00:00.00

Dan Gizzi

Hi everyone. This is Tech In EdTech. In this podcast, we discuss technology that powers education and improves learning for all. Welcome to today's episode. I'm your host Dan Gizzi, from Magic EdTech, and our format has changed a bit today and I have the privilege to welcome two guests, not just one. Today we have Andrew Lippert, CTO from McGraw Hill Education, and Acky Kamdar, CEO from Magic EdTech joining us. Acky, Andrew, thanks for joining me, and welcome to today's show. So Andrew we're going to start with you since you are the real guest on the show not to downplay you Acky.

00:31.21

Acky Kamdar

Thank you very much, Dan.

00:37.77

Andrew Lippert

Ah, please.

00:39.34

Dan Gizzi

Ah, but Andrew saw you've got quite an interesting background. You know I'd love to hear how you got your start in ed tech you know, quite a quite a ways away from your time in the navy so we'd love to just give you a chance to tell our audience how you got in ed tech.

00:51.68

Andrew Lippert

Certainly so I've been doing education technology for about 20 years now. I had the privilege of working with Cheryl Vedoewho headed Apex Learning right about the time Paul Allen was losing his interest in specifically ed tech and moving into the brain science endeavor. but that engagement wound up being ah an extended period of time rebuilding solutions re-entering markets and expanding capabilities and I've been enjoying ed tech ever since. A variety of different flavors from um business education to now at Mcgraw Hill where obviously we have a very broad spectrum of solutions across both the k to grade market space but the US and internationally. s you mentioned you know I come to education technology kind of naturally and self-interestedly. I was a pilot in the navy for a decade and wound up with six kids so I have a very, very deep interest in making sure the education solutions out there serve the needs of our students and produce effective learning outcomes because I need those kids to move on.

02:11.40

Dan Gizzi

That's such a great Ah a great introduction. And I'm a former Red Cube proud McGraw Hill employee as well. So it's it's it's great having you join us here today.Acky, your turn, I'd love to hear your how you got here.

02:17.80

Andrew Lippert

My pleasure.

02:22

Dan Gizzi

Acky your turn, I'd love to hear how you got here.

02:25.72

Acky Kamdar

Um, I will say that I've got such an illustrious background in Ed tech, I joined ed tech sometime in 2014 by way of my investment in magic software. Magic as a company has been around since 1989, my previous background has always been in technology before I came here. I used to be in wall street and I used to think that you know in wall street we are the masters of the universe, we created technology that powered the world I think after coming into education I have been humbled. Um. I think the impact that or the potential to create impact in the ed tech world is massive and since the time I've been here I've learned a lot about inclusivity, accessibility, and diversity equity inclusion. That is so key to our education world and how ed tech can help make that happen.

03:22.61

Dan Gizzi

Thank thank you Acky, yeah, it's amazing how the journey into ed tech for so for people is always through other avenues. It always seems, and it's great to hear both of your backgrounds here, and you know starting with Andrew you know.

Would love to just understand a little bit about you know with your leap into Ed Tech and from the support for the initiatives for affordability and Access. You know, how does your background you know as CTO you know, lead some of those decisions that are happening not only just for your six kids but for all of the you know the children of the world that are in education?

04:00.17

Andrew Lippert

Right. Yeah, it's I am fortunate I've got a ah, very interesting seat at the table you could say because our our breadth of solutions and the markets we serve are so so diverse and broad. So we we touch a spectrum of students that few education technology companies have the privilege of serving and of course the that spectrum spans many different vectors from socioeconomic to ability to diversity of culture. And as a result we we always have forefront in our plans and in our implementations the needs of those students in mind not just from an equitable access perspective and an affordability perspective but also as Ackymentioned from an accessibility perspective ensuring that the solutions are able to be leveraged by people of all all abilities. The initiatives within the organization consequently touch on a whole spectrum of technology solutions. The things you don't necessarily think about like the purchasing workflows. Ah, how you register, and roll, and title a piece of courseware. How the payment for that Curriculum resource the learning ah solution is actually Adjudicated? We've then staunch supporters and have very successfully deployed something that we call inclusive access, which allows in the Higher Ed space, students to have immediate day-one access to their learning materials without having to worry about whether there's enough money in their bank account toTo have to choose between ah a beer fund or a learning experience. The cost of the solutions get rolled right into their tuition making it for a much smoother onramp for those individuals and it's delightful for the instructors as well. Then all of our educators are appreciative of that program, as it gives the they know day one all of their students are going to have all the materials they need to actively engage with the learning experience that they're they're ready to and produce. So It's It's an interesting position I get a ah lovely seat to kind of orchestrate a bunch of different types of conversations and ensure that from a technology perspective, we're building solutions that work for all of our users.

06:29.20

Dan Gizzi 

That’s great to hear and I think there's a couple of things in there I want to unpack a little bit later once we get into them. Achy, from your perspective, you know you have a slightly different seat at many tables when it comes to the work that you do with Magic, also the work that you do as part of, you know your other ventures outside of the education Space. You know when it comes to affordability and Accessibility, you know what are some of the things that you're seeing as Trends pre-pandemic that have now morphed into ultimately you know this different place we are in now, almost hopefully coming into being able to say post-Pandemic.

07:10.91

Acky 

Um, first of all, Andrew, you know the insights that you provided are amazing and I can understand how you see the world. I think I don't differ very much from how you see it. For me technology is a big enabler and um and it kind of empowers learners with different abilities to come up to speed at their own pace. Um, at the heart of everything that we do, we are here to help a learner become more efficient at learning the subjects that they want to pursue. So I think learner efficacy is at the very heart and to allow each person to learn at their own pace is important and technology allows us to find the learner where the learner is and then provide the learning material in the manner, in the format, in the media that they're most comfortable with. And this does not discount what may or will continue to happen in a classroom and what a teacher can do in a synchronous class model. But I think it allows us ah to ah, explore different ah avenues to teach learners. So I think though to me technology is an empowering tool.

08:32.59

Andrew Lippert

It's ah it's a really great point Acky and one that I emphasize with my teams regularly. The technology enables capabilities that you just couldn't do any other way. Imagine ah, an instructor in a classroom with 30 students trying to individualize instruction and personalize the experience for each of those students meeting them where they are on the educational path, that's ah, lot to ask of an educator. So, traditionally the classroom has been kind of melded toward the middle, if you will, I'm teaching to the center of my student population. With our EdTech Solutions, we're now able to actually hit each of the points along that path and meet the students where they are exactly as Acky is saying. Um, and the counterpoint to that that I have with my teams is that the technology needs to be transparent as well. So that we don't get in the way of the learning moment or impede the outcome we need to support and extend the opportunity to really make efficient that learning objective and outcome.

09:41.15

Dan Gizzi 

Yeah, and that seamless ah technology making it work without people knowing it's working was no small feat at least on your part and the company's part of Mcgraw Hill. You know an industry that was not built to be driven by technology was built to be driven by textbooks for so many years.  When you're you know sitting.

09:57.82

Andrew Lippert

Lots of trees.

10:03

Dan Gizzi

 lots lots of trees that's for sure maybe and lots of press cds that were gonna replace the trees. That's how old I am in this industry so I can see him.

10:06.40

Andrew Lippert

That's right, I got a two-spindle burner, at one point I could do 2 CDs at a time was great. 

10:13.76

Dan Gizzi 

That's right, we were going to replace textbooks with them, I remember. So there's a lot of decisions that go into that So Massive shift and pivot that had to happen in the industry to get it to where it is today. You know so when you're sitting down and thinking about that next great Pivot, you know the the adaptive learning the personalization was another one that that took place you know when you're sitting down and just thinking about that you know with a CTOhat on and obviously I'm gonna ask you when you feel like that with a parent hat on too. You know what are some of the things that you're looking at from a strategy and transformation Perspective. You know we have to go blow it up.

10:49.30

Dan Gizzi 

To Make this the future but without disruption of too much of of that, you know I think you said some good things about the teachers as well. You know I'd love to hear just a little bit around that and then Acky I'll ask you know if you could just give your your opinion on that as well.

11:00.23

Andrew Lippert

Yeah, the the beautiful thing about McGraw Hill is that we've got a tremendous amount of depth the Curricular materials at our disposal, the library of resources that we've created over over time are mammoth. And The thing about personalized education and adaptive learning is that it's not so much about the technology, the algorithms, and machine learning opportunities those are all sexy opportunities from a technologist's perspective to really get in and play with cool toys to deliver outcomes. But the important bit is the curricular resource, the curriculum the actual learning materials, and how you can deliver them in appropriate ways. But if you don't have a sufficient mass of those curricular materials you don't really have anything to personalize. If you've only got 1 path through a learning trajectory personalizing that means going backwards and forwards a little bit. It doesn't mean branching or exploring or addressing the needs of a reader who's still struggling to comprehend some of the vocabulary, or going back and teaching a student about two-digit addition and carrying it. You've got to have enough teaching material to make the personalization real so the beauty from my perspective and where I sit is that McGraw Hill has that library and it's it's a very wide moat for entrance and new entrance into the Ed Tech space to to cross because of the production required, the amount of investment needed to build that kind of corpus is phenomenal, it's just it's it's almost unfathomable given the history of this company. So there are technology companies and new entrants to the field in the startup world that I acknowledge their struggle. It's it's a difficult industry to penetrate with technology solutions around personalized learning, adaptive learning, and machine learning models because that's not sufficient. It's it's necessary the technology's a critical component of it but it's not the totality of the solution. It's one of the reasons we like working with Magic as well, you you have experience on both sides of that equation. Not only are you software developers but you also understand the content creation aspects and that that the learning moment is a combination of those things.

13:41.36

Acky Kamdar

I just want to add to what Andrew just talked about, I think it's so it's one of those ah topics that I had hosted in one of the one of the conferences. What comes first, content or platform? 

13:59.65

Andrew Lippert

Right.

13:59

Acky Kamdar

Um, and we had about twenty ah, twenty ah participants in the room and everybody you know debated very aggressively and we referred to you know the HBO model you know where content or ah, you know what you have on on the platform is more important how the platform plays and then Apple comes along with Apple TV and makes a lot of those things irrelevant because the interface is more important and the how the platform delivers the content you becomes more important to you. But at the end of the day you know when you look at you know the fatigue levels today with all the streaming media you still go back to the content. And so in some ways, you know I I and to thank you for the perspective that you brought to the table in the way you talked about, you know, ah curriculum and how it you know it becomes important from providing personalized learning. Ah one of the one of the things you know, obviously, when you're looking at you know ah, the play of technology especially you know from when I look at the future and I look at inclusive access. You know, I must say that the last three years of ah pandemic taught us a lot of things. As we are going back, you know we are questioning all of our models. One big thing that came out during the pandemic also was the disparity you know which we saw amongst the student population and even amongst the school districts, we saw that there was that equity was not there. Whether it was in the technology access or you know the learning skills or teaching skills as well. And I think we were going back to classrooms and schools, we are taking a lot of those learnings back into incorporating into our technology, hybrid learning has become the center. And I think accessibility by design and diversity, equity, inclusion is the main topic of conversation in all the products that we are working with our clients.I think it's an important element in the ah learning efficacy for the students as well, because if the students are not able to engage with what you're delivering to them then they're not learning anything. And if they're not learning anything 

16:18.90

Andrew Lippert

Absolutely.

16:22

Acky Kamdar

then you're and you're not delivering better learning efficacy. So that's I think the become the core as we are looking at it. So now, It's not a matter of you know, hey there's a mandate and we are to meet the mandate now it is for the edtech companies. It has also become a question of ah product adoption, and it has therefore become a question of you know revenue for them. So I think the company which has that futuristic view of the market, I think they're going to win in this market because they are investing ahead of time. Just look at the assessment business, It's completely collapsed during those five years and you know we are all now questioning the most accepted way of doing assessments because everything is going digital.

17:04.19

Andrew Lippert

Yeah, absolutely, you look at some of the damage done over the last couple of years and the significant learning loss that was universal. It doesn't matter what your socioeconomic strata were, you still had learning loss. The degree may have been different, but addressing the need is critical. Recapturing that opportunity in the timelines that people have available to them given our traditional educational system are finite. If you were a ninth grader two years ago, you lost Two years of your high school experience and you only have two years left to make it up. That's a tremendous challenge, not just for this individual student, the high school as an institution, but also and matriculating towards a college experience. How do you fill that gap? How do you remediate that? And what role can some of these technology solutions play if you can get access to them and and to your point Acky that inclusive access our ability to ensure that everyone has access to the tools they need to ensure an effective and efficient learning outcome is one of the few opportunities we have to remediate some of the damage done over the last two years with the pandemic.

18:25.31

Dan Gizzi 

In regards to things such as infrastructure and the equitability that were there before pre pandemic you know, it's not like the pandemic just exposed that but obviously with legitimately the overnight shift to an online learning environment that has now transitioned back to more of that Pre- pandemic for most of the country being backed to ah face to face in the classroom again with some intermingling of a hybrid view of the technology as and this is a question for both of you. You know as we see the next five years unfold in ah in the education space. You know the investments that are being made by the industry for inclusive access and making the the material more affordable and accessible and then, Acky, you know, thinking about it from a partnership side of the house that that Magic sits on. You know what does the next five years look like assuming we continue to see the trend towards more technology, less print?

19:27.93

Andrew Lippert

So you know the the interesting dynamic in the industry is that print's never going to go away completely. There's at least from where we sit at McGraw Hill there's still that experience and the classroom-focused nature especially in the younger grade levels where you need some paper products, you need a textbook you can flip through. And to technology enable that classroom over the course of the last fifteen-twenty years we've made a tremendous amount of progress. Getting towards that point where devices are ubiquitous and every student in every classroom might have something that they can leverage to get digital sides of things covered. I see that trend continuing the funding related to the Cares Act has a lot to do with additional insurance around infrastructure making sure bits and bytes can flow through the pipes and get the the digital equity established so that our technology-based solutions can be more ubiquitous. There's also a notion of the teacher population adopting those things and there was a dramatic forcing function with the pandemic that the reluctant teacher was literally forced to step into a new world and embrace some of these things. So for the next several years, I see the facility of our educators with technology-based solutions increasing dramatically by virtue of the necessity. And as they get better at it their demands of the technology are going to be more robust, and our capabilities to support them effectively and efficiently need to expand. Ah. And that all is kind of a virtuous cycle that's going to feed the equity base as these solutions become more effectively used in the classroom to achieve learning outcomes. What's your perspective Acky?

21:34.65

Acky 

Um, you know I have always talked about the last mile problem in the technology world, where very basic stuff like ah address every student have a device to access you know, learning material. And you know this is because you're talking about digital but and to your point everybody would also have you know a print book with them and I'll give you some examples of that. But you know, ah, first of all inequity, Ah you know is defined I'm used to reflected very oftenA very big time on the last mile, does everybody have a device to access? second is does everybody have network which is good enough for them to access their learning material and work on it? this had been a stumbling block and during pandemic many districts across the country, And even at the college level I think a lot of them They went out of the way to fix that hole within ah within the infrastructure. It's still not resolve fully But I think you know we are much in a much better place because many emergency funds were diverted to make that infrastructure happen in many of the counties. And I think we moved in ah, a much better place now than what we were three years back, so I think I would say that's a blessing coming out of the pandemic. Um I think the other thing is that you know we we talked we touched this a little bit earlier technology allows you to scale

And scale and make it also affordable. so in some ways you also can leapfrog ah you know and jump to the next level you know of technology an option in places where there's none. So given that you know we also um, McGraw Hillalso has exposure to the international market You would have seen that. That in some other the places some of the countries abroadYou know their leapfrog in terms of technology has been much better because they don't have anything to you know ah discard they don't have any legacy to carry on. So I think in some ways ah, we've seen you know for example India as an examplewhere ah, you know online learning has just gone through the roof and I think that adoption of technology is becoming very dubious out there as far as digital learning is concerned.

23:52.81

Andrew Lippert

It's an interesting example too because they kind of Leapfroged the traditional wired network and went straight to cellular as well. So very interesting evolution from from that perspective for ed tech.

23:58.75

Acky Kamdar

Yes.

24:05.20

Dan Gizzi 

And and with the evolution of technology, with the evolution of access you know I've got one last question here before we get ready to wrap up would be a little bit around lifelong learning. you know, but the the journey has always been at k through twenty  and then you move into you know wherever your Career is going to take you. that's turned itself on its head in higher education where you know that's not necessarilyEveryone's path anymore particularly now with what what the pandemic has done would love to just you know, leave our listeners wanting a little bit more from the twoof you and potentially bring you both back for another time on this. But you know, where where do you see the lifelong learning journey you know going in the future? and then this this getting a question for both of you spitfire a little bit.

24:53.18

Andrew Lippert

It's interesting I think it's it's not even in the future It's today. The the transition to notions of certification programs, badging the ability to get a boot camp experience where you're very tightly couplingA. Ah, high intensity period of in very specific and pointed learning to change a career path. We've actually been working with several boot camps and hiring former teachers who've transitioned to the software development career with a fourteen week program .um, not going for a four-year bachelor's degree in computer science but coming in day one with the skills and experience frankly to be professional software engineers. They know how to write code ,commit code, collaborate on testing the the code, and delivering software solutions. It's it's a tremendous shift in the way the traditional education pipeline has has functioned historically and that trend is only going to continue. industry continues to push for assurances that students are exiting their learning experiences with specific skills that are directly aligned with the the business need and carving up kind of the traditional higher education degree granting program into more discrete deliverables. We have a solution called synnet which.

Simulates the Microsoft office experience in a teaching way. So we teach you how to use the Microsoft office suite and and we're seeing professionals coming to us asking for a badge that certifies that they know how to use excel at an expert level. Because they can use that as leverage in conversations with their employer about future career path and and promotion. Um, that's that trend I think is only going to continue.

26:58.39

Acky Kamdar

I think lifelong learning is already here. you know we are no more depending on our traditional four year degrees.° you know, even when I'm looking at our own workforce we are continuously assessing you know where our members are from their skill set perspective or as they call it skills stack perspective. and I think even if we were not there to guide it I think today you know if you look at what's going on in the business there's a massive amount of disruption going on. There's a lot of opportunities available for. Ah, talent to move around and you know seek new opportunities. I'll again go back to the whole experience of pandemic where many people have come out of pandemic questioning what they want to do in their lives. We talked about the big resignations or ah Ah, you know, or how people are thinking about their choices in their life and you know even making decisions to move away completely from their chosenYou know, current career path to a completely new career path You know, balancing work and life. And I see this as a continuous thing which is you know every 3-5 years I may choose to do something different because the industry is evolved something new has come up there's a better opportunity out there. and so I would interpose my life with some learning and then you know do something different.

So I I think you know we have all have what adapt to that. you know we are whether we are employers or whether we are educators and whether I'm a learner or I'm a worker. And I think we have to see this as a lifelong commitment to building our skills skills Stacks, sorry about thatyeah.

28:43.44

Andrew Lippert

Totally agree.

28:45.95

Dan Gizzi

That's that's great insight I appreciate it, Thank you guys. So last question for both of you I'll start with Acky, so Acky you know when you're on your pedestal and you have the opportunity to speak to your counterpartsYou know what would be one parting thought or piece of advice you would have for them Regarding you know the future of education and technology.

29:10.92

Acky Kamdar

Um, so I I mean you ah assuming you know if I'm talking to um, ah, an investor who's looking at investing in you know building an Ed tech product, I would always say that you know like Andrew mentioned earlier that don't. Ah, don't get carried away with Ai or those kind of things, in block chain is another thing that I keep hearing a lot in my business. I think remain focused on you know the purpose of us being in this business of ed- tech which is you know you know delivering learners'efficacy. I think if you're focused on that and then build product around that think about that first and learning has to be a happy journey and happy experience for the learner. You know you don't necessarily want it to be a crying experience, So I think you want to ensure that you know people are enjoying the journey and while they are at it their learning efficacies improved by ah, your product or by your solution.

Think as long as you're focused on that. and it may not always be technology that always solves the problem. It may be a combination of you know, bringing the right kind of ecosystem operations, processes, everything to work together to make that happen.

30:26.25

Dan Gizzi 

thank you, Andrew, same question. 

30:26.36

Andrew Lippert

I think that's really well said. Yeah, really well said Acky. my constant refrain with my teams and my peers is that we need to avoid gratuitous application of technology. There's a lot of conversation around. what the metaverse means to the future of education,talk about the equity issues of that in another conversation, but just from a technology perspective What is the metaverse going to provide that enhances, that optimizes, that makes more efficient, that makes more Entertaining and delightful, to to Aki's happy comments. The learning a moment, The learning experience. It's not enough to use an ar camera and put a sphere on the desk. What do you do with the sphere? What learning can be accomplished in that modeUsing that technology that you can't do in other ways? How can you enhance the understanding of a concept by ah, application of the technology? that's a constant conversation for me with my teams and, ensuring that we don't get lost and enamored with the latest buzz buzzwords or ah Cool programming languages. We've got to really soak in and be in relationship with the ultimate user of our solution understanding their needs, their wants, their desires and address those solve the real problems. Let's not create new problems for them because of the the.

Cutting edge technology that doesn't quite work right. Talk about a frustration that our students don't need, our teachers don't need. Let's make sure that the applications are seamless as transparent as we can make them and reinforcing the learning experience.

32:14.54

Dan Gizzi

Andrew and Acky, thank you for joining me today for the latest Tech and EdTech podcast. We appreciate your insight and look forward to you andour audience joining us in future podcasts. Thank you gentlemen.

32:24.34

Acky Kamdar

Um, thank you Andrew thank you Dan thank you very much.

32:25.90

Andrew Lippert

Thanks Dan thank you Acky.