Why Edtech Needs Less Hype and More Honesty with Tony Wan & Betsy Corcoran

Tony Wan is Head of Platform at Reach Capital and co-founder and former managing editor of EdSurge. Betsy Corcoran is a writer, speaker, serial entrepreneur, and co-founder of EdSurge who explores AI and learning through her work and podcast, Future Fluent.

💡 5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode:

1. How EdSurge helped shape the early edtech ecosystem.
2. Why edtech needs more honest and nuanced storytelling.
3. What the tech backlash gets right and where it misses the bigger picture.
4. Why teacher-turned-founders and school leaders are critical voices in edtech.
5. How AI can support education without becoming the focus itself.

✨ Episode Highlights:
[00:03:48] The origins of EdSurge and the need for an edtech “water cooler.”
[00:13:49] Why teacher-turned-founders deserve a bigger voice in the tech backlash.
[00:18:04] Starting with the “why” instead of treating technology as the solution.
[00:23:58] Tony on the legitimate concerns around screen time and edtech.
[00:26:23] Betsy on why edtech needs more honesty about what doesn’t work.
[00:34:01] Why humility and learning from failure matter in edtech.
[00:35:50] Tony on where AI can genuinely add value in education.
[00:47:51] Betsy on the questions edtech should keep asking: Why, when, and when not to use technology.

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🎉 Presenting Sponsor/s:

Innovation in preK to gray learning is powered by exceptional people. For over 15 years, EdTech companies of all sizes and stages have trusted HireEducation to find the talent that drives impact. When specific skills and experiences are mission-critical, HireEducation is a partner that delivers. Offering permanent, fractional, and executive recruitment, HireEducation knows the go-to-market talent you need. Learn more at HireEdu.com.

This season of Edtech Insiders is brought to you by Cooley LLP. Cooley is the go-to law firm for education and edtech innovators, offering industry-informed counsel across the 'pre-K to gray' spectrum. With a multidisciplinary approach and a powerful edtech ecosystem, Cooley helps shape the future of education.

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Transcript

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[00:00:00] Alex Sarlin: Innovation in pre-K to grade learning is powered by exceptional people. For over 15 years, edtech companies of all sizes and stages have trusted Higher Education to find the talent that drives impact. When specific skills and experiences are mission-critical, Higher Education is a partner that delivers.

Offering permanent, fractional, and executive recruitment, Higher Education knows the go-to-market talent you need. Learn more at hireedu.com. That's H-I-R-E-E-D-U.com. 

[00:00:34] Tony Wan: Look, when I read the headlines around the tech backlash, I think, I think the concerns that overlap with some of the research on the impact of screen time on how we develop as children is valid, right?

I think that as we learn more and more about some of the mechanisms for which software is designed to engage kids or people in general, right? You know, we often like to say edtech borrows, right, from consumer tech.

[00:01:07] 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. 

[00:01:23] Ben Kornell: 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.

[00:01:46] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to Edtech Insiders. We have a couple of edtech legends, true, true, true legends with us today. The founder of Edsurge and the former managing editor of Edsurge, Tony Wan, you may know now from his work at Reach Capital. I'll give their formal bios, and we'll jump right in, but these are the most-- some of the most informed people about the edtech space in the world.

First off, Tony Wan, head of platform at Reach Capital, an early-stage investor in learning, health, and work. He's co-founder and former managing editor of Edsurge, where he covered edtech. Uh, he previously built a math game, he worked in nonprofit publishing, and he taught English in rural Inner Mongolia.

Very interesting. Betsy Corcoran is a writer, speaker, and serial entrepreneur. She co-hosts the podcast Future Fluent with Dr. Jeremy Roschelle. I had the pleasure of being on that podcast. What a blast. Or I guess I, I had the two of you on edtech Insider. That's what it was. Uh, amazing, amazing. Exploring AI and learning, and she chairs the board of Design Tech High School.

She also advises edtech organizations, including Playlab AI, Playlab, and she previously co-founded Edsurge. Tony Wan and Betsy Corcoran, welcome to Edtech Insiders. 

[00:02:55] Betsy Corcoran: Thanks, Alex. It's really great to be here with you. 

[00:02:57] Tony Wan: Good to see you, Alex. Always nice to hang out with a blast from the past. 

[00:03:01] Alex Sarlin: Oh, it's 

[00:03:02] Tony Wan: great. The OG.

The OG in 

[00:03:03] Betsy Corcoran: my book. And good to see you, Tony. I love seeing you too. 

[00:03:05] Tony Wan: Yes, back in a, back in a square box. 

[00:03:10] Betsy Corcoran: There we go. Feels just like COVID. Mm-mm. 

[00:03:12] Tony Wan: Ah, exactly. 

[00:03:12] Alex Sarlin: Exactly. We have all known each other for many years. I- it's no secret that Edsurge was the direct inspiration for everything we do at Edtech Insiders.

I've, I've, I've said it 100 times on this show. I feel like the two of you truly created an entire new, new ecosystem of journalism covering the education technology industry, especially at a time when it was just sort of being defined. It was, uh, really blowing up as an industry. So, uh, Betsy, let me start with you.

Tell us a little bit about what the world was like when Edsurge launched, and what sort of transitional periods we were going through that, that led you to found it, that led both of you to found it. 

[00:03:48] Betsy Corcoran: Thanks. Yeah, Alex, and, uh, great work. I mean, we're really pleased to see everything that you guys do with Edtech Insiders, and so I-- it's a huge compliment to say that, uh, Edsurge was an inspiration for you.

You know, we got Edsurge started back around 2010, 2011, and what we saw at the time was really the creation of a new industry. I'd covered a lot of new industries for many publications, uh, the Washington Post, and Forbes, and so forth. And what was happening in 2010 were the-- a couple of elements were coming together.

Young entrepreneurs really excited about using technology to support learning. A few funders coming in and dropping sort of a little bit of, of, of money, kind of like fish food. And it seemed to me that the third thing that had to happen to make an industry really coalesce was there needed to be a water cooler.

There needed to be a place where the entrepreneurs could learn about their business, learn about their customers, very important there, learn about each other. And where the potential customers, educators, could have a voice and could learn about the developments that are going on. And so I'd seen that happen in a many, many other industries, even in the PC industry.

In the early days of the PC industry, Esther Dyson had a very famous newsletter. And so that was the initial idea. Tony was the first person to join Edsurge on a full-time basis, or part-time basis originally. And Tony, what did you, what do you remember seeing when you, when you jumped into it? 'Cause you, I think you read the very first newsletter and- 

[00:05:30] Tony Wan: I first learned about Edsurge, uh, from being at one of these meetups where we would used to gather in, in San Francisco in- these co-working spaces.

I remember it was you and Alan Louie, and I think may, uh, a couple of others whose names I'm blanking on, and you were in- interviewing Alan Louie at, at the time about what would become, uh, you know, one of the first edtech accelerators in matching K-12. And so at the time, I was building a math game with a couple of people who would actually later join Edsurge.

So yeah- 

[00:06:01] Betsy Corcoran: Go Lucky Bird. 

[00:06:02] Tony Wan: Acquihire us. Um, and so, I mean, I think in those days there was a, a, a big yearning and, and hunger to just learn more about the, the industry as, you know, young technologists, you know, came on the scene to build tools that are maybe based on their lived experiences and have the, the new software and computing power to build, you know, new software and also distribute that to schools to learn a little bit more about, like, what the business of selling to schools and all the stakeholders, uh, and what that, like, what that meant, you know, and understood the education market a little bit more.

And so what Edsurge started as at that, at, at that time was a really incredible resource that opened up, that surfaced a lot of these opportunities for a lot of young entrepreneurs at the time. There were a lot of lessons learned about what it takes to go to market, some funding opportunities. And look, edtech isn't, wasn't a thing, right?

I think even I've seen one of your early coverage then. There were the gri- there were some grizzled veterans who had, like, been, like, plodding and doing this that, you know, Edsurge also brought into the fold and to kinda share their, you know, lessons on. And so I think it was a really magical coming together of, like, content and news that covered all of these different bases.

[00:07:14] Betsy Corcoran: And the interesting thing is I remember talking to an education publisher at the time and asking them some pretty straightforward questions, questions, Alex, that you would ask them. Like, "Okay, so let's talk about your revenue." And they'd say, they literally said to me, and this was, I think, a PR person, "Oh, well, we can't talk about that."

And I said, "You are a publicly traded company. I can read about it at the SEC." So there was-- frankly, it, it was, I think that what I brought to the table were a lot of the good disciplines of good journalism, uh, things that I'd learned at the Post and at Forbes, and that was not something that was typical.

Um, certainly covering the technology companies as businesses was not very typical at the time. And then the flip side of that, which I still feel is incredibly important, which was amplifying the voice of the user, the teachers, because at the end of the day, unless you are listening to your users, you're not gonna build the right products.

And so Edsurge was always about trying to amplify the voices of the users, ultimately, you know, ideally students, and also the entrepreneurs. And we weren't trying to be cheerleaders. We weren't trying to just say, "Oh, you have to do everything. This is great." We were trying to be critical too, and we were trying to say, "Look, you know, you, you won't always get it right, but, uh, let's ask the hard questions 

[00:08:49] Alex Sarlin: Yeah.

I mean, so many of these points resonate so much, the need for a water cooler, the need for a, a, a newsletter or s- coverage that actually sort of legitimizes the, the field and the community. And, and that was a moment, you know, you mentioned the grizzled veterans, Tony, right? You had these-- You had the Pearsons, you had the Power Schools had been around a, a while even then.

You had some companies been around, like, 100 years. And then all of these new companies came into play right at that moment. I mean, that was two-- 2011, I think, was Duolingo, uh, Coursera, and the-- all the whole MOOC movement was, you know, 2012. We had-- You had Quizlet starting right then. A lot of the, what we consider really the household names, uh, came out in, in edtech, were coming out and just trying to figure out what to do right then.

[00:09:31] Betsy Corcoran: I remember, uh, Dan Carroll coming from Colorado, where he was working for a charter school and saying, "Hey, I have this idea." And that became Clever. And, and super excited to, you know, be one of the very first people that he talked to when he was coming to the Valley. The folks from Nearpod came out of Brazil originally.

They were some of the other people that we were very early on in talking to. And so it was a very exciting moment. It was an exciting moment, and I think that by continuing to press for, "Hey, you gotta listen to teachers." You know, Edsurge also, in addition to the newsletters, did... I think we did something like 100 events around the country.

And, um, we loved those events. We would start by saying, "You, the teachers, are the most important people here, and you're here to try to give feedback to the entrepreneurs." And that was very fun. It was very exciting. It was very empowering for teachers. And we did a lot of research, and we had a lot of fun, too.

[00:10:35] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. And you were so far ahead of so many-- I mean, some of the things we still see the need for and still see happening today, like this need for co-design, more channels of communication between educators and edtech. We're still working on that. The need for an index. I mean, I think, Betsy, the first time I talked to you, you said one of the core pieces of the Edsurge story was the, the product index, the idea that there was no place, no reliable place online to figure out and compare edtech tools.

Th- I would argue that's still mostly true. I mean, we're-- we've worked on it. We've gotten some, s-some indexes are, are up. They're comprehensive to different degrees, but, but the need is still there. I feel like you were 10, 15 years ahead of the pressing needs in edtech and, and, and saw them clearly even then.

[00:11:18] Betsy Corcoran: Well, I wanna also give a shout-out to a couple of the other folks who were fundamental to Edsurge. Nick Punt, who's a longtime education technology entrepreneur, who did all of our design and, and was hugely influential in the idea of the index. Agustin Villaseca, who was our technology lead, who built everything that everything relied on.

And Leonard Bedlock, who did everything. I mean, Leonard wrote, and he wrote software, and he wrote words, and he helped do some of the interviews. Um, it, it was really a very, very special group of people, and got even more special as we were joined by a lot of teachers, too. 

[00:11:58] Tony Wan: Many Edsurge people also are now in, like, have stayed in industry, I think, right?

I think. I don't wanna say, you know, mafia may not be, you know, the right- 

[00:12:10] Betsy Corcoran: I 

[00:12:10] Tony Wan: think we need to make more money to be a 

[00:12:12] Betsy Corcoran: mafia, Tony. 

[00:12:13] Tony Wan: You know, appropriate word these days. Yeah, not quite the PayPal mafia, but, you know, you have, um, I think Allison Salisbury has been on, on, you know, on the show. A lot of former EdSur- uh, Edsurge colleagues, uh, work in industry, some at Reach portfolio companies.

Yep. Uh, and so- 

[00:12:28] Betsy Corcoran: Mary Jo Madda's at Google ... Mary Jo Madda's at Google, and so- And still sort of, uh, swinging for the fences every single day. 

[00:12:34] Tony Wan: You know, I think it's worth, like, a lot of, you know, active people who are active and passionate about the, the, the space that they're working on, they decide to stick in this as career.

I mean, I'm at Reach for, for a reason, right? Part of which is kind of the getting to learn and see, you know, on maybe behind closed doors the things you don't tell a reporter on record, you know, what the conversations are and the things that go into informing investments and deals. 

[00:12:59] Alex Sarlin: And, and you're still writing really influential and important pieces about the space.

I know that there's a series right now that you've been co-writing with Jennifer Carolan and, and maybe others at Reach about the tech lash, about... And th- this, you know, we're at this very interesting moment. I almost see it's like the other side of the unbridled enthusiasm of the early 2010s. Now there is a pretty vocal and pretty persistent, you know, discussion about the role of technology in the classroom.

Was it oversold? What is, what are the motivations? There's a lot of stuff here, and, you know, I think a lot of people wish there was a, a, an Edsurge out there trying to make sense of it and help explain the story, um, from multiple perspectives, including those of the edtech industry and s- not letting it be conflated with regular tech.

I'm curious, what, what would Edsurge be writing about today, Tony? What would you, who would you be interviewing if Edsurge was trying to r- talk about the tech lash? 

[00:13:49] Tony Wan: I think one of the voices that I most enjoyed covering and writing about at Edsurge is the voice of founders who were former teachers. And these are oftentimes, you know, start, you know, at, at, at a startup stage.

These are, you know, former educators who are building things from, like, their lived ex- lived personal experience, and they have seen and used technology in the classrooms, and they are driven to try to build something that, that works better and that can scale to, you know, many other places, uh, for, for different populations.

I do feel like we don't, like, hear that voice as much these days, you know, in the predominant media coverage of edtech, where it's pretty-- I feel it's, it's very bifurcated, where, you know, I think the big companies, right, the Googles or, you know, the i-Readys kinda suck, you know, the focus of kinda attention.

You know, but for better and, and for worse, right? I think some of the concerns are, you know, are warranted. You know? I think there's a lot of cross-intersections across other kinda concerns around screen time, right? That is also a, a part of this conversation. But yeah, I mean, I think if there is a voice that I would love to see kinda rally and co- and, and, and kinda surface more is, like, hearing from the perspectives of former teacher-turned-founders of, of edtech products and services and seeing what they wanna, you know, w- how they wanna contribute to this conversation and to, you know, a smarter, better, more balanced and nuanced use, uses of tech.

[00:15:21] Betsy Corcoran: I think there's another voice that we're starting to hear, and hopefully we'll continue to hear more, which is a school leader voice that's saying, "What should we be doing in schools?" I think technology at the end of the day is a tool in any industry, whether it's communications or education or medicine.

It is a tool. And the big question is, what do you wanna do with this thing, and why do you want to do it? Um, it-- even when we were writing for Edsurge, there was always this perennial observation that, well, school hasn't really changed. We're still doing the same thing we did 100 years ago, which is, you know, sorta true but sorta not true I would like to suggest that we may be on the cusp of a fundamental shift in what are we doing inside of classrooms, whether those classrooms are in high school or in, uh, post-secondary, in different university environments.

What we have now is we have a group of sch- we have groups of school leaders, sometimes isolated, but sometimes, you know, getting together and talking, who are sophisticated about technology, know that they can do things now that they couldn't do before, and are starting to say, "This is what we want to do."

And that is so important. You know, I spend a lot of time, as you mentioned, Alex, with dTech, which is, uh, a school, a public charter school, nonprofit you know, based in Redwood City. It's on the campus of Oracle, which is very fortunate because it helps us make the budgets work. But what's really interesting is that the founder of that school, Dr.

Ken Montgomery, is very focused on using design thinking as a driving idea in learning. How do we give people a sense of agency? How do we give kids a sense of agency? How do we give teachers, too, a sense of agency? And so when you start with the why, why are we trying to do this thing, then you can say, "Great, and so what are the technology tools that make this happen?"

Building 21 on the East Coast, another phenomenal charter school that's doing the same thing. It's asking, "How do we change the way we learn?" And, uh, we've also seen this, I did a piece on the, the Play Lab blog about some of the work that's gone on in New York City public high schools, and these are classic public high schools.

Uh, once again, asking the question of, "What do we wanna do?" And then, "How do we use technology to do that?" That to me, super important. 

[00:18:04] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. You're both making great points there. I think that, you know, we've sort of fetishized certainly AI and maybe even edtech, right, as, as its own field, as its own, as technology, as a solution.

And I think we spend a lot of time talking about the tech, and everybody's like, "What's your AI policy? What's your AI strategy? What's your AI, you know, literacy thinking?" And I, I agree with you, Betsy. I think the most sophisticated thinkers right now are, and I don't include myself in this 'cause I'm constantly talking about AI as its own thing, but are thinking, "How do we get to the thing we've always wanted to do with education?

How do we-" 

[00:18:36] Betsy Corcoran: Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. That's it, right? You know, Alex, before starting Edsurge, um, one of the fields I covered, both when I was at Scientific American and then later at Forbes, was nanotechnology, right? Nanotechnology had a huge boom. The technology was amazing. All of a sudden we're working at scales that, that people couldn't even imagine before.

Now, tell me, what does nanotechnology do for you today? Chances are you don't know, right? But it's inside of a lot of products. It's inside a ton of interesting and different products. It's making materials that are stronger, sunscreen that's better. I don't know, pants for L.L.Bean that resist water better.

I don't know what. But it's being used for other purposes. But nanotechnology? Mm, not really a subject we talk about. It's not making the headlines. I wonder to some degree whether we'll see technology in education go the same path, that we'll be asking, "Why are we doing these things? What are we trying to learn?

How are we trying to inspire people?" And oh yeah, here's the thing that lets us do that. 

[00:19:47] Alex Sarlin: 100%. And, and I think to your point, Tony, that I love teacher, I call them teacherpreneurs. I don't think that term has actually caught on a- among anyone else. But, um, I, I love the founders who are former teachers. I actually had a panel just a few weeks ago with like Peter Gault from Quill, and Dacia Toll, and Ta- Tommy, Thomas Thompson from Edu8, all former teachers, and Maya Bialik from QuestionWell.

And they all think very much from the classroom perspective and, you know, a student first, how do you actually make life easier for teachers and better for learning? And, and I, I feel like they're, I agree that they're a real missing voice. It's a group that is almost never covered in, in mainstream media when anybody thinks about technology.

They go to, they go to ask Google, they go to ask IXL or, or some of the, some of the big Duolingos sometimes, some of the big te- edtech companies, but they don't, you sort of see the places where that overlaps, and I think the teacher, teacher founders are one of the most amazing groups. I love talking to them.

I always point out that, you know, whenever I interview one, I say, "You were, you were a sixth grade social studies teacher. You were a math teacher. You know, what did you bring to that?" 

[00:20:49] Betsy Corcoran: So Alex and Tony, I wanna ask you guys a question. I can't help it. Of course. 

[00:20:54] Tony Wan: Surprise. 

[00:20:56] Betsy Corcoran: Which part of the tech backlash is really justified?

What do you think is justified right now? 

[00:21:04] Alex Sarlin: I mean, I think that in a lot of ways what happens is when things start to feel like they're off the rails in any particular system, y- there's always a million reasons, right? There's always a lot of different systemic failures and points of failure and, and root causes.

But it becomes very comfortable to sort of look at the most visible, uh, most sort of easily associated drivers of that field and say, "Oh, it's, it's their fault." And I think in education, for a long time it was teachers. For in education, uh, the teachers got the unfair blame of being the ones who are not, you know, getting the, the, the, the scores of, the NAEP scores up or not getting the PISA or all of those things.

And I think in the last few years, because of exactly what you've been saying, Betsy, you know, that, that we've sort of considered technology just as like this panacea solution to everything, and all the founders and all... You know, I worked at Newton. Uh, Tony, you did this amazing, you know, take down way back in the day of the, of Newton's crazy self-aggrandizing story.

But I think, you know, we've had now a decade and a half of founders saying, "We're gonna change everything. We're gonna make everything happen." And then, of course, during the pandemic, we had this unforced... I mean, this, this forced experiment where tech was everywhere. So to your actual question, I think that we have not, as a sector, told our story well enough and found the comprehensive results that would make anybody say, "Okay, edtech is a positive force."

We've had individual tools see results. We've had individual tools get absolute love from students and teachers. We've had individual organizations make a big difference. But I think it's an easy target, and I think it's a target that is... I, I, I feel, I say this a lot on the show, but I just feel like edtech doesn't know how to sort of bolster its own understanding and reputation among parents and teachers and journalists who are trying to make sense of this complicated space.

It's like there's no PR firm for edtech as a, as a sector. Mm. And because it includes companies like Google and Anthropic and OpenAI, that, that recently it becomes even more of a, a sitting duck for people who are trying to figure it out. You know, I, I complained about Natasha Singer at New York Times, who's just trying to tell this story about how the big tech companies have taken over the schools, and, like, it's a great story.

I get why she's trying to tell it. I get why she's trying to sell books on it. I don't think it's at all true, but, like, what's the counter story? What's the exciting story about edtech in a classroom? It's, it's not really out there. And, and, and sadly, I think the loss of Edsurge is a big part of the reason it's not really out there.

[00:23:39] Betsy Corcoran: Okay, I wanna come back to that, but Tony- Yeah ... I want you to jump in and, and say- Alex, I think- ... what part of the backlash is justified first? 

[00:23:46] Tony Wan: Well, first, Alex, I think you're gonna get a lot of calls from some PR firms, uh, Edsurge and PR firms, some of whom I've worked with, some of whom we've battled with over the years, you know.

You know- 

[00:23:57] Betsy Corcoran: Bet ... 

[00:23:58] Tony Wan: uh, after this. Look, when I read the headlines around the tech backlash, I think I think the concerns that overlap with some of the research on the impact of screen time on developmental, on how we develop a- as young, as children is, is valid, right? I think that as we learn more and more about, uh, some of the mechanisms for which software is designed to engage kids or people in general, right?

You know, we often like to say edtech borrows, right, from consumer tech, right? We're learning that some of those mechanisms are not very appropriate, you know, when they're designed to kind of keep you on the screen, right? We often, you know, in Silicon Valley like to measure engagement in terms of like time on, you know, time spent on software when there are, you know, early ages where like you don't want kids.

You know, we're learning that there are, that, uh, detrimental effects to, you know, having kids in front of a screen for too long, and to the extent that it may be substituting for, you know, human eye contact with a caregiver and a human. So I think all of that is kind of now pretty or becoming more well-known, you know, from researchers like Jonathan Haidt, that have, have done a lot of good kind of re- research on this.

I think when I see some of the headlines around that, you know, you always lead with like a juicy anecdote, right? Of like a kid sitting in front of a screen doing iReady practice for 45 minutes. You know, yes, that is a very kind of this moment in time that's gonna get a lot of headlines and drive a lot of attention.

I also question, though, kind of like the implementation part of it. I think like edtech, whether edtech succeeds or fails is very much a large part in the human, you know, the humans involved in, you know, making sure that it is set up, you know, properly, that have some guardrails, that have some kind of, uh, gu- that offer some kind of guidance.

And so I do think that edtech companies need to do a better job of maybe communicating and, and being more upfront about the conditions for success. But I also, you know, when I s- when I read stories about a kid being, sitting in front of a screen for 45 minutes, I kind of ask like, "Hey, where, where, where, where are the adults in, in, in that room?

Like, why, why is this happening?" So not necessarily trying to point blame, but I think implementation is a very, very tricky and dynamic thing that depends on the environment and resources that you have. 

[00:26:23] Betsy Corcoran: I think implementation is hugely important, and yeah, there-- it takes, you know, it takes a village in lots of different ways.

I wanna come back to ju- not to beat up on you, Alex, but I'm gonna come back to this idea of is edtech telling its story right? You know, one of the huge changes that we've seen over the years is this idea of storytelling and this idea that there's a right way to tell your story. You gotta position everything right.

It's gotta be always upward to the right. Whatever happened to A little more honesty, a little more frankness about, you know what? This is a time that you shouldn't use the stuff. This is not good. This is when it doesn't work. And I appreciate that, you know, s- y- we, we all like kinda stories with happy endings and things that solve things, but we have...

You know, the world is ultimately a more complicated place. I mean, when Tony talks about implementation, not every tool, not every technology, not every screen should be used all the time, always the same way, et cetera, et cetera. And we've, in our enthusiasm for telling the right story, sometimes we have forgotten to tell the true story.

I, as a consumer, am happier when somebody says to me, "Well, you know what? This is the part that doesn't work, and just don't do it that way." 

[00:27:57] Tony Wan: Some of the most popular articles in Edsurge were from, you know, we had occasionally a few founders kind of write fairly honest op-eds around, like, hey, like how things went- 100%

how things went off the rails and kinda- Yep ... what, what we learned and what we hope the industry can learn, you know? That's right. Some assumptions that we baked in, some of the things we've tried just didn't work out, and we had to close shop or, you know, do something drastic. And I do think that kind of humility is, you know, that kind of humility is often missing in the tech and Silicon Valley kind of world.

But I think it was also a big part of what people, uh, what pe- what builds credibility, right? And why people kinda like, you know, also like Ed- liked about Edsurge was surfacing and looking for these kinds of difficult stories that are not easy to tell. 

[00:28:43] Alex Sarlin: Yes. Very fair points. I would say that, that the-- I don't think, personally don't think the edtech field is mature enough to tell those stories yet because systemically, I mean, when you look at an edtech founder or a, a startup founder, they have to tell the positive of their story to get and continue to get funding because that's the world right now.

They have to act a little bit like so- some of those overpromising Silicon Valley founders that we've all come to sort of parody, but that's sort of part of the game. And then they have to be very positive to buyers and procurement people in districts. There's-- I don't think there's much room, unlike some fields that might be bigger, I don't think there's much room for many individual players to sort of do this mea culpa, we did it wrong, because when they're small companies, they're, they're just trying to get a foothold, and then when they're big enough, they have their own internal marketing and communication thinking.

You're not gonna see the big publishers say, "Oh, we launched this product last year and it was terrible for kids, so we pulled it and we're, we, we learned a lot." Like you-- So I just think there's like... I don't, I don't disagree. Just to be clear, I don't disagree with what you're saying. I just think that we're It's systemically, there's very little incentive.

I mean, I, I'm curious about the people, the articles you did in Edsurge about where people did this, but I think there's very little incentive to sort of say, "I did it, you know, w- I did it wrong," or, "We did it wrong as a company," because there's, you know, it's such a fragmented space that very few people can say that and then still stay on top.

I mean, even, uh, you know, we, we've seen all this backlash against i-Ready recently, and I've talked to Curriculum Associates people on this podcast, and I mean, there's no way they're gonna come out and say, "Oh, yeah, yeah, you know what? Good point. i-Ready is kind of mind-numbing, and we don't... It's not adaptive."

Like th- it won't, they won't do it. I, I don't know if expecting them to do it is realistic, even though it might be better for the field. 

[00:30:46] Betsy Corcoran: But pushing them to talk around those questions is really critical. And, you know, it's, again, things are not black and white. I mean, i-Ready is not all bad or all good, but, you know, trying to introduce a little bit of nuance into the conversation really makes a difference.

I mean, when, the reason that, the reason that educators trust each other when they go to buy ed tech products is because they'll look at each other and go, "You know what? Don't use it with this population 'cause it's gonna be a dead fail." You know, or it's just not, it's not designed for that group. And so, you know, from a very pragmatic point of view, people are, uh, you know, people trust people who are gonna be a little more straight with them.

Tony, I'm curious, you s- you mentioned that you, you're behind the closed doors now. You're seeing what entrepreneurs say to the investors. So have you, have you had the experience of any entrepreneurs coming in and talking to the Reach people and saying, "Hey, here's where it's just fallen apart, 

[00:31:52] Tony Wan: man"? Look, I mean, part of our diligence, right, that is of course gonna be off the record, is to, like, dig into some of the things you, you know, what you've done in the past, and not every entrepreneur is successful in the first go.

We know that. Yes, we know that. And so, you know, we dig into where, you know, what they've learned about it, and the lessons that they've learned to t- that will help, you know, that, that will help inspire their, their next, their next venture. And so I think when we say, like, I think authenticity in this day and age of AI is, like, super important, and when everything is just up and to the right and super polished, it almost kind of feels fake in this day, in this day and age.

Like, that's something suspect. And so I think people are Craving for the authenticity. And I think admitting that you, you know, that you may have slipped up or you have, you, you have hiccups, right? Does not necessarily be framed as a judgment on your character, right? I think, like, you don't as, as a storyteller, as an editor, you know, you know, you don't f- if you frame it that way, I think people are definitely not gonna, you know, will definitely not wanna tell the story.

But if you frame it as a way, as like, "Hey, like h- this is, like, how I've grown," right? "And this is what people ch- you know, what else, what other people can learn, you know, from my experiences," you may find a better, you know, better, better chances of kinda getting people kinda to, to share their story kinda out of their shell a little bit.

I think that, yeah, I mean, like even for Reach, for, you know, one of the reasons why I'm at Reach was that as a reporter at Edsurge, most VCs, most-- They don't really wanna talk to me about bad stories, right? Right? And you know, they just, you know, they, there's, you get no responses, you know, a shut door. But I think some of the, you know, some of the founders here, and I think even some of the, some of the team and the partners at, at Reach have been, I would say, more open than, than most, you know, you would expect from, from investors around kinda sharing more the background around why something may not have turned, like, panned out as well.

And I think that for a firm in the long term, you know, it's, you know, that's what I had, you know, some- that's something that sticks with me, and I think that helps build your credibility and, and trust going forward. And I think that's, like, super important to realize that you're, you're playing the long game here, right?

Even as you're telling stories. 

[00:34:01] Betsy Corcoran: We are all learning. We are learning as entrepreneurs. We're learning as people who are exploring how to use technology. We're learning as educators, right? We are all learning. And that kind of humility to say, "Yeah, you know, I tried this, and now I'm trying something else." I mean, in great schools, we're trying to get our kids to do that.

We're trying to say to them, "It's not just about that grade, it's about the learning that's going on." And so in some ways, it's kind of on us to show them that we really believe that too, and that here's how we're learning. So let's talk a little bit about AI too, because, you know, I've been, uh, I've been having a lot of fun, uh, working with trying to build some dashboards.

Uh, got, uh, a little, uh, side project going on that's about the election and politics. And so I've been doodling along trying to, uh, build a bunch of AI dashboards to track changes in voting procedures across different districts in the country. And Boy, oh boy, am I learning a lot. I'm learning a lot about how AI works, and I'm learning a lot about when it doesn't work, too.

I think that, that some conversation about what are we learning about the way we interact with AI is super valuable, rather than just is it going to increase such and such test scores. Tony, what are you seeing? You guys have a wh- you have, uh, probably every single company that you have now is probably using AI.

To what degree is there a lot of learning going on, and to what degree is there, um, is there just, you know, a, a sort of dead heat race to put in as much AI as they can possibly? 

[00:35:50] Tony Wan: Well, I mean, like, not all education services are a-- Like, not all of our edtech companies are, like, discarding all of their messaging and framing and saying they're going all into AI, because we know that education and Also in healthcare, we are starting to invest in more.

That ultimately at the end of the day, these are human services, right? And so ultimately, like, if your company is not fundamentally AI native, you know, that's, I don't know, I think, I think that's fine. Like, don't try to s- like slap AI on kind of services where, where AI doesn't belong. I think that feels very inauthentic about, about things.

But I think AI-- what does AI do really well? It really helps us sort through like big, messy chunks of information, right? Let's say like, and like tries to, you know, kind of gives you a little bit and services, you know, kind of insights or suggested insights, you know, uh, a lot faster and, and helps you parse through that.

And so when I look at the fragmented data systems that schools and districts operate on, the SISs, the LMSs, the things that don't talk to, talk to each other, the th- you know, the things that, you know, Clever once tried to p- you know, solve, but only partially 'cause there's this whole other world of like other kinds of like student data out there.

Like I think there's a really interesting opportunity to, you know, when we, when we say data, you know, data-powered insights or data-informed decision-making, which was a big thing back in the 2010s, like I really think AI can really help kind of really plug that together and also offers an opportunity to maybe rebuild some of these legacy systems like from, from scratch, right?

So I don't know. I'm sorry, PowerSchool. I'm sorry, Canvas. You know, I think- ... you know, I, I think, I think the tar- the target is on you. You know, the other thing as a writer that I am personally finding is that I think like it's interesting that words are now really important in shaping how you build AI products and design AI products and like what choice of adjective you use to, you know, suggest, uh, how an AI tool should, should respond.

[00:37:54] Betsy Corcoran: Oh, give me an example, Tony. What's, what's your favorite example? You've got one in mind, I can tell. 

[00:38:01] Tony Wan: When I have AI give me feedback, I always tell it to like give me, give me suggestions that help tidy and polish this up, but do not change my meaning whatsoever. Do not try to... You know, I try to like Almost berated a little bit about like, tell like what not to do and draw, and draw very clear lines.

And so last week was, uh... Was it last week or maybe a couple weeks ago, Figma had its big conference here. Figma, the design software, and a couple of the speakers, uh, one of the speakers was from Anthropic, and, and her job was the head of content design at Anthropic, and her team is writing the editorial rules that guides how Claude responds to people.

And she had like a lot of fascinating stories around like how little word tweaks, right? Can help kinda shape, you know, how Claude responds, which then shapes how people act and, uh, take actions or not take actions. And so, you know, I just think it's really interesting that, you know, the craft that, you know, that we're from, that you taught me is now like I'm thinking about a, a lot more now as like a product, as like a product design like medium now in this age of AI.

And then so, you know, I've been doing some writing around like the future of writing and AI a lot, and a little bit of hand-wringing about, you know, the good and bad, the good and bad of it. But I do think from like a product development and user experience standpoint, I think UX writing has become really one of the really interesting area for me.

Gonna dive into it. 

[00:39:36] Betsy Corcoran: I mean, that's fascinating. So, so h- here's a funny question. Do you think of interacting with your AI around a piece of writing, how similar or different is it from editing a human being in writing? Do you do 

[00:39:51] Tony Wan: that- I much prefer you. I much prefer you, Betsy, as an editor. I have to use it.

[00:39:55] Betsy Corcoran: Oh, that was a setup. Thank you. 

[00:39:59] Tony Wan: But so your question was how do I, how does a- interacting with AI feel? Well, you just, 

[00:40:04] Betsy Corcoran: you just said that the words make a difference, right? The words make a difference. And Alex, I'd love your thoughts on this, too. The words make a difference, and when you edit a human being, the words do make a difference.

I mean, I even tried not to be too rude to people or, you know, try to, try to cajole them into getting to where I wanted them to get to. So is that similar to what you're now doing with AI? 

[00:40:31] Tony Wan: Yeah. I get a little testy with my AI a little bit. But when I'm having it give me suggestions and suggested edits, I get very, very detailed about like what I exact- what exactly I like, what I don't like, and...

But you know what I mean? This presupposes that I know what good and bad writing looks like, right? Like I- 

[00:40:49] Alex Sarlin: I think you do. 

[00:40:50] Tony Wan: I can, I can tell when something's clunky, right? Like you kind of know what you wanna convey, but like you can tell that this is just a really clunky, long-winded way of articulating this idea, and I can't quite put my finger on it.

The more that you can, you know, share that with AI, I think, you know, the, the better that You will get suggestions that feel authentic and true to, to what you want. And I think that to me is the one part that about like AI and writing that it's still kind of a moving needle, right? I mean, I think we all use AI...

Well, I don't, I don't wanna say we all, but I often, you know, ask AI for such, such as just now the limits test is like, does this feel true to me? Does this feel real, like real to me? Do I still feel like, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm the owner's owner of this word or this sentence, right? And I think for everyone that's gonna look a little, where that needle is, is gonna look a bit different and, right?

I think that's kind of where, that's kind of where, where I'm at right now 

[00:41:47] Betsy Corcoran: Alex, how much are you using AI in your writing? 

[00:41:49] Alex Sarlin: Oh, in my writing, I wrestle with it. I go back and forth a lot. I've been writing a long piece as something I'm doing later in the summer that's, like, a, a pretty significant paper, and I've been using AI a lot for the brainstorming of it, but I'm doing the, the first full draft by hand before bringing AI back in, and it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, I think it's a real question.

But I just wanna raise something that I'm hearing you both say that I think is really interesting. You know, Betsy, you mentioned before that, that the people who are gonna really succeed in this era are leaders who have specific visions for what they want, you know, education to be, and they're using AI as a tool towards it.

And I th- I think the same is true for creative work. I mean, it's, it's what I'm hearing you say, Tony, as well. You're like, "I want this to be it. I want it to convey the ideas that I already came up with, that I want it to be exactly that, and I want it to be in this style, and I know what good looks like, and I'm gonna give it really detailed instructions."

And I have pretty consistently seen that the people who are like, like, what s- more sophisticated AI literacy is beginning to look like is really having a very crisp idea of where you, of the, of where you want it to go. And I think that, like, AI slop is when people are like, "Do something that's Pixar style, that about a kid who does this," and then it ends up being, like, mostly AI with very little sort of human input, very little human vision.

But the people who are, who have a lot of human vision can have amazing results with AI. And I mean, I think it's only a matter of time before, to your point about writing, before we see the first, you know, both fiction and nonfiction, like, bestsellers that are co-written by a human and AI. But to get to that- They kind 

[00:43:21] Tony Wan: of already exist.

[00:43:22] Alex Sarlin: They do? The name on the title? Like, with, like, AI on the cover? Oh, 

[00:43:25] Tony Wan: not yet. Maybe not. Maybe not as a c- on a 

[00:43:28] Alex Sarlin: cover, but- That's what I'm sort of thinking about. Yeah. Like, where it's like, it's like explicitly this person and AI wrote this book. I don't know. As-- I think it's gonna come at some point. But, but the, but, but the thing about that is, to get to that, the person has to have a very crisp, clear vision of what they wanna do, and I feel like that, you know, people have called it discernment, critical thinking.

It's come up a lot recently in these conversations about, like, when AI can do anything, or can do a lot, certainly can't do anything, but can do a lot, using it properly means having really creative, smart, specific visions about what you want to accomplish. And like, Tony, when I hear you say, "Oh, I'm, I argue with it.

I tell it, I wrestle with it. I tell it to keep my exact meaning, and d- don't you dare change this, and keep my voice." I know you trained an AI to speak in your voice with a whole corpus at one point. And, like, I feel like that's a very sophisticated use of AI for writing, and most people, especially students, are nowhere near that.

[00:44:23] Betsy Corcoran: Which may be a very good reason to study poetry. 

[00:44:27] Alex Sarlin: Perhaps. Or journalism or, uh, storytelling. 

[00:44:31] Tony Wan: I find myself missing, like, those dirty, rough drafts That, you know, as painful as they are, I mean, they give me a clearer sense of what it's like to be in that person's head as I'm trying to help, you know, that person or guide that person to more clarity.

I feel like all these run-on sentences, things that are, like, not grammatical, these crazy logical leaps, like, I think they tell me more about where, you know, where a person's, like, state of mind is than something that's very flat and polished and Anodyne for lack 

[00:45:03] Betsy Corcoran: of a better word I s- I still love the ideas that so much of innovation happens when you pull things from very different fields, very different places together, and you do mashups, right?

And I think that's one of the things that people are still really good at, and hopefully maybe even better than AI is. The kind of creative leaps that happen when you pull things, you know, from very, very different places, and all of a sudden create an image, an idea, or a message that makes someone stop and say, "Huh, I hadn't thought of that before."

As long as people can do that, I think we're still in the game. 

[00:45:45] Tony Wan: We're seeing this, like, little resurgence of philosophy, right, in the headlines, and I think that's super interesting. Like, like philosophy and computer science, right? Things that you may historically not put the two together, but I think that's kind of, you know, that is...

Well, I'm reading this book called "The Infinity Machine," which is about the co-founder of DeepMind, uh, Demis Ha- Hassabis. And I think one of the through lines of that book is that, like, the quest to build AI is somewhat born from a quest to understand human intelligence and what make-- And, and so, like, there is a lot of overlap around, like, as we talk about artificial intelligence, you know, replacing or s- or substitution human or replacing humans.

Like, I think the origins of this, this quest is for, you know, these researchers, really smart scientists to really better understand, like, what is it that constitutes humans' intelligence, and why do we do the things that we do that are illogical, like, at times, and insensible to machines, right? I think AI is good at actually things that are difficult for humans, but it's actually sometimes very bad that seem very simple and natural to us, right?

And like, why is that? 

[00:46:51] Alex Sarlin: I think it's an exciting time because I think over the last 20, 30 years as, like, computer science and business have become by far the biggest majors in, in college, it's like, well, that's because the society has valued very structured, rigid, step-by-step thinking. I mean, you can m- you could make so much money as a computer engineer until recently.

Or, you know, it, it was a s- way of thinking that was highly valued, and philosophy majors and English majors were baristas. And I feel like we're moving to a totally different way of societal... Like, we may be valuing that kind of inspirational leap, that, that juxtaposition, that idea of putting together what it-- Like the person who invented Velcro, right?

Who was like, it's, burrs stuck to their clothes, and they were like, "Hmm." That's the kind of thing, I don't know if AI can do that yet, but that means we need our humans to, to really think about it. I wish this conversation could go further, but I have to, I have to wrap it up. Um, Betsy, do you wanna take us out?

I feel like you've done a great job of hosting this episode. Well- And I mean it com- I mean that in a good way ... 

[00:47:51] Betsy Corcoran: Alex, again, I think that there's, there is tremendous power in the technology All we have to do is remember why we wanna use it, and keep asking ourselves, why do we wanna use this? When do we wanna use this?

And when do we not wanna use it? Those are the questions that I think Edsurge always tried to ask. I'm really happy that those are the questions I think that you're asking too. And so thank you for having us on the show to talk about it. 

[00:48:20] Alex Sarlin: Oh, well, thank you. I mean, there wouldn't be an Edtech Insiders without Edsurge.

I mean, I, I can say that 100% positively. Tony Wan is the head of platform at Reach Capital. He was a co-founder and ma- former managing editor of Edsurge. Betsy Corcoran, writer, speaker, and serial entrepreneur, podcaster with Jeremy Roschelle of Future Fluent, and, um, advisor for k- edtech companies like Playlab, also the co-founder of Edsurge.

So amazing to talk to both of you. We could do, like, seven hours on, on all of this. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you all being here on Edtech Insiders. 

[00:48:53] Tony Wan: Thank you, Alex. 

[00:48:53] Betsy Corcoran: Thanks, Alex. 

[00:48:55] Tony Wan: See you around. 

[00:48:57] 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.

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