individualization, that's where you can see the. Most benefit of AI and really saying, okay, if we know how to differentiate learning for students, let's try it with this group of students where they have the most individualized needs.

And then the amazing thing that can come out of that is that those learning principles that you get in the research findings can be applied to other students following this universal design of learning framework. 

[01:28:09] Alex Sarlin: Yes, uh, I've heard it called the cut curb, uh, where, where you know that, uh, smoothing out the curbs of sidewalks is originally for people in wheelchairs, but actually helps an enormous swath of people that you sort of do a universal design principles that can open access for a lot of people, not just the ones who are originally designed.

[01:28:26] Adele Smolansky: Exactly. And that's something that we've seen as well, where. When we were designing with that accessibility mindset first, which really means how can we understand the unique needs and abilities and interests of each individual student and create something that is best suited for them. Yeah, it can be applied to a wide range of students.

So we found our niche areas as well, even within general education, and I think there's a lot of potential there. Yeah. 

[01:28:46] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. And so, you know, you mentioned sort of personalization. You used individualization. Or differentiation. This is such a, a holy grail. It's the number one thing. There was a Family Feud event yesterday, and the number one thing teachers are looking for from AI is personalization, personalized learning.

I think it's the most exciting piece of it. I, I can definitely see that. Uh, I really like your point about how personalization I. Works differently for different types of students by design or individualization. Uh, but it's, you know, being able to individualize learning for students with disabilities who've often been locked out of the traditional education system or the ed tech system in many ways is, is the, it it, it's a great place to start because then you start really thinking about individualization in a much more.

Specific way than the idea of like, oh, the kid who likes sports, and the kid who likes music, which is the kind of that, you know, things people always say, how, how does, how do you see that playing out in the AI world? 

[01:29:35] Adele Smolansky: Yeah, I think with special education, that idea of personalization and customizing is, you can't go without it because some students, it's a student has autism and they may not like apples if you ask them to do addition with some.

Apples as a visual support, they're just not gonna do it. Right. Um, and for general education, it's not that extreme, but it still is really important. And if we can really understand their individual needs, there will be a great push towards it. And AI helps with understanding students' needs in a faster manner.

Um, and it allows teachers as well to not have to mentally. Remember all of the information on students, but have it really help out and with that analysis and then the feedback, and then ultimately that content generation. So like there's just so many incredible applications of ai, um, and education. Um, but I think also what I do wanna emphasize is.

AI can't solve all of our problems. There is still so much that we do that doesn't involve AI and so much that should be happening first. And we really have to be understanding what are those learning goals that we're trying to tackle, and then how could AI enhance, or maybe we don't even need AI for that specific solution, but there is room for it somewhere else.

[01:30:45] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, that's fantastic. One thing I've noticed that the, uh, show this year is there's the number of IEP solutions. There's a number of solutions that are trying to do like very high level security and compliance for AI tools in schools so that, you know, so that. Information like IEPs or disabilities can flow into the AI system safely without it being, you know, information that, you know, private health information basically.

Um, do you think that that's moving in an interesting direction so that tools will be able to individualize and say, we know which kids have our own spectrum, we know which kids are, are using IA devices. Uh, do you see that coming or is there still a while to go? 

[01:31:19] Adele Smolansky: Yeah, I think it's really interesting to see how much work there is in IEP writing.

Um, there's a company goal book that has been really dominant in this space for a while, so I'm interested to see what direction they take. And of course, it's great to see all of the startups Yep. Um, that are doing this. Um, we haven't yet gone into the IEP space. We like will try to see, okay, like here's the student's IEP goals, so here's what they should be doing.

Based on that IEP goal and giving progress to that. Yep. Um, but there's so much complexity in this compliance area that it's not something I personally wanna tackle now, but I think it's really incredible. And ultimately what an IEP is, is it's a, it's a goal for students individualized 

[01:31:54] Alex Sarlin: plan. It's, yeah.

[01:31:56] Adele Smolansky: And all students have goals, and I think all learning should be based on those goals. Um, but. To your other question of how can AI help with more of that assessment and diagnosis as well? I think it's great that we have more data and we have more advanced, um, like machine learning methods now of understanding and analyzing data.

And so we're able to help with early identification, which is a huge problem, especially with limited time and resources. So I think if we're able to do that and also then provide students with more personalized learning path to then. Make, get them to grade level standards, that is really the place to go.

[01:32:31] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. Often a lot of, uh, learning, dis learning differences are not diagnosed, uh, until much later when it's often, you know, too late to catch up for a lot of kids. And 

[01:32:39] Adele Smolansky: actually sometimes they're misdiagnosed. Sometimes we think that a student has a learning disability, but actually they're just not.

Provided with the resources that they need to be able to be on grade level standards. So we can really go both ways and we wanna be facilitating learning as much as best as we can. Yeah. That's 

[01:32:53] Alex Sarlin: fantastic. Well, thank you so much for being here. Uh, this is Adele Smolansky, she's a CEO and founder of AI Learners, not Blurs.

She's a CEO and co-founder, sorry. She's a CEO and founder of AI Learners. Thanks so much for being here with us on EdTech Insiders. 

[01:33:08] Adele Smolansky: Thank you so much for having me.

[01:33:09] Alex Sarlin: Thanks for listening to this episode of EdTech Insiders. If you like the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more, EdTech Insider, subscribe to the Free EdTech Insiders Newsletter on substack.