Global EdTech Prize 2025: What the World’s Most Promising Solutions Teach Us

In this special episode, we spotlight the Global EdTech Prize 2025 with founder Vikas Pota of T4 Education and six inspiring finalists from around the world.

💡 5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode:

1. Why educators (not investors) choose the winners
2. How AI, AR, and VR expand access to learning
3. Innovation across Brazil, Nigeria, India, MENA, and Ukraine
4. How schools and governments are becoming edtech leaders
5. The role of global collaboration in scaling impact

✨ Episode Highlights:
[00:02:23] Vikas Pota on the prize vision

Finalist Interviews:
[00:17:54] Hamdi Tabbaa, CEO and Co-Founder of Abwaab
[00:32:42] Smita Deorah, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of LEAD School
[00:48:58] Anna Sydoruk, CEO of Osvitoria
[01:02:43] Rapelang Rabana, Co-CEO of Imagine Worldwide
[01:15:37] Serdar Ferit, CEO of Lyfta
[01:28:05] Aniekeme Umoh, COO at The uLesson Group

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Chapters

• 2:56 Vikas Pota on the prize vision
• 3:28 Innovation from Brazil, US, Nigeria
• 6:46 “Tech in the service of learning”
• 13:14 Schools and ministries as edtech leaders
• 19:09 Hamdi Tabbaa, CEO and Co-Founder of Abwaab
• 33:57 Smita Deorah, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of LEAD School
• 50:13 Anna Sydoruk, CEO of Osvitoria
• 1:03:58 Rapelang Rabana, Co-CEO of Imagine Worldwide
• 1:16:52 Serdar Ferit, CEO of Lyfta
• 1:29:20 Aniekeme Umoh, COO at The uLesson Group

Transcript

[00:00:00] Vikas Pota: World of education is so deep and so wide that we have to do everything we can to platform. Like I say, just the most excellent innovation that's happening and the excellent leaders that are leading that. And that's why I am so energized by what we see in this Global EdTech Prize. Again, I mentioned to you that actually our purpose is to make sure that technology is in the service of, of learning and education.

And so what we are trying to do is put educators at the heart of it so they will decide who in the end ultimately wins our categories, and that's what I think is powerful.

[00:00:38] 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 enjoy today's pod.

We are here with Vikas Pota from the T4 Education and the founder of the Global EdTech Prize, as well as the world's best school prizes. Vikas as an entrepreneur and investor in education and digital businesses that seek to address some of the sector's intractable challenges and to advance education, quality and opportunity.

He's the executive chairman of the Education Leaders Forum where he convenes the CEOs and leaders of many of the world's biggest and most influential education businesses to advance their growth. He's also the founder of Inizio Partners, an executive search firm dedicated to helping education institutions, technology companies, and social impact organizations find their best leadership talent, and as if he didn't have enough else to do.

He is a busy guy. He is the co-founder of Carter Fleet, one of the world's leading PR firms in the education and technology sectors. He has previously led the rebrand of a major education business. He's built a corporate venture capital fund, and he's run a philanthropic foundation. True Renaissance man in EdTech, Vikas Pota from T4 Education.

Welcome to the podcast.

[00:02:23] Vikas Pota: Thanks, Alex. I'm looking forward to this.

[00:02:25] Alex Sarlin: It has been so much fun talking to all of these incredible applicants and finalists for the Global EdTech Prize. It is truly restoring and renewing my faith in the power of education technology. I'm reading all this negative AI stuff and I'm like, no, technology can change everything, and I'm seeing it over and over and over again.

Tell us a little bit about the top 10 finalists that you have for the Global EdTech Prize and what makes them stand out and what makes them inspire you. 

[00:02:55] Vikas Pota: You know, Alex, all of our finalists have harnessed technology and the service of education. What makes them stand out is, you know, not just their innovations, but they are innovating to make an impact.

All of them deserve to be celebrated for what they do. But just to pick out one example of impact, if you take a look at Nove in Brazil, which is a free digital educational platform that supports public school teachers across the country. It works to ensure that every educator has free continuous access, you know, to high quality, relevant resources with technology as a means to achieve equity, educational equity, and it's in a country which has persistent learning gaps.

This is a vital resource, and what this includes is a WhatsApp planner powered by ai, a tool that combines plain language, generative ai, and an educator built content library to generate tailored lesson plans for each teacher. What they're doing is leveraging technology to democratize access to quality training, saving time, and to strengthen the teacher's autonomy.

And what this AI lesson plan generator has done in particular, has expanded its reach to historically underrepresented groups and regions. So 46% of its users identified as mixed race, 15% as black and just over nearly 2% as indigenous. I mean, that's a great example. And we have, you know, another example right from where you are, which is the US is exact path from Edmentum.

Ed meant to me is Americas, if I'm not mistaken, oldest EdTech company. And what Exec Path does is make school-wide personalized learning possible with research-based instruction and immediate data insights proven to, you know, accelerate growth. And this diagnostic assessment, you know, drives every student's individual strengths and needs to help inform, like a sustainable strategy for providing personalized support.

And we know how important personalized learning is in closing education gaps. And this kind of technology really opens doors. And the final example that I have for you, which I know is a favorite of yours, uh, as well, is from Nigeria. And that is the EVA Open University, which is a digital first online university that addresses Nigeria's critical higher education gaps.

And it provides accessible, affordable, and high quality learning opportunities to students across the country, especially those excluded due to cost of capacity constraints in their traditional universities. And what they have is they've combined cutting edge technology. So ai, vr, AR to enhance engagement and comprehension, right?

So for example, the Miva Interactive Neural Dialogue uses AI to give real time feedback and support. VR stimulates clinical settings for nursing students, and AR overlays digital content onto real environments. That's simplifying complex ideas. And these are just three examples that could pick from any of our finalists.

But in all three, you can clearly see our innovation and impact combined, you know, taken together. That's how we spark change. 

[00:05:52] Alex Sarlin: Exactly, yes. Innovation impact and democratization of access. It feels like a real through line for a lot of these finalists is that they're taking these cutting edge technologies and they're putting them inside technology solutions that are available to many, many different types of users.

Many users who would not usually have access to cutting edge tech. And it's creating incredible transformation. 

[00:06:13] Vikas Pota: Thank you. And again, I, I look at it from this basis, which is this in the service of learning. Yes. And so, you know, as opposed to for technology, for the sake of technology. And I think that's a really powerful differentiator in what we're trying to do with our Global EdTech Prize.

[00:06:26] Alex Sarlin: Yes, so we spoke a few months ago as you were just launching and taking applications for the Global EdTech Prize, and now we're sort of at the other end of the cycle and seeing the finalists come out from the outside. It has been an incredible journey. I've been following the different levels of people moving through the process and just seeing these lists of applicants and finalists is just unbelievably exciting when you just look at the potential and the actual implementation of technology around the world.

I think too much about the, you know, the nuances of the, the VC world within the US EdTech system and the funding and this and that and, but when you zoom out and you start to see things in Brazil, in Nigeria, in India, all over the world, you are absolutely everywhere. It just really replenishes your faith in the power of technology and education.

That's what I'm feeling today. I'm curious if you've had a similar experience. Tell us about your sort of personal journey from founding the prize, I think it was seven months ago, something like that, to now being close to the final reveal of the winners. 

[00:07:25] Vikas Pota: Actually, Alex, it's, it's very much what you said.

I think there's a lot of doom and gloom in the world, but from the work that we do and what I see, I see so many bright spots in the world of so many amazing things that are happening. And like, you know, I've always worked to give a platform to individuals, organizations, and initiatives that are closing learning gaps and tackling like these persistent challenges in education.

We have to recognize today, more than ever, the transformative potential of EdTech in that equation. You and I will both agree and all of your listeners will agree that I hope at least that EdTech has the power to change the world. Like it can spark creativity free teachers up to actually teach close learning gaps and help ensure every child receives a quality education.

But it's important to say, but only in the right hands, and that's a crucial caveat. We have to focus on tools that actually work for educators that are designed with and for them, and can make real difference to that next generation as a result, which is our prize is judged by educators themselves. And you know, I've always believed in the power of prizes to provide that platform from which impact can be amplified.

So we established the global ed tech price to recognize these trailblazing solutions that are driving change, real change, and give a platform to help companies and organizations scale their products and the impact worldwide. 

[00:08:44] Alex Sarlin: I've asked each of the finalists and, and applicants I've been speaking to about what it's meant for them to be part of the Global EdTech Prize in, its in its first cohort, and they've been saying a few through lines have come out so far.

One is they're really enjoying the moment to step back and reevaluate and look at themselves through a different lens. Let's think about our journey, let's think about what we've been doing and how it reflects some of these really exciting visions about what technology can do. And the other is they've loved meeting each other and they've loved seeing other solutions and learning from others in other countries.

I imagine that was part of the plan. And you say you have faith in the value of prizes to make change, and it feels like those are two varied natural extensions of what it means when you create a competition in this way. It it, it doesn't make people cutthroat. It makes people feel really like a cohort and a community and they're learning from each other.

I was really excited to hear that. I'm curious if you've experienced that yourself or what you've heard from other applicants. 

[00:09:36] Vikas Pota: Yeah, so the thing is, is that prizes have long been established as a way to spur innovation. And in some quarters, you know, people get a bit snooty about prizes. But actually everyone loves prizes and in education especially, so, you know, you take a school, you take a, you know, school prizes of existence since day do teacher prize of existence is day dot.

And so these are natural kind of mechanisms to try to surface and platform and celebrate and shine a spotlight on what's working. And I think we just need a lot more of that. You know, the world of education is so deep and so wide that we have to do everything we can to platform. Like I say, just the most excellent innovation that's happening and the excellent leaders that are leading that.

And that's why I am so energized by what we see in this Global EdTech Prize. But again, I mentioned to you that actually our purpose is to make sure that technology is in the service of, of learning and education. And so what we are trying to do is put educators at the heart of it so they will decide who in the end ultimately wins our categories.

And that's what I think is powerful. 

[00:10:40] Alex Sarlin: I agree. There's a, an element in which, you know, the sharing of technology has also accelerated, you know, in the internet, people were able to say, look at this amazing thing happening in Indonesia. We could do that here. We could make a version of it. We could borrow lessons from it, or something happening in the United States that could be translated to England or wherever it would go.

Every country has its own Duolingo at this point, right? There's all the du 

[00:11:02] Vikas Pota: No, not only that, Alex, but there also, there's another really great trend that's happening, I think, which is before it used to be the case that you used to think that technology can only be developed by technologists. To some degree, that is still very true.

But also now, as you see in our short list, we have traditional brick and mortar institutions who are becoming technology businesses. Sure. And so in our final list, we have at leasT4 of those. That actually you would say our traditional university or traditional school who fancy themselves as one of the world's most fastest growing and leading ed tech companies.

I think that's fabulous. It's, and that kind of trend that we are seeing, I think has to be encouraging. We'll see more of, but also in the case of Indonesia, we are seeing the actual government thinking of themselves as an ed tech, which I think is just the most fabulous thing where, you know, governments are seen as stodgy, old bureaucratic, right?

And here we have is someone like, you know, our entire ministry of education saying, okay, we are gonna become a ed tech. I think that's powerful. 

[00:11:59] Alex Sarlin: I think it's very powerful and, and I think, you know, the technology is now more accessible than ever. The ai, yes. Speed up development and it, it creates an environment like you say, where more people can jump into the education technology world, even if they don't consider themselves developers or coders or technologists.

Correct. They can come from the education side, to put it really bluntly, they can be ministries of education, like you mentioned. They can be schools or universities or individual teachers. We see a lot of teachers now starting at tech companies. What an exciting moment for education technology, don't you think?

[00:12:30] Vikas Pota: Oh, a hundred percent. Like, you know, we are looking forward to, you know, seeing all these finalists join us at the World School Summit in Abu Dhabi this November, where they will showcase their work before an expert panel, which comprises leading figures in the world of technology as well as education, including investors, policy makers and such from around the world.

This expert panel will narrow down the final three per category, who will then present their products and tools before the entire audience of educators at the World School Summit, who will vote by secret ballot to determine the winner of each category. And they will be announced live on stage at the culmination of the summit.

Like, you know, and again, this is not behind closed doors, it's not like hiding away from anyone. This is radical transparency to say, okay, what are the educators voting for? What is it that has caught their imagination? And for that reason, I think this is a very different proposition as a prize and what it brings to these 30 organizations.

And also the many hundreds that have actually applied or been nominated, you know, more than anything else. I look forward for that real, in real life moment of seeing our finalists at the World School Summit in Abu Dhabi. And you know, I can't wait to find out which tools will be chosen by educators. You know, I wanna say best of luck to finalists, 

[00:13:46] Alex Sarlin: right?

But even the ones who don't win are, are so inspiring. I mean, everybody you talk to, you learn something new about what is possible with EdTech. Let's double click on that one more time. Give us the exact dates and place of this. I, I don't know how many listeners the podcast will actually be able to make it out to Abu Dhabi.

I wish I could do it myself, but we will be covering it from Indeed. Absolutely. We're so excited to see it. These finalists are so inspiring. So it is in November. 

[00:14:11] Vikas Pota: So the World School Summit takes place on the 15th and 16th of November in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. You are all very welcome to attend.

So 

[00:14:20] Alex Sarlin: listeners should be marking their calendars. If you could be there in person, that would be incredible. It's obviously an incredible trip, but even following it online is going to be incredibly inspiring because we are talking about people from all over the world doing truly in Inspire. I mean. I've used the word inspiring maybe 20 times in this interview already, because I really feel rejuvenated when I hear about some of the things that are happening here at education technology.

You know, I'm an ed tech maniac, of course. At the same time, sometimes when you're, when everything you read is about, Hey, students are using AI to do this and that and this, you're like, oh, you are missing the, they're missing the forest for the trees, and I really think that what you're doing is incredibly good work in highlighting the global potential of what is possible and what is happening in education technology.

What else would you like to leave our listeners with this episode is we have all of these incredible finalists from the Global Ed EdTech Prize, but what is one thing that you feel like has just surprised you during this experience? You know, you, you came up with this global EdTech prize I, I, probably a year ago, and now we're here in November.

In November, it's going to be the finals broadcast all over the world. Tell us what surprised you. 

[00:15:29] Vikas Pota: You know, we try to flip it on its head as a concept and so make it educator up and then schools up in university up as opposed to coming top down from venture capital or big tech or things like that. And we took a risk in that regard to make sure that we tell the story of these technology pioneers and how they relate to the world of learning in schools and universities and such forth.

And what's really gratifying is that at the World School Summit in November, you know, now we have confirmations from some of the leading venture capital businesses from your part of the world in America, the big tech companies like Microsoft and Google. And people are that coming in a significant way and they're all excited to see what's happening at the coalface.

And I think that is the energy that we see throughout all of our work with this prize and also with the World School Summit. So like I say, I reiterate the invitation saying that if anyone is interested, and Alex, you do yourself a little bit of downer by saying that if any of our listeners can't afford to come, actually you have a global listenership.

And actually a lot of people do come through the UAE and they'd be most welcome. 

[00:16:33] Alex Sarlin: Yes, people should be thinking about how they could be there because as you say, it's gonna be, uh, amalgamation of people who are doing incredible work from the government side. Incredible work from the technology side, incredible work from the school side, university side, and then big tech companies and then VCs.

It's very, very much gonna be a who's who of ed tech globally, and that is such an amazing thing to see. I wanna thank you. You know, because for launching this, because I personally feel just like it's really given me a new vision. I, and I can tell from the finalists they're saying the same thing. I think it's given them a sense of their own impact and sense of their own story and journey that they don't, you know, in the day to day, sometimes they, you just have to make all these business decisions or all these instructional decisions.

But when you zoom out and say, look at what we're doing as humanity, look at how we're changing the face of what education looks like, it becomes very awesome and inspiring. Awesome. In the traditional sense. Awe inspiring. So thank you for that. I hope to be there and, and Abu Dhabi, I don't think I'm gonna be able to come, just 'cause my come, my tons are so young.

But I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try, try because I truly think it's gonna be one of these moments where we sort of all collectively celebrate how far we've come as an EdTech ecosystem. 

[00:17:41] Vikas Pota: Well, thank you for this opportunity and you'd be most welcome. All of your listeners will enjoy and be inspired, but what they hear, I can definitely guarantee that.

[00:17:50] Alex Sarlin: Absolutely Vikas Pota, founder and CEO of T4 Education in the global EdTech Prize. Thanks for being here with us on Ed Tech Insiders.

[00:17:57] Vikas Pota: Thank you so much.

[00:17:59] Alex Sarlin: We are here with Hamdi Tabbaa, CEO, and co-founder of Abwaab, which is reshaping education in the Middle East and North Africa by delivering affordable, high quality learning to millions with leadership experience as a GM at Uber, MENA, the Middle East and North Africa, and as a founder of Dukan with degrees from Kings College, London, and the London School of Economics, Hamdi is dedicated to democratizing education for all.

Hamdi Tabbaa. Welcome to Ed Tech Insiders. 

[00:18:28] Hamdi Tabbaa: Hi, 

[00:18:28] Alex Sarlin: Alex. How are you Doing? Great. I'm excited to hear more from you. I've heard a lot about Abwaab, but I frankly, I don't know as much as I, I'd like to. Given how big a presence you are in the Middle East region of EdTech, tell us for our guests who are not familiar with what you're doing with Abwaab and how you're democratizing education.

Tell us about what you're doing. Doing. Absolutely. 

[00:18:49] Hamdi Tabbaa: I mean, if you look at the region, um, as a whole macroeconomically, you would realize that due to the relatively poor infrastructure of public schooling systems in the region, there is relatively high dependence on afterschool tutoring. And that results to around 25, 30% spend of household spending going towards education.

Lots of that goes towards supplementary. So in a nutshell, what we do at Abwaab is we help students with supplement their learning experiences by helping them advance at school and score better grades through our platform. Very 

[00:19:26] Alex Sarlin: important mission there and, and you know, you've been working with personalized academic support.

You've been doing various things to make that supplementary education more and more effective and more and more individualized for each learner. You have academic advisors, you have an ask a teacher feature where people can connect with educators. Tell us about these features and how they've influenced student learning and kept students engaged in your platform.

[00:19:50] Hamdi Tabbaa: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the biggest learnings we had in the past few years revolves around the human element. Yep. We realized that it's not just as simple as taking an app, throwing it in a student's face and telling them, go ahead, learn. I'm just gonna count on you to make sure that you're gonna make the most out of it.

I mean, let's face it, we were all at school, not a hundred percent of the school student group was the achiever persona, right? Yes. At least two thirds of the cohort is students that are of different personas, and that's like basically human nature. Definitely students needed the element of accountability in order to just follow up on their studies and be able to get on top of everything.

So what we did is we introduced this concept of academic advisor, and this is a real human that gets allocated to you the second you enroll on Abwaab, where you're part of the larger cohort. And this academic advisor follows up with you on a weekly basis, periodically assigning your schedules, following up with you, making sure that you're receiving the support that you need in order to complete the year.

But what's interesting over here is we realize that beyond academic. A very big part of this has been like emotional and psychological support. Yes. Think of exam periods when you're like highly stressed before an exam. You need that figure to be there to be helping you out. So lots of personalization happening on a human side.

Aside from the work that we're doing technically through AI and other initiatives in order to personalize the actual academic experience based on our like strengths and weaknesses 

[00:21:26] Alex Sarlin: academically. Yeah, that lesson for ed tech companies to sort of be able to, if you can provide a human advisor to support students, especially, you know, a consistent advisor over time that actually knows you, cares about you, they care.

If you don't show up for an assignment or for a session, it makes an enormous difference. We've seen that a lot in the higher education sector in the us the very large sort of mega universities do something similar. They assign an academic advisor early on in a student's journey and then have that person be a sort of touchstone for them throughout their experience.

It makes a huge difference. One thing you, you mentioned AI and one thing I wanted to ask you about, you have been developing and maintaining a whole library of high quality educational content in Arabic because you're working in the Middle East and North Africa. I'm curious how you've done that. That's, you know, it's obviously a big undertaking, but also how you're starting to think about AI and its ability to translate content so easily and what that's gonna mean for having an even bigger library of Arabic content in the future.

[00:22:26] Hamdi Tabbaa: Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, Arabic is the fifth most spoken language globally, but the online content represents, I mean, studies vary, but like one to 2% of the online content, right? And when you think of Pedagog, pedagogically correct content that matches curricula, that's even less. So what we're doing at Abwaab is we're localizing the whole learning experience for every single country that we operate in to match what students are learning through the Ministry of Education's curriculum in that certain country.

So for example, we operate in Egypt, Oman, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar. If you're a student in one of these countries, the whole learning experience is catered around what you're supposed to be learning at school. So it's kind of like an exact matter of that. Obviously in order to do this, there's lots of work that happens by the learning team in, in every country, the collaboration between the subject matter experts and the teachers and everyone around that to be able to provide that experience.

[00:23:27] Alex Sarlin: And do you anticipate that, you know, AI is gonna play a role in either the translation or the localization of content moving forward? Or is it you've already built such a robust infrastructure of, of humans doing that work that you're sort of ready to go? 

[00:23:41] Hamdi Tabbaa: I mean, reality is AI is already here and you can be a ton more efficient if you know how to leverage the power of ai.

I think for us, we're looking at it across multiple folds. From one side you have the whole personalization aspect of getting the AI to track how you're doing, assess against your learning phase, et cetera. But on the content side. Mean curriculums keep on changing every single year, right? Ministries update the curricula frequently, and at some point it's just gonna be extremely inefficient to be relying 100% on the human element.

Right now we already use AI to generate content that is relevant to students, whether it's assessments or video lessons or transcripts, et cetera. And as time progresses, it's just gonna keep on growing even further. I mean, at some point we're having discussions with our, some of our top celebrity teachers that have millions of followers on whether they're okay with the fact that we might be generating video or audio content using their voice by licensing what they like, their voice and their character on content that we create fresh using ai.

And because obviously like Global LLMs and other products are continuously advancing very quickly, every month you have a new update of something that you can bid and release. So definitely the world is headed in that direction and given all the data that we have and all the content and relationships with the teachers, it'll just enable us to move, uh, faster on it.

[00:25:14] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. And you know, you mentioning the speed of change from these ministries of education in all of the countries you work in, they keep updating the curriculum and changing it and exploring new technologies. I'm sure changing underlying learning outcomes and goals and and objectives. It makes sense that the ability to stay up to date is going to be enabled by ai.

But one thing that's also particularly interesting about your work is you are working in countries with a lot of different political headwinds or various things going in different directions. Obviously a lot of people in the US when they think of some of the countries you just named, you know, Qatar, Oman, uh, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, there's so many different, you know, there's just a lot of elements that go into what happens in the educational system there and in the political system there.

I'm curious if that affects you at all. Do you feel like when you work with these ministries of education, it's just pure education or do you ever feel like there's sort of a political backdrop to some of the work you do because of the region you're in? 

[00:26:10] Hamdi Tabbaa: Yeah, good question. I mean, the way I like to look at it is the bigger the challenge, the bigger the opportunity.

So we're very comfortable in operating in geographies where these challenges continue to grow. I think at the core of it, having a very strong team that is agile and reacts fast to market changes is what drives our ability to adapt and move very quickly. Because sometimes you, you're faced with situations where the Minister of education changes, announces changes in curriculum weeks prior to the back to school season.

I mean, right now I was having a discussion with one of our team members in Egypt, and he was saying that there are 20 modules in Egypt. For grades, I think seven to 11 that were changed. And this change was announced only this month. Wow. And we have like few weeks to be able to cope, accommodate with that, fix our learning journeys, update the content, update the assessments engine, fix the whole scheduling around it.

In order to cope with that, obviously you need to have the right tooling and infrastructure to be able to manage all of this very quickly. Yeah. But then at the core of it, you need to have a team. And we are very fortunate to have like a very passionate team at ABA that is able to do this. We have three core values actually at aba.

Think bold, move fast, and feel the passion. 

[00:27:36] Alex Sarlin: Mm-hmm. And 

[00:27:37] Hamdi Tabbaa: I think, I'd like to believe that the team truly lives these three values. And if you do live these values and you're able to adapt very quickly and move fast on this, you should be able to navigate. Obviously sometimes changes in the political situation may be beyond our capability to deal with it.

Whether it's like war or big hits on infrastructure, et cetera. But otherwise, like day-to-day political challenges I think is something our team has proven to be able to deal with. And this. Kind of like gives us a very nice edge in terms of strength, where ABA as a platform today is probably the largest and the fastest growing in the Middle East, north Africa region.

Yeah. And being able to really cater these experiences, the learning journeys to students and across every single geography in a way that really feels personalized to their needs. 'cause bottom line, as a student, you have a pain point, you have exams, everyone's on your back, your parents are on your back, society's on your back.

You need to be able to achieve and deliver. And if you have that partner that you build trust with as a web, as a platform to help you do that, then we've done the job. 

[00:28:45] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. You also have a, a lot of young people, very large youth population in a lot of these countries that you operate in, so I'm sure there's a lot of competitive spirit there in terms of trying to, if, if there, there are only limited spaces in colleges, there's only limited spaces for various kinds of academic awards and so many young people.

I wanna ask you about the Global EdTech Prize because this is part of what is, you know, happening right now. It's a really exciting moment. This is the first cohort of the Global EdTech Prize, and you are obviously been working with the team there and applying and being part of the process, but also sort of representing, I'm sure, what is happening in the Middle East and North Africa region in EdTech generally.

Tell us about your experience. What has it been like in this first cohort of the Global EdTech Prize? What have you learned? What has it been like and what are you looking forward to? 

[00:29:31] Hamdi Tabbaa: Very exciting 

[00:29:31] Alex Sarlin: for 

[00:29:31] Hamdi Tabbaa: sure. I think the thing that stands out the most for me is the global reach of such a prize. So when you go into this competition and you realize that there are companies from all around the world.

It kind of like keeps you on your toes and you just remember that you're not on your own like trying to figure things out. There are many others chasing similar challenges and trying to solve problems, but at the same time, kind of like pushes you, like pulls up this competitive angle to say, listen, you know what?

We wanna be the best at. The team has been extremely collaborative, amazing with us, very supportive, and very much looking forward to being in the full event in November, hopefully. 

[00:30:18] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, in Abu Dhabi. It's really exciting. So right in, right in your, in your UAE, right, in your, uh, in your backyard. It's such an exciting cohort.

These conversations have been so inspiring and really exciting and just seeing, I love the way you put it. It's sort of, yes, there's a competitive aspect to it, and also this collaborative cooperative aspect because you know that these are different companies with different approaches, but they're all doing and, and nonprofits, but they're all moving in the same direction.

Everybody's trying to sort of democratize access, improve educational outcomes, support young people and their futures, and I think you're, you've been doing an incredible job. I'm really happy to get this opportunity to speak with you because I have heard really amazing things about what Abwaab has been doing, and it's great to hear a little bit more firsthand from what you're making happen in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, it's been a blast. Hamdi Tabbaa is the CEO and Co-founder of Abwaab, which is reshaping education in the Middle East and North Africa by delivering affordable, high quality learning to millions, and still going towards that global EdTech prize. Thanks so much for being here with us on EdTech Insiders.

Thank you. We are here with Smita Deorah. She's the co-founder and CO CEO of LEAD Group. India's only school learning system unicorn. With over 22 years of experience, she's pioneered innovative curricula to transform teaching and learning in Indian schools, while training thousands of educators nationwide.

At LEAD Group, Smita leads education, research, product innovation, and capability building, driving the shift from rote memorization to multimodal AI-driven personalized learning. This transformation is making high quality, outcome-focused education possible for every child in India. Today LEAD Group is improving learning outcomes for over 3.8 million students across 8,500 schools in 400 towns and cities, while equipping over 60,000 teachers with the tools to deliver excellence recognized as one of India's top corporate leaders.

Smita is at the forefront of reimagining school education and preparing students for success in the 21st century. Smita Deorah, welcome to EdTech Insiders. Yeah, 

[00:32:25] Smita Deorah: hi. Thanks Alex. 

[00:32:27] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, first off, before we get into anything about the prize or the details, give us the overview of what LEAD Group and lead school does, because you are a enormous tech giant and I don't know if a lot of people in the US really know a lot about how you work.

[00:32:42] Smita Deorah: Sure, Alex. I'm happy to do that. So, normally in schools, and you know, maybe traditionally, even in other countries, but largely in India, a lot of the teaching in the classroom would happen with a textbook in a blackboard. That is what happens at scale. It's only some of the. Uh, high fee schools that were using technology in the classroom.

What we do is we basically partner with schools and provide them a learning system. This learning system changes this textbook and blackboard based learning into multimodal learning. What that means is that there is technology in the classroom. There is audio visual and learning materials in the classroom.

There are also kinesthetic learning material that we provide with it. Mm, with structured lessons that the teachers can use. And we introduce a technology platform in the school where instead of the school running as an analog system. And you know, the best example I like to use as principals walking the corridors and peeping into the classroom to understand what's going on to a technology platform where teachers, school leaders, parents, students, all of them are able to sort of work on the progress of the child's learning.

And personalize the learning for them and personalize the focus of adults towards the children's learning through the platform. So basically that's the big difference. Learning system typically does result in a big school transformation. It's a big change that a school goes through. So schools do partner with us over a long period of time.

Initially, when they start, they work with us, they commit to work with us for three years. And now over the years we've seen a large number of our school customers actually extend and they continue to stay with us because they find that learning is significantly improved when they use a learning system.

[00:34:25] Alex Sarlin: I mean, that is such a transformational change in a school environment to go from pure analog and principals, you know, pacing the hallways and textbooks, you know, to a technology enabled school environment. And that all of us in ed tech, that's the idea of that full school transformation is really, really powerful.

So what kind of feedback do you receive? You know, you know, we mentioned over 60,000 teachers have been trained in the LEAD Group, you know, model. What kind of feedback do you get from them about the lead learning system? And you mentioned outcomes. What other transformations do they experience when they go from this analog world to this technology enabled world?

[00:35:00] Smita Deorah: Sure. So two contexts I'll share before I go into. What are some of the things that we've heard and seen teachers tell us? One is that typically teachers and schools. If they don't have our learning system, they will land up getting textbooks from one provider. They'll get some sort of digital content from another provider.

So it's very piecemeal and teachers struggle to put these things together. At the same time ensuring that, you know, classrooms are running well and they're able to focus on every child. So that's the context in which the teacher is working before she starts working with us. And the second context in which this happens is the context that typically classrooms in India are 40 to 45 students to one teacher.

[00:35:44] Alex Sarlin: Wow. The 

[00:35:44] Smita Deorah: teacher classroom ratio is very different from, let's say again, some of the developed part of the world where people have more affordability. And this simply comes from how much parents can afford to spend. So in that context, when a learning system comes in, I would say there are three types of feedback that we hear from teachers.

I'll give examples just for it to be real for our listeners. One is that they actually say that, Hey, now my students are able to actually understand they're actually building skills versus memorization. 

[00:36:16] Alex Sarlin: Right? 

[00:36:16] Smita Deorah: So, you know, the old pre lead world for the teacher would be, she will only teach from the textbook.

Hence, students just wrote, memorize the question answers. To the extent, if you're in an English class, students will actually just learn the story. But if I give them something new to read, they'll not be able to read independently. Yep. And here, basically after the lead learning system is implemented unanimously, teachers tell us that my students are able to read independently.

They can write on their own, you know, they can express their ideas in English language, they understand sciences, like simple things. A second and third grader would know what is healthy eating habits. They will know how things work as compared to just diagrams and answers in a book. So I think that is one big shift.

The teachers. Talk about Parents also actually very visibly catch that, and it just is like a lot of joy for them. Second is that teachers find that the classrooms become a lot more engaging. Yeah. Now that is understandable because you know, a typical classroom would be teacher talking, students just sitting and listening.

And we all know as educators or parents both, that that's not what a child really engages with. When we move to multimodal, which means students are actively doing things, they're actively looking at some video and engaging with it, they're doing some activities. So let's say, you know, an example would be in a math class.

Instead of them just doing addition and subtraction on a piece of paper, they would have place value kits physically with them and they'll be doing concrete addition, subtraction, and hence the classes are a lot more engaging. Yep. So teachers don't have to discipline the students much like suddenly there's just so much of engagement and joy in the classroom.

Which for a teacher is very helpful because otherwise she's just trying to discipline kids. 

[00:37:57] Alex Sarlin: Right? 

[00:37:57] Smita Deorah: And the third thing that we've heard from teachers is they actually call our, you know, as part of the learning system, we give every teacher a tablet, which is basically her go-to place where she's teaching from that with exemplar lessons, with all the resources.

So teachers actually call it their best friend because it reduces their workload. It actually gives them exemplar lesson plans. So they don't have to always make lessons. They can improvise on top of it. I call it microwave ready lesson plans. You can just warm it and just go with it. But you can improvise on top, let's say, if you wanna add something to it.

Right. And they also get to learn in a nonjudgmental environment, you know? Because they're able to rehearse, they're able to see a lot of micro videos. So these are the kind of feedbacks that we hear from teachers. And of course, over time what that has meant is that not only with this feedback, but also the Student Mastery demonstration that we see in our assessments.

Over time, we've improved our curriculum, we've improved the interface for teachers the last two years. You know, we've sort of introduced a lot of AI tools for teachers to make things simpler. For example, once a teacher gives us assessment data, there are personalized remedial solutions we give them that she can run for her own class, which allows her to manage her class of 40.

We have personalized remediation layers for students to practice with at home, you know, in a one is to one format, so it connects classroom learning to home learning. So those are things that we have done over a period of time to personalize learning for students and also to really make a teacher's life simpler.

[00:39:32] Alex Sarlin: It's really exciting to hear you talk about the different ways in which the technology can transform a classroom and when you have those high student ratios, engagement, being able to meet each student where they are. Being able to sort of move away from, I almost see it as like the reification, like when you have a textbook and the teachers are literally reading from the textbook.

It's such a old fashioned way to teach. Yeah, and it makes it seem like the textbook page is the gospel. It's like everybody has to memorize exactly that and then you move to modern AI based, personalized learning. The type of learning you're describing here, it's like the exact opposite. Everything is customizable, everything can be changed.

The teachers have their tablets, their best friend tablets they work with, and they can change lesson plans on the fly and they can customize them to what the students need. It's sort of a, a condensed version of what we've seen with technology transformation in education globally. It's just happening in an even shorter and more extreme way with lead school.

That's what I'm hearing you say, which is I really exciting to hear. It's. And concentrated. Mm-hmm. 

[00:40:30] Smita Deorah: Yeah, and I would just add one thing, Alex. You know, the thing is that in India we have, you know, because of just the size of the population and teachers in, uh, small towns in India, teacher capability to begin with is not very good.

Right. You know, it's fairly low because they themselves have been a part of the system. 

[00:40:48] Alex Sarlin: Totally. 

[00:40:48] Smita Deorah: So, you know, they're trying hard, but they don't know these things. What the learning system does is basically in a very short period of time, uplifts the teacher through practice into becoming really good teachers.

You know, so learning by doing, it's true for students. It's also true for teachers. Definitely. You know, instead of training them and telling them, Hey, make lesson plans X way or Y way, we are basically giving them exemplar lesson plans and saying, Hey, execute it in your classroom. See what happens, learn how to do this, and then improvise.

So learning by doing actually just results in. So much better implementation and execution. And hence we actually don't do a lot of teacher training. It's like no one had to train us how to use email and then WhatsApp. Right? But it, it just completely changed, or even Zoom for that matter, or the tools that we are using to record those, the things that were so intuitive to use that we just started using them and it changed our behavior.

It fundamentally changed the way we work. That's the approach we have to our learning system. And that's what the tablet and the system does to a school is just inherently simple and intuitive to use. So schools do different things which is anchored on a student's learning and improve outcomes. 

[00:41:57] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, and I think it's a testament to the learning system that you don't need to do a lot of training.

That's what EdTech companies aspire to is to have tools that are as intuitive as Zoom and as email that are, you know, as intuitive as consumer tools so that people, even without a lot of technology background or training can pick them up and use them and really get deep with them without needing a whole, you know, many, many hours of professional development.

It's, it's great to hear. So you mentioned the outcomes in passing there, that students are able to read independently and that you're seeing, you know, science progress, but you also measure outcomes, you know, tell us about some of the student learning outcomes you've seen when this lead school, you know, lead learning system transformation happens within a school environment.

[00:42:36] Smita Deorah: Yeah, sure. So. Just again, as context in India largely, and you know, there is a lot of independent data that has been published, which basically shares, and we have seen that with students who come, students and teachers who come onto our, our platform is that typically in a school, students are one and a half years to two years behind in their English language skills.

And a lot of the private schools in India are English medium schools because higher education in India is in English. 

Yep. 

So if they learn English language right from the beginning, it gives them access to higher education. There are English learning gaps. And also what we have seen is that on maths and sciences, average mastery levels are only in the range of 45 to 50%.

That means where the whole grade should be, skill level is only at the 45, 50% range. What consistently we have seen with the use of our learning system is. On English language. For example, there is one and a half years of skill growth in one academic year. 

[00:43:35] Alex Sarlin: Mm-hmm. 

[00:43:36] Smita Deorah: Which is executed by these teachers who themselves are not very fluent with English.

That's what the system learning system delivers. What that means is in two to three years, students are at grade level English, and when they are at grade level English, they are actually able to do very well across all subjects because now they're understanding their sciences better and they're understanding their, you know, social sciences and humanities subjects.

Much better math, much better things like that. The second thing that we see, of course, is on the core subjects, other core subjects of math, sciences and humanities, social sciences is what we call it in India. 

[00:44:09] Alex Sarlin: Yep. 

[00:44:10] Smita Deorah: Students, when they are, you know, in the beginning of the first time they come to our platform, they're around 45 to 50% mastery that we see in a class.

We actually see in six months. That means in one semester. This mastery goes above 70%. Wow. And what we are really proud of is actually, it's not a bell curve in the classroom. So more than 70% students go above 70% mastery. So I call it a rising tide instead of a bell curve, because we, like all students are doing well.

So, you know, those are some of the outcomes that we have now delivered consistently across many years. Across all of our schools. The visible change that parents always talk to us about, and one can see when you visit one of our partner schools is students are just inherently much more confident. Hmm.

Because they're fluent with English, so they can communicate, they have very deep conceptual understanding so they can engage in discussions. One visible change that sports students and parents talk about and is very palpable, visible in a school is how confident students are, whether they are, uh, three or four year olds, or whether they are 15 year olds, because, you know, they have deep conceptual understanding and they can apply their learning.

So these kids are actually able to, they, they, they feel very confident about their own knowledge, their presence, their ability to engage in sort of dialogues about what should or should not be. And, you know, that's one very visible change as they, uh, develop all of these skills. Of course one of the big metrics for any school is how their students are performing in the final, uh, national boards By the time students come to high school, and now last year, for example, our national board results were one and a half X better than the national average.

Wow. Though the national average includes students who come from metros, whereas all of our partner schools come from small towns of India and they're the affordable schools. So that's the other thing that now these children are able to perform at the national level, and great board results mean good college admissions, a good future beyond that.

So that's another outcome that is now very visible. 

[00:46:20] Alex Sarlin: I mean, it is such an exciting story of sort of technology leapfrogging, right? I mean, you were working in, in rural communities, you're working with students who might not have access to the type of technology and teachers who don't have access to this technology, and then it unlocks English language learning, which unlocks all these other subjects.

It unlocks all of this possibility and opportunity for college and further education. I wish we had more time, but I wanna ask you one more question, which is that, tell me about this experience with the Global EdTech Prize. This is a new prize this year, and you've been involved in it. Tell us about what your experience has been and what have been some of the benefits of working with the Global EdTech Prize.

[00:46:56] Smita Deorah: Yeah, I think I would say two things. One, it's a great learning opportunity for us because as, uh, you know, as all the prep work happened and we were having interactions with the team, we of course, you know, got to know a lot more educators and amazing companies outside in other parts of the world who we were earlier not aware of.

So it's a great learning opportunity for us. I'm sure others feel likewise. I know I've spoken to a few other founders in the process and we've interacted and, you know, we've, we've landed up making some friends because we found that there are things to learn from each other. That's definitely one big part of it.

Second, of course, is that if there's something good that we are doing and there are others who can sort of take inspiration from what we are doing, learn from what we are doing and take that outside and other parts of the world will be really happy. So I think that also is something that we are getting a platform for.

So I'm really excited about this because ultimately all of us as educators in a collaborative manner would do much better for all our children. So I think this is a great platform. I 

[00:47:54] Alex Sarlin: totally agree. Yeah. And so Smita Deorah is the co-founder and co CEO of LEAD Group, India's only school learning system.

Unicorn, and I totally agree with you. People can share ideas across borders, especially with multimodal and AI and some of the amazing work that you're doing to transform communities and schools all over India. Thank you so much for being here with us on EdTech Insiders. 

[00:48:15] Smita Deorah: Yeah, thanks Alex. Thanks for this conversation.

[00:48:19] Alex Sarlin: We are here with Anna Sydoruk, who's a Ukrainian educator, and the CEO of Osvitoria, a leading educational NGO in Ukraine, delivering over 20 large scale projects. These projects include teacher professional development ed tech solutions to create free educational access school rehabilitation programs, and nationwide education reforms.

Anna, welcome to EdTech Insiders. 

[00:48:45] Anna Sydoruk: Thank you. 

[00:48:46] Alex Sarlin: Well, first off, tell us a little bit about, you know, we've mentioned 20 projects, professional development, EdTech solutions. What is Osvitoria and what are you doing overall in Ukraine to support education and technology? 

[00:48:58] Anna Sydoruk: Yeah, so we are the leading Ukrainian non-for-profit that develops education in our country.

And we work in three main directions and run this 20 projects. So the first one is our K 12 school in Kyiv, and this is our r and d center. So all the best we have in our school. Then we share with the government through our educational projects and implement nationwide. The second is teachers professional development, and here we have lots of programs to upscale teachers professionally and to support them.

We have global teacher price awards. We have our own media with more than 4 million users. Wow. And the third direction is we design and develop ed tech solutions. 

[00:49:42] Alex Sarlin: And I learn, I believe is one of your ed tech solutions, right? Yeah. It started as a small project with Skype lessons for students in a rural orphanage, and now you've been growing it.

Can you tell us more about how that platform began and what inspired you to grow it nationally? 

[00:49:58] Anna Sydoruk: Yeah, of course. Thank you for this question. So we were inspired by the results of our very first students. The project began more than 10 years ago in one orphanage, in the nuts region. Now this region is occupied, right?

And the idea was very simple, is to help graduate of this orphanage to prepare for the final multi-subject test for free, but at high quality so they could enter universities of their dreams. So in Ukraine, if you have the highest score, then you can enter university and have scholarship and study for free.

'cause during the exams, everyone is equal, but in preparation, some have good schools or private tutors, while others have nothing. So yeah, in 2013 we started daily Skype lessons and within one month we tracked progress at it became clear that some students, they had really good chances. And again, in Ukraine, especially in rural area, this learning gaps between students from rural areas and like big cities is like crucial.

Yeah. Sometimes it goes to three, four years, this gap. So after one year, the results exceeded all our expectations and we saw that those students who studied daily with us, so they scored among the highest. And one student, he even entered the National University of Economics, one of the best Ukrainian, uh, university.

The story we still very proud of. So yeah, that success made us think about scaling the impact, and we decided to create a platform with prerecorded lessons and simulator tests. And our first courses, we recorded with the students of, uh, Keith Economic University while professors developed this content and once we shared this platform with the schools, it become popular very, very quickly.

'cause at that time it was a game changer 'cause you can prepare for the most important exam of your life. We stop university professors and completely for free. And uh, few years later we got our first big partner, Coca-Cola Company. They supported our project and thanks to this support we updated the platform and added gamification, which boosted students engagement like once in more than six times.

[00:52:20] Alex Sarlin: Wow. 

[00:52:20] Anna Sydoruk: And yeah, how it worked. So you register on the platform, you pick a character, and then for studying, and I dunno, completing tasks for example, or attending webinars, you earn virtual coins. We call them add the coins. And with this coins you can upgrade your character or even get some partners merchandise like Coca-Cola School backpack, or a cab, or even a pet for those students who complete the entire program with the best score.

And today we have around 300,000 students who prepared for this final exam with us. 

[00:52:57] Alex Sarlin: That's incredible. And I think, you know, it's a testament to some of the real powers of technology to close distances between top university professors and rural orphans. Like yeah, people who usually would have no chance to connect and then to bring a structure and systems into place like these gamification systems of these daily Skype calls and they, that create that kind of structure that is so powerful and really exciting.

And you obviously, it goes without saying that Ukraine is a country that is, is at war, is, has a lot going on. People are facing trauma, they're facing instability, displacement obviously have, uh, I'm sure many of your learners have been personally affected by the war, if not the vast majority. Tell us about what strategies you've been using to deliver education in that type of really traumatized environment.

[00:53:45] Anna Sydoruk: You know, Alex, it is important to note that during the war, every lesson and education in general often becomes the only island of stability for children whose lives have been so dramatically changed. Today, every fifth school in Ukraine is damaged or completely destroyed. Around 1 million students cannot attend school physically, and some have lost not only their school, but entire city, their loved ones, their normal life.

And just imagine, yes, you are 16 years old and just recovered from COVID, pandemic Lockdowns, yes, that all the students pass through. And now the word. Yet preparing for the final exams is one of the most important milestones in your life. Yes. And when you have platform where no matter what is happening, teachers join every day the spiritual lessons and give a lesson and it, it restores sense of stability and bring students back to this vital learning routine.

So this is whaT4 I learn is very, very useful. And our students just email us and say, lots of thank you for this learning routine. Give them back. Yeah, and to make learning process easier for students with trauma and help them to retain learning materials more easily. We also introduced some elements of mornings using associations, and of course, emotional support was very crucial.

So every single webinar began with some simple but necessary words of support for students, and this was very helpful for them as well to be focused and emotionally stable. 

[00:55:29] Alex Sarlin: It's hard to even get your head around the level of displacement and sort of just life trauma that so many students are facing.

One in every five schools are damaged and a million students are, are not in school. And education at heart is about, you know, the future. It is, education is sort of an optimistic, uh, you know, endeavor at heart because it's all about improving oneself and then preparing for what's next in a country with that type of war.

Coming at it from all sides, a after the pandemic, as you mentioned, I'm sure that sense of stability, that sense of optimism, and hey, think about where this might lead you. Think about what could happen next if you keep educating yourself. It's probably a real lifeline for a lot of students. 

[00:56:08] Anna Sydoruk: Yeah. And you know when everything is completely changing.

So everything you have is your education, like every Ukrainian face that, so whenever you start your, your new life in your country or even when you like stay in Ukraine, but situation is very changed. Yes. All you have is your education. 'cause you can lose your home, your family. It's, this is everything you have.

So 

[00:56:34] Alex Sarlin: yeah. It's 

[00:56:34] Anna Sydoruk: so crucially important to keep, uh, learning process, keep moving, and when students are learning and when teachers are teaching, no one will take up a future. 

[00:56:45] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. Yeah. And nobody can take your education away from you, even if you know everything else is going sideways. In, in your country, in your school, in your town, in your life.

You can, for whatever's next, you can bring your education, bring what you're learning, bring your sense of self that you're improving with your education with you. If you have to leave the country or go to another school at least. You mentioned Coca-Cola as a partner. You mentioned that iLearn has already reached, I think you said 300,000 students across Ukraine.

That's really amazing. What is next for iLearn and for oia? You mentioned, you know, this 20 plus projects that you're working on. What do you see as the next phase of your work? 

[00:57:22] Anna Sydoruk: We want even more. So we plan to expand and learn with some several new features and direction. And first of all is mobile app with, uh, offline access.

Ensuring students can use learning materials even during blackouts and for example, when they in de occupied or occupied territories with limited connectivity, so they still could learn. The next one is we want AI powered personalization, integrating tools that provide tailored learning support, motivation, and guidance for each student.

We also want to add career guidance. Introducing dedicated courses and one-on-one sessions, consultations to help students to plan their futures even more specifically. And we also were thinking this is more long-term vision, but also to work with community-based study clubs and scaling. I learned from online to offline by creating local study hubs in town or in small villages to support exam preparation.

And Korean orientation for those students was like very poor connectivity areas. 

[00:58:29] Alex Sarlin: It's phenomenal. If any listener here hears about the amazing work you're doing and wants to support in any way, where should they go online to find out more about iLearn or Osvitoria? 

[00:58:39] Anna Sydoruk: Yes. In our website, Osvitoria.org, you will find information about all our projects or also my LinkedIn profile and we'll be happy to share with all the information.

And yes, we are very welcomed for new partners and I dunno, new ideas and partnerships. So we'll be happy to connect. Amazing 

[00:58:59] Alex Sarlin: connect. Absolutely. I'm, I, you know, I'm sure some many listeners are saying, oh my gosh, this is such important work and such vital work in, in such a, a place that's dealing with so much strife and grief, and right now how can I help?

What can I donate? How can I partner? So, um, we'll put the links to us victoria.org and to your LinkedIn and any, any other link to you want to share in the show notes for this episode. The last question I have for you, you know, you have been part of this Global EdTech Prize. This is the first cohort of the Global EdTech Prize.

What has that experience been like for you and what has been sort of your main takeaways and learnings from being part of that Global EdTech Prize community? 

[00:59:36] Anna Sydoruk: Yeah, I was very proud and you know, for me it is very, very special because I learned was my first tech project. 12, 13 years ago. And such a global recognition, uh, is very important.

And we even have two projects that become the part of this attack prize. So I learn, and also all Ukrainian School online, the biggest national platform for distance and blended learning. So yes, we are proud, we are excited to meet some new partners, to learn from other winners because again, whatever the challenge, education is a solution.

So we really believe that there are lots of common challenges, which means lots of common opportunities to solve those challenges. And this is, will be very exciting to learn from other organizations and, uh, at tech companies as well. 

[01:00:29] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, that's amazing. We, we've heard consistently that this learning from one another, especially across borders, across continents, has been one of the biggest takeaways.

And I, I can imagine people are learning a ton from you and when your work in, in such important work, such work that probably hasn't been as amplified as it should have been. And now people are starting to hear a lot more about it and all the incredible strides you've made in Ukraine. So whatever the problem is, education is the solution.

I love that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna absolutely note you on that. I totally agree. This has been so much fun. This is Anna from o vitoria.org. I am sure I'm not pronouncing that correctly, but I'm trying, um, Ukrainian educator and a leading educational non-governmental organization in Ukraine delivering over 20 projects, including.

I learn just Skype lessons for rural orphanages reached over 300,000 people. And the Ukrainian National, what was it? The The one, the other one you just named? 

[01:01:23] Anna Sydoruk: Yes. All the Ukrainian school online, the biggest national, and here we have more than 2 million users, like the biggest national platform for distance and blended learning, which is now also like the key platform for students who now externally displaced or internally displaced, or those who cannot attend the school, but they can learn online with the best Ukrainian teachers with Ukrainian curriculum and be Ukrainian wherever they are.

[01:01:50] Alex Sarlin: It's amazing. Truly amazing. Yeah. Externally or internally. So no matter where they're in the world, they can still stay connected to the Ukrainian education system and to teachers. Truly inspiring. Really, really inspiring. Thank you so much for being here with us here on EdTech Insiders. Keep up the incredible work and just the optimism in the face of so many terrible things happening in the country.

[01:02:09] Anna Sydoruk: Thank you so much. Thank you. 

[01:02:12] Alex Sarlin: We are here with Rapelang Rabana. She's the CO CEO of Imagine Worldwide, and she's deeply committed to using technology to solve education and skills development in Africa. Prior to Imagine, she founded Rekindle Learning, a dynamic ed tech company that drives business performance through impactful micro learning.

She served as a board member for the African Leadership University and was selected as a young global leader by the World Economic Forum in 2017. Welcome to the podcast. 

[01:02:43] Rapelang Rabana: Thank you so much, Alex. Really awesome to be with you. 

[01:02:47] Alex Sarlin: It's awesome to be with you as well. So before we get into the details, give us the overview of what you are doing with Imagine Worldwide to Solve education and skills development in Africa.

How did you come up with your idea and how are you hoping to use EdTech to address such major issues? 

[01:03:03] Rapelang Rabana: Alex, I like to think of, imagine Worldwide as the quintessential disruptive innovation where we've taken EdTech solutions to a non consuming markets that previously was not using technology, had no access to power, and was seeing very poor learning outcomes.

So as imagine, we focus on providing tablet-based learning interventions that'll address literacy and numeracy gaps, specifically in Sub-Saharan Africa, where we're facing large classrooms with very few teachers, very limited infrastructure, power, electricity, and very few teachers. And in this context, many, many children are not learning to read and write By the age of 10, one of the World Bank statistics refers to 89% of children not being able to read with understanding by the end of grade four.

Wow. Which is a huge tragedy and not indicative of the potential of the children, and hence why we're doing this work. 

[01:03:57] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, I mean, unlocking potential feels like a key idea here. When you have so many children getting such a poorer level of education, you can use technology to really accelerate that.

That's exciting to hear. And then, you know, you mentioned the tablet-based technology, so that involves wifi and, and access. You play a core role in coordinating all the different parts of this program. From the logistics to the training to the community engagement, you have government partnerships that are needed to make this work.

What are some of the lessons you've learned about putting together all of the pieces around a goal? This audacious? 

[01:04:31] Rapelang Rabana: We've lent a hell of a lot over the last few years. I would say, you know, first is that we had to spend a number of years learning how to implement in these contexts. And you mentioned wifi, but the reality is that the tablets work entirely offline and don't need any electricity.

So we provide solar, renewable energy so that schools even in remote areas, can use the program. And then figured out how do you train people? How do you engage parents in communities where they have never seen technology before? How do you provide the right security? How do you engage governments at a local and national level?

So there were many pieces to figure out in the first five years and were some of the key lessons we learned was, one, it's really important to demonstrate in real life for people to see themselves. Most people just can't imagine what it is we're doing until they've been in a classroom, watched a hundred kids be totally engrossed with their learning on a tablet in a way that you can't imagine that level of concentration in a normal classroom.

And then secondly, I would say the biggest thing that we did was actually do a number of research trials. We've concluded over nine randomized control trials that have demonstrated time, and again, that learning gains are indeed in the top quartile of education interventions. Typically, a good education intervention delivers a 0.2 standard deviation or effect size, and our programs have delivered 0.3 to 0.9.

Wow. Which is really remarkable. And on top of that, we're seeing kids coming back to 

[01:05:58] Alex Sarlin: school 

[01:05:59] Rapelang Rabana: that didn't wanna come to school before increased attendance, increased enrollment in schools as well as far more positive learning attitudes from the children. And what excites me even more is that the teachers themselves are actually really excited about the tool because they believe it supplements and compliments what they've been doing.

And a lot of the kids who were left behind are now able to more meaningfully engage in their normal teacher led sessions. I mean, 

[01:06:23] Alex Sarlin: those are incredible results. And just so gratifying when I hear results like that, learning outcomes, attitudes, major changes, multiple, you're talking about standard deviations that can add up over time, you become completely transformative of lives.

You know, this is why all of us went into EdTech in the first place, is to be able to make Exactly, exactly. This 

[01:06:46] Rapelang Rabana: is the dream finally happening in the real world. 

[01:06:48] Alex Sarlin: Exactly. So, so let me ask a little bit about, you know, you said it's hard to imagine what it's like. I, I agree. It is hard to imagine what it's like until you're in the room with seeing a hundred kids on the tablets.

What are they seeing on the tablets? I'm curious, you know, you, you mentioned numeracy and literacy. How do you design your, your curricular materials or your instructional materials so that they do engage and then also reach the type of outcomes that you're talking about? 

[01:07:11] Rapelang Rabana: Yeah, we actually have a very strategic software partnership with another NGO based out of the UK called 1 billion, and it is their software that we use.

They're actually one of the winners of the learning XPRIZE from many years back. And we're essentially the implementing partner that pulls everything else together, including the software to make things happen. What's particularly unique about this experience is that one, a child who's completely illiterate and digitally illiterate, has never seen technology, can pick up the tablet, put on the headphones, and be guided by the digital teacher and avatar.

In Malawi, she's called the Lifa and speaks to the children in CVA and guides the kids from how to tap, how to swipe, how to use the tablet to the first letter, to full fluency and numeracy and literacy skills. And that kind of scaffolding is particularly unique because most software applications out there for literacy and numeracy assume that the child has some partial literacy skills, or that there's an adult right next to the child to help them start the journey, which is really not a viable option in the context that we're working in with one teacher to a hundred kids, sometimes 200 kids in Malawi.

So the program is based on, you know, literacy numeracy is actually quite similar across many countries. 'cause foundational learning is, is really quite, um, fundamental in that sense. It was originally based on the UNESCO framework for literacy and numeracy. And over the years they've been a number of improvements.

For example, they've even been able to cater for children that are partially deaf by having the characters that are talking be lip-syncing and cool innovations like that. And what's been really helpful with the learning, we think, and what makes it super important is this rapid feedback loop. The child for the first time can engage, get a response, self-correct.

Whereas before they had very little feedback loops to actually be able to self correct and improve. And then of course it's sound, it's visual, it's gamified, it's fun, it's, you know, multisensory learning experience that can completely captivate the child and actually deliver the learning outcomes. 

[01:09:17] Alex Sarlin: When I hear you talk about it, it strikes me that you're designing a solution that can be really self-contained.

It has the curriculum built in, it does not require wifi, or it doesn't even require internet access. It could be done completely offline. And then it's just, you know, we have great curricular partners and this character based approach that allows students to just pick it up exactly where they are, whether or not at any level of numeracy or literacy.

I mean, that's absolutely incredible. That said, I'm sure you do so much work to get this actually working on the ground. You know, with any kind of large scale program like this, it's just there are funny obstacles that you just have to work through. I'm sure people are so excited about it, especially when they see the outcomes.

But I'm curious, you know, you mentioned Malawi, uh, you know, when you work with your partner countries, which countries do you work with and what has it been like actually building those relationships with the governments? I'm sure they're excited about what you do, and then there's all this policy and bureaucracy and various things.

How do you work through it and make sure you can actually get that last mile delivery that actually works? 

[01:10:16] Rapelang Rabana: It's not a trivial venture, Alex. It's actually a full-time job to just keep that bus moving. So our focus countries where we're hoping to scale the program nationwide over the next five to 10 years, um, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Tanzania, and will likely also add a francophone country.

And our vision is really to demonstrate that EdTech can work in geographically and linguistically diverse countries. Mm. You know, Malawi, small country, Southern Africa, Tanzania, massive country, east Africa, Sierra Leone program in English, smaller country, complementing the Swahili and the chia. And then we'll also have a francophone country in Africa so that we can really demonstrate that it works in all contexts and essentially that all low and middle income countries on the continent can actually deliver EdTech programs in a way that is scalable and sustainable.

We believe that if we can do that, it can really change policy and development in the education sector because it'll be a valuable proof point, um, for everyone. 

[01:11:16] Alex Sarlin: Oh, huge. That's 

[01:11:17] Rapelang Rabana: it. 

[01:11:18] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. 

[01:11:19] Rapelang Rabana: It's not without its challenges for sure. And what we found really critical is that we need to have a dedicated local team in each country.

So we've got a local NGO that is staffed by senior leadership, typically former educationists themselves from the university's professors, highly regarded, that are essentially staffing that team and focusing every single day on how to move this program forward. And each country, there's quirks. Some country might need, you know, different technology approvals to let the certain tablets in.

All of the countries will review the content and that Ministry of Education will determine that it is indeed suitable and complimentary to what they covered. Therefore, it can be used in that public schools. And there's a whole process around that. There'll also be a whole process around how do we engage the teachers for training?

How do we engage the district supervisors who do typical quality assurance and monitoring? So we have identified a number of work streams where in each country we kind of have to figure out where does it sit and how do we engage that group of people initially first to build awareness, much like with any change management intervention.

And then increasingly, they can become more confident, provide more advice, until ultimately they're the ones implementing. And driving the work going forward, we see ourselves as a very temporary actor, and we say to our government partners that we're here to help mobilize the resources, build the infrastructure, and strengthen your education system with a view to step out as soon as humanly possible.

And everybody knows it. Imagine that we're not a forever NGO. If we do our work in this country, we should be out in less than 10 years. Yeah. I and governments appreciate that approach because they want to take ownership of their programs. Now, certainly with, you know, the advent of the USAID and healthcare, it's become really important and it demonstrates that it's so critical for governments to own their own programs for it to be sustainable so that if there is a change of sentiment at some point in time, governments still are able to have the expertise to run as well as the funding to cover the cost, which is another big part of why our government partners bought into it, is that while we are able to mobilize philanthropic and development aid to fund the initial infrastructure, the ongoing recurring costs that they commit to taking on are $3 per child per year.

Which is less than 7% of even the poorest countries per capita education budget, and all of these things kind of make it possible for them to then take it on and walk this journey with us. To ultimate institutionalization of the program. 

[01:13:56] Alex Sarlin: Amazing. I mean, that combination of very affordable price points, which doesn't make it feel like they're gonna be left on the hook for a large budget item that they can't control.

Yeah. Creating a local team of, as you say, respected experts who are already under, you know, understood and connected and respected in the education ecosystem. Having to align with the ministries of education and get everything approved, you know, lots of hurdles, but at the same time seems like a really repeatable approach.

When I, when you talk about letting the country sort of run with the program, I picture like the space shuttle, right? You know, the, it takes it up a certain way and then falls back and the rocket take off on its own and it feels like that's your role. You say, we wanna put ourselves out, you take ourselves out of the equation within 10 years so that they can run the, run it on their own.

[01:14:39] Rapelang Rabana: Precisely. And that's a unique proposition from traditional large NGOs, which are really, you know, in country to stay. And we wanted to take this different approach so that we are incentivized to not stay. 

[01:14:51] Alex Sarlin: Right. Yeah. And having, I mean, and creating, I'm sure that takes its own whole level of work, creating a, the team of, of senior people within each country.

But at the same time, you're doing something, you know, when you show these randomized control trial results and the engagement and the, you know, videos or you know what, whatever, you have to show the success. I'm sure you're fighting in some way, hopefully a convincing people that this is valuable is a downhill battle.

Right. Because it's something that everybody needs, everybody respects. Mm-hmm. You know, knows that education is a goal. They believe, I think at heart that technology could, if used properly, make a huge difference. And then if you're like, and it does, and we can show you, we can show you it works in this country.

[01:15:31] Rapelang Rabana: I'm 

[01:15:31] Alex Sarlin: sure it's amazing and it's been 

[01:15:32] Rapelang Rabana: incredible. And Alex, we often forget that less than 10% of EdTech interventions actually have evidence of impact. Right. And certainly only working with the imagined research team have. I really come to appreciate that there's evidence and then there's evidence. And getting to the right quality of evidence for your stakeholders has been really incredible in helping us mobilize the government support as well as the funding support we've been able to get.

[01:15:58] Alex Sarlin: Yes, I can only imagine. And, and, and it, we have an evidence problem in the ed tech sector. We've talked about that a lot on this podcast. You know, there's things move, it's, it's hard to gather evidence, it's hard to do randomized controls trials. It can be expensive. It can take time takes, yeah. So the fact that you have multiple ones showing these huge outcomes, that huge effect sizes means that you can really walk in with your, your head really high and say, we, we know this works.

Now it's about let's like making it work. It's incredible. So this is obviously an amazing story. What you're doing is, is spectacular. Um, I'm curious about, we've been talking to a number of different applicants and finalists in the Global EdTech Prize for 2025, which is a new prize all around the world.

Obviously elevating the work that Imagine is doing, imagine Worldwide and others are doing is, is one of the big benefits for everyone else. What have been some of the benefits of working within the Global EdTech Prize community for you and for Imagine Worldwide? 

[01:16:54] Rapelang Rabana: I have had the privilege of knowing because for, for many years through the YGL network, um, of the World Economic Forum, and there isn't probably a more passionate advocate for, for education.

I'm super keen to actually leverage some of the work that T4 Education has been doing broadly around setting best practices in schools, how teachers and parents can be more engaged, because certainly while we're bringing ed tech to schools, we still need strong head teachers. We still need strong teachers into the mix.

And that's certainly an area of work where we are very keen to, to take some learnings and integrate into our program so that when we're strengthening the system, it's not just the education system, but the actual schools themselves would really be the most beneficial way I see it at this point. And of course there are so many other amazing organizations involved in this network.

And being able to learn from what they're doing in Latin America, in Asia is, uh, super instrumental. And I think it determines your pace of improvement and growth. And I'd imagine we've always been about continuous improvement. Let's learn more, get better. You did what you did when you knew what you knew, and once you know better, we have to do better.

So being in this ecosystem that helps us know better and do better, I think is absolutely critical. 

[01:18:08] Alex Sarlin: That's amazing. Yeah, and I mean this global community of passionate, professional, just incredibly thoughtful entrepreneurs trying to make changes in education systems in so many different ways is, is really, is so incredibly inspiring, is CO CEO of Imagine Worldwide.

They're using technology to solve education and skills, development issues in Africa and in four countries in Africa and growing all the time. Incredible effects. Thank you so much for being here with us on EdTech Insiders. 

[01:18:39] Rapelang Rabana: Awesome. Thank you. EdTech Insiders, 

[01:18:42] Alex Sarlin: we are here with Serdar Ferit. He's a former filmmaker and teacher, and now the CEO of Lyfta.

A leading efforts to bring immersive real world stories into classrooms to inspire curiosity, compassion, and critical thinking. Serdar has directed films viewed by millions, created interactive stories and taught in both schools and universities. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Alex. Thank you for having me.

How are you? I'm excited to speak with you. You have such an interesting model of teaching and, and, uh, engaging students in classrooms. Can you tell us about what Lyfta Lyfta is, how you use storytelling in educational environments? 

[01:19:20] Serdar Ferit: Sure. So Lyfta is essentially a world of human stories. So there's, we have a globe, and on the globe we have lots of different pins, and each of those pins is a new story world, and children and teachers can enter a story world, which is basically a slice of someone's life and it starts in a real life place.

It could be their home or their workplace, or a community. And we can explore that place in 360 degrees. It's a real high resolution image. Bit like you might get on Google Street View. You can look around it, and within that there are various pieces of multimedia that we can explore, we can watch or view or listen to, and that could be imagery.

It could be what we call rich media articles, which are a bit more like textbook articles. It could be audio files, could be videos. So lots of rich content. And really importantly, in every single story where there's always a, at least one human being who we can get to know a bit better through a short documentary film, a really high quality and well made short documentary film made by amazing professional documentary filmmakers, which we think is really, really important because the quality of story is actually directly related to how engaging it is and how much learning children can get from it.

[01:20:39] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. So if a classroom is using Lyfta, students are able to basically almost step into the shoes of people all around the world, be in immersive environments, explore what it's like to be them or in their world, and then see, you know, all sorts of different media artifacts, including really high quality documentary films.

And you know, that's an important part of your story. You are a filmmaker yourself. Storytelling is clearly core to what you're doing with Lyfta. Tell us about how you came up with this idea of using really immersive high quality stories in education, and you use it for both primary, you know, for sort of core curriculum and secondary curriculum as well.

[01:21:17] Serdar Ferit: Absolutely. It came about when my co-founder, Paulina and I, were working on a documentary in Ethiopia. And we realized as we were making this documentary about this community that we found very inspiring and wanted to share their story, we, we started off, Paulina started off making a, just a regular documentary about it.

And then I was loosely involved with that initial project. And then as we got to know the community better and as we got to become better storytellers, and as technology developed, we realized actually we don't just wanna make a documentary about this place. We wanna take people there. Mm. How can we take people there?

And that was the kind of innovation question that we asked ourselves that led us to look at what was possible. And we're talking a period between 2004 and 2014, which took us 10 years from meeting the community to create this first immersive interactive documentary project. 

[01:22:08] Alex Sarlin: Wow. 

[01:22:08] Serdar Ferit: And yeah, then making an explorable documentary essentially that was just more, was more than just a linear story.

And then showing that around the world and seeing. Really positive audience's reactions to it. And then showing our parents. And, and three of our four parents with my co-founder are teachers. And my dad in particular, when he saw what we'd made, he said, have you ever shown this to children? And we were like, well, it's kind of designed for Guardian Radius who go to documentary festivals, not for children.

He said, just try in a classroom and see what happens. And when we did that, it was a mind blowing audience experience for us that we both at that stage. So we're talking more than 10 years into our career, we've both made works that lots and lots, millions of people have seen, got awards, shown our stories and films in, in auditoriums to hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of people at the time, you know, really had amazing audience experiences.

But then we had this very humble classroom in, in Ipswich and the children absolutely blew our minds with their responses to this work. And we thought, well. We came into documentary to make impact. We've just impacted these children, like we've never impacted any other audience. What if, and this is with one story from Ethiopia, what if we could offer a children away to have a meaningful learning experience in every country in the world before they leave school?

And that became the vision that, that drove Lyfta. 

[01:23:39] Alex Sarlin: And if you fast forward to your, you mentioned the globe with the pins in it, and you're, you've been creating these documentaries and these story worlds for various countries for various stories and types of lives for years now. Tell us about how that awe inspiring moment, that impactful moment in the classroom that inspired the company, has scaled.

I'm sure you've now seen this in so many classrooms, in so many students' eyes. What does it look like when a student steps into a story world and starts to experience a completely different life than they they've been living? I 

[01:24:12] Serdar Ferit: mean, what we're seeing and what we, we've visited dozens of schools over the years and we've had feedback from hundreds and hundreds of schools.

Lifter now serves continuously over a quarter of a million children. And I never tire of going and watching a Lyfta lesson in, in person and just seeing children's eyes light up, whether it's their first one or their, the hundredth one. You know, just going to a new place. Where are we gonna go? Who are we gonna meet?

What are we gonna learn? And just seeing children's eyes light up. And I used to be a teacher and, and that's what you do that for. You teach so that you can inspire and engage and, and teach children and, and seeing such a, an enthusiastic and positive responses. Food for the soul, for teachers. 

[01:24:57] Alex Sarlin: After interviewing many ed tech founders, you know, on this podcast and being in the field for a long time, I tend to think there's a few different ways to look at sort of the role and the the potential for education and technology.

Many people use it to do things we've done in the past, you know, faster or spread them to more people or do it more efficiently or more effectively. Incredibly important. And others say, look at school and say, you know, what if it were like this? What if it were really different? What if instead of reading a textbook or reading a short excerpt from a story, you were able to step into somebody's life and see high quality documentaries about them and see media artifacts of them and sort of meet them and be them.

And it's just a completely different vision of what education might look like. I think both types of founders are incredibly visionary. They can be very visionary in very different ways, but it's very clear as a filmmaker and just hearing you talk that you are deeply in the second camp of this idea of what if education was just so much more immersive, engaging, exciting, awe inspiring than it sometimes can be in our current world.

Tell us about what that means when you're actually on the ground. So, you know, I've noticed Lyft, as I mentioned you, you can do things that correspond to existing curricula, like existing core curricula. You can also do story worlds that are supplemental to the curriculum and exploratory. What has it been like taking this vision of what education could be and working within existing school environments to sort of expand their horizons?

Well, 

[01:26:23] Serdar Ferit: I mean it's firstly because there's, there is nothing else like Lyfta that there still isn't, as far as we're aware. The first period in particular was showing educational leaders what it was, because nobody knows they need an immersive storytelling platform in their school. Right, 

[01:26:39] Alex Sarlin: exactly. Yeah. 

[01:26:41] Serdar Ferit: So we had to think really carefully about how to engage audiences of school leaders, decision makers, and in a very short space of time, show them and make them feel that this was important.

And yeah, we often did that at conferences, with short speaking slots. And then over time, as people have seen how we've developed and the impact we're making now we're invited to keynote in a number of conferences. And then that has been super helpful. But the first phase has been very much informing people about what it is and what it can do.

And that's been challenging. That's been really, really challenging actually. 

[01:27:17] Alex Sarlin: But it feels like you've broken through, you know, you've mentioned a quarter million students continuously. And just to give our listeners a little bit of a sense, I have not seen these documentaries yet and I really can't wait to, but it's things like going to Belgium and what is it like to be a child in a traveling family of circus artists?

What is it like to work in London as an immigrant and keep a city smiling? What is it like to be a young aspiring writer in a nomadic family in Iran, in the mountains of Iran? Mm-hmm. I mean, what is it like to plant a billion trees in the desert in China? I mean, these are really big stories that, as you say, feel that they're documentary, you know, level stories.

I'm curious, what do you feel is the sort of role of the emotional engagement? Obviously, you know, documentaries are meant to open up people's minds to a different part of the world, a different type of, you know, just different experiences that people don't have and to engage them emotionally, make them care.

And I'm curious, the caring part, how you see the emotional engagement serving as part of Lyfta as. Orientation and goal in education? 

[01:28:19] Serdar Ferit: Well, emotional engagement is key and good storytelling. We learn through stories. We all know this. It's been proven yes, and actually even academically. Immor, Dino Yang and DeMaio did a study about 15 years ago now, and they prove that deep learning only occurs when cognitive learning and emotional learning are both activated now.

Storytelling good storytelling means emotional engagement, and that is a huge part of the way we make learning more accessible, more engaging, and more enjoyable for children and teachers is through good storytelling. And actually we live in an age where anyone can make a movie very easily, very cheaply, and therefore the quality of the storytelling becomes even more important.

Actually, you can make something looking a little that looks amazing on an iPhone. It's very easy to deceive when something can look professional, but how well is it told? How well is it crafted? That's super, super important and I think it's more important than ever that we show our children that. 

[01:29:23] Alex Sarlin: That was actually exactly gonna be my next question.

I think it's a great segue, you know, some of these stories being a wildlife conservationist in the Philippines, living as a family in the Amazonian rainforest, these are things that technically people can start to replicate or simulate with an iPhone or with AI at this point. Mm-hmm. And I, you've mentioned the quality of the stories and you have, you know, Oscar winning people on your team helping build this documentary film.

I'm curious how you see if the world starts to come to where you've been for a while and say, emotional engagement storytelling really is a great tool in our educational arsenal, and we should be storytelling a lot more. How would you recommend we as a, as a society don't sort of race to the bottom and be doing virtual Spider-Man comics about photosynthesis, which I think is a very natural instinct for a lot of us, and instead keep the quality and the thoughtfulness really high.

[01:30:16] Serdar Ferit: I'm sure many teachers will use. AI to make learning more accessible. And I encourage that. And actually we have a story world all about AI called the Age of AI on Lyfta. And in that we meet one of the amazing brains, or the main amazing brain behind chat, GPT. Ilia Discover, who was the chief scientist to open AI is not anymore.

And in that story, in his story, he tells us about his passion for AI and passion for computing. And he talks about a GI, artificial general intelligence when AI will become better than us at everything and poses some questions and some provocations that we think children and teachers ought to be thinking and talking about.

Now, in that same story world, there are articles about deep fakes, but they're not standard sort of online safety PowerPoint presentations about what you should and shouldn't do online. It's like. Well, let's go meet a founder of a company that uses deep learning to manipulate imagery and, and change people's faces.

And, you know, and we use this in technologies like Snapchat. Children are aware of that. So it's really cool. It's really interesting. It's really exciting. But then actually when we're learning about that, we also learn that these can be misused. And that is a really respectful way to engage a child in thinking about what could go wrong.

[01:31:36] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, 

[01:31:37] Serdar Ferit: we learn about echo chambers and, and how social media works, and, but it's done through engaging, powerful, well-made expensive storytelling. And I think that, you know, we, we have children for a certain amount of time each day. They are connoisseurs in a way of digital content, but they may not always be as discerning as we might like them to be.

It's really important that we consider what we put in front of them, and we kind of meet them more so where they're at. 'cause this, the modern child is unlike anything we've ever seen before. Uh, the modern child starts school with thousands and thousands of hours of screen time under their belts. Right?

That's a different child to the children we were when we were at school. And we need to appreciate that, I think. And yes, we should try and I think, challenge some of the, the habits that we're seeing in children because I don't think, I think it's very clear that some of 'em are potentially very unhealthy in terms of the way they consume digital content.

But I think it, we also have to accept that this is the way the new world is, and we have to kind of meet them where they're at in order to engage them and teach them. 

[01:32:42] Alex Sarlin: It's a terrific point. Many terrific points in there, but about how, um, you know, to respectfully engage students on complicated issues, but also knowing that they're coming to this educational environment with more, with more screen time, with more exposure to more things than probably any young people in the history of, of the world.

Well, definitely. Right? Definitely. Yeah. Certain media. Absolutely. I look at your content and it, it is incredibly high quality. It's so thoughtful and think about there's a world in which as AI slop or, you know, I won't even necessarily call it slop, but, you know, AI generated content or rapidly generated content of any kind, proliferates, and it can be anywhere, and it becomes the equivalent of, you know.

Mass production for media that is definitely happening where high quality content that's really thoughtful, really humanistic, like what Lyfta makes just changes the conversation about it. It it becomes even more valued when you realize that yes, it's easy to make a hundred videos about X, Y, Z and they all look kind of the same, and they all have that particular AI look to them, or they, you know, even, even as AI evolves, it's, it's just there's not that much thought put into them and they're not really human.

Right. Uh, uh, to the point about a GI, it's like they're generated by artificially based on sort of the training from humanity. I can see that what Lyfta is doing with your story world and your documentaries become the connoisseur. They become just a expose young people to a totally different version of what media could and should look like, and that could become even more valuable in a world where there's so much more sort of low hanging fruit.

I'm curious if that resonates with where you see things going or if you're, if you see things differently. 

[01:34:23] Serdar Ferit: I hope so, Alex, right. We are now, I mean, we've done a series of round table discussions with trust leaders, which are like charter school leaders in the UK over the last three years where we've tried to educate them about some of the things that are happening in AI with regards to deep fakes, truths, et cetera.

And we are now beyond the point of no return. And I say this is a filmmaker and former media studies teacher. It's impossible technically to tell whether something is real or fake in terms of video. We've gone beyond the point of no return. We've seen phenomenal stuff being created of very well known people saying stuff, and it's all AI generated.

So we live in a world now where we cannot trust our eyes and ears. We have to trust our hearts and our minds, and we believe that by exposing children to authentic content, and that is our commitment, we will never have an AI generated documentary on Lyfta, of course, 

[01:35:19] Alex Sarlin: goes without saying. I can. I could, I could.

Yeah. 

[01:35:22] Serdar Ferit: And so therefore, by exposing our children to and introducing them, maybe exposing is not, is not the nicest word. Introducing them to authentic real life. Well-made human documentary content regularly where we're giving them a good diet of what is real, what is authentic, what does that look like In this world of 15 second TikTok videos and coming very soon, lots of AI generated stuff that we won't be able to tell if it's real or fake.

Yeah, we think that a healthy diet of thoughtful, well-made authentic content is hopefully gonna be more valued and more important. 

[01:36:04] Alex Sarlin: We won't be able to trust our eyes and ears, so we'll have to trust our hearts and minds. That is maybe the most powerful, uh, well, one of the very most powerful statements I have heard about, about AI and media, and certainly the education is sort of adjacent to that.

Such an interesting take. And I agree. I think we're gonna have this much more authentic humanistic media and then we're gonna have this slop. Yeah. Or I won't call, I, I shouldn't call it lop 'cause I think there'll be some really amazing stuff coming outta AI media, right. But like, there'll be AI generated media and there'll be this very humanistic media.

And I think our job as educators is going to be, as you say, to make sure that students don't only eat the, the, the junk food to use your diet metaphor. And it's not only 15 second animated TikTok videos, even if they're educational. That there is some media and some film that that is truly filmic, that is truly thoughtful, that is truly coming from a perspective of trying to uplift the end user and not just get more clicks.

And I think there's something very, very powerful about that statement, especially right now because I agree we are past the point of no return. And we've talked to a lot of AI companies that are doing AI video in various ways, and it is coming so quickly and it's very, it's exciting. You're gonna see a lot of student filmmakers too, which I'm really excited about, but at the same time.

The student filmmakers, if they, if all they've ever seen is TikTok videos, you can imagine what kind of films they're gonna make. This is so interesting. We're sitting here in the context of the Global EdTech Prize, and I wanna make sure that I ask you about that experience because you are coming to that global EdTech prize.

I think from a somewhat different perspective of some of the other finalists we've talked to, which are often about sort of opening up access to existing types of content to new audiences like college preparation material to people who couldn't be, weren't thinking about going to college in the past, you're really looking to sort of uplift the content of what education looks like.

What has that experience been like being in the Global EdTech Prize and what have been some of the benefits of being in this process with all of the other applicants? 

[01:37:59] Serdar Ferit: Well, every interaction I've had with the team at the Global EdTech Prize has, has been very positive. And I must say we we're all super excited at Lyfta to be part of this and, and looking forward to being in Abu Dhabi in November and.

Having seen the other nominees and the other people who've been selected, it's, it's a real honor to be a part of that and have something to share. And, and yeah, I think the world we're all working toward to make the world a little bit better and it's, it's exciting to, to be a part of that. 

[01:38:33] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, agreed.

It's, it's a quite an incredible group of, of educators and education technology advocates and, and aficionados and experts. It's really been amazing to speak to them and to you. This has been such a fascinating conversation. I, I, I am a big AI AI optimist, but I am feeling the wheels turning as you think about what the future looks like with AI video, and it's, I I, I, I really appreciate your take and all the work you've done to do these incredible story worlds at Lyfta A, anybody who has not been to Lyfta a, that's Lyfta a.com and seen what these story worlds look like, how they're used in classrooms, what these documentaries look like, they're truly amazing.

You should absolutely be there, and I, I, I'd love to get in and see some of the films myself. I haven't actually seen the films. I'm only looking from the outside, so yeah. 

[01:39:15] Serdar Ferit: Guest Alex, honestly, whenever you like, just let me know. 

[01:39:17] Alex Sarlin: I will follow up with that very shortly. This has been so interesting, so. Serdar Ferit is a former filmmaker and teacher, and he is using his platform at Lyfta to lead efforts to bring immersive real world stories they call story worlds into classrooms, to inspire curiosity, empathy, compassion, and critical thinking among students everywhere.

Thank you so much for being here with us on EdTech Insiders. 

[01:39:43] Serdar Ferit: Thank you, Alex. 

[01:39:44] Alex Sarlin: We are here with Aniekeme Umoh. She's a global operator and leader in education, access and outcomes, and she's the group COO at uLesson, Nigeria's largest EdTech comprising Miva, the country's first private online university. Miva Open University has enrolled over 12,000 students in just over two years and continues to push innovation in technology and ai.

Welcome to the podcast. 

[01:40:12] Aniekeme Umoh: Thank you Alex. I'm excited to be here today. 

[01:40:15] Alex Sarlin: I'm excited to have you here today. So first off, tell us a little bit for people who don't yet know about uLesson or don't know about what's happening with Miva in the last two years, give us an overview of what you've been doing to transform education in Nigeria.

[01:40:28] Aniekeme Umoh: Absolutely. So the uLesson Group started in 2019 and started as uLesson K 12, where we created educational content for kindergarten through 12th grade, but really primary junior secondary and senior secondary school following the Nigerian curriculum. It's a Nigerian company founded by SIM and has been operational since 2019.

Like I said, we've had over 5 million app downloads on the K 12 side of the business. And the outcomes, you know, just from testimonials, sometimes not even requested by us. We have schools who use the uLesson platform, individuals who use the uLesson platforms and governments who use the Uon platform.

Wow. And the outcomes across the board are just remarkable. And it's a testament to why we've had over 5 million downloads of, of the uLesson app. Now, in 2023, there was a change in regulation in Nigeria that allowed for private operators to establish open distance universities. Mm-hmm. And so Uon decided to take on that opportunity and applied for a license for Miva, uh, Miva Open University.

Nigeria's first private, operational, open distance university. We've been in operation since we were licensed May of 2023. We enrolled our first cohort in September of that year, matriculate 525 students, and today we have just a little shy of 13,000 students enrolled. This is just about two years, so the university has just completely taken off.

We're very excited for not just the numbers that it's doing, but the impact that it's having and the way that it really has stayed true to the reason why our founder and the founding team decided to go after the license and launch this very innovative university in Nigeria. 

[01:42:32] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, let's talk about that decision.

'cause that is a really exciting and very interesting decision to go from the sort of K 12 space application space where people are transforming their educational outcomes from young people going to the higher education space and sort of moving and expanding to a much broader set of different possible students.

Can you tell us a little bit about what learnings from uLesson are being brought and sort of baked into the Miva philosophy? 

[01:42:58] Aniekeme Umoh: Yeah, absolutely. So with uLesson, we did a lot of pre-planning, right? So everything that we do on uLesson is aligned to the Nigerian curriculum. And so we have an internal team that has studied that curriculum and broken down what should be taught in the curriculum into bite-size pieces that is really properly like instructionally designed to that level.

So a person in primary one grade one, the way that they're going to consume content is different from a person in. Secondary school two, which is what? Grade 11. And so that intentionality behind the planning process is something that we've brought into Neva. So I, for example, joined the uLesson group in September, which means the planning of Neva had already happened.

And I came in and I was like, oh my gosh, the team did such an incredible job. We had outlined the eight programs that we're gonna launch with, and just the intentionality of how those programs would launch, what would go into the curriculum, what type of assessment types, how are we going to deliver this asynchronously synchronously?

That level of intentionality fully comes through. And of course, we're a technology company at the end of the day. Yes, it's, it's education, but it's very much like technology as the pipeline, as the foundation for it. With uLesson, we delivered this via app. It was a web app, it is a web app and a mobile app, because Uon still exists.

Eva, we deliver also online. Mm-hmm. Right. So we have a learning management system. We have a student information system. We just launched an examination portal, and so tech is such a big enabler for everything that we do at both U and K 12 and Miva Open University. 

[01:44:50] Alex Sarlin: Clearly the appetite for online learning and distance learning is very high in Nigeria.

You're growing very quickly on, you know, you'd mentioned 5 million downloads of the app and up to almost 13,000 students in just two years for on the higher education side. Tell us a little bit about why you feel like there's a, a good match here for distance education, especially highly intentional, very planned out, very thoughtful, aligned curriculum.

What does it mean for the students, and what kind of transformation do you see when this type of education becomes available to young people in Nigeria? 

[01:45:23] Aniekeme Umoh: Right. Fantastic questions. I mean, there's two questions that you've asked there, right? One is. The why. Why is adoption so high? And then two, what is the impact?

So I'll start with the first one. Why is adoption so high on the tertiary side? There's a massive tertiary deficit in Nigeria. 1.8 to 2 million students write our equivalent of like the SATs, where it's called jam. You need it in order to get into a traditional university in Nigeria. So 1.8 to 2 million people write this exam, but only about 700,000 of those people are able to be placed into a university.

Wow. So you have something like 1.2 million people each year who are perhaps qualified, but there's no space for them in a university. So there's a massive demand already. So that latent demand is part of what has driven this growth that you've seen. So, so far, I mean, think about 1.2 million compounded year on year, right?

Because those same people will try to gain admission again next year, the year after, before they finally give up. So you have the people who have just graduated high school and they're in this bucket, but you also have older folks who never went to university and maybe they've started to advance in their careers and they're in a space where it is helpful for them to have a degree, or now they want, they just want to learn.

They want for their own personal fulfillment. They want to be able to say, yeah, I have a degree. So, so the market is massive, and you're looking at this in the context of Nigeria. There's over 200 million people in Nigeria, and our youth population is growing at such a rapid pace. So the market is really, really large for that, and Nigerians honestly are quite tech savvy.

The penetration, the smartphone penetration is pretty high comparatively on the continent, and there's a lot of appetite for, you know, digital native products. You'll see the success of some of our fintechs here as a testament to that. So all of these factors, you know, on a macro level have driven adoption for eva.

But if you now look at Eva's use case, if you, you see the intentionality again, this nationality of the branding, the support that we give students, the way that we have the curriculum structured, word of mouth kind of drives the growth as well, because you have students who come in and they're like, whoa, this is a Nigerian university.

Oh my gosh. Um, then we're affordably priced. The quality that we give our students for the price point that that they get it at is it's unimaginable. Our students have access to executives and residents. You have people who've been in the industry for years and they get to hear from these folks. We had our metric creation, our second matric creation last year.

The former vice president of the country was the keynote speaker at that matriculation. So there's just so much that we, we pour into this offering that it's evident, you know? So that also drives the growth. 

[01:48:30] Alex Sarlin: That's a lot of great reasons. Right. And the huge latent demand, population growth. Lots of people taking the examination to go to higher education, but not being able to find room.

Yeah. That's really exciting. And it sounds like you're coming into a market of just a very high demand market with so much appetite for higher education. It's really exciting to hear. I'm curious if you have some outcome stories so far. I know you're only a couple of years old, right? But I imagine some of these students who have been trying to get into university year over year, like you mentioned, or are coming back mm-hmm.

Adult, I, I imagine there might be some stories that stand out to you of like, life transformations from students. I'm curious if any, if you wanna share any here. 

[01:49:10] Aniekeme Umoh: Yeah. And, and that answers then the second part of that, your, your initial question that's impact side. I love this question. I feel like you can see that I've like frightened up a little bit.

You can ask any one of my colleagues and they'll probably have some specific story that they'll tell you. It's so inspiring and it is, it's such an important thing about Eva because we haven't graduated our first set of students yet, but you can already see the impact and that is phenomenal. So my personal favorite story.

I was driving into the office one day or being driven into the office one day, and I saw that my colleague had driven himself and I wondered where his driver had gone. Uh, and so I asked him, I said, Hey, you know, where's, let's call him David, just, you know, for I, oh, where's David? Where's your driver? He said, oh, he, he quit.

And I'm like, oh, why? And it turns out he had enrolled into Eva, into our MBA program, and off of having Eva on his resume and what he had started learning, he was able to get a job in it. Like he was able to get a job in a tech company. 

[01:50:18] Alex Sarlin: Wow. 

[01:50:19] Aniekeme Umoh: So, of course, like this is what we want, you know? 

[01:50:22] Alex Sarlin: That's amazing.

[01:50:23] Aniekeme Umoh: Things like that. And, and there are stories after stories that echo a similar sentiment. Yeah. 

[01:50:30] Alex Sarlin: So I have two more questions for you, but we have a limited time, so maybe we can do them rapid fire one and they're, they're not small questions. So maybe we can do rapid fire one is what has it meant to you participating in this first cohort of the Global EdTech Prize?

This is a new competition, global competition, and you are obviously such an incredibly exciting innovation happening that's very new. What has it meant to be part of that process? 

[01:50:53] Aniekeme Umoh: So for us, it's been an incredible opportunity to even reflect internally on our journey. So in the application process with the questions we've had to, you know, work together to refine or even like on earth some aspects of our story that we just haven't spent time on.

In the past because we've been so busy, you know, growing and, and, and, and solving the problem that we're solving. So one's been incredibly reflective for us. This being the first time that this prize is, is being run. Us being the first in Nigerian private online university, there's a match there, you know, so we're excited to participate in the conference and the prize came highly recommended by some people that we trust over our ventures.

And so for us, it's all around. It's been exciting. This is the second interview style thing that I'm doing as part of this process. And even those are also incredibly reflective for us, for me personally. So great experience. 

[01:51:53] Alex Sarlin: Sometimes it's great to take a moment and have to explain your story to the outside world and then you realize all these new things you may not have noticed.

And then the last one, biggest question, the shortest time, but you know, you mentioned how in Nigeria, the FinTech sector, you know, Nigeria is well known for having this mobile first technology that has been especially relevant in, in banking and finance. You're now entering the online university world that the whole country is, but especially Miva is as well.

I'm curious how you see the sort of mobile first approach combining with the AI capabilities that are now available to really accelerate, you know, Miva and I'm sure you there will be followers as well to world class, you know, online education, 

[01:52:35] Aniekeme Umoh: right? Yeah. So I mean, fantastic question and it even hearkens to the first question that you asked of how are you taking what you learned from uLesson and bringing it into the tertiary space, right?

Uon was, was is an app native. Right. Goba isn't app native. Our ambitions are to have a lightweight app application that is, you know, specifically designed for the, the customers here, where the data bandwidth requirements are little lower, you know, offline access is optimized. All of the things that show that you're really thinking about the customer here, that's something that we're already working on.

So in a couple of of months, that will be delivered on the AI side? Yeah, yeah. On the AI side, we recently launched a proprietary AI tool. We called it Miva, interactive Neuro Dialogue Mind. Nice. Um, it essentially is a tool that allows our postgraduate students to case study. AI avatar and have that real time Socratic method interaction with case studies, with real case studies.

And it, it really helps our students with their comprehension with, with communication and conciseness and strategic thinking. 'cause you all, you're having to also just think on the fly and answer the questions that the AI tool is asking you. So that's where we're at in this stage with ai. But we have so much that we have planned that of course, is gonna sit on top of that mobile application layer.

[01:54:06] Alex Sarlin: Makes total sense. It's really exciting. We have to check in again in, you know, next year when you've gone from 12,000 to even more of the students. Yes. And I know what, what you're doing with these incredible technologies. This has been a blast. Really, really interesting work. Fascinating work. Aniekeme Umoh from Miva Open University and uLesson in Nigeria.

Thank you so much for being here with us on EdTech Insiders. 

[01:54:28] Aniekeme Umoh: All right. Thank you so much, Alex. 

[01:54:30] 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 Insider's Newsletter on substack.