Edtech Insiders
Edtech Insiders
Inside CoGuide: Built by 11-Year-Old and 19-Year-Old Innovators Transforming Classrooms with AI
Janak Panchal and Rishan Dutia are cofounders of CoGuide, an AI classroom assistant that plans lessons and runs live discussions in 30+ languages. Janak, a former assistant guide with 250+ socratic discussions sessions within the Acton Academy Network, built the first MVP. Rishan leads engineering and builds the Vision OS for hand-raising and participation analytics.
š” 5 Things Youāll Learn in This Episode:
- How a teacherpreneur and a student founder teamed up to build CoGuide
- Why AI facilitation goes beyond lesson planning to live classroom discussions
- How Vision OS tracks participation and supports teachers with actionable data
- The balance between teacher augmentation and student privacy
- Where Janak and Rishan see AI in classrooms heading in the next three years
āØ Episode Highlights:
[00:02:12] Janak Panchal on turning classroom struggles into CoGuideās first MVP
[00:04:18] Rishan Dutia on becoming one of the youngest edtech founders at 12
[00:05:55] How CoGuide evolved into Vision OS with live classroom facilitation
[00:09:51] Janak explains āstandby modeā and real-time analytics for teachers
[00:11:17] Rishan on building privacy-first AI that works in 30+ languages
[00:16:03] Why CoGuide focuses on collaboration, not one-on-one AI tutoring
[00:27:39] Janak shares how CoGuide could reduce teacher burnout
[00:29:04] Rishan on augmenting, not automating, the teacherās role
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[00:00:00] Rishan Dutia: We wanna make AI in a more. Human way, right? Like teachers might be robotic and they might be burnt out, but AI is constantly going over the edge. It is trying to make the discussion engaging, and it just feels more natural in a way, even though. It is ai.
[00:00:25] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry from funding rounds to impact to ai developments across early childhood, K 12 higher ed and work. You'll find it all here at EdTech. Insiders. Remember to subscribe to the pod, check out our newsletter, and also our event calendar.
And to go deeper, check out EdTech Insiders Plus where you can get premium content access to our WhatsApp channel, early access to events and back channel insights from Alex and Ben. Hope you enjoyed today's pod.
We are here with a really exciting. Very, very special episode of EdTech Insiders. We're here with two co-founders, Janak Panchal and Rishan Dutia. They're co-founders of CoGuide, which is an AI classroom assistant that plans lessons and runs live discussions in classrooms in over. 30 languages. He can also recognize when students are raising their hands.
Janak is a former assistant guide with over 250 Socratic discussions run through the Acton Academy network, and he built the first MVP that his co-founder Rishan leads engineering and builds the Vision operating System, the Vision os, which recognizes hand raising and participation analytics. Welcome to EdTech Insiders, Janak Panchal and Rishan Dutia.
[00:01:48] Janak Ajay Panchal: Thank you so much for having us.
[00:01:50] Rishan Dutia: Yeah, thanks. Nice to meet you.
[00:01:52] Alex Sarlin: Absolutely. It's great to have you both on. So first off, Janak, let me start with you. You started CoGuide after classroom experiences. You were doing a lot of Socratic discussions and realizing that discussion was a really ripe opportunity for AI intervention and AI facilitation.
How did your work in the classroom shape your idea for CoGuide?
[00:02:12] Janak Ajay Panchal: Yeah, that's a great question Alex. So I went to a unique school. I went to a an Acton Academy and they gave me the opportunity to start becoming an assistant teacher, right? An assistant guide where I got to build curricula. I got to facilitate it, lead it, and then really collect feedback on how I personally was doing.
And during that time, I realized the struggles and, you know, the highs and lows of being a teacher and an educator in the American school system. I realized, hey. People are being overworked. There's multiple inefficiencies, and how can I start improving that? I personally don't come from a world renowned tech background or anything, so I just sat with the no-code tools that just came out and the first versions of chat GPT right back in 20 22, 20 23, and tinkering around.
I built the first MVP. I personally used it for a few months building just basic discussions because that was something that primarily took my role. So using that, I started selling it to other actins, got some great feedback, and then that's when Rishan and I crossed paths, and then we started building multiple other products and now building our flagship product, CoGuide Smart Classroom.
[00:03:29] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, there's a lot of things it's worth pointing out in that, first off, you're a teacherpreneur. You're somebody who is noticing real problems in the classroom and then being able to use no-code tools to get your idea from idea to actual inception to product, to something you actually could sell and scale in other schools.
That is a pattern we have begun to see in this AI era, and it's really exciting because you get to see. Educators turning their ideas into reality and then mm-hmm. Rishan, you are an incredible example of a different, really interesting trend. You are 12 years old. You started CoGuide when you were 11 years old in sixth grade, and you are the CTO of CoGuide.
You're one of the youngest, not one of you are by far the youngest EdTech founder we've spoken to. Tell us about your experience becoming a founder of an EdTech company in elementary school.
[00:04:18] Rishan Dutia: Yeah, so Jenna came to me with this awesome idea, CoGuide, and at first I was skeptical, right? I was like, he is this gonna work out?
And more, I was like, can I do it right? So we went out for dinner and then he explained to me everything what CoGuide was, and slowly it was like I got inspired and I really thought there's a huge market for this. Teachers are really struggling. So that same day we were up till. I think 5:00 AM in the morning, and we went out with basic MVP and we created the code guide that we have today.
Together, we created a whole new platform. He had come to me with that no code, MVP he was talking about, and then we had turned it into something bigger and that has evolved into our current Vision OS platform.
[00:05:10] Alex Sarlin: It's incredible. You're both mentioning that teachers are struggling, they don't have enough time, and CoGuide is saving teachers up to 10 hours a week in lesson planning and making sense of all facilitation.
Do and facilitation, but it also does the facilitation. This is what I really wanna ask you about, because this is a very unusual functionality for an AI product right now. CoGuide Smart Classroom, you just mentioned Rishan. Can actually facilitate a class discussion. It can recognize when students are raising their hand.
It can call on them, it can respond to them. It can track who's participating. That is not something we've seen a lot of in the AI era yet. Janak, let's start with you. As you move from this prototype to something teachers actually use, how did you put together the different pieces, the different product features, the lesson planning and the facilitation?
[00:05:55] Janak Ajay Panchal: I mean, first of all, that's a great question. Very loaded question. I think it all starts with, we had a headstart and that headstart was, Rishan is student facing, and I came in with a teacher facing that's true perception, and that was fantastic because then we had primary resources of exactly what teachers and students will respond to, and that kind of propelled us for that reason.
We were able to go in with. Pretty much an exact feature suite initially that people would find value and extract value from. So, building that we started off with basic Socratic text generators in terms of within a couple prompts, you could get a fully implementable discussion. Or activity, a challenge, an assignment, whatever it may be.
Or you just speak back and forth with CoGuide until you find something that you find that's of value. Right? So we started off with something very simple, very basic. That would definitely help teachers ideate. Post that whilst we were selling to different acting academies and just different schools trying to get feedback, which is extremely valuable to any startup.
We met Gia Hong, he's the Acting Academy founder of Kuala Lumpur, and he reached out to us and he was like, look, I love what you're doing, but what you're doing is good for today. But if you guys wanna future proof yourselves and build the technology for tomorrow and present it today, you guys need to start now.
And that's. One of the biggest pivots that took CoGuide by Storm, and it's where he presented us with the Smart Classroom technology idea. And Rishan and I, I still remember, we looked at each other after that meeting and we're like, this is the most sci-fi thing. How are we gonna build an entire platform that facilitates tracks and pretty much mimics a teacher?
And we gave ourselves two weeks and we did an intensive two week sprint. And by the end of it we were like, this has legs and this is something we should run with. And now we're in front of you talking to you, Alex, with something very cool.
[00:07:58] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. Rishan, tell us how it works. What is the Smart Classroom and vision os and what is the experience like in a classroom?
[00:08:05] Rishan Dutia: Well, CoGuide Vision Os is completely automated. So what the teacher would do is they would input a topic, for example, maybe it's science class, and they're learning about DNA and RNA. So the teacher would first introduce, what is DNA and RNA? Ask a question. A student can just raise a hand like he would in a normal classroom.
The AI teacher will call on them. He can speak, and the AI teacher will understand his response and just respond right back. It works exactly like a real teacher.
[00:08:36] Janak Ajay Panchal: And just to build on that, we don't want any teachers or anybody to feel that they're being replaced. We're not here to replace any teachers.
We mimic teachers. We don't replace teachers. Help them. So one of the biggest features that we have that we're very proud of is our hybrid mode, or also known as standby mode, which is basically, it will be a fly on the wall, but a very intelligent fly. It will give you real-time analytics. It'll give you a cognitive overload score.
It basic, basically will analyze the response. Based, uh, from the students, based on the teacher's question and be like, Hey, the student has maybe a 75% understanding based on their response to your associated question. For that reason, we recommend X, Y, z supplemental questions and supplemental instruction, so then that student can ace the next test.
It'll give the test readiness score class wide. It'll give a participation heat sink map, which is like, Hey, the last row participates 25% less than the third row, and then that participates 10% less than the first row. So all this data in the classroom that. Clearly it's just going to waste and not being used wisely by the teacher.
And moreover, the administration, we're providing that on a silver platter.
[00:09:51] Alex Sarlin: It's really amazing. And I mean, it's basically a virtual teaching assistant that can, as you mentioned, stand in standby mode or in, in sort of a hybrid mode, working with the teacher and collecting data about what's happening in the classroom and supporting teachers to make decisions.
It can also actually step in and facilitate, I'm sure, either a whole class or a small group discussion. A small batch batch, yeah. Yes. And Rishan tell us how can it do that while maintaining the privacy that we come to expect in a classroom. We just had a survey just this week that said parents are beginning to be concerned about people putting student data into AI assistance and AI teaching tools.
But you've thought a lot about that.
[00:10:28] Rishan Dutia: Yeah, so none of the data that the actual camera feed or anything goes to the ai. All the AI can see are geometric shapes in the classroom with a name on top of them. It cannot see faces, hands, clothing, anything. It can only see. Like a triangle to represent a student, right?
So we take privacy very seriously. The camera feed comes in, we filter it, and we only give what's absolutely necessary for the AI to see. The AI doesn't actually know about anybody. Identities or any of their information,
[00:11:03] Alex Sarlin: and it works in 30 languages. So you could potentially have a classroom where people are speaking a bilingual classroom or even a classroom where everybody is speaking different languages, and the AI could still be responding in real time and understanding and even responding.
Is that right?
[00:11:17] Rishan Dutia: Yep. So our AI has been trained to speak in over 30 languages flawlessly to help classrooms that have a high diversity in languages.
[00:11:29] Alex Sarlin: Exactly. I mean, it really, as you say, janak, it really is like a sci-fi vision of how classrooms might work. I'm envisioning it. It's really, I mean, it's very exciting.
It's intense, it's really exciting. You obviously are really devoted to this discussion methodology, the Socratic method, which is really exciting and there's lots of evidence that that type of teaching has a lot of positive effects. How do you expect to. As the tool rolls out to more and more classrooms, what type of learning outcomes are you looking for in terms of getting students engaged or in terms of making the data actionable and seeing changes in teacher behavior?
What do you hope to accomplish in terms of learning outcomes in classrooms with CoGuide? That's a great
[00:12:05] Janak Ajay Panchal: question. I think touching back and piecing your question together, the first part, right? We initially started with the Socratic methodologies, but we realized that the Socratic methodologies are not.
100% been, have been implemented in the traditional school systems yet, right. So once again, building the future of education, but also meeting the education standards where they're at currently is very important, at least on our roadmap. So first we would ease in with the traditional learning methodologies.
Baking that in, in terms of whether it's an assignment being presented or a discussion being presented or a lecture right? Because we're not here to just completely change the methodologies overnight. Mm-hmm. That we understand that the Department of Education moves very slowly, and we don't want to take anybody by storm, wanna be as frictionless as possible.
And speaking about frictionless, that's where the standby mode. Comes in and is very important because we don't expect, and we can't expect students to all of a sudden be receptive and be engaged with an AI teacher overnight. That's why the standby mode for maybe six months, maybe a year, depending on the school and their dynamism, willing to adopt new technology.
So during that standby mode, I already spoke about all of the. Analytics that the teacher receives on the backend, and that's data that they can then chat with, they can then interact with, and it creates an action plan of how they can be a better teacher and how they can improve student engagement. So once again, we're not replacing the teacher.
We're empowering them.
[00:13:42] Alex Sarlin: Absolutely. And Rishan, when Janak mentions that you found a sort of product market fit early because you came from different perspectives, you bring a sort of student facing perspective, you're currently a student and he is bringing a teacher facing perspective because he has been a teacher.
I'm curious what that looks like in practice for you when you're. The CTO, you're building product features. You're building out your roadmap and thinking of how to implement AI in classrooms. What happens when you sort of put on your student hat and say, oh, what kind of AI interactions would I like to see as a student in the classroom that would actually enhance my learning experience or my engagement?
[00:14:16] Rishan Dutia: Yeah, so whenever we start building new features. I always like to think that CoGuide is in my classroom, and if I wanted to, what could hit like just the right spot as a feature that would just push me over the tip of the iceberg. So stuff like having an avatar. So to make it feel as a more human interaction, a face to the voice, and also inputting interests of students could help pinpoint exactly what questions are gonna hook them more than others.
So that's definitely one of the things we do. We also go to classrooms and test it out there, and then ask those students exactly what would they like to see in our platform, and we just incorporate that.
[00:15:04] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, and this is a question for both of you, but Rishan, let me stay with you at first. One of the things that we're so exciting about at EdTech Insiders when we see different use cases for AI in education is I think we've early on started to see a lot of the same type of use cases come up where it's like an AI tutor where students can talk to a computer and learn from the computer in a guided learning mode from Google or in a tutoring sort of methodology, or ways that AI tools can create content or create images.
Or lesson plans for teachers, and those are all really powerful, but they're also a little bit isolating. They're basically a person and a computer going back and forth. What's really interesting about what you're doing with CoGuide is it doesn't feel like that at all. It's really AI working in a very social collaborative way with the teacher and the students in a classroom.
It could even make students talk to each other. It could facilitate conversations or raise the level of discussion. I'd love to hear you talk about. That vision of AI versus what we often see with a sort of one-on-one model.
[00:16:03] Rishan Dutia: Yeah. So we wanna make AI in a more human way, right? Like teachers might be robotic and they might be burnt out, but AI is constantly.
Going over the edge, it is trying to make the discussion engaging. Mm-hmm. And it just feels more natural in a way, even though it is ai. Right. And yet again, not trying to replace teachers. It's really, there's an element of it getting you Mm. In a way it, knowing you and helping you learn through that is very powerful.
[00:16:40] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, and I think that's one of the ironies we're already seeing with ai. It's not a true human intelligence, but sometimes it feels like it actually gets you or knows you or it's a safe companion to talk to. Even maybe safer than humans, whether any kind of human in certain cases. So it's an interesting moment we're starting to see.
And Janak, same question for you. I mean, how do you envision the future of AI being social and collaborative rather than a little bit one-on-one between a human and a computer?
[00:17:06] Janak Ajay Panchal: Yeah, that's a fantastic question and I wanted to jump in, but I like refrain myself when Rishan was talking, for example, here in Texas.
Mm-hmm. That individualism is being from a state level, being cracked down upon, right. No more personal devices, no more Bluetooth headphones. These things are now banned, at least in Texas public schools, and that's a rippling effect. In charter and private. So we're seeing a very different tidal wave in terms of, on one hand you have all this AI influence and all this new technology that's coming in, and on the other hand you have all this technology being redacted from the classroom, right?
So that's why. Ho Guide is positioned very uniquely because we're here to stimulate and facilitate further sociable standards and kind of being an incubator for that in the classroom. Instead of everyone just being on their personal device and chatting with an AI bot. Now you're chatting with an entire classroom facilitated by an AI agent, right?
An AI educator. So in that sense, it's very unique and the fact that. A teacher and most curricula is outdated. Realistically, the minute it's published, it's outdated because news is new every day, something's changing and AI can adapt to that change and bring those live current events into the classroom at a very reasonable and easy to understand level.
[00:18:36] Alex Sarlin: Absolutely. And some of the AI functionality could really be complimentary in a social way to what's happening in a classroom. And it can say, you know, this person said this and that person said that. So person A said this, person B said that, so person C, how would you put these two things together? It can, it can have a, you know, eternal memory.
It can synthesize with news and other data. I guess this is my next question, Rashaan. Lemme pass this back to you, but I'd love to hear both of you talk about this. You've mentioned several times how you don't. Expect or want CoGuide to replace teachers. I don't think anybody wants that. But you have this really interesting team teaching approach that you know it, it's in a classroom, being an assistant CoGuide is in the classroom as an assistant, and then you have a teacher.
You're expanding the capabilities and the capacity of what the teacher can do. How do you envision the relationship between the teacher and CoGuide to evolve as you continue to expand the platform and the features?
[00:19:28] Rishan Dutia: Yeah, I think the teacher and coed relationship is very important. We want the teacher to feel welcome and coed is like their best friend, that they can get information, easy feedback, and a lot of.
Data that helps them improve and helps them become a better version of themselves.
[00:19:51] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, like having, uh, just the most reliable teaching assistant who knows when to jump in, when it's needed, knows when to stand back when it's not needed, can give you data at the end of the day and say, like you mentioned, you know, nobody spoke from the third row today.
Maybe we should do something tomorrow to shuffle things up or do a group activity with them, just like actionable data support, but never overbearing. Yeah. And then Jan, let me turn it around. What do you envision the relationship between CoGuide and the students to be in this type of classroom? How would you want the students to view CoGuide?
You know, Rishan mentioned that maybe they would have an avatar, maybe they'd have a little, something of a character to it or would know student's interests. How would, when the student goes home and tells their parent what happened in school today, how should they describe CoGuide's contributions?
That's a
[00:20:33] Janak Ajay Panchal: great question, and I'm glad you said speculative because once again, we don't feel comfortable in terms of just throwing it out in front of students and then expecting them to react in an ideal manner. Right. One-to-one discussion, them just having no problem adjusting from a human to an ai.
Right. And that's where we kind of, Rishan talked about the avatar, making it personable, remembering your name right. Just your name is. A huge identification factor and it's very personal to people, right? So that immediately, and you know, there's teachers who forget people's names. I've been in classrooms where the teacher's forgotten my name.
It's maybe my third or fourth day, and there's like multiple social disconnects. But that's where we can bridge the gap. Making those connections, allowing CoGuide to use that data. To improve the classroom culture, ask more pointed questions, and I feel like at the end of the day, if the student feels stimulated, then they will have a much more positive reaction to speaking and interacting with CoGuide Smart Classrooms.
[00:21:38] Alex Sarlin: Makes sense. And then the last piece of this sort of relationship dynamic in the classroom that I'd love to ask about is, you know, in Socratic classrooms or in classrooms that are really discussion oriented, which is a lot of the pedagogy that you're pursuing with CoGuide, the students are really learning from each other.
That's a huge part of what, what is happening there. And I'd love to hear what your vision is and you know. In a classroom that uses CoGuide, how do you want the students to view each other? How might CoGuide, improve or change the relationship between students and elevate the level of discussion and improve the peer teaching approach?
[00:22:12] Janak Ajay Panchal: That's a great question, and that's actually the primary number of demo runs and beta testing that we've done has been in Socratic modules and then also of course in traditional modules and settings as well. But what we've realized is. AI is very good at remembering students' answers.
[00:22:32] Alex Sarlin: Yep.
[00:22:32] Janak Ajay Panchal: And formulating them into additional questions that it can immediately ask other students.
Right. For example, we were at the Humanist Academy. We were running a beta run, and someone asked a question about. So it's better Michael Jordan or LeBron James, and then it actually reprimanded them because the discussion was about the trolley cart problem, but then it remembered what they previously had spoken about and their previous answer to saying, Hey, I would move the train track the other way because then I wouldn't feel as bad if only one person died versus five.
And then I would take the hit of my social conscience, right? It formatted that, and then asked another person saying, do you agree? With Lyle on his answer, or do you disagree because you don't want that to be on your social conscience? That's something that most teachers aren't trained on, and we can't blame them for not being trained in that method.
But the beauty of CoGuide is that you can train it, you can customize it to however you want it to do.
[00:23:31] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, I thought you were gonna say that. It asked them if which one the trolley should hit Michael Jordan, or
[00:23:39] Janak Ajay Panchal: it may be, we could probably conjure up a discussion like that as well.
[00:23:44] Alex Sarlin: Exactly, right. Put all the pieces together, but that's really interesting.
Yeah. I mean, being able to keep students on topic to be able to pull previous answers and reformulate them as questions to keep the discussion moving. It's a very particular type of interaction, and it's one that I think a AI can do incredibly well at because it's so good at remembering and putting all the pieces.
Together. Rishan, same question for you. In a classroom that CoGuide is facilitating, how do you want students to react to each other and learn from one another
[00:24:10] Rishan Dutia: in terms of students learning from each other? With the power of CoGuide, what we wanna do is we want to add like sort of inspiration from peers trying to get to know.
Based on what their answers are. Even get to know a person. Mm. Right. It's very effective. And also just overall treating other people as your equals and
[00:24:37] Alex Sarlin: no, it, it's very interesting. I mean, I think there is something that very exciting about a classroom discussion where you're talking about something like the trolley card problem or some academic subject of some kind, but you actually underneath it all, you're learning about.
How people think, what they believe, what they care about, and what matters. Their opinions. Yeah, their true opinions. And I think that that idea of AI being able to sort of pull together threads and help people be inspired by each other's answers or even help you learn through vicarious experience. Right?
I mean, if one student asks something. That is off topic or something that is not the most brilliant insight in the world, and the AI is kind and understanding and makes sense of it and helps elevate the discussion because of that student's comment, I imagine other students would say, oh, this is actually a safe space to learn.
You know, it's this place where I can, I can reveal my opinions, I can speak freely and I don't have to be afraid that I'm gonna be humiliated, which is a, a big problem in a lot of schools. I think that would be a really powerful output for a tool like CoGuide. Let's look ahead to the future. You are really pushing the boundaries, which I love about how AI is used in the classroom.
This vision os the ability to call on students, to respond to students, to elevate a class discussion, to generate class discussions. Janak, let me start with you here. If you put on your future hats three years down the road, we know that AI moves very quickly. What do you envision CoGuide looking like?
Where does your roadmap take you that can sort of make this the reality of what AI looks like in the classrooms?
[00:26:00] Janak Ajay Panchal: That's a great question because we were just thinking about this yesterday and I think it's something that we look at all the time. 'cause we, you know, we have to readjust our roadmap depending on a multitude of factors.
But ideally, one thing is we're an impact driven company. How can we get our technology in as many classrooms in front of as many students and supporting as many teachers as possible as soon as possible. And you said three years? In three years, I would love to be in a hundred districts. At a minimum, if not more, and collecting that data in a way that is secure, private, and student friendly and supportive to the teachers.
Not just that. If we can boost engagement scores by analyzing that data, saying, Hey, post CoGuide your engagement scores classroom wide, because of the tailored analytics and you know, making a game plan on how to improve. You guys have been up 50%. Or you know, a hundred percent participation in the third row has been fantastic because teachers don't know who they're going to be teaching and where each student is going to end up in 10 years, but they can be a part of that student's journey, their hero's journey, and maybe.
Set their trajectory to be very different. And right now teachers are overworked. They work an average of 53 hours a week. The average teacher is 43 and 60% of them don't like what they do. 26% of them wanna leave. They have a 26% year over year turnover rate. It's not a good place to be if we can by, you know, any percentage improve that for the educator.
That's what our mission is.
[00:27:39] Alex Sarlin: I really appreciate you bringing up some of the statistics about how difficult a job it is to be an educator right now, and how unhappy many educators are. I'm not trying to bring everybody down, but because Yeah, I think sometimes people sort of defend the status quo, especially when it comes to, mm-hmm.
Educators, but educators themselves are very, very aware of the burnout issue and the problems and how stressful and difficult it is to They're yearning
[00:28:02] Janak Ajay Panchal: for assistance.
[00:28:03] Alex Sarlin: Exactly. They're well put. They're yearning for assistance. So I think it's important to bring that up, and that's a really exciting vision.
And Rishan, let me pass you the same question put on your futurist hat. Three years from now, what changes do you hope that, uh, CoGuide can help manifest in the classroom? In
[00:28:17] Rishan Dutia: terms of CoGuide and the classroom, I think that in three years I really wanna foster a good connection between CoGuide and the teachers.
So I don't really want the teachers looking at it like we're coming here to replace them. I really want to bring about that change, that we're trying to help them and we're trying to help them prove themselves. We're not automating. Them we're augmenting them, like we're sort of assisting them. Right. So I really wanted, so that students and teachers feel comfortable with CoGuide being in their classrooms and just the fact that we're making a real difference.
Right. And it's not just another AI tool that people are scared of and are afraid of. Right.
[00:29:04] Alex Sarlin: I think you're on a really good track for that. I love that you brought up the automation versus augmentation. Framework. This is something Erin Brisen from MIT has been writing about. It's something that the Anthropic report on education really focused on how different tasks are augmentative or automotive, and it feels like, you know, augmenting is exactly the goal of what you're doing with CoGuide, which is really amazing.
Augmenting the classroom experience, augmenting discussions, augmenting the teacher's sense of support and the student's sense of engagement. It's really exciting. And almost when I hear both of you talk about it, I think of almost like the relationship between a teacher and their laptop, right? It's like, you know, teachers aren't afraid their laptop is gonna replace them, and students are only gonna wanna work and learn online.
We know that that hasn't really worked out that way. Instead, the teacher sees a laptop as a totally reliable. Very functional, useful assistant, you know, tool that can help. It doesn't talk to them, it certainly doesn't talk in 30 languages, but it assists them in getting their daily work done and saves them a lot of time.
And I think, you know, what you're doing with CoGuide feels like a big augmentation to that. Well, this has been a fascinating discussion and I think you know, your team here, a teacherpreneur, somebody coming outta the classroom and a student entrepreneur. A student founder, who knows exactly what it's like and what they wanna see for AI in the classroom.
Is an incredibly inspiring model for what the future of AI ed tech companies can and should look like. It's just, I, I'm sure people listening to this are saying, wow, how cool is this about a, a teacher and a student working together to create an ed tech company? I find it incredible, and I think you, what you're doing is also happens to be really pushing the boundaries of where AI education will go.
So my last question here is just total, let's put on your big futurist hat. When you look around at the AI and education landscape right now. What is something that you feel like you are seeing from your perspective? You mentioned the device bands is an interesting one, Janak, you know, that you feel like you're seeing that is going to be impactful in the future years.
Something that is sort of an emerging trend, Janak, uh, I'm curious what you think of that question.
[00:31:04] Janak Ajay Panchal: That's a great question and I think the emerging trend right now is. Using AI to crack down on students in not an education manner, but in terms of a more constrictive manner in terms of test proctoring.
Let's implement AI so we can track their eyes, track their face. Track their keystrokes, so then we can catch if they're cheating or catch them if they're doing something out of line, right? Reprimanding them instead of inspiring them or reprimanding them. So I feel like in multiple settings, at least for students, it's going in a more not as inspiring method, but at the same time, there's lots of one-to-one tools out there for educators and students.
Kind of going back to your individualism, but they are still very beneficial. You know, for example, con Mingo, right? That is an on-prem, on device personal tutor that knows each student very well. I'm not getting paid by Con Academy or anything for bringing them up, but I just saw their 60 minute interview and I was like, oh, that's very cool.
It's not CoGuide, but in a different sense. It is very interesting because it's supporting each and every student, but there's significantly more student facing AI tools and technologies than educator facing tools and technologies. That's probably. In a nutshell, what is going on right now, in my
[00:32:30] Alex Sarlin: opinion?
Yeah. They're very different. The student facing tools and the educator facing tools are very different. Mm-hmm. And I think that surveillance, that AI to catch students is an interesting trend that it's, it's worrying to me and it doesn't feel like the, the best use of ai. Rishan, how about you? You put on that big futurist ta.
Where do you think things are going and what are you seeing now that might have an impact in the future?
[00:32:48] Rishan Dutia: Yeah, to mostly just build onto the next point. I think really how AI is gonna help is to create adaptive systems for every user, for example, or for every student and user. For example, like tests that are based on your interest grammar, that is based on books you read, stuff like that.
Mm-hmm. It's really gonna be. Personalized AI and help like engage the learner more now. And right now I think the biggest trend is also AI co-pilots for teachers such as lesson planners, just things that assist you. Like teacher sidekicks and definitely student AI tailored pathways. Mm-hmm. Is definitely what I, where I see the future of AI is,
[00:33:37] Alex Sarlin: we talk a lot on this podcast about personalization, customization, differentiation, individualization, you know, pick your term about how, like you say, about how AI can adapt interests or the grammar or the way it talks to students based on their, you know, what they care about or what their learning goals are.
And I think. We talk about it a lot, but we're still starting to see what it actually will look like. I think we all can envision, you know, I hear lots of examples. Oh, if the student likes soccer, it can talk about soccer. If the student likes Harry Potter, it can use Harry Potter metaphors. But those are just scratching the surface.
I feel like there's so much. When you think about what a, a great teacher or tutor does to when they know what their students love, it can go very deep and AI has infinite memory. It can go really deep. So I just think we need more examples of it. I'm looking forward to seeing some from CoGuide and other tools.
Thank you both so much. This has been a fascinating interview. We are talking to Janak Panchal and Rishan Dutia. They're the co-founders of CoGuide an AI classroom assistant that plans lessons. Then discussions and runs, live discussions in over 30 languages can also recognize when students are raising their hands, call on them, analyze data, and give teachers all sorts of insights into the classroom.
Thank you both so much for being here with us on EdTech Insiders.
[00:34:49] Janak Ajay Panchal: Thank you so much, Alex.
[00:34:50] Rishan Dutia: Thank you.
[00:34:51] 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. Subscribe to the Free EdTech Insiders Newsletter on.
