The Future of EdTech with GenAI: Bridging the Literacy Gap

00:00.00

Dan

Hi everyone. This is Tech in EdTech and in this podcast, we discuss technology that powers education and improves learning for all. In today's episode, we'll be focusing on AI. I'm your host Dan Gizzi from Magic EdTech and our guest for this special edition podcast is Brian Carlson, founder and CEO at Storytime AI. Brian, thanks for joining me, and welcome to today's show. 

00:23.18

Brian

Thank you so much for having me, Dan. I'm really happy to be here. 

00:28:00

Dan

So Brian, we've known each other a little bit. We go back a couple of different careers together throughout different industries. I'd love to just hear a little bit about your background for our audience. Um, what got you into edtech and a little bit about you know where you got through today?

00:44:00

Brian

Yeah, thanks. I've got a pretty interesting background. I started as a teacher, which was not my plan. I started here in Baltimore at a college, pretty local, Loyola, and started with an engineering background math background. Had a little you know break in the college trajectory as a lot of people do, found myself out in Washington state as an astronomy and physics major, and then when I was done I was thinking I was going to go into maybe get a Ph.D. in astronomy and I worked with some folks at the University of Washington but then I met a girl and moved over to an island in the South Pacific called Vanuatu and was a teacher there for 2 years and I just absolutely loved it and that really kind of got me going into when I got back to the States, education technology. Ah, got involved eventually in a company called Ellucian which I think most people are very familiar with, that are that are listeners of your show, and I was actually there prior to it being Ellucian. I went through a couple of acquisitions, was there for about 6 years as a technical consultant traveling to colleges and universities. During that time, saw a really large opening for the beginning of what became sort of the online education platform market and it was very early stage and Blackboard was the dominant player at the time. I got out and started working with an open-source solution called Moodle and became a pretty large commercial provider for that open-source solution. Starting to colleges and universities eventually got involved in the corporate market whereas I think that's pretty much where I started to meet you. And I and I'll throw it back at you, I've always been curious Dan what got you into this field? I don't know if anyone's ever asked you that. So, I am very curious.

02:29.76

Dan

Na, I appreciate that. Actually, no one's ever asked me on this before. So happy to talk about myself a little bit. Yeah, I have an accidental publishing career for a lot of my professional time. I actually started out in my university, I was a computer science major and ended up finalizing my time there with an MIS degree before MIS was a thing back at the end of the '90s. I was hired by my university by junior year, as a web administrator that was back I guess in what we would probably call Web 1.0 or even probably Pre-Web 1.0. We still had black backgrounds and the music would play and then we did all the fancy fun graphics. So I was the web administrator for Monmouth University - the university I attended and graduated from. I was working on the team that was taking word syllabi from the faculty, uploading them into WebCT and we would call that an online class back in 1999. Amazing how far we've come in the technology space since then. And then, I found myself in New York working for a corporate company doing ASP and web development and realized very quickly how I was much better at talking about technology than building it at that point. I found myself into publishing - had a publishing career through some of the Big 3 and then ultimately ended up in corporate learning where you and I met and from there ended up moving around a little bit during the pandemic and finding my way back into the professional services space here at Magic.

04:03.54

Brian

Wow! Very interesting. I haven't heard that. I haven’t heard a WebCT in a bit. That's a throwback name that you don't hear these days because I think they got sort of bought in. Were they purchased by Blackboard and then it was Sunset? 

04:14.14

Dan

They did. Yep, just before that, I was with them just before. We were working with them as one of their premier universities at the time prior to the acquisition by Blackboard. Yes, so I'm sure if the code I wrote all those years ago is long gone but who knows it could still be out there in the ether. Right?

04:28.30

Brian

Yes.

04:34.49

Dan

I mean, so as we think of just you know both of our journeys and how we've both you know made it to this point in our careers, I'd love to hear your take on, you know the the democratization of learning. And I've been practicing that word offline a few times, and I of course fumble it, but you know it's the emerging technologies: how are we taking what you would say and be all of these different competing resources - Web1, Web2, and now Web3 (where we're at) and get them to where you would say would be a position for a learner today.

05:05.55

Brian

Yeah, great question! I think with both of our backgrounds, it's a really interesting question because we both started in places we didn't expect to land on - sort of online education. So, I think when we talk about online education, that's probably where a lot of the democratization of learning has happened over the last two decades. There's a famous quote, I think from a Hemingway book, “How did you go bankrupt, right? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly” right? So, you know if you would have told me twenty-five years ago when you know 1999, 1998 when Blackboard and WebCT were first really starting to get dominance that It wouldn't. It would, we'd still be sort of what I would say is you know, not fully baked in the world of how we're providing online education, you know, I probably wouldn't have believed it. But I think that these things, they happen very slow at first and then all of a sudden it's the only way that you learn down the road. So, I think we're still sort of in the middle of it -  maybe two-thirds through that that you know obviously a lot of people are getting their education done in an online manner. That's really dropped a lot of barriers and you see products like Coursera or we had the you know the the MIT. You know, open courseware projects and some things like that came out over the last couple of decades. It really started to say you know you've got some more B to C plays like Masterclass has done a really good job of taking gurus in a specific topic and saying just because you live in you know, in another part of the world you can still have access to this expert through the benefits of an online video or and a full online course. So I think we're we're doing, we're doing pretty good. I mean there's a lot of you know, a lot of people working very hard every day to continue to find ways to democratize education. You know, another great example, that would be like University of the People they're offering a free education. They've worked with a lot of immigrants, a lot of you know refugees that are you know some of the stuff that was happening in Ukraine or Syria. You know they were offering an education to those people at a time where they needed it. You know they've serviced tens of thousands of users so I think it's still in its process of happening and I think we're making really good progress. But I think we you know we still have work to do there to use these emerging technologies. And I think some of the things that are coming out will continue to help but I don't think it's going to be an overnight thing.

07:39.60

Dan

Yeah I would agree with that I would say you know having at the time when all of the world seemed to change overnight I had a second grader now I've got a fifth grader and I think one of the areas where I would say the gap is increased dramatically with. With that particularly in underserved populations is the reading gap you know I think we, everybody focuses so heavily on math but I would say literacy skills has almost taken aback, it tends to take a back seat all the time as well. Even from the funding perspective where. You know, a lot of the stuff does flow into the sizes of the maths and you know even if you think I'm just STEM and STEAM well but we forget about the reading part of that too. You know what are some of the things that you were seeing I know you had an interesting journey throughout the pandemic. What led you down this path of not only taking for example, it obviously we're discussing AI here today but from a generative approach to bridging the reading gap?

08:48.20

Brian

Yeah, yeah, that's a really good question. I  think it is important to note that my last company was I founded a company eThink Education that was based on Moodle that we mentioned here in the intro that I did sell. And that got consolidated with a couple of other companies doing the same thing and that's now known as Open LMS. That's a pretty large company, hundreds of employees you know thousands of clients. They're based on open-source Moodle I stayed on board for a little bit and as the head of sales there and then needed some time off and that was um, you know very important for me because I had some time to really get back in the lab so to speak had some time to reset kind of recover from startup life if you will which can be quite stressful. During that time, it was the last couple of years that's when the AI boom started so I was lucky enough to kind of have time to really dive back in I've always been very interested in some of these emerging technologies. Whether it's Blockchain or AI and whether or not and I think that was really the big question they were going to be as impactful in the world of education and if so really, how? So what I'm working on right now is a new project called Storytime AI and it really just came up ah about just based on some tinkering and some questions I was I was curious, what can the AI do well right now where is it going to be 5 years from now? It didn't matter to me as much as what could I use it for that would be interesting and fun and maybe not quite as stressful as you know running a larger company like I did in my last endeavor and that's where I landed on. Okay, let's use this to create stories for kids to start with and then maybe down the road a little bit more. Ah, the way of generative literature so longer form books that would go for more than just young kids so we started using the the AI models and testing the limits to pull in images and text so image models and then LLMs so the large language models to pull text plus images and combine them into what we've felt were engaging and compelling stories. So the way we're seeing right now as using this as an example, where we see some of these you know AI products democratizing education. For what I'm working on right now in terms of the literacy gap, we just released our product. We had some early testing and beta going on. But the biggest thing is just engagement. You know there's a concept of if you see it, you can be it. That's come up quite a few times from teachers that have had the app in their hands and what they're saying is that you know if a kid can see themselves in a story then it's just one of those psychological tools that, you know they believe they can become that I had it in front of a friend's kid recently and I said what do you want to be when you grow up and he said I want to be a Baltimore City police officer and I thought that was you know, really really the interesting answer. So I put that into the into the end of the, end of the story, front end prop where it you know, just a setting, a theme, a plot.

11:52.28

Brian

And I said Baltimore, so Baltimore City, I said you know that he grows up to be a Baltimore City police officer and the AI it took me about you know 10 seconds to create the prompt in the front end of this app and then a minute later I had a full flippable book that I that we read together. And he was his eyes were wide open. He was shaking with excitement I'm not even exaggerating. He just couldn't believe how that how it worked that he was in the book and he was asking me how he calls me Uncle B. He's like, “Uncle B..Uncle B, how did you do that? How did you do that?” and I kind of you know we've had a lot of experiences like that but that whole concept of okay here's, here's a case study where you know AI is coming and allowing a parent at a very very low cost to not have to go buy a $25 book but do this for you know, twenty cents a story to be able to create a book for their kid that is culturally relevant and inclusive and you know that's powerful and so there's one example either. I've seen some other really powerful examples as well. But that's one of the ones that I've personally been a part of here over the past couple of weeks.

13:03.26

Dan

It's such a great story I love hearing that.  

13:07.52

Brian

Thanks.

13:12.23

Dan

I guess that does lead me down another path of questioning though that I'd love to get your opinion on so you know having now become a pseudo-expert in in generative AI. But forcefully like just to bike everyone else, It feels like in the last nine months. You know one of the questions that we're always tasked with asking is yeah it really is you know one of the questions we're always tasked as a company that provides professional services for example is security and protection of IP or security and protection of the individuals on the other end of that. You know what are some of the the measures you would say if we're stiff if we kind of spin this back around to thinking about say Web 3.0 again that you would want your listeners to know around you know, security protocols and things in areas that they could implement say we got some entrepreneurs listening that are thinking of starting something like this for themselves. You know what are some security measures they could be thinking about to not only protect say IP but also protect say you know that 8-year-old end user that's going to be the next Baltimore you know Baltimore police officer?

14:12.77

Brian

Yeah, you know it's a good question and it's ah it's emerging right? So there's, it depends on what specific thing you're looking at for AI and generative AI in particular to start with. We'll let's talk about images. There's a lot of work being done. Like so far ours. For example, we have multiple and NSFW filters to filter out. We want an approach and this is super important for anybody any entrepreneur out there trying to do anything in AI. You know you have COPA laws. You have so many guard rails to protect um, you know kids and in an educational setting or parents want the same thing if they're doing this in their homes. So if you're an entrepreneur you have to make sure you have those guardrails. So there's a lot of built-in ones with a lot of the products out there. We've added extra layers in ours for you know bandwords as an example. Um, we also have image classifiers, so if the image ah comes back and it has anything in it that we would deem to be unsettling or not safe for children then it flags it and it won't show that image. It blurs the image out and it it says that it makes you recreate the image or. Um, you know that may also flag it for us that we would take a look if we're seeing a lot of that come from one user we're building in the guardrails to make sure that we're monitoring it as well and looking for any misuse of the product. So I think that the ah, the AI companies themselves and there's quite a few emerging whether it's on the side of images like if you look at we're using an open source one a big proponent of open source technologies based on what I've done in my career. We're using stability stable diffusion SDXL image generator and they have a lot of built-in features as well. It's very important to them obviously in the early stage, to not to not have anything come out that is going to be that is going to hurt their reputation. Open AI, the exact same thing, they have a number of filters. So you'll probably already see that if you've been using Gen AI Chat GPT, um, there's a lot of other LLMs emerging. Open source ones, Meta has got “llama” out which is emerging right now as a strong open source competitor and the same thing applies there. You can add your own in but it's certainly very important when it comes to that type of work on the other side. You know in terms of you know, protecting IP and things like that that is also really interesting and that is as of right now I think being sort of continually debated as to where IP exists and where it does it. But I think that. We try to err on the side of conservative on that you know it's ah it's down the road. Um, you know I think there's ways you can really integrate and give a portion of proceeds to those whose data was trained to get the generative AI content. And I think that that's right now a really interesting thing that a lot of entrepreneurs need to consider is, you don't want to replace humans. You need to figure out how can you work with creators to enhance what they're doing or work with people that already have existing content. To make sure they're getting some type of a revenue share when you're looking at protecting, you know their IP or you'll probably end up sued. So I think there's a lot of emerging models and conversation around both of those topics.

17:35.45

Dan

That That's great. I appreciate that insight. Let's fast forward 10 years from now, you know the current Dans and Brians are still staring at the stars and plotting their path to technological revenge that are in college right now, you know what are you telling them to think about 10 years from now?

17:57.37

Brian

Wow. Um I mean I think that right now you. 

18:00.40

Dan

Yeah, no pressure on that question by the way either.

18:17.17

Brian

Yeah no no I think that right now and because this is that you know the focus that we're looking at today is Gen AI and really Web3 as a whole. I think you have to look at Web3 as a movement if you're an entrepreneur right? Web2 was massive, right? Um, and you and you know you and me cut our teeth right now mostly in Web2 technologies, right? We came you, we came to really after Web1 was starting to kind of hit the tail end and Web2 was starting to take off with one three. 

18:29.40

Dan

Right.

18:35.75

Brian

You know I think you got to you got to hone in on understanding where the industry is going to go right? So you have to get knowledgeable right now if you're a young entrepreneur and you're looking at you know I want to be you know I've talked to a couple of people recently that I've just thought wow you're so lucky you have the exact skill set you need for what I would consider you know the first inning of AI and Web3 technologies really starting to capture the attention of the public. We all know as you said for the last nine months we've all become pseudo AI experts right? That's not that I've never really been through something quite like that you know the internet was the closest thing. But this is new that you know we've been told over and over in all of our you know media that we need to learn AI and AIs coming whether we like it or not right? So I think you got to wrap your head around that if you're young and understand wha what are these benefits. We're gonna see from Web3 and what can they do and what can't they do and and what would be different about Web3 technology versus a Web2 technology right? So I think you need to you need to have that short list of what are those things and then what are the technologies that will support those things and then become a little bit like. I would say hyper-obsessed with following those companies following those individuals that are talking about those things and then doing the extra research so that you become an expert yourself and if you do that you'll be invaluable.

20:00.14

Dan

That's great. Final thoughts parting advice for our listeners. You know that are out there. You know, grinding along and figuring out what that next next greatest thing is you know what's what's some of your parting advice.

22:29.12

Brian

Yeah I mean I think I'd go back to you know to that to the last question and and I would say that you know we're we're in a state of change right now right? We we see a lot of things in flux I think in the world and it's a time to really think invest in yourself right now and understand you know as much as you possibly can about you know the shifts that are happening right? And if we talk about Web3 technology specifically in that and that's something that's interesting to your to your listeners that are are trying to plot their their journeys in the world of education technology. Um, there's just a lot of really exciting things happening right? if you look at Web3 you think about decentralization you think about lowering costs because of that you think about things like um, you know using blockchain to build distributed autonomous organizations. Um, which are really I think important when you look at what's happening with some of the consolidation you and I have seen over the last twenty years in the industry where it might open up new new ways of creating businesses that allow entrepreneurs to come out of the gates faster. Um, and build things that maybe allow them to use blockchain to build new incentives and new ways to sort of um you know, take advantage of you know ways that when we were trying to build businesses. It was more difficult and there was more bureaucracy. So I think the advice I would have is to really double down on yourself right now and realize that. You know what was, Dan our parents all had one job right for their whole careers and you know and worse we had ten and I don't know how many jobs the next person's going to have I don't know if people will even have jobs. They might just be, you know all freelancers working for distributed autonomous organizations that are built on blockchain and building these decentralized apps that are you know you know, kind of owned by the by the masses as opposed to owned by large entities. So there's exciting stuff coming with all these Web3 technologies and obviously, AI is a big part of that. So I think you'd really want to just continue to double down continue to invest in it and really you know don't be afraid of those things because um, they really present opportunity right now and I think I think that's the big, the big piece of advice that I would say to anybody. You know young world old right? I mean if you're a mid-career. It's the same thing. You know you have to realize that those shifts are coming and change is inevitable. So although it's you know it's ah you know' it's gradually and then all of a sudden it's all at once. It's it's still ah, it's still. Ah, it's easier to look back and see the change. But. I think in the midst of it. The advice I would give and I think what I've learned is it's always coming and it seems to be going at a more rapid pace right now than when we were younger and maybe that's me just sounded old but maybe I don't know you feel the same way.

25:22.50

Dan

Um, yeah, well if you know the old ad is the only constant is change, right?

25:29.16

Brian

There you go. That's exactly right. You know and it does feel like it's happening faster. The way technology has has evolved especially with this new massive shift using Generative AI.

25:46.20

Dan

Brian, thank you for joining me today on the latest Tech in EdTech Podcast. We appreciate your insight and look forward to you and our audience joining us in future podcasts. 

25:53.30

Brian

Thank you I really enjoyed being here, Dan, such a pleasure.

25:54:00

Dan

Absolutely.