Smart EdTech Adoption

The following transcript has been edited for readability. Timestamps have been removed and minor transcription errors corrected, while speaker comments and context have been preserved. Please note that the original recording contains intermittent editing or recording issues that cause the audio and video to abruptly jump to later portions of the presentation. While every effort has been made to accurately transcribe the available content, these discontinuities prevent a complete transcription of certain sections. Instances where these abrupt jumps occur are marked as [Inaudible Jump]. 

Opening Remarks

Rich Portelance

Well, hello everyone, and welcome to the smart tech webinar, brought to you by EdGate. We're super excited that we have such a fantastic group of panelists today, and it looks like we have fantastic attendance, as well. So, welcome to what we think is going to be an exciting conversation. 

Just so everybody is aware, we will be recording the webinar. It will be available afterwards on YouTube, and we will send it out to anybody who registered, so you will get the link to the webinar, and you can share it with your friends, your family, and your kids. I'm sure they'll all want to watch.

So, the topic is around how state and district leaders are “separating the wheat from the chaff”. So what we did today is we have some leaders from both edtech and from education. People who are kind of in the weeds on the approval process, and of course, people who are trying to get their products in the door. We think that this group will be able to shed some light on what's happening in this space, how you can find adoption, and make sure that your product is ready for the classroom. 

So, I'm going to let each of our panelists introduce themselves, and then we'll dig into the topic a little bit further, so I want to start with Mark Maslowski. Mark, if you could give us a quick intro, and then we'll go from there. 

Mark Maslowski

Yeah, hi. My name is Mark Maslowski, I'm the VLA (Virtual Learning Academy) director at Jefferson County Educational Service Center (JCESC). We're located in Steubenville, Ohio. We're a small ESC (Educational Service Center) that supports seven local schools in Ohio, and then we provide over 100 schools with our online curriculum platform in Ohio, as well. So, I'm really glad to be here, and I'm anxious to learn some things myself, as well. 

Rich Portelance

Fantastic, thank you, Mark. I appreciate the intro.

Sarah, could you give us an intro? 

Dr. Sara Delano Moore

Of course. I'm Sarah Deleno Moore. I'm a math educator and writer, and my work for about the last 20 years has been in educational publishing, where I currently serve as vice president for content and research at Origo Education, so I think a lot about the math world, especially for elementary children right now. 

Rich Portelance

Excellent. 

And David Berg?

David Berg

Hi there! I am a high school teacher by trade and training from California. I live in the Pacific Northwest now, and I work for an organization called Big Picture Learning, which is a nonprofit. In that capacity, I was the co-creator of a platform called ImBlaze, an edtech product that we have out on the market now that helps schools and systems manage their internship and apprenticeship programs. I'm happy to talk more about that later, but I'm glad to be here. 

Rich Portelance

Thank you, David. I appreciate it. 

And finally, we have Dr. Michael Rubin.

Dr. Michael Rubin

Hi, everybody. I’m Mike Rubin, principal at Uxbridge High School in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. I've been principal here for nine, now going on 10 years. I was named the 2020 Massachusetts High School Principal of the Year, and our school really has leveraged its focus on postsecondary readiness. We work very closely with a number of different opportunities in the edtech space in terms of student certification and career pathway work, so I’m looking forward to the conversation and learning with and for all of you today. 

Rich Portelance

Excellent. We're impressed with the work being done by Dr. Rubin and by our panel. There's a lot of good information here. 

So, with many edtech companies claiming the benefit of their smart products, how do districts and states separate the innovation (wheat) from the chaff? We want to know if outcomes of state assessment testing matter, what other key factors play a role, and why? Today, these experts that we presented will provide the community with some insights to help unravel these mysteries of adoption, and hear what new technologies are resonating and which ones are white noise. 

As I've mentioned before, this webinar is part of a series of conversations EdGate is hosting surrounding the topics of educational effectiveness today and what it takes to get there. 

As I mentioned before, this is being recorded, and you will receive the link to the recording after the webinar. 

Discussion

Rich Portelance

So, let's get started, and I'm going to kick it off with a question to Dr. Moore. You sent me an article recently from The Washington Post that attempts to shed light on the value of AI and its role in society. The title was “Is an AI Chatbot Smarter than a Four-Year-Old?”, and we will provide a link to this article in the follow-up material to everybody. Can you… The discussion here is not all about AI, but we want to kind of cover it because it is the elephant in the edtech room these days, everybody's talking about AI, so we want to start there. 

Sarah, can you give us some insight on the article and your impression as it relates to the edtech community? 

Dr. Sara Delano Moore

Of course, Rich. Thank you.

When I read the article, I was struck by a line very close to the end that talks about the fact that growing up as children is different from scaling up as technology does. And I work primarily in the elementary education space, preschool through maybe grade six. I was a middle school teacher when I was in the classroom. So, I think a lot about these technologies and how they impact and change the learning young children need to do. 

My teachers told me you have to learn long division because you might not always have a calculator. That's not true anymore. So, that part has changed. When we look at AI, which is definitely the squirrel, the shiny object in our space right now, to me, that article reminded me that it's one dimension of edtech. And like any dimension of edtech, it has its strengths and it has its limitations. If we're looking for factual information fairly quickly, we can often get that from AI. We still need to check, but it's getting better and better in those ways. 

If we're looking at strategic reasoning, at the kinds of causal relationships that young children figure out through play, AI doesn't know how to do that yet. Or, at least, our large language model (LLM) chatbots don't know how to do that yet. And so, we need to be thinking about what our purpose is. What is it, you know, for my role as an elementary mathematics publisher, what is it we want children to learn? How do we want that to happen? Where does the tech fit? 

And I thought this article was a really nice reminder that it has a place, but even though it's the new shiny object, it's not everything. We've got a lot of other interesting technology to talk about together today. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah, I agree, and I'm gonna latch onto a word because you mentioned “play” as a key component of what AI cannot do. And when we talk about play, there's a lot of movement towards the gamification of content and gaming in education, so I want to explore that a little bit with Mark, because I think you have some background there with the VLA leveraging gaming technology. Can you tell us what impact it's had and how you're using it? 

Mark Masloski

Yeah, and I’d just like to respond to, like, what Dr. Moore said, you know, AI is a tool, right? It's like we went from chalkboards, right, to whiteboards. So, you still need that human element; you still need to teach kids and come up with strategies for how to use those tools. So, you know, I don't think it's “no AI” or “yes AI”, but I think Dr Moore is right on how you're going to implement that. 

And what we see with our gaming courses, which is really important, because we saw that, okay, we need to provide some social emotional learning (SEL) standards for our students. And primarily our students, you know, we're a nonprofit, we're public, but we provide curricula for a lot of schools. How can we make something engaging for students to learn what appropriate behavior is, and how they handle frustration? Well, you know, we saw that there was something called Game Plan, and we were able to work with a new employee who just graduated from our local university to create a course called “Gaming Concepts”, and in that course, we're able to sneak things in about teamwork, working with somebody, and how you handle things when things get frustrating in a way that students can relate to because they understand these games. 

Now, when I looked at those games for the first time, I'm thinking, “Where's Pac-Man? Where's Donkey Kong?” I had no idea what those games look like, but it gives a way for students to be more engaged. And, you know, our philosophy is that any team member at the Jefferson County Educational Service Center is that students are our first concern, so we need to make sure that we have the engagement piece, and Game Plan does that for us, you know? We talk to our students, we talk to our teachers, and figure out what they need, and we have a really good local superintendent who helps us and lets us know what they need, and they said, “What can we do to teach some of these social-emotional learning standards? These standards, where kids could learn some of this, but they might not be comfortable in a group environment. How can we do this in a one-on-one environment?” And it's kind of, it's really helped us along the way. 

Rich Portelance

Well, that's terrific, Mark. Thank you for that insight into, you know, what gaming is, what gaming technologies you're using, what's going on, and why you're using it. It's an important facet of what's going on here in the smart tech space. 

Dr. Rubin, during our pre-recorded interview, we spoke at length about operational efficiencies, and I think we can tie gaming in here a little bit because I think it's important to figure out, you know, what those operational efficiencies are. Can you dig into what you mean by that and give us some examples of what you consider operational efficiency and how technology plays a role? 

Dr. Michael Rubin

Yeah, absolutely, and I think this will be a good segue to some of what you'll talk about with my colleague, David Berg, in a couple of minutes, and a connection to what you've already heard from Mark and Sarah. 

To me, operational efficiency, and really any technological tool that we seek to implement, a term we often use here is “is the juice going to be worth the squeeze?” And I share that in that it's about pragmatism to us, and it's about making sure that the tool that we are using suits the purpose and the why. And I think that is where we merge some more traditional technology implementation, both hardware and software, to also, you know, the thoughts of artificial intelligence. It's really nice to have an AI tool that can help you develop a rubric, but it shouldn't necessarily be the only tool that you use in developing the rubric. And, you know, I was working with our staff recently, and I don't mean to say it in pejorative terms, but sometimes it's “garbage in, garbage out”. 

If you want to make sure that the tech tool that you're using is going to be hitting the right purpose, for us, we talk about operational efficiency: “Is this going to benefit us in a positive way in the classroom and out of the classroom for the purpose that we serve?” And, you know, we looked long and hard at a number of different things, particularly where we have a lot of our students who aren't in the building going out and participating in things like internships, we really wanted to make sure that the tool that we were using was going to support the actual purpose of the work, and make it more efficient. Otherwise, it's just not worth the training and the implementation time. So, that is also something I think that you'll hear from a lot of us. It's probably a good segue to where David and I work together. 

Rich Portelance

Okay, thank you. 

And I want to remind everybody that there is a Q&A box at the bottom of your screen. If you have a question for any of our panelists or for me, you can put it there. We already have one question, so thank you, Joyce. We will get to that towards the end of the session, and we'll go through. Your participation is really important here, so if you're attending, you're listening along, and you have a question, please put it in here, and we'll attempt to answer everything. And if we don't get to it on the live event, we'll send out answers afterwards with the material that we provide. 

So, David, you know, Dr. Rubin was pointing towards you and the work that you do, so we want to hear a little bit about that, and I'm going to preface that with the phrase, “tools matter”, because you said that to me, and I think that's an important part of what Michael was just talking about. Can you dig in there a little bit? 

David Berg

Yeah. The analogy– or the metaphor that I use is “if the only tool that you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail”. And so, tools do matter, particularly around innovative practice. You know, in our case, I'm an educator, and I spent a lot of time in the edtech space with accelerators and with other startups. Oftentimes, those people– not always, but oftentimes, those people aren't former educators; they're all former students. But what kind of students were they? Like, what types of school experience did they have? Many times, they're quite successful in navigating traditional systems, so they may build something that sort of reaffirms that, which may not be what we need today, kids today. 

In the case of our platform, as Dr. Rubin mentioned, you know, we work with high schools primarily, and we're promoting an innovative practice, which is that schools are a really powerful place to get knowledge capital to learn stuff. But because of the internet, because of the fact that kids are digital natives, like, they can get knowledge from lots of places now. And so, there's a new role for schools, particularly high schools, to play in the lives of young people, and we think it's also to build social capital, it's to help connect them with people out in their communities. In this work, talking about separating the wheat from the chaff, we have to look at the tools that are out there, like our tool, we think, and see how essential they are to the work. 

And when I say essential to the work, we also have to parse that a bit. And Mark probably sees this part, which is that companies will come in and talk to district administrators and say, “We've got the perfect tool to make your life better, or to provide data for the state”, or things like that. If those tools don't make educators’ lives better, you're going to spend $100,000 on something that is going to be essentially wasted. And so– and Mark, please challenge me on that, but my sense is that if the tool is essential for making the life of the educator better, and also enabling the educator to feel like they're an innovator, because they want to innovate, they want to to do different work, and and improve their practice if the tool helps with that it will be successful we we see that a lot in our in our practice. 

And I think Dr. Rubin speaks to this; it is like, we want to make it so that educators feel empowered to help build real-world learning experiences for young people. We also want to make it so that, you know, kids are getting to their internships, that they're getting back from their internships. Once folks, principals in particular, see our platform and the attendance functionality there, they kind of can't unsee that, like, “Oh, I could see that kids are attending their internships, I need to know that”. Like, there are certain legal and moral responsibilities to know that. So, yeah, that's what we think; we think that it has to be essential for educators. 

Mark Maslowski

David, I totally agree with what you said. You know, you have to have a buy-in, and it has to be attainable, right? Educators and teachers… you know, I have a family, I have a twin brother who's an educator, his wife's a teacher, my wife's a teacher, and I got a couple of daughters, so we know when we go in and we're talking to a group of districts, we do not want to overwhelm the teacher, because the students will see that their teacher might be overwhelmed using a new product, or a new vendor of some sort, so you want to make sure it is attainable. And then when kids use it, you want them to have success in it as well. So, yeah, you're totally right there, David, I totally agree with you. 

Rich Portelance

I want to interweave a question that came up in the Q&A here, because I think it's important as you're talking about essentials for educators, and I'm curious how you guys kind of parse this. Can you address thoughts on providing free pilots to schools or to educators as a way in which to get in the door? Does that make a difference? How was that viewed by you guys as educators? 

Mark Maslowski

You know… What do pilots for schools do? We also do some pilots for our support system, right? So, we have, you know, like Game Plan, we piloted that before we started using it. We tested that out among our staff, among our young employees, and among students. So, you know, it takes time to evaluate a product or a vendor. As well, we pilot constantly, so we're working with a dropout recovery school right now, and we're creating six– we did a survey with them, so we're creating six career cluster courses for them. That's going to be quarter credit, and we're also providing a pathway to the future for seniors who could graduate, but they still want to participate in fine arts, music, or athletics, so we're creating a pathway to the future where we're going to incorporate finance, career readiness skills, internships as well, and job placement. So, you know, I think that school is a great support for us, and working together with that, but you have to have a great team, and we're lucky enough to have a team. 

Dr. Sara Delano Moore

I can chime in, Rich, from a publisher’s perspective. I work– or as a publisher of elementary math curricula, so when a school adopts a new curriculum, it's a big investment. It's proportionally a lot of money, it's a program they're going to use typically for five to seven years, and making something, I… What David said really resonated with me, making something that is usable, not just in terms of bells and whistles and reports for administrators, but in the day-to-day lives of teachers and students, is critical. And we certainly believe, and my colleagues in other parts of the math industry, I think, share that belief that pilots are important. 

I will say that I'm hearing more and more about schools that are saying, “We want to pilot, but we don't want to talk with you while we pilot”, and that makes me very uncomfortable, because you're learning about a program and a pilot, and you need to communicate with us to answer questions, to understand what's going on… We don't need to look over your shoulder every day, but we want to check in on a regular basis to see what's working, what's not working, and is what’s not working because you didn't find that feature or element of the program yet, or is it not working because there's something that's really critical to you that we don't have? In which case, we might not be the right program, hence the power of a pilot. But we really do. I think pilots, especially with technology, are important because it's so easy to have a veneer of beautiful bells and whistles that don't translate to the day-to-day lives of teachers. 

David Berg

Yeah, it's vaporware, I mean, is the notion like… You know, edtech companies… Well, I'm unique. The company I work for is unique in that it's a nonprofit. Edtech companies are traditionally for-profit entities, which means they have VC (venture capital) funding, and they have a whole funding model that really pushes them to get a quick rate of return. And so, they are forced, and they don't like this, but they're forced to invest in marketing, they're forced to invest in saying their platform is everything for all people, with a really slick website, and lots of customer testimonials, and all this stuff. And they may not at all do what they say; some of that stuff might be in their roadmap. 

So piloting is… I love that, I think Dr. Moore is right, like, I think pilots are great. I will say, though, if you are thinking about adopting a platform and you're a teacher, let's say, adopting a tech tool. If you are tech savvy, you're gonna figure it out, like, and you're motivated, you want to do it, like, you're gonna figure it out, whether it's a pilot or not. If you are not into this initiative, if you're just, like, “This isn't really for me”, you know, thinking about my work, like, getting out into the real world, if an educator is like, “Yeah, I don't really care, that's not my job, I'm not really interested in that innovation”, it doesn't mean they're not amazing educators, but it's just not their area. In that case, you really need leadership, like, there needs to be the principal or superintendent, but particularly principals need to say, “This is an initiative we're committed to. We're doing this, we're doing this change, whatever change is, we're doing this, and this is what we're going to say no to, because, you know, there's only limited capacity, so here are the things we're not going to do anymore, here are the things we're going to shed”. And principals have a hard time doing that, oftentimes, you know, like, saying what they're not going to do if they're going to try something new. But that's a key first step for there to be that change management. Pilots are great along that way but better if the principals already said, “We're doing this, and we're not going to do this stuff anymore, but we're going to do this, so get on board”. 

Dr. Sara Delano Moore

And I would encourage– add to that, an encouragement to ask your partner, whoever's materials you are adopting, piloting, whatever it might be, what implementation support they have for those principles, for those administrators, who might not be experts in the thing, the specifics, but we need them as cheerleaders. How do they know what to look for in a classroom walkthrough? How do they know what questions to ask where others might have gotten stuck? And how do they overcome those things? That's a place we've invested a lot of energy in the last few years, and it's really been helpful for our school partners, because they have that architecture in place to function more independently. 

Rich Portelance

So, does that resonate with you, Michael, in terms of the approach to free pilots? 

Dr. Michael Rubin

It does, and it doesn't. And I think, you know, I might be the the skunk at the proverbial lawn party right now, but I am going to tell you that I am always very cautious about the implementation of pilots and how we go about it, because oftentimes, I want to make sure that the initial levels of support that occur when we're going towards implementation are not just a “flash in the pan” moment that dissipates after implementation. 

And I think the other part of it is, it goes back to your earlier question about operational efficiency, is the why. I think as a school leader, it is incredibly, incredibly important for us to indicate the “why”. There has to be a clear purpose, and I think a lot of teachers– and I put my teacher hat on a little bit, it's been a long time since I was in the classroom, but teachers sometimes feel a little bit snakebitten by the concept of “initiative of the day”. And so, when they sometimes hear the word “pilot”, they hear, “Okay, we're going to do this for 30 days, and if somebody doesn't like it enough, we'll just move on to something else”. So there needs to be a sustained commitment as well, and I think that is one of the things that one has to be really honest about with a pilot to be honest, because a pilot is just that. You don't want to give this false pretense that a pilot is the implementation. Those are two very different things, and sometimes people don't divest that. And oftentimes, the pilot can determine how or if an implementation is successful, and then, in fact, whether it can be sustained. So, I see the purpose, I value the purpose, but I'm very clear with folks that when we talk about something being a pilot, the two-way feedback highway needs to be traversed pretty consistently. 

Rich Portelance

Thank you very much for that. You know, it's good to have the viewpoints that we have, because you can provide a different perspective, right, and that's what we want. It's not just about agreement, but it's about digging in and really finding those pathways. And I have to say, as someone who was an edtech provider with my platform and trying to get pilots in the door, that was really informative in understanding. So, my next question would be, does the length of the pilot really make a difference if we say, “We'll make it a two-year pilot”, so it does have time to resonate. Does that make a difference to you, Michael, and to the community, or what have you guys seen?

Dr. Michael Rubin

Highly variable. There is no one answer to that. I have seen things where a pilot of anything has been so successful, so quickly, that people can't wait to see how it's going to be sustained over time. I've also seen others where the implementation curve is this rocket forward, and then the dip. And people struggle with the dip, because they expected everything to be stratospheric for the duration, and that's not sustainable, right, it's not. If you're doing something right, there needs to be some sort of challenging conversation that occurs within it. So, I do see, I do see that it's a possibility, but I also think it's important for anybody when they enter into the conversation about implementation to have an honest and frank conversation about what in fact the short and long-term expectations are, again, on both sides of that relationship. 

And I think the final piece of it, for us, at least, and I think this is considering evolution, right? How something is used in year one. I'm going to go to something that's not particularly technological. As an English teacher, I taught in the English classroom. The only book I think I consistently taught for five years was The Great Gatsby. I taught it every single year that I taught, but I can't say I used it the same way year over year. Technology is the same thing.

Mark Masloski

Yep. 

Dr. Michael Rubin

You know, for those of us who are video gamers, I've beaten Super Mario Bros. 3 a bunch of times, but I've never beaten it the same way. And I think that is an important metaphor for technological implementation and pilots. 

Rich Portelance

So, I see people shaking their heads, and I have another series of questions. We can go on this thread for I'm sure another hour, easy, but 30 seconds from each of you… Did you have another comment, Sarah? On that thread? You're muted. 

Dr. Sara Delano Moore

Forgive me. 

I want to echo the importance of implementation. You know, when we talk to new customers, we talk about how it's going to take two to three years to be in a place where you have a system in place, you have a team. And it's those open expectations on a two-way street that really matter.

Rich Portelance

Mark? 

Mark Maslowski

No, I think it's important, like, and I can't remember who said it, maybe everybody in the panel, the support system has to be there. I guess in the business world they call it “customer service”. So, when we pilot with somebody, or somebody pilots with us, it's important that we meet on a weekly basis at the beginning, and then a bi-weekly, but there's communication there, so they get to know you and your personality a little bit, and know what you can do and what you can't do, I think that's unbelievably important. The situation sometimes being a nonprofit, because we're not huge, so once they see that we can do things, people have to be ready, because they'll ask for more, which is fine, but I agree. 

I think your support system has to be there, and you have to be communicating throughout the pilot, because it's not going to benefit you or the school. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. 

David? 

David Berg

I'll just add– and this is something that Dr. Rubin mentioned or referenced, a pilot is like… It's like dating. It's like, wait, you know, it might not be right for one or the other, like, I will just say, as an edtech company, I have said to customers, “You know, you're not really ready for this. Like, you're not ready for this innovation, or you don't have the capacity of leadership”. It's okay, but come back to us when you are. And, you know, as Mike said, there's a capacity thing, there's work to do. 

Most initiatives and most edtech products, and in most of this work, somebody still has to do work, and if you don't have the capacity, you're not ready. It's okay, but you're not ready. 

Rich Portelance

Thank you. No, those are great points, so let's keep moving forward and thank you for the question, Joyce, that was really informative and helpful. 

So, this is going back to Sarah, and I want to talk about crosswalking, and understand a little bit, what is crosswalking or mapping? And can you explain how it can be employed to gain access to new markets? 

Dr. Sara Delano Moore

Sure. 

When we think about elementary school math, it's fairly easy for all of us to come up with a common list of what students need to learn. They need to learn addition and subtraction facts, and then how to add and subtract all different flavors of numbers. Same with multiplication, division, and some geometry. The way standards are constructed in the United States, because they are state by state, because we missed on the power of the “common” part of the Common Core, it's a challenge as a publisher to keep track of, “Okay, this state is multiplying up to 10 in third grade, and then they just go on to everything, and this state adds a standard in fourth grade about going up to 12. And so, the idea of mapping and crosswalking is connecting lessons to standards. 

And then, and this has the been the magic of our partnership with EdGate on this front, being able to say, “If I wrote this lesson for this standard in Ohio, where I live, about multiplication in third grade, the technology can help connect that to that related third grade standard which might have slightly different phrasing, or a slightly different numbering system in other states. And for us, as a small publisher, that means we can craft a curriculum, and then have the technology help us serve that up to customers all over the U.S., where they will be able to see their own local standards. Same lesson, but I'll see my Ohio standard number, my Washington state standard number, my Florida state standard number, whatever it might be, and that helps make our resources more accessible without the full expense of print state editions, which can go out of date hourly depending on how a state changes or chooses to make revisions. 

Rich Portelance

That makes a lot of sense. 

So, if we take that in the context of the classroom, Dr. Rubin, can you– in selecting tools, it's understanding of alignment to the standards that you're putting out there, can you tell us how important that is, and what are you looking for when… You know, what are the criteria you're looking for when you're bringing stuff into the school? 

Dr. Michael Rubin

So, I think for us, there's a constant balance, and this is speaking of our school, this is not every school, so I want to qualify the statement with that first, that we operate very, very tightly on this equilibrium between content and skills. And if the tool should be speaking to content curriculum frameworks, durable skill curriculum frameworks, and oftentimes both. And so, that is really our litmus test, very simply put. And, you know, it sounds simple, like, oh yeah, you find a piece of technology and I'm sure it– or any curriculum resource for that matter, we want to make sure ideally, that it is connecting to that student or the community from the outside, if we look, sort of again, on that binary, that they intersect in that Venn diagram in the middle, which is a lot of times how I think, that there's a connection between school, community, skill and content. 

And some of those curriculum frameworks are explicit. They're very articulately written in a book somewhere on the state website, but we also need to give ourselves enough latitude to make sure they marry into the local context, and that's sort of that variable piece that I think is is particularly important us, because a tool that might work for integrating an English curriculum tool, or a speaking and writing tool, in Uxbridge, based on how we want to place our students into the surrounding world of work in terms of of our internship program, will be very different than what, you know, Mark, Sarah, or David are seeing in other parts of the country, and that contextual piece is particularly important. 

Rich Portelance

Well, you don't– really, I know you don't realize what a great bridge you provided to Mark, because the conversation we had was exactly around that, you know, regionalization of content, because his Virtual Learning Academy is actually working with various states. Can you give us a little background there, Mark, and kind of tell us how you're contextualizing things for local regions? 

Mark Maslowski

Yeah, so, you know, Virtual Learning Academy was started 20 years ago, and it was just used to help support our students who might be homebound. So, you know, with VLA, we want to make sure that we are student centered first, so when we look at curriculum and courses, we want to make sure it's aligned to those standards, and really, EdGate helped us a ton, because like Dr. Moore said, the crosswalks are important, the mapping is important, but we probably already have those lessons, right? And the thing that helped us with EdGate is that they might have seen something in our Algebra 2 course that relates better in an algebra course in another state. So, you know, with us being so small, that saved us a ton of time making that lesson a little bit more engaging for those students. 

And I think sometimes when I talk to schools, and they want to know about our program, you know, we create an LMS (Learning Management System) for that school uniquely, so that student information, the courses, the content, the textbook, everything's in there with the data. And what's nice about us is that we can make live changes in a course that is modern, or in that area, as Dr. Rubin said, and I think that's so important. And a tool that we used with AI is, how are we going to make a little bit better, authentic assessments? How can we do things that relate to the kids? So, you know, we have some young employees right now that are creating some unique types of assessment questions on some content that students can relate to, and we want to make sure that we're forward-thinking and always updating things, because it's a long process, right? You know, we needed to get 28 courses approved in a state within a year, we needed help and support through that process, and we had some courses already designed, but we had to create some courses with that, so, you know, working with our authors and our authors are just a higher school teachers, we work with our local university, we’re able to submit things to EdGate, Naomi, Greg, and their team looked at it, “Hey, this crosswork, there's something missing, here's some gap analysis missing”. So, it was just a long approach, and somebody's like, you know, “28 courses?” Well, 28 courses for us was a lot at that time, even though we have a huge span of courses, but it's important that schools are comfortable knowing that whatever curriculum you're going to provide, it's going to do that checkbox of it's going to have that curriculum and that standards in it. 

But, like Dr Rubin said, it's going to really be up to the students and teachers, and how they're going to implement those standards in that skill set. I mean, that's really important. A lot of times, I think, okay, we're doing these things just so it's a checkbox, yeah, we're 100% aligned for our 28 courses. But the implementation is going to be the most important for those students, especially if it's going to be asynchronous, where you have to have engagement activities within your courses. If it’s synchronous, you have to have teachers who are able to teach skills and things off of that computer, off those standards, that they need as well, so I'm interested to hear more. I know we won't have time for Dr. Rubin and his philosophy, but I kind of liked that here. That job approach and that internship approach and, you know, using what's in your community, and that's our approach.

Rich Portelance

One of the things I know, and I'll make mention here, we had interviews with each of the panelists. They're going to be available– the YouTube links will be available on the slides that we provide afterwards, and so you can hear more about Mark's VLA. They serve multiple states, so they've regionalized content. You can hear about Dr. Rubin and some of the edtech products that he's brought into play, and some of the engineering products in those interviews. 

I do want to get back to David, and talk a little bit about ImBlaze, it's an internship Management program. You have over 250 schools, I believe, that are using your product, so to me, there's a great deal of success. Can you give us some of the key statistics and why you believe your team has had such tremendous success in this market?

David Berg

Sure, well, so, yeah. We, you know, in terms of edtech products, we're pretty “boutique” at this point. You know, that's actually quite small, but that's by design, because we consider the tool of disruptive innovation, in that we are not necessarily building efficiencies on sort of legacy practice and legacy systems. We're really trying to help innovators do something completely different in the high school space, which is getting kids out into the real world. As such, we likely have– we're confident that we have the largest data set of actual student experience out in the real world, so that's really interesting for us from a research perspective, informing back the policy perspective. Like, we intuitively, by and large, I think understand that it's important for high school kids to do a lot of things, but one thing is to get connected out into the real world, and have some real-world experience, have some mentored experiences, and so forth. We think that's intuitive, but– or intuitively important, but we don't have a lot of data showing us what's effective. 

We also have a, you know, quite a “potpourri” of requirements that states have around work-based learning. Some states have none, some states have quite a bit, and so, you know, to Dr Moore’s point, it's hard to map that, because many states have requirements, but no systems to put those requirements into practice and to meet those expectations. So, we're really excited about showing researchers, showing policymakers, our data, our metadata, and saying, “Here are some of the examples of high-quality, real-world learning, and here are some examples of not-so-high-quality, real-world learning”. And we have that data now, which is really exciting for us, you know, 2.5 million hours of student attendance logged on our platform out in the real world, so things like that could be really exciting for us in the next phase of our work, which is really trying to inform that practice, so that this disruptive innovation starts to shift into being standard practice. 

Rich Portelance

That's fantastic. And then, you call it “boutique”, but you know, I think many edtech providers would be really thrilled with having that kind of adoption, because it's showing the sign of growth and opportunity, so congratulations to employees, and what you're doing is so important. I do want to– 

David Berg

Well, I will say, like, you know, there is now state policy and expectation. It's very hard for a superintendent to say, “We don't have an internship program”, at, you know, at a school district that has a high school, like, “We don't have an internship program”. That’s not something that looks good to them at this point, like I think it's pretty universally accepted. And so, it's just us finding those people and showing them that, yeah, they can actually not have an internship program in name only; they actually can have a program that's thriving, as Dr. Rubin does. 

Rich Portelance

I think that's really vital. 

Michael, anything to add to that since you're working together? You're muted, Michael. 

Dr. Michael Rubin

I never do that! I think the world would love for me to have a mute button! …David, don't say anything. 

No, I think David hit the nail on the head. I think that the integration piece is really at the core of it, and I don't know that I have anything to add that he has not already articulately said. 

And I know you have other questions to get to!

Rich Portelance

I do want to tell everyone on the panel and out there in our audience today, just a reminder we're going to send out the link to the video afterwards. EdGate is doing work around CTE (career and technical education) standards, which is not something, you know, kind of not so popular, but I would encourage people if you do have interest in career and technical education, to talk to Kathleen at EdGate or one of your sales reps. There's actually a pretty robust initiative going on in that space. [Inaudible Jump] A lot of our students are not going to be attending college; they might want to go directly to the workforce, so they might want to gain those skills.

Michael, can you tell us what you're using today and why you feel that's important? 

Dr. Michael Rubin

Yeah, we use a few different platforms. I mean, I think in progress for us, with respect to our work, that's being done outside the building, ImBlaze is actually probably the primary facility that gives us feedback on how students are doing, and we're tracking their number of hours, it helps us consider things like punctuality and responsibility, and some of these other… You know, I hate the term “21st century skills”. It implies that, you know, like, the ancient Romans never did collaboration, you know? Come on, let's talk about it for a second.

But in existence, things like simple Google Forms that our students can fill out so that they can give us a metacognition about how they feel about reflective pieces. And we are issuing industry-recognized credentials through a couple of different platforms, and we've partnered with a few other platforms. For that skill assessment piece, we've started a couple of other partnerships. One's with a group called Career Scoops, which is a little bit more AI-based… Credentialing, so it stays with the students, so as we document things through, we've been issuing credentials and micro-credentials through a badging system using a program called Credly by Pearson. So, we've really put the time in of the “wanting to document it for the kids in the here and now”, but to document it for employers in the future. 

And that is something that is– [Inaudible Jump] to wrap their head around, because it is very, very different that, you know, when a student in eighth grade finishes their civics project, they are getting a documented badge that they have completed some– [Inaudible Jump]

–Yet, not necessarily. But they're not that far off from being able to send to a, to, you know, my daughter's in eighth grade, she's putting flyers around the neighborhood, and that she's a babysitter, well– [Inaudible Jump] 

–They are able to see a project from September to June all the way through, well, there's something there. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah, fantastic. 

Closing Thoughts

Rich Portelance

We're getting tight on time, so I want an opportunity to cover anything that you think we've missed, and, you know, or touch on the topics that we're just talking about, because I do think– [Inaudible Jump] 

–start with Mark, and then we'll go over to Sarah, and kind of… Anything you think we missed here, Mark, that's really important– [Inaudible Jump] 

Mark Maslowski

First, hey, thanks for doing this. I appreciate you and EdGate. You know, when I think… Our philosophy at VLA is always student-first. I mean, it's always student-first, and we want to use technology. Obviously, we're an online curriculum platform, but just to let everybody know it's important that students are off a computer– [Inaudible Jump]  

–doing it through a student's lens that is asynchronous and synchronous, so we want to make sure that the lesson, that it's going to be involved– not just the student, but whoever is in the household, as well, so that's our philosophy. It's really important, and obviously it's important that it's stand– we have a standard base in each unit and lesson so the teacher can see that of a unit, but understanding, I guess, like what Dr. Rubin said, is the why. You know, why am I doing this lesson? Why is it important? Right? And that's important for us, so I just kind of want to let everybody know that, you know, we use tech, we understand how much to use, when to use it, and not to just totally rely on it. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah, it's a great point. Thank you, Mark. I appreciate that, and I appreciate you being here and joining us today.

Sarah? 

Dr. Sara Delano Moore

I want to come back to where I started, and that is this notion that growing up and scaling are not necessarily the same. So, as we think about technology, part of what we have to do is help children learn to use technology strategically. I have a seven-year-old granddaughter who's not so sure of spelling and writing yet, but she knows how to use voice control on her iPad to search for the things she wants. And it makes me think a lot about the balance between “That's efficient search”, and that doesn't mean you don't need to continue working on the spelling and writing piece as school goes on. It probably means the balance is different. 

And so, that, I think, is a place we've all got to think about as we build these… Durable skills in mathematics, we talk about them as the mathematical practices or processes, the kind of reasoning that goes along with mathematics. Where does tech fit? What can technology help you with, whether it's voice recognition or calculators? And how does that make it even more important, say with calculators, to have a good sense of estimation? So that when you see a number come out of the calculator, you can look at it and say, “Whoa, that doesn't make sense! And now let me stop and think. Is that because I keystroked it wrong? Is that because my mental estimation was off?” Learning to go through that process so that technology really does what we want it to do is incredibly powerful. 

And the last thing I'll add, kind of coming back to our pilots conversation and implementation, because I work in the elementary space, we may have teachers who have four or five different subjects they teach in a day, and each one is on a different platform. Helping people think about as you work through that piloting and implementation process, how do all these tools work together? The tech can become overwhelming, and it doesn't benefit or empower any of us when that happens. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah. And that's where API Integrations and making sure is… Synchronicity is really critical. Thank you, Dr. Sara Moore. We really appreciate you being here as well, and in Origo Education, and your contributions, so thanks. 

Dr. Sara Delano Moore

Thanks, Rich 

Rich Portelance

David, what are you thinking?

David Berg

Well, I think a lot of what everybody else just said is like… I want to, like, I want to just put my stamp on that all in particular. What Mark said, you know, we're really proud of our platform, like we have this model, like, you want to get online to get offline, that's the whole idea of ImBlaze. Whether it's internships or apprenticeships, like, sure, get into the system, root around, find a cool experience, pursue that, and then get out into the real world. Interact with adults who are not your parents or your teachers. See what the world of work looks like, do learning that is authentic because it's applied to the real world. Those are the things that we focus on. If I worked for a tech company that's sole purpose was to get kids online more… I would not do that job anymore; that would not be my job. I came into this work leading wilderness expeditions all over the world, and while I was an educator, I was doing that as well. Kids need to get out, like, that's really important, and they need to interact in the real world. 

So, to Mark's point… And then also to Dr. Moore's point, like… You know, there's this bright, shiny object proclivity. We were like, “Oh, the next bright shiny object”, like, there's always going to be that next thing. It has to be aligned, and it has to make life easier and better, like, it just… If it's cool, it, just, may not be worth it, and there'll be another cool thing tomorrow, I promise. 

So, I'll leave it at that, because I know we're getting short on time. Thanks for having me! 

Rich Portelance

Thank you very much, David. It’s a pleasure.

Michael, anything to wrap this up? 

Dr. Michael Rubin

No. I appreciate your time, Rich, and certainly the rest of the group. 

I think that one of the things that you're hearing from all of us is the examination of purpose. And I think that, you know, when we all think of our… You know, David just mentioned he went into outdoor education. I started, I was in public relations and sports media. And, you know, I think that there's a lot to be said about examining purpose and context, and understanding the lay of the land, and using that, and not seeing that as an impediment to any purpose that we have both in the individual and the collective. And that has really resonated with me as I've been hearing some of my colleagues speaking here today. 

Rich Portelance

Thank you. It resonates with me, as well. I think that's really an important leave-behind for everybody. 

I'm going to just share my screen with everybody who's still here. The resources will be shared with you. We have the Washington Post article mentioned and a few other links. We will also be including in there the panelist interviews, so take a look at those; there's more great information that was shared by each of the panelists. And Sarah's interview is actually coming up, and will be posted next week, so keep an eye out for that. And we have links to everybody, so if you need to communicate or find their websites, they're all here on the final screen. 

So, I do want to thank everybody for joining us today, and make sure that, you know, please come back, see some of these videos, and thank you for your time, panelists. I know this is not a short process; everybody spent time doing an initial interview, as well as today's session, so we thank you very much for being part of this and providing some insights to the community. 

Mark Maslowski

Thank you, Rich. 

David Berg

Thanks, Rich. 

Dr. Michael Rubin

Thank you. 

Dr. Sara Delano Moore

Thanks, Rich. 

Rich Portelance

Thank you