The following transcript has been edited for readability. Timestamps have been removed and minor transcription errors corrected. Speaker comments and context have been preserved.

Opening Remarks

Rich Portelance

Why, hello, everybody. Today, we're going to be talking to Melissa Quinn from News-O-Matic. My name is Rich Portelance. Welcome to the EdGate Powers podcast. We're talking about technology and how it's influencing edtech, where things are going, and I'm just super excited to have Melissa here today. Why don't you give yourself an introduction, and then we'll jump into some questions?

Melissa Quinn

Sure, sounds good. My name is Melissa Quinn. I am the education specialist for News-O-Matic. I taught for a lot of years–you know, you lose count after 10–prior to taking on this role. But it's been– it's been great being able to help so many teachers across the country and across the world with what I'm doing now, so I enjoy it.

Discussion

Rich Portelance

Well, that's a great place to start, Melissa, because, you know, probably a lot of people don't know about News-O-Matic. I had the pleasure of speaking to some of your associates last year and getting a little bit of insight, but why don't you tell us what News-O-Matic does, because I think it's really cool what's happening and why you guys are doing the work.

Melissa Quinn

So, I'm trying to think where we can start here. So, the company was created because there wasn't a really great site for children to get their news. A lot of the news at the time, you know, 10-plus years ago, was geared towards more, you know, adults. So, the company decided, like, let's make these, you know, world stories “readable”, I guess you could say, for children, and for students. And that's kind of how it got started. And we've just grown, and we've grown exponentially since then. So, we write five news articles every day, yeah, 52 weeks a year. And we are covering local news and global news, we have different series that we run, and they are just all written for those students in a very fun fashion, very high engagement.

Rich Portelance

Well, that's fantastic. And I'm sure taking the political bias out of some of these things, right? And just giving the students some familiarity of what's happening in the world, and it's tied to curriculum too, which I think is fascinating. So, why don't we talk a little bit about that because students are learning how to leverage that content, right, to, you know, help fill out papers or research, things like that. And then you're tying it to education standards, which I thought was fascinating. 

Melissa Quinn

Every state has their, you know, their plan. They have their standards that they follow. I know we tried to do the Common Core thing across the country, which, honestly, a lot of the states wound up taking the Common Core standards and tweaking them slightly to fit their states specifically, but overall, they're pretty similar. And so, it's nice that we have these articles that correlate to all of the states across the country, and fit their curriculums really well, and still provide, like, real-world, you know, examples of how these things and events are happening.

Rich Portelance

So, you know, one of the things I'll give a shameless plug to EdGate, because we offer this free resource, which is the standards comparison maps. So, we took Common Core and some other standards sets, and we allow people to go in and view the comparison of the Common Core to a particular state. So, you can see if you go into Kansas, you know, maybe there's a 70% match within language, or a 50% match within mathematics, and so you can kind of start to see, you know, how close you're going to match up if you meet the Common Core with your curriculum or with your content. And then, you can kind of start to understand what kinds of adjustments need to be made. I don't know if you've seen those maps yet, but they're hanging off of the website, and it was just an interesting exercise. I bring it up mostly because the exercise for EdGate as we were kind of looking at this, it showed that interesting leveraging of the Common Core. As you just pointed out, like, most states have used it, and just kind of riffed off of it rather than, you know, made up their own standards out of whole cloth, right?

Melissa Quinn

Right. Yeah. No, that's kind of what I've noticed over the years, too. And even as a teacher, I taught in different states, and I just noticed that the standards are pretty similar across the grade levels. Really, social studies is the only one that tends to be very different depending on the state. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. So, social studies kind of changes depending on where you are. Is it bringing in local, kind of historical content? Or is it just perspective? 

Melissa Quinn

I think it's a little bit of everything. So, it's a little bit of local, a little bit of a perspective, and it's really just what is being taught at different grade levels. It very much varies. Like, you could be talking about world history in the younger grades in one state, but it could be in the upper grades in another state. That does vary. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. And just to remind everybody, Melissa is going to be joining me and some folks from Edmentum and EdGate on a podcast in a couple of weeks on June 12th. There's going to be a link below for that webinar, in which we're going to explore technology and education a little bit further, how some of these advanced technologies are starting to have an effect, and what people are doing internally to leverage them to hopefully get to market quicker, which is a goal. You know, as things change, as we see this ripple effect of states becoming more and more independent in not only their standards, but also their compliance, companies are struggling. So, we're trying to uncover how they're getting to where they need to go so they can get contracts and can get their content published in classrooms, and so it's going to be a great conversation. And, Melissa, we're excited that News-O-Matic agreed to join and have this conversation.

You know, you were talking a little bit about state-specific. So, when you guys start to look to get adoption within a particular state, can you give us an idea of what the process is for News-O-Matic?

Melissa Quinn

It's funny that you asked, because I have an RFP (Request for Proposal) that I've been working on– that I have to work on this week, but, it varies very much also by state, what they need, what they require, how they– Some just want us to send our platform and they'll kind of look at themselves, and then other states are like, “No, write exactly how you cover this standard. I want the article, I want an explanation, and everything.” So, sometimes it's pretty in-depth, but it helps with being able to correlate, you know, with EdGate and everything, so I already know… I can kind of see, like, “Okay, well these are the standards that fit this, or these are the articles that fit this particular standard,” it's kind of great. 

Rich Portelance

So, in your case, you're using EdGate SMES (Subject Matter Experts)? Are you using ExACT? 

Melissa Quinn

We’re using ExACT.

Rich Portelance

Okay. So, you're using that tool to start to kind of figure out the correlation, and then get yourself aligned and ready to go into particular states.

Melissa Quinn

Right. We correlate ourselves. We have a team of correlators helping out because we write daily, so it's an everyday kind of process. And then it's nice, because EdGate allows flexibility to the way… you know, without giving away what you guys do and how you do it, they give the flexibility to hide articles that may or may not fit a particular standard. Even if, like, if I particularly don't want it to show for that standard, or I personally don't think it fits, even though, you know, EdGate may say it fits very broadly, I have the ability to kind of hide those articles too, or even add specific standards to an article that may not have appeared when I just initially did the correlation. So, it's been really great to kind of hone in on that. 

Rich Portelance

So, here's a different process, and I want to point this out because I think it's significant to anybody who's watching. If you're a small edtech company and, you know, you need to do your alignments and get into states with your correlations, but you have a smaller team, right, you're using technology, and you're developing five articles a day. So, five articles, how many states are you getting those out to? That's a lot of material that you're releasing into your platform that has to be aligned, right? 

Melissa Quinn

Yes. I mean, all the states have access to us, and then worldwide, too. So, we're looking to add on other standards, like Canadian standards, as well. So, that's another– a whole other process there. But yeah, we have to make sure– And then we get a lot– our sales team gets a lot of questions like, "Oh, well, when our standards change, will your articles reflect that?" And that's what's so great about working with ExACT and EdGate, is that it's going to change automatically and seamlessly, and we can tell our customers and our potential customers that so they don't have to panic… because I can't imagine changing the standards for every state, for every article, every time they change every, like, four years. 

Rich Portelance

That would be crazy, right? 

Melissa Quinn

Yes.

Rich Portelance

So, tell me, what functions within ExACT are you using to allow your company to do that? Can you break it down a little bit for me?

Melissa Quinn

That's, like… How it change– Well– So, like, we get those updated. I get messages every Friday about what standards are going to be updated, when they're going to be adopted, or if they're adopted but then to be implemented too, because that sometimes varies by year. They say, "Oh, we just adopted these, but we're not going to implement them till 2027,” but at least we have all that knowledge. So, EdGate gives us all that knowledge. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. 

Melissa Quinn

So, then we can say to our customers, like, "Yes, we already know, we're prepared. Things were going to change over seamlessly." So, when we tag, well, I don't know how much you want to go into the process of how you guys correlate, but… 

Rich Portelance

It doesn't matter. I mean, I think people want to, you know, have some discovery and… I guess, you know, for us and what we're doing here, if there's flaws in the… I don't know if you're saying maybe there's some issues, or there's proprietary methodologies?

Melissa Quinn

Right. Like, the way you all tag everything, I know that's proprietary to you guys, so I don't want to give that away, but when we tag– I mean, I'm not tagging specific standards, so I think that's what's been very helpful when they do change, because you tag concepts. 

Rich Portelance

Yep. Correct.

Melissa Quinn

Those on your end get changed to be tagged to those specific standards, so I don't ever have to change my content. I mean, EdGate has a lot of work with all the changes in their standards, I'm sure, but that's kind of what helps. Because we are a small team, I can't imagine correlating every article for 50 states, plus the national standards, and then– oh no, I couldn't imagine. 

Rich Portelance

And, you know, that whole concept… EdGate has multiple patents on that process, and that's how we ended up building the ExACT tool, based on the idea that we're utilizing concepts in order to build our alignments. We were doing that by hand for years, and years, and years, and we perfected it with SMEs, and then we said, “Okay, well, how do we start to leverage technology to speed that process?” So it wasn't, “Hey, we're just going to start and use AI to do the work that we used to do with humans.” We, you know, started to leverage and look at, you know, how can we use things like machine learning, semantic matching, and other things that may take the process that we perfected by hand, and make it go a little faster. 

So, you know, it developed over time. What I'm intrigued by are some of the reporting tools that are available now, like the gap reports, and I'm curious if News-O-Matic kind of uses those on a daily basis, some of those tools to see the comparisons and be able to adjust content so you can meet standards quickly.

Melissa Quinn

Yes. So, we do some of the– Well, I have, like, a whole spreadsheet where I use the data from how much coverage for each state. So, I pull in that percentage, and as we add more articles, because there's quite a few articles every week, you know, I go in and check to see if that number has increased. So that's how I keep my sales team up to date with the coverage, because we're only correlating for ELA, science, social studies, and SEL (Social Emotional Learning) if applicable. 

So those are the ones [Inaudible]. The gap, so I don't have access to the gap reports. I know that I can look at a specific grade level for a specific state for a specific subject, and it will tell me exactly what articles are aligned to each standard, and sometimes it comes up zero. And so then, I can kind of… We write daily news, and it's very much news, but when we see a standard that we may be missing, we kind of, like, look for news that may fit that standard. So that also helps for getting that information from EdGate and that report. 

Rich Portelance

Oh, that's fascinating. So, you're looking for news that might meet the standard, and then that helps to kind of move the process a little bit quicker if you know that there's some match. 

Melissa Quinn

Yes. Yes. We do that with our 50 States in 50 Weeks series. We try to find some of the state-specific news that may fit a standard we'd be missing a lot. I mean, history standards are very difficult to cover in daily news, unless it's like a civics kind of thing, but that's kind of where we go with that.

Rich Portelance

And what– Tell me about the 50 States in 50 Weeks series that you're doing. 

Melissa Quinn

This is our third year that we've done that, and it's just a way to kind of hone in on some state-specific local news. Because we are a global newspaper, we have customers and students that read us worldwide. So we don't have time to do very state- or city-specific news that you might see in your local newspaper, but we do try to hit on some different festivals or… So in Pennsylvania, we did, like, we had a Taylor Swift day because she was born in Reading, so that was one of our state-specific stories. And when we did a Punxsutawney Phil story. 

Rich Portelance

Oh, okay. 

Melissa Quinn

That’s always a good state story.

Rich Portelance

Yeah, that's solid in Pennsylvania. I mean, you can't go wrong, right? 

Melissa Quinn

Right. Right. Right. So, like, things like that that we might just cover that might be a little bit more specific to a state, that wouldn't necessarily be worldwide news, so it’s kind of nice.

Rich Portelance

But that's good that, you know, students are getting some exposure, you're meeting the standards, and you're getting into the classroom. How are teachers using the content that you're providing in their lessons now? Do you have some, you know– and what grades are mostly using your content? 

Melissa Quinn

So, we have a wide range, so we are K through eight. I would say our sweet spot is two through six. We have a lot of teachers from two through six using us, and that's because, you know, the students are independently reading. Although, we did lower our Lexile levels to catch some of those early readers just recently. So now we have five levels instead of three for each article, times five articles, so, you know, it adds up for sure.

Rich Portelance

Wow.

Melissa Quinn

But, yes, so they use it in the morning. I know a lot of teachers will use it in the morning, like they’ll pick an article to read, and then every day they'll pick one, and at the end of the week they'll choose which one is the most relevant to their classroom or to the students, or which ones they liked– articles they read that they like the best. A lot of them use it for, like, an introduction to maybe a more complex topic, or even like a station-type rotation in your younger grades where they independently read, but we also do audio so they can listen to that reading. 

So, small group, whole group, we just added active learning slides, so you can project it on like a SMART Board, or Promethean board, or something like that. And then, you can kind of go through these slideshows and read the article and stuff. It was great.

Rich Portelance

So, to accomplish multiple Lexile levels with the same article, how do you achieve that? That's pretty impressive. 

Melissa Quinn

Well, so we're trying– we're looking to maybe refine that process a little bit, because with the addition of the extra two, going from three to five was a lot. Right now, our writers do it. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. 

Melissa Quinn

They start at level five. They write all the content that they want to include for those seventh and eighth graders, and then they level it themselves.

Rich Portelance

Okay. And how many writers do you have on your team? 

Melissa Quinn

I think we only have like six right now. Five or six. We have freelancers sometimes. 

Rich Portelance

Okay.

Melissa Quinn

[Inaudible] for us as well. 

Rich Portelance

So, you have these five or six writers who are producing the five articles every day. They're also leveling the articles too. Do they take advantage of AI and some of their processes to help speed it up? 

Melissa Quinn

Yes. 

Rich Portelance

What are they doing?

Melissa Quinn

Yes. So, we've been dabbling with AI a little bit here and there. I've actually been helping try to create some prompts that fit– take our guidelines, because we have very specific guidelines for, like, the range of the Lexile. So, the diversity of the verbiage, the vocabulary, like, we have very strict guidelines. It's, like, a 65-plus page document of writer's guidelines. So, I'm trying to condense it into an AI prompt. So, the results we're getting are… okay.  

Rich Portelance

Okay. 

Melissa Quinn

Yeah, I would say it's a tool. AI is absolutely a tool you can use. It's not the end-all be-all, and it definitely needs a human touch for sure.

Rich Portelance

Yeah, I think that's what we find a lot too. You know, we can do a lot of material and a lot of correlations and alignments by hand– or, I mean, with tools, but you have to have some SMEs at the end of the process to refine and to really polish it up, make sure it works. But these tools can save, you know, human hours, and they can save, you know, get you to market quicker, especially if you're doing this every day. I mean, that sounds like it's pretty intense going from, you know, 8 to 5 every day and having to have results, because you have to have those five articles into the classroom and ready to go. 

Melissa Quinn

Yes, 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. every day.

Rich Portelance

And, you know, so, how does that process start in the morning? Like, give me a little bit of the day in the life of Melissa Quinn. As you guys go through this whole series of things, like, is there morning writing and then afternoon alignment or..? How do you guys manage all that?

Melissa Quinn

Yeah. So, we have– I mean, we have different teams, even though we're a very small company, like, maybe 20 people total, that really work on the day-to-day. We have the editorial team; they meet around 9:30 every morning to discuss which stories they're writing and any upcoming stories as well. Like, we know, we get the press releases, we know what's coming up, so you can kind of plan ahead and prepare for that sometimes. Sometimes it's just like, “Oh, did you hear this happened overnight? We should probably write about it.” And, like, that definitely happens. So they discuss that in the morning, then they take the time to write and edit throughout the day, so they can publish and be ready by 5:00 P.M. Now, my role is very different. I work with the team in the morning sometimes, giving them ideas, telling them which standards we're missing, and like, "Hey, I need an article about this if you guys can figure it out." But then, you know, working on the UI/UX design, as well, and working with marketing a little bit, and training, and, like, all sorts of things.

Rich Portelance

Well, that's, you know, I think that's such– it's the beauty of a small company, and that's part of the reason we wanted to talk to you, because if, you know, we're putting some of this content out to people to understand how a smaller company operates today, because when you have to kind of manage 50 states, all the logistics, all the standards, and all the regulations, and, you know, but you're successful. You guys are out there and you're in the classrooms. How many states utilize your content now? That you actually have contracts with? 

Melissa Quinn

This was just in an email, and I read it. I read it, but now I can't remember exactly what it said. I want to say we have… I mean, at least half for sure, like with contracts, and even very much ongoing contracts. There are a few that have, you know, trials, or we may have a school or two.

Rich Portelance

Okay. 

Melissa Quinn

So, it might not just be whole districts, you know. We’re really, really huge in Texas, and in New York, we have lots of traction in Maryland and Mississippi, and some Florida. And if you think of the states that I mentioned, they're very different. 

Rich Portelance

Very different. Yes.

Melissa Quinn

Very different. We've had– but we've had to add some things like content filtering.

Rich Portelance

Okay. 

Melissa Quinn

Just based on the states, like the laws of the state. You know, if you can't show or talk about something in a specific state, we have to flag that article then. But it's not something that we want to give access to anyone. You can just hide all the articles. It’s really just because the law says that the state can't have that for the students.

Rich Portelance

Okay. So, I mean, if you're doing work with, you know, Texas, Florida, and New York, I mean just in that triumvirate, you have a lot of differences. That's impressive in itself, but say, you know, 30-ish states that you're juggling on a daily basis with a small team of 20-ish people that's… Congratulations. You know, I think for a lot of smaller startups or edtech companies who are trying to break into the market and understand it, that would be success to them, right? So, you know, when did News-O-Matic start? How long have you guys been plugging away at this to grow your market and to get into 30 states?

Melissa Quinn

So the company's been around since 2014 for a while now. I joined a little over three years ago, and at first, it was more of like a… What is it..? Just, like, a B2C? Is that what I'm– a business-to-consumer model, where it's just the individual apps– Like, they just download on the app like a parent would or… It wasn't as big in the schools. 

And then when COVID hit, and everybody went virtual and online and needed all these online resources, then we kind of really saw some traction in these schools and districts. And then we got the contract with the state of Mississippi. And so, that kind of propelled… That's why I'm here. They're like, "Oh, we have funding now. We can hire you!" 

Rich Portelance

You know, that's the story of edtech companies. You know, I started an edtech company around 2014. Gosh, yeah. It was 11 years ago now. And, you know, so I've been in that world, and I was telling somebody the other day, at that point, not really understanding standards well and, you know, compliance. I was doing something called CareerPath, which is, you know, a career tool for students. Probably, you know, kind of borderline whether we needed to add standards and some alignment in, but so much has changed from then till now. So here's, you know, you guys are a company that started around the same time. You've made that adjustment, and you've been able to grow your market share, add people, and have influence within the classroom, and I think that's fantastic. Is there advocacy in the classroom or at the teacher level that you guys work on from a marketing perspective? Or how do teachers get familiar with News-O-Matic so that they can adopt your content? 

Melissa Quinn

That's, I think, been our biggest challenge, just not well known. You know, there's other companies that are bigger, like size-wise; they're 500 people as opposed to 20, and their marketing budget is… well, they have one, as opposed to, like, a smaller company. So that's been the challenge, just getting our name out there. We try with attending conferences, or even a little dabbling in some reels on TikTok, and things like that, Instagram stories, and trying to partner with different people to get our name out there.

Rich Portelance

Yeah.

Melissa Quinn

Because I think our content's so great, but I wish more people knew of us. That's been– that's just been the challenge.

Rich Portelance

Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, you know, you're so busy and doing the work, that it's hard to also, you know, kind of talk about yourselves out there into the world, and, you know, build more traction, but it's happening. And, you know, with 30 states on board and potentially Canada, I think that's fantastic. And, you know, when you look at getting into an international market, does that change the content that you're producing? Do you have to hire a whole new team of writers? Or how do you go about that if you go into Canada? 

Melissa Quinn

So, this is interesting. We are already working with a Canadian team, so when we were acquired by a larger company, we kind– We still are, you know, News-O-Matic, but they have a Canadian team, so we kind of work with them. We share stories, and they'll do a Canadian-specific article every day for their team, for their readers. 

But we are in, you know, we're trying to get a little bit more traction in the China market, as well. And so, that has its own interesting process, just because they are very stringent on what news can be read. But we've kind of managed to work around that, and I think we're good to go in that market as well. Half of our team works in France–

Rich Portelance

Okay. 

Melissa Quinn

–so we're very global to begin with. So, I think that helps with how, like, you know, our market, our operations, and their CEO, everybody's, you know, they're French. We have a French team, we have a Canadian team, and then we have us that are here in the United States. And just kind of working with everyone–and we've been working with everyone–makes that jump into the global area a little bit easier I want to say. 

And we translate into the four other languages. We're adding German, I think come fall, as well, so it'll be six languages total then. So, it's kind of– it's great. It's been really great.

Rich Portelance

Good for you guys. And, you know, hopefully we can help get you more exposure. But in doing all of that, I mean, getting into different global markets, different US markets, because there are 50 different US markets, you know, you've relied on some tech and some wily ways to grow, it sounds like. Where do you see… you know, how do you kind of continue to leverage technology going forward? What are some things you can do to continue this growth and support these new markets?

Melissa Quinn

That's, I mean, the AI has been helpful for different– even just voice recordings a little bit, and not just for the writers, but even for me, some of the content that I'm creating, like lesson plans, things like that, it's, you know, I can ask for suggestions, which is so helpful at times, and whatnot, and it can give us some suggestions for marketing… but it's just, it's still people. We rely on people, and you can't really replace people at the end of the day. No matter what the tools are, you need people. 

Rich Portelance

And when you go into some of these new markets, like, you talked about China, with a lot of regulations, are there also standards that you have to align your content to? Or is it just kind of meeting the regulations?

Melissa Quinn

For this one, we're meeting more regulations, and then we're trying to tap into some of those international schools. I think that’s where we’re going to start.

Rich Portelance

Okay. 

Melissa Quinn

Yeah. We tried to change our database a little bit so it doesn't look like a daily news, but maybe more of like… we'll have our daily news there, but it will be kind of more categorized, like a research-type setup, a little bit. But yeah, so it's more regulations. 

Rich Portelance

And so, it sounds like, you know, if you had to describe News-O-Matic, it's almost like AP (Associated Press) for kids, because you're really building a global news organization. So, your writers have to take in content from all over the place, and then make it, you know, specific to that particular region. So, if I'm writing something for Canada, they, you know, you want it to be, is it, is it Canadian news? Or is it worldwide news that just has a Canadian bent? Is, you know, are you..? Does this question make sense? Are you building one article and then adjusting it for each country? Or is it multiple articles for each country?

Melissa Quinn

So, we're keeping the same content for everybody aside from the Canadian team, like I said, where they do their one Canadian-specific article. Sometimes it overlaps, but we will write it and we'll– It's going to be more of like– We have a category called “Around the World” that isn't… and then we have a U.S. specific category. So, we might take that story and kind of change the verbiage a little bit around just to make more sense for our US readers, but we have to kind of keep in mind that we are global. So we… But this helps with not having any bias, because we know that we have to write for a lot of different markets, so we just say, “This is what happened,” and keep it very much at that level. 

Rich Portelance

That makes sense. And it makes it more straightforward, right? To keep it unbiased. So, in terms of the adoption, when you're going into these other states and countries, are you still looking at K through six kind of being your primary focus outside of the US as well?

Melissa Quinn

So, K through 8 seems to be kind of where we are. Actually, middle school is kind of where we're pushing a little. We would like to see a little more traction in that middle level there, which is why we upped the level, made that a little bit higher, and making sure we're hitting those standards that are in those middle school levels. A lot of other countries use us to learn English, so they adapt– We even have a little app within our company, the larger company, that has an “I Love English”, you know, news, and they take our articles, and since we have the lower Lexile level, they can start to read just in English. It’s just like “learning to read English” is kind of where we're hitting that. 

Rich Portelance

Hm. That's a really fascinating way to kind of make another leap here. So, you mentioned that there's a larger company. Are you okay to tell us who that is, or..? 

Melissa Quinn

Yeah, it's a French company called Bayard Presse. So, they have Bayard, Inc. over here as well in Canada and North America. But yeah, it's kind of who… They kind of took us over two years ago, or so? I don't know how many years it's been now. Maybe a year and a half?

Rich Portelance

Okay.

Melissa Quinn

I’m losing track, but we kind of– we still kept us who we are. Like, we still are News-O-Matic; everybody stayed the same. 

Rich Portelance

Autonomous.

Melissa Quinn

Yeah. Yeah. It was a very nice, I guess you could say, acquisition? I don't really know all the businessy terms. But nothing changed really on our level, except we do have a little bit more resources now, because we do have a little bit larger team, so that's been helpful as well, but we're still kind of doing our own thing. 

Rich Portelance

Well, that's terrific. I mean, that's the best of both worlds. You have this access and some more resources, and you can still operate independently and continue to grow. And so, you were talking about the writing team, and you have 20-ish kind of people. That's the global team, right? That's folks in France, folks in the U.S.? 

Melissa Quinn

That work directly with us. Yes. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. And how many of those are salespeople going out and, you know, trying to find new contracts?

Melissa Quinn

Two or three.

Rich Portelance

Yeah, I think, you know, I point it out because, you know, smaller companies who are trying to get into the market need to have a kind of a sense of what scale do you need to accomplish things. You guys have accomplished a lot with a small team. So, you know, it's possible, and that's one of the things we want to show is, you know, how do you grow a small company in the edtech space, and what do you need? So, you guys have a small sales team. You mentioned there's not a ton of marketing, but a little. It's more– is it more self-generated from your whole staff rather than a dedicated department?

Melissa Quinn

There are a few of us that work on it. Yeah, there's just like, that's one of my many hats. And I jump into– It's like– so, it's like, not maybe a marketing team, but it's… there's a few of us that kind of work on it and keep up with… just keeping us up with our social media, because that's just so important. Everybody's using it now, so we kind of have to make the time for it. Whether we have the time or not, you have to make the time for it. And we also rely on some partners. We do have teams, and like, we have our New York City partner; we have a team that sells in New York City. So, that kind of helps as well. 

Rich Portelance

So, these are like 1099 people, or folks that are contractors, and, you know, they can help to grow your presence. So it's a nice way to expand the presence without having more people on staff. 

Melissa Quinn

Yeah, like there are teams that sell different types of education products, and then they add us to their repertoire, and they can sell us as well. So, it's been– we've had mixed results with doing that, but it does help get our name out there in different states that we can't– two or three people can't hit all the states all at once. So, it helps with that. 

Rich Portelance

So, tell me a little bit about your platform. I'm looking at that great screenshot in back of you, and it looks like it's a proprietary platform. Is it web-based? Or is it some software that has to be loaded onto a computer? How does it work? 

Melissa Quinn

So we have our web-based app, but we also have apps that you can download for iOS or Android as well. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. 

Melissa Quinn

But I would say that the best user experience would be in our web app. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. So– and what makes it the best user experience? What about the web app is preferential? 

Melissa Quinn

I just think the way– Because we have so much content, tools, and data for teachers, and all of that is available in the web app, whereas it might be limited in just the iOS and Android space due to screen size, and just how much content you can have in these apps. So, it's– But we had it– we have both, or all three, I guess you could say, since iOS and Android are totally different. 

Rich Portelance

That's right. 

Melissa Quinn

Yes. But I would say– And they all need different types of updates. It's not all the same, so with a small team, you have to kind of pick and choose what you are going to update first, and then what is the second phase and third phase? So, we always make sure of that, because no matter what device you have, you can always access the internet. So, we make sure that our web app is absolutely the best experience that you will have, always. And then we integrate with different single sign-on providers, so that helps too. They can just kind of one-click sign in and begin reading. 

Rich Portelance

That's fantastic. I imagine with students and schools, districts using different platforms, whether it's PowerSchool or Canvas, or whatever else, there are all these LMS's (Learning Management Systems) out there. Being able to do a single sign-on is a big advantage. It gets you in the door quicker. Do you embed content in some of those LMS's as well? Is it, you know, is content streamed over? Or is it always viewed on your platform?

Melissa Quinn

Mostly viewed on our platform. We do have, like, links though that you can share. So, you can just grab a link to an article, drop that in your Schoology assignment that you're creating, and the students will be able just to click that link, and it will open on our platform. But it's nice to have that link, so they don't have to jump back and forth–it can all just be in Schoology. We also have– everything's printable and in a PDF, as well. So that's really great. It’s just very versatile for teachers, so versatile.

Rich Portelance

That's amazing and huge. My wife's a high school art teacher, so I live that life of hearing, you know, the things that go on in schools, and, you know, sometimes it's budget that restrains, or sometimes it's the number of kids that's a… you know, kind of a limiter on what they can do. You know, there's all sorts of limitations, and so teachers have to get creative in how they deliver and how they use content, and so, being versatile, I'm sure is a major plus for those teachers.

Now, you said you were a teacher for 10-12 years? 

Melissa Quinn

Yes. I taught all the grades. Well, not all, but K, one, four, five, and six. I'm a reading specialist as well, so I have a lot of experience with a lot of different students, abilities, levels, and different states. 

Rich Portelance

Oh, that's fantastic. So, you bring perspective to this product that I'm sure is very, very helpful.

Melissa Quinn

I don't think they always love to hear what I have to say! They're like, "Are you sure?" I'm like, "I'm pretty sure. This is how it goes in real life, like in the schools." But I would say we've grown, and I think– I hope– hopefully I contributed to the growth, giving my feedback, ideas, and stuff.

Rich Portelance

Oh, I'm sure you have, because, you know, people have great ideas for products, and if you're a product person–I'm a product person, I'm not a teacher, per se–that's half the battle. If you understand, you know, how the tech works, how you can get it to market, and here's the idea, but if you don't know how it can be applied effectively, then, you know, you run the risk of failure. And, you know, here you have this experience that you can bring to the team and say, you know, “Hey, you know, that sounds good, but we may want to do this.” That's invaluable, because obviously you guys continue to grow. When I was talking to one of your French counterparts a couple of years ago, I don't think that News-O-Matic was in 50 or 30 states. I think it was like five or 10 at that time. Like, you've grown pretty substantially in the last year and a half, two years. 

Melissa Quinn

Oh yeah. Like I said, after COVID, and then we kind of took off after that, and since then, we've been just updating our platform. And a big draw is that we are reasonably priced. I don't– I’m not sales, so I don't actually know what those prices are, but I just know that helps, because, I mean, you have to think about where, with budget cuts right now across the country, like in different states, and you've got to make sure that you fit what's available funding-wise. And we do, so that's pretty awesome too.

Rich Portelance

Yeah. I mean, once you're adopted, you're in the classroom, people are using it, you have already established your presence, and they have your application. I would imagine it, you know, it makes sense to be flexible and adopt your pricing to whatever is available to a certain extent, so that you can remain intact rather than trying to hold a hard line on a price that may be unreasonable. right? 

Melissa Quinn

Because you never know, and especially right now, that's been a very much of a concern for many districts, and there's concern about budgets, and, you know, there's some things that you can't… I feel like edtech's one of those things that they kind of float, like they “don't need it”.

Rich Portelance

Yes. 

Melissa Quinn

That's been the challenge too. Like, “Do we?” No. You need us.

Rich Portelance

Well, you know, yeah, otherwise, are you going and researching and writing articles, or bringing in news from various sources which may not be credible or reliable? I mean, that's a lot of work for teachers to take on.

Melissa Quinn

Yeah, I've read articles– Like, not– I guess some papers and things about how many teachers actually go out on their own and try to find non-fiction content for their students, and it turns out that it's not vetted. Oh, like because we're vetted by a child psychologist, too. So, you're not going to see anything that you shouldn't see on our page. I totally forgot about that; that's one of our biggest things. And then, so, it's not vetted material; it's not, like, age-appropriate, it's not even– the Lexile levels aren't accurate, things like that. So, and a lot of teachers do that, but we have it ready for them. We have videos and images. Teachers don't have to go looking elsewhere for all that to accompany their article, too, so it's great. 

Rich Portelance

So, you have a child psychologist on staff who's reviewing the material, and their job is to make sure it's not going to negatively affect a child's psyche?

Melissa Quinn

More or less. Yeah, if there is anything that comes up, like, sad, unfortunate events of the school shootings, like the Texas one a year or so ago. We know we have a huge presence in Texas now, so do we write an article on that? Do we not? And we have, you know, we confer with her and to see… does it do more harm than good? 

Rich Portelance

Yeah.

Melissa Quinn

And it wound up we– I guess they wrote the article and decided not to publish it based on– it would cause too much fear and anxiety, I believe the child psychologist said. And so, then, we'll write like a– we do have these little news bites, which is just like a sentence of something that happened, and we would just write a sentence that it happened, and not a full article about it. 

Rich Portelance

That makes a lot of sense. And boy, that's invaluable to have that resource available. Like you said, you know, if you're trying to do this by yourself, you're not going to have the availability of all these resources. But News-O-Matic has put them together, put it into a platform, and you know, you have the right people behind the technology to make it all happen, kind of whizbangy every day. 

Melissa Quinn

Make it happen? Some days I wonder! Now that we're talking about it, I'm like, “How do we do this every day?”

Rich Portelance

Well, that's the beauty of small edtech companies that are growing, and, you know, that's– I really appreciate your perspective. You know, when we get on to the webinar, and we talked to, you know, your counterpart from Edmentum, you know, there's a big company that has infinite resources comparatively. Nothing's infinite, but, you know, they certainly have a lot of presence and folks available, but they're operating differently. But, you know, here you are, and you're both selling into the same market, and finding success at much different levels. And, you know, I love looking at that difference and seeing how people are getting to where they're going. And, you know, if somebody who's watching this can glean a little bit of information and say, "Oh, that makes a lot of sense," I think then we've accomplished something pretty special.

Melissa Quinn

Yes, it's challenging at times for sure, but then it's rewarding too, when we get the information from teachers and how much they like us and use us, and I enjoy that.

Closing Thoughts

Rich Portelance

Anything that you would want to add that we might have missed today?

Melissa Quinn

No. No, I think we covered… We are always making updates. We have a new search feature coming out. Our searches were lacking, I guess you can say. It needed some upgrades, so I've been working on that pretty extensively over the past couple of months, trying to make sure that you can see our content, because yes, you see those five stories every day. And obviously, I'm a Philly fan, so I picked this one as my background, but we have so much content; I want teachers to be able to see all of it and leverage all of it. So, having the ability to browse and check out our different categories is going to be great. I'm excited about that. 

Rich Portelance

That is great. Is that a real example of what you can do on the platform? You can pick a favorite article, have it show up on your desktop, and kind of customize the desktop?

Melissa Quinn

I mean, I can! Definitely my favorite articles, for sure. But, like, we have units and some custom units that districts and people can pick their favorite articles, put them in custom units, and share them across, like, schools, and even across the district. And teachers can make assignments where they can choose a couple of their favorite articles and send that to students, and students can read or choose one of the articles that the teachers compile. So we have all that availability as well. And our units. I love my units. They're all of our– Like, the texts that go together, because after 10-plus years of content, I have a lot of articles that go together that fit into nice little text sets. So, I enjoy doing that. 

Rich Portelance

I can imagine. That's a lot of articles over that course of time, and it has to be organized here using technology to bring forward what you want based on matches, keyword searches, and concepts. That's pretty cool.

Well, Melissa Quinn, I want to thank you today for joining the EdGate Powers podcast for, you know, having a really engaging discussion and sharing some of what News-O-Matic is doing. We look forward to having you on the webinar, and for now, I wish you all good luck in entering the new markets that you're pursuing.

Melissa Quinn

Excellent. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it