Designing EdTech to Meet Students Where They Are

00:00.00

Dipesh Jain

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Tech in EdTech where we discuss technology, education, and everything in between. Today on the show we have with us Serena Sacks-Mandel, Serena is the Global Chief Technology Officer for Education at Microsoft. 

Serena welcome to the show.

00:17.18

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Thank you so much, I’m glad to be here.

00:17.31

Dipesh Jain

Serena you have a very interesting background, I mean you've been in education for a long time. The very interesting thing is you've been on the school side, you've been in EdTech companies. Can you give a little bit of background to the audience, um about your role, how you came into Microsoft, and your journey in education?

00:39.60

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Absolutely happy to talk about that so I actually started my career in corporate. So, I actually have a master's in policy analysis and management, and I wanted to do something that was going to really help people. Ah but I I was in love with technology. And my stepfather said I would be, ah I wouldn't necessarily like being in public sector. So he's like why don't you work in the private sector and then you can work in the public sector, so he, it actually came true that way. So I worked for IBM for the first ten years of my career, ah learned a lot really, ah it was a great experience. And um and then I went on the client side, I was at Walt Disney World, and I worked for a number of other ah private sector, Fortune 100 companies, including Harcourt which is now HMH. And that has proven to actually be very instrumental in me understanding, kind of, the publishing content side of education. But then I went on to um, be a consultant, a C-level consultant and I worked with Julie Young at Florida Virtual School and that's when I really found my purpose, and that would be to transform education with technology. I learned from the best and the brightest Michael Horns, and Tom Vanner Achs, and Julie young about personalized learning and how technology can be so much more engaging for students and help each student learn the best way for them. Ah, so the personalization of the modality and the content and mastery competency of content areas versus just getting a letter grade and it just really made sense to me. And then I wanted to implement a different model, a model like this, but in the public sector in traditional brick and mortar. So I was fortunate enough to meet Robert Avosa and he was the superintendent of Bolton County schools which is north and south of Atlanta. And there we had a great team between the academics and the technology the whole, whole district was innovative and energized and we transformed learning we implemented personalized learning at scale for 100000 kids and we had amazing results because of this total change, not just the technology. And we were the first large district to pivot to remote in the beginning of 2020, but I could see, I was getting calls from other districts and they were having challenges and I could see that I really needed to help bring this experience that I had gained to the industry. And so I talked to the folks at Microsoft and they were starting up a customer success unit for the US. And so I joined Microsoft as the general manager and the leader in the US for customer success in education, and then just a few months ago I became the global CTO for education at Microsoft. And both of these roles have really helped me continue this journey that I've been on to make education more engaging, more positively impactful, to help all learners become ready for whatever they want in the workforce. It's just been so amazing to be able to help so many people across the globe.

04:07.78

Dipesh Jain

That's amazing Serena what I love about your journey is there's so much breadth and so much depth. Like you've been with IBM, you've been in Fulton County, you've gone to HMH. Ah, not only that, but you've also worked in technology roles, and you've worked in customer success. So you really know the issues that teachers and students faced firsthand rather than doing user surveys. So so I think that's amazing. What I love about your profile is the headline that you have on your Linkedin. “Empowering every teacher and learner on the planet to achieve more,” I think that's that just summarizes it all for me. 

04:43.92

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Right, right, It does. Well and so it's very close to the mission, of overall mission for Microsoft is to empower every person and organization to achieve more, so I've just adopted that to education. And it is about the educators and the learners and helping, especially since the pandemic, so much has changed and we need to you know we need to think differently. I mean the worst thing that we could do is go back to how it was, it wasn't working well before. And the pandemic has accelerated change by a decade in two and a half years. And so now there are so many possibilities to leverage the possibilities that technology provides.

05:28.65

Dipesh Jain

Absolutely. And you know one of the things that you and I discussed at One Edtech, I remember was just the gap that we see. students today are born as digital natives, right? 

05:38.65

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Um, right.

05:42.15

Dipesh Jain

They're born and they have smartphones and they are just way ahead of the curve when it comes to technology.

05:47.61

Dipesh Jain

Whereas teachers, educators, and faculty, and even administration are not so much. It is how it is so how do we bridge that gap of having digital native students versus not so digital natives creators, administrators, teachers?

06:07.18

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Ah, so you know you're right. And the pandemic has has has kind of shifted that, right? So before the pandemic, most teachers really were not that comfortable with technology. There certainly were. Ah, you know the district that I was at we have what we'll call vanguard teachers and they were very comfortable with technology and they helped the other teachers learn how to integrate technology into their instructional practices. So that is one proven method is that you enable and empower the educators that are comfortable with technology to help the other educators. Another thing that we implemented was student-led technology change. So let the students who are so good at technology help other students and their teachers to do better at it. And then you know there is this challenge where teachers tend to like to be kind of the most knowledgeable person in the classroom, and this is all kind of age dependent, but we can help our educators become more knowledgeable about technology with professional development. So like Microsoft has the MIEE, they have a whole line of certifications for teachers so that they can become comfortable with technology but these other methods work as well.

07:31.10

Serena Sacks-Mandel

And now that we've been through the pandemic. Ah, I think there are a lot more teachers that are comfortable with technology and now it's about using it better and being better at it. So I think maybe we've encouraged a thirst for learning. Hopefully.

07:46.13

Dipesh Jain

Yeah and and what you just said I think the concept of students who are very comfortable with technology kind of guiding teachers. It's very similar to the concept that I'd heard back in the days about reverse mentoring, where somebody who is very Comfortable, you know the mentor and mentee role can change. Ah, so I think that that's a very powerful concept. Um, I hadn't heard about it in in an education perspective. 

08:12.50

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Um, yeah. 

8:13:00

Dipesh Jain

So That's that's that's pretty great. Um, now coming to digitally engaging technology, right? 

08:20.46

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Right.

8:22:00

Dipesh Jain

Um, what are some of those examples of how do you think, can we make education more engaging and you know basically improve teachers' workload rather than burdening them further? What are you have some of those examples?

08:29.91

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Right. Yes, yes, and so you know the key to student education is engagement. I don't think that we can really teach students any longer without technology. And if you try, think you know, kind of beware because I don't think that students are going to tolerate educational experiences that are not technology-rich, so it becomes imperative for the teachers to be comfortable with technology. And some of the ways that we are making it easier for teachers to offload some of their work. What I call let the teachers be the human in the room teachers don't need to be the subject matter expert all the time. They need to be maybe learn with the students and be more comfortable with that, be the facilitator of knowledge and help students not memorize things, not just remember facts and figures, but critically think about information and even gather that information themselves at age-appropriate and subject-appropriate times. So we should be thinking about teachers as the ones that help students find their gifts, inspire them, help them develop relationship skills, conflict management skills, and coping skills. Things that only a person can help another person do. and rather than just lecturing we can use technology to capture the best presentations, multimodal presentations even, from master teachers. So somebody that is a subject matter expert and who is a gifted speaker can talk and we could replicate and reuse that content over and over. So you know I envision a teacher in the classroom maybe playing a snippet of a lecture, or showing a bit of a video of An environment or animal or situation and then stopping the video and having the class discuss it. What did they see? What did they learn? What would they do in this situation? and so more facilitating discussion rather than telling the students what they need to know. And it's a very different role for teachers, But at the end it's going to be much more interesting for both the students and the teachers. You know the number 1 thing we need to teach our students is a love of learning, because lifelong learning is going to be the norm.

11:12.20

Dipesh Jain

I love that, um you know there are so many things to unpack over there. First one I think the concept of earlier days we used to memorize because the information was scarce. You know we live in an information-abundant world today, we have information overload.

11:27.00

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Um, right.

11:28.00

Dipesh Jain

So I think it's important to teach students how to make sense of the information around them and in some cases actually limit the sources of information that they get, because there's just too much information out there 

11:33.45

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Um, yeah, yeah.

11:39:30

Dipesh Jain

and the second thing that you said which really hits home is making students think about a situation rather than telling them. Okay, this is how for example, photosynthesis. This is how photosynthesis happens, this is how it is, and now you learn it and then you repeat it in the exam. Rather than that, okay stopping in between and saying “Okay, what do you think should happen? Why do you think that this color is green?”  So you know I think that that think from the change from teaching, or not teaching, the change from one-way delivery to a facilitative mode of learning is so powerful.

12:13.50

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Right! Right and and helping students work with other students, helping problem based analysis, helping solve problems, helping them think critically, analyzing, synthesizing, those kinds of things. That's what teachers really need it. And and it's interesting because I was just working with a um, an organization in Australia that are early childhood educators and you know I hadn't done a lot of early childhood thinking or education or support. So I prepared for this. And I went there and I heard from lots of other thought leaders and the discussions were so rich. They're working with kids that are ages 3 to 5 and sometimes even younger and the the you don't need to teach these students so much differently than the k to 5. They Are capable of being creators. We had very rich conversations about students as creators rather than consumers, even at ages 3 to 5. They had students creating projects and learning about the environment whether it was farming or whether it was creating even a video of ah pictures that they had taken of their environment. They would go places and take pictures of it and then come back and put it together into a story they would plant seeds and watch them grow and document them growing. There are so many things that even young children can do that we might not have thought was possible. So certainly students in older grades are capable of gathering information, synthesizing it, coming to conclusions, thinking critically about it, and presenting it.

14:02.79

Dipesh Jain

Yeah, and and you know the skills that you're talking about are so relevant as you go up in your journey as a learner and even in corporate. Like, project-based learning is so so relevant. Today, if you think about knowledge work most of the work that we do, is projects. Um. And you know project management I and I you know I I argue sometimes with my team members that project management is is necessary for every role that you do today

14:24.23

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Um, oh yes I couldn't agree more.

14:30

Dipesh Jain

Every role involves project management, and you don't need to be PMP certified but you need to understand core skills of project management. The second is note taking.

14:36.11

Serena Sacks-Mandel

right.

14:38.87

Dipesh Jain

How do you synthesize the information from meetings and make it into actionable insights? So and so your observation is very fascinating about kids aged 3 to 5 thinking on those lines. Um, you know I mean I have a four-year-old and I he does he astonishes me.

14:42.40

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Um, right.

14:56.76

Dipesh Jain

Sometimes with the things that he comes up with.

14:58.35

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Students meet our expectations and we need to have high expectations for all students. So You know you're saying your 4-year-old, if if you give your 4-year-old your opportunity to learn from a computer, learn letters, learn reading, learn sounds, They will, they will, they will step up. And I actually have the same background as you, ah for the first half of my career is very focused on project management delivery and strategy. I am PMP certified to actually even help write the portfolio management ah book of knowledge. and so yeah pin the pinback for Portfolio Management. So I thought that was the most important skill, and I still do for internal organizations. And to be able to deliver projects you have to be able to relate to people, you have to be able to identify risks and mitigate them, you resolve conflicts, you will prioritize schedule, plan, Identify dependencies, you know there's you know vendor management, and communications management, and change management. All of those things are critical for project management but they're critical for every job as you said.

16:07.64

Dipesh Jain

Yeah, and so now we take a shift from what is there right now to what do you see the future of Edtech to be like Ed tech in Education.. What do you see with what we are seeing right now the improving adoption of technology and in some cases you know, Some cases successful, some cases not very successful. We are trying to make a lot of things work. What do you see the future 5- 10 years down the line ?

16:33.55

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Sure so you know I think one thing's for sure is that nobody can say exactly what's going to happen. I do consider myself somewhat of a futurist, I've always been reading and and thinking about what is possible in the future and so many predictions don't come true exactly right but there's there's there's central themes that come true. And I think we can all agree that technology is only accelerating and it is a part of every aspect of our lives and work. So, It is critical that we all develop some technology skills because no matter what your role in this as an adult, as ah as a ah worker, It's going to include some level of technology. And I'll say there are 5 things that I'm seeing right now as trends in the educational technology space, and I think these are going to continue. I think that the pandemic has just accelerated our change. So the 5 things are accessible digital learning environments. Equity and accessibility for pandemic recoveries, I think that's going to go on for the next several years and it's going to continue that we want to make our learning accessible and equitable through technology. So, We have lots of adaptive technologies at at Microsoft, so for example, we have immersive reader. And you can put any kind of text into immersive reader and it will read aloud, It will read with more spacing, It'll read more boldly, It will help the reader read if they're dyslexic. So it is a truly accessible tool that people without challenges often use some of these tools just because it makes it easier for them. And then the next one is learning insights and analytics and adaptive learning for acceleration. So. You asked before what can we do to help offload work from teachers. we can personalize the learning, so help teachers see where students maybe need some additional work and actually have the artificial intelligence build those content playlists. For each student. an individual teacher cannot personalize a lesson plan for every student every day but technology can, so I definitely see that education will become more and more personalized just like we see that trend in medicine. That we're doing more to personalize medicine based on a person's genetic and other system specificities. The third one is cybersecurity and ransomware threats. We've only seen that accelerate and every organization should know that they have to be diligent, they have to have safeguards in place, you have to have a safe environment before learning can happen. Number 4 educator and staff retention issues. We've seen a brain drain in educational organizations Into the private sector. You know I went from a public sector organization to private sector and we're seeing that, you know I'm just one person, but when I speak with our customers they have lost a lot of staff. They're having trouble attracting and retaining educators. And we have to do things to make the environment for the educators more accepting and welcoming and attractive. And it isn't just about pay, people want to work somewhere that they feel they belong, that they feel like they're making a difference. And so the kind of education I described earlier where the teachers, the facilitator, that's something that teachers would welcome. And we have some tools under viva and they help with professional development, with like nudging them to have Work life balance and all kinds of other things to make it an attractive workplace. And then 5 this one may not be a 10 year trend, but it's certainly in the next few years as we see the economy struggling with inflation and maybe even going in a recession. We're not sure.

21:03.87

Serena Sacks-Mandel

but, cost-cutting and doing more with less is a theme that I'm consistently hearing from our customers. And so we do need to look for ways that ah that we can do more with the funds and and even our time the time that we have, so just being efficient with our resources. So in the tenure horizon, personalized learning is going to be a huge play, learn ah analytics data, AI ah ML and then I think the last one that I didn't mention would be immersive learning environments. Just got a preview of ah the metaverse and the possibilities are endless how we can help our students be immersed in an environment to learn a topic whether it's you know under the sea or in the sky or in a different part of the planet. They can just be immersed in this environment in a 3D concept and and so that's just going to be amazing.

22:06.53

Dipesh Jain

The Metaverse is very exciting. You know I mean it It is just it is I think everybody is looking forward to it. I know that there is some early trends, really very interesting to see how that shapes up. But one of the things that you mentioned was accessibility I'm always amazed at Microsoft's focus on accessibility and you know I read Satya's book Hit Refresh he talks about accessibility being a very core tenant of what he does. So. It's very. It's very and I you  know our office is very next I mean I am very close to the Microsoft store. in New York so I see that emphasis on accessibility 

22:43.25

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Um, yes

22:47

Dipesh Jain

and it it is very refreshing and very good to see that.

22:49.25

Serena Sacks-Mandel

it is and what we're finding is that you know what we're all unique in some way right? We all have some maybe talents and gifts and then some things that we're not as good at. And ah so technology is is the great equalizer it can make us all operate in a way that is productive regardless of what we are really good at and what we need to make up for. And so accessibility is I think something that we can all support and Microsoft is taking the lead on on providing accessible and equitable tools and technologies I was in the accessibility lab in Redmond Washington a few weeks ago. Amazing. They have this whole space where you can see they can demonstrate, they bring people into test things, and they try out new products all the time. New things like a different type of mouse and adaptability and you can buy these now. There's adaptability Ah, hardware for your mouse for your keyboard. You know we we um, a hackathon actually trained computers for eyesight for ah people that can't use their body like with ALS they can actually write with just using their eyes to select the letters.

24:05.72

Dipesh Jain

Wow That would that would be amazing.It is It is just amazing. The possibilities and I think the importance is to keep everybody in mind while designing the product. 

24:16.39

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Um, right. people.

24:21

Dipesh Jain

Um I think that's the core of it I think yeah.

24:23.58

Dipesh Jain

Ah, technology can make things possible if I think we we design for everyone and we conceptualize for everyone.

24:26.82

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Um, yes, ah yes, a hundred percent and you know technology like you said I want to repeat that technology has to be people first. It's always about the people. Change about using technology is about the people and then building a technology has to be about the people so that that's just that's a great way of putting it. amplify that.

24:51.64

Dipesh Jain

Yeah, no, and and as we come to a close,Serena, a couple of questions. Where do you get your Edtech information? What do you read? Are there some sources that you follow you know? Where do you get most of your Ed-tech and education related information?

25:09.60

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Um, ah so I I read I scan I look at everything possible. There's ah one in one publication in particular that's only a few years old, at least since I've been reading it, called the 74 and they have reporters in New York and in LA and they do report from across the globe as well. And and they talk about real situations going on. But I read all the others you know as much as I can in terms of you know The and um Chronicle and Ed Week and you know you name it. My inbox is full every day whenever I get a couple of minutes in between meetings or before or after meetings I go through and I look for the headlines and. But then I also look at some hard sources like Mckinsey and Hollow Lens and IDC and gartner. So I I try to look at. And then you know and then internally we have a lot of information as well. So I try to look at a broad spectrum of content but then I also get information from talking to people, talking to customers, talking to developers, and and marketing folks. And and so I learn As much as I try to give when I meet with customers.

26:29.14

Dipesh Jain

great. Those 74 is I you're right I've heard of it recently I read some of the articles, pretty good. So I think that's that's really up and coming. Um.

26:39.25

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Ah, just say that in addition I don't just read educational information. I read, I'm an avid reader of nonfiction. So I have to give a shout out to Rene Brown, I like to say I'm her number 1 fan but I'm sure there'd be a lot of competition.

26:54.20

Dipesh Jain

Love Love the content from her. It's amazing.

26:56.20

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Yes, And then yes and then along the same lines is Adam Grant, so Adam Grant is amazing. So I read everything that Renee Brown and Adam Grant write

27:05.51

Dipesh Jain

great great I think both of them are are um, just amazing, concept of vulnerability, you know leadership, I really like the content as well. So so thank you for highlighting those ah last two questions one is.

27:12.67

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Um, yes.

27:21.96

Dipesh Jain

What is your vision I mean there's Microsoft vision of education right? I'm sure there are things but what is your vision within that bigger vision of how do you want to propel that vision forward. Um in the next you know years to come?

27:33.37

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Right. Well that is exactly what I have focused on and I wish I could show some pictures but it's a podcast. Let's just say what my vision and my hope and what I am working for is to be able to provide what we used to call at IBM turnkey solutions. So looking at the big challenges in education like predictive analysis, understanding what students are struggling. So using data to understand who's struggling, how they're struggling, and then being prescriptive In terms of here's what we can do about it. This is how we can help them overcome those struggles or those challenges and succeed. And so I want to be able to provide and, I'm just giving one use case here. Provide our customers whether it's higher ed or k through twelve with with the data the analytics tools as well as the prescriptive. Content and that can come from a third party. These are not going to be all first-party Microsoft solutions but we should also be able to provide the partners that can do that integration and that delivery. So I want to be able to come to our customers with that complete package solution of the Microsoft platform, Microsoft tools, and in addition are partner tools. So ISVs, as well as the systems integration partners, so come together with a very big tent of of people process and technology to help our customers succeed.

29:02.89

Dipesh Jain

that's that's amazing and know the turn key solution is is is very fascinating. So definitely looking forward to that. Um, and and the last question before we leave I think what is one thing that's not on your profile that you would like to share.

29:18.14

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Oh well, what's not on my work profile is is is what I do in my personal time when I have it and so this past weekend's a ah perfect example I was out in Redmond with customers for the week and so I stayed over the weekend And my husband and I ah hiked Ah, the cascade mountains. And so I love to be outside, I love to be active. My husband I both have a passion for travel for adventure, for adrenaline rushes, we like to hike and boat and bike and run.

29:51.91

Serena Sacks-Mandel

And we are building a house together that is going to be our dream house on the lake. So I'm super into architecture, modern architecture. So those don't show up on the profile at all.

30:02.28

Dipesh Jain

That Yeah, that's amazing and I would love to see a photo of the house when it's done. 

30:08.41

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Um, okay, ah

30:13

Dipesh Jain

So um, so thank you for this. Where can people find you? Where can they connect with you?

30:16.21

Serena Sacks-Mandel

The best way to find me is on Linkedin it's Serena Sacks Mandel and that's I'm on Twitter I'm on insta but I really use and I'm on Facebook but I use Linkedin the most so that would be the best place to find me

30:31.94

Dipesh Jain

Great. Thank you so much Serena, this was wonderful. Loved all your insights and really excited to see the direction you're heading in and yeah, thank you for coming. Thank you for coming on the show today.

30:43.26

Serena Sacks-Mandel

Thank you for having me enjoyed having this conversation and and and thank you for giving me the opportunity.

30:48.36

Dipesh Jain

Thanks.