July 31, 2023 • 33 mins
Join us for our summer mini-series where we’ll be talking about artificial intelligence (AI): what it is, how it is already being used in education, and how it will continue to transform education in the future. In this kickoff episode, we sat down with Jennifer Carolan, general partner at Reach Capital, to chat about the current state of AI in education technology.
As a former teacher and current leading-edge education technology entrepreneur, Jennifer has so much to share on how, if done correctly, AI will become a partner with educators and a tool for fostering social learning opportunities.
For more from Jennifer, check out the following resources:
- Read Jennifer’s article, “What AI will disrupt but never replace.”
- Hear more from Jennifer and follow her on Twitter.
- Keep up to date with the Reach Capital team.
- Join us in the Math Teacher Lounge Facebook Community.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I worry sometimes that all of this excitement and
this innovation, this buildingin this space, sometimes
disregards the things about usthat make us uniquely human.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome to Math Teacher Lounge. I'm your host
Dan Meyer. I'm flying solotoday. Know Bethany here to
keep my , uh, my worst impulsesin check. Well , I'll see if we
regret that decision. Uh, we'vewrapped up our series on math
anxiety, and we're now gonnaspend a couple episodes talking
about something fairly topical,which is artificial
intelligence. Uh, if you are ateacher, odds are good that
(00:36):
you're technologicallyinclined, uncles, aunts,
siblings, whoever has asked yousomething about like, what does
this mean for teaching this ?
These new AI products thatwe're seeing pop up a lot of
discussion here. So to startoff our summer mini series on
AI in education, we'll talk toa person who wrote one of my
favorite pieces on the topic ofAI and math ed tech investor,
(01:00):
Jennifer Carolyn of ReachCapital. Uh , her piece was
entitled, what AI Will DisruptBut Never Replace. I always
find her so serious on thematter of building things for
classes with technology andalso teaching and how it
interacts with students. Soplease enjoy this conversation
with Jennifer. Carolyn , well,we are so happy to have
(01:22):
Jennifer, Carolyn in thelounge. Jennifer, welcome to
Matthew Your Lounge.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Uh, we have , uh, sparkling water in the fridge.
Ignore any brown bags that havenames on them that aren't
yours. But , uh, yeah, you'rewelcome to have anything , uh,
from there that you want. Butthank you for being here. Can
you just tell people like a bitabout your background? We've
intersected a lot of differentways in our, both of our time
in the Silicon Valley , um, inthe Bay Area, and you've just
had a very interesting careerpath. Can you just give a few
(01:48):
of the highlights from yourperspective?
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Sure. Uh, so I grew up in Chicago, went to school
in the suburbs, and then alsoin the city. And I had this
sort of very formativeexperience of going to a
Chicago public school mysophomore year. And this was
the year Bill Bennett declaredc p s the sort of worst schools
(02:11):
in the, in the nation. Iremember seeing that on the
front, the headline of theChicago Sun Times . And then I
also went to school in thesuburbs and had a completely
different experience. So thatreally shaped me in ways that I
didn't fully understand at thetime, but probably motivated me
to go into education. I becamea classroom teacher, a public
(02:33):
school teacher. I taughthistory at the middle school
and high school level, and Idid that for seven years. Um, I
moved out to San Franciscoarea. I got my master's in
curriculum in teachereducation. I published my
research in ed leadership andfor my master's thesis, I
studied differentiation orpersonalized instruction as
(02:56):
some call it now. I then wentto go work for a nonprofit
called New School's VentureFund, and they were combining
this venture capital model andeducation. They tried to
overlay the, the venturecapital model into education
and back educationentrepreneurs. And so I sort of
(03:17):
learned the craft of venturecapital there for nine years.
And I met , uh, Chu , whobecame my co-founder, and
Chantel Garvey was our firsthire and we spun out and formed
Reach Capital Venture Fund, andwe've been at it since 2011. We
have four funds and we aretotally focused on education,
(03:41):
technology investing.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
So I love that you have like the background as an
educator. You've been a ,you've been a , a student
yourself. You've seen schoolsystems that at their best
resourced and least resourcedperhaps . Yes . And now you're
working as a , as a venturecapitalist. Can you just
explain for our audience, youknow, high level, what , what
does a venture capitalist doday to day in the education
space, for instance?
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Sure. So yeah, I ne when I was growing up in
Chicago, I never knew what aventure capitalist was. It was
not until I came to SiliconValley and I got to meet all of
these technology entrepreneursand understand the financial
system that was kind of fuelingall of this innovation , um, in
the valley. And so I thought,could this sort of vehicle of
(04:26):
growth be used in the educationspace to bring technology and,
and different tools to thatspace? And I was particularly
interested in it because I wasgrabbing technology tools sort
of off the shelf or makingthem, we didn't have, this is
gonna date me, but we didn'thave like digital graders,
electronic graders back then.
(04:47):
We did it all in that, thatgreen , uh, that green sort of
folder that you were given onthe first day of school. And so
I was really interested becauseI was shopping online and
banking online, and I thought,gosh, this job is really hard.
I'm teaching 175 students and Ican't even get a good kind of
(05:09):
greater , automatic greaterfor, for this job. And that
really began my exploration ofhow can we bring great
technology into schools? So toanswer your question, the job
of the the VC is really capitalallocation. So we are given
money through a lot ofnonprofits, foundations,
endowments, high net worthindividuals, and we invest in
(05:34):
entrepreneurs, founders ofcompanies. In our case, it's,
it's ed tech entrepreneurs thatare building companies in the
space. So companies like ClassDojo and , um, Desmos and
Instructure Canvas and, andthese. So venture capitalists
(05:54):
back these companies early on,oftentimes when they have no
customers at all. And then wework alongside them, we partner
with them, support them overthe years. And that's, that's
in a nutshell, sort of what wedo. So my job is a couple days
a week I'm sourcing and lookingat new companies. We have about
(06:16):
a hundred companies that comeinbound per week and couple
days I'm working with myexisting companies that I'm on
the board of, and then I'm alsomanaging the fund.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
That's super helpful. Yeah. From the
perspective of , of a teacher.
Like I came to a school and wehad a bunch of tools that we
were using that were picked bypeople who were not me. And
yeah , I just , I didn't, Ididn't have a strong sense of
like where those tools wereselected from, what other
options were available, how didthose options come about? And
that, that in my mind is whereI think where you come in and
(06:49):
reach comes in. And when Iworked, you know, at Desmos you
were a , a group of people thathad access to a bunch of money
and we needed money to grow andcame to you and convinced you
that we were a good bet. Andthat's how part of our growth
story. So I think it's justinteresting to think about like
the , the choices that we haveavailable, these huge companies
that just feel like they arepart of the air, like they're
(07:10):
Yeah . Natural forces that havealways been, are actually the
result in lots of cases ofpeople like you who make
choices based in values andexperience and knowledge about
what seems like a good thing togive money to. That's a , a ,
to me, a very interesting andconsequential job.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I do. I will say though, that I was stalking
Desmos for many years. It was. I was delighted when
we had the chance to invest.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Well, it's , so I guess I'm , I'm curious. So
you, there is a question thatyou have mentioned you get all
the time now , uh, in your roleas someone who thinks about
technology and what could workin schools and what could be,
you know, profitable inlearning by lots of definitions
of profitable. What , what isthe kind of question you're
getting? What's in , what's inthe air right now in your
world?
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah, so definitely ai, generative ai. And will AI
tutors replace teachers? Sothis is, I don't know, when I'm
seeing a hundred companies aweek, I would say now almost
half of them are, are ai,generative AI companies.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Super interesting.
We will come back to those 50in a little bit. I have
questions about that. But forthe sake of our audience, like
AI has been around for a verylong time. You know, like
self-driving cars have been apursuit for a very long time.
You know how from movies , uh,you know, from way back in the
day have been examples of ai.
But why are we all talkingabout AI right now? What's been
(08:33):
going on that's so big.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Yeah, I'm glad that you mentioned that. It has
been, it has been around for awhile and we've been backing AI
driven companies or machinelearning companies for, for
many years. We backed GradeScope and Right Lab and
Mainstay, and those werecompanies that used leveraged
AI for their solution. But thisnew generation of AI is a step
(08:58):
function different. It's verydifferent than the, the
innovations that have comebefore. So I think of generated
AI as this like umbrella termreally for this sort of
groundbreaking form of newcreative AI that can produce
original content on demand. Soit's not just analyzing or
classifying or categorizingdata, but it can use the
(09:21):
patterns in these largelanguage models and existing
data to create entirely newcontent. And that's what's so
different and groundbreakingabout it.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
And as it as that intersects with education, why
are people looking to thissector of education in
particular saying, ah, likepeople aren't thinking that AI
will disrupt every sector inthe same way, but it feels like
there's a lot of attention oneducation as a possible place
where AI can go in Yes . And gowild with it. So what , what ,
what , what about what is soimpressive about these models
(09:52):
that has people thinking, ooh ,education.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Yes. That's a , that's a great question because
it , the venture capitalistsand those sort of in this space
are really identifyingeducation as one of the first
sectors that it willdramatically change. And I
believe it's because at thecore of education is about
communication and learning andcontent. And there is a belief
(10:17):
that AI can sort ofdramatically change the way
that content is delivered ortransmitted between humans. And
it's also something that everyperson on the planet
experiences education in someform. So it's seen as a huge
market. It's seen as somethingthat is content driven and
(10:40):
anything that's large marketthat has content, I think that
people think that, that thistype of technology can disrupt,
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Right? So the , the the , the person who, you know,
fixes my toilet or runs myelectricity or whatever, like
right . It's, it's , that's nota content delivery kind of
field. We aren't thinking aboutapplications there quite as
much. Um, education is a lot ofthings obviously, but one thing
it does do is try to reproduceideas from one generation to
the next often through whatfeels like content delivery.
(11:09):
Yes . There's some like, I'm,I'm gonna say some things and
hope you learn them. So can youjust go a little bit, like
paint a little more of apicture would you about like
what things like chat G p t,like what these, these gen AI
model , like what does it looklike? What does content
delivery look like when it runsthrough one of these new tools
that has people thinking, ooh ,content delivery and education,
we should try that here.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
So there's lots of different ways that this
content gets transmitted tostudents or between students.
And there is the classroom,there is group work, there's
just all different pedagogicalapproaches to, to teaching and
learning. The tech sector hasbeen very, I would say almost
(11:54):
obsessed in some ways with thisconcept of personalizing
learning. You know, this beliefthat this one size fits all
education is not good for kidsor, you know, can be improved
through personalization. Andyou, you saw that kind of
pendulum swing in early twothousands where there was, you
know, some of these classroomslooked like call centers where
(12:16):
you had kids in cubicles Yes .
That were learning online bythemselves. And I think that
this latest technology peopleare excited about in some ways
because you can improve thatpersonalized process of
learning where, you know, in aclassroom a teacher sometimes
is gonna have individuallearning time, they're going to
do one-on-one teaching, there'stutoring that happens and
(12:39):
there's this belief that chat,G P T and other forms of
generative AI can mimic the ,uh, skills of the teacher in a
lot of ways and transmit thatknowledge maybe even, you know,
better and , and more preciselythan, than a teacher could. So
(12:59):
I dunno if listeners have heardhave used Conmigo or some of
the other AI tutors that areout there now, but they're
getting quite good andimpressive in a lot of ways.
But I think that's one of the,one of the ways that the tech
sector is very excited aboutthis is that, hey, this can
really personalize learning ina way that is automated. It
(13:19):
doesn't require much work fromthe teacher and is can kind of
target each student's zoneproximal development mm-hmm.
very precisely.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
I think that con uh , conmigo, I , I liked a lot
how it, it felt so orientedaround my assets as a learner
when I was playing with it inways that previous tools have
not Yes. Where previous toolswould be like, Hey, you got
this wrong. Do you want towatch me do it for you? And
then you can do a differentone. Um, that , that sort of
thing. Conmigo like I would getit wrong unin intentionally, I
(13:48):
should just add for thelisteners' sake here , um,
. And it would tell melike, oh, what , what you might
have been thinking was this.
Which , um, to me felt muchmore like , uh, uh, a
knowledgeable human instructorwas pretty interesting to me.
Um, I guess I , I'm wonderingthen you've been on record with
a , a really , uh, persuasiveessay . I thought that we'll
put in the show notes that AImay disrupt teaching but not
(14:10):
replace teachers. And so Icould you ref reflect a bit for
us on where you see like thepower of AI and the power of
teachers, like where the powerof AI stops? Yeah . Like what,
what is the difference therebetween uh , the best AI
generated teacher we couldimagine here and what a human
teacher does?
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Yeah. I should start by saying that ai, the , the
pace at which AI is evolvingand improving is , is wild.
Like, and nothing I've seenbefore. Like it's, it's really
improving rapidly. Like thisweekend I was at the Berkeley
AI hackathon and it was 1500hackers from around the US and
(14:52):
I, I think that almost 25% ofthem were working on education
products, education tools. Andit was just remarkable some of
the things I saw. So I thinkit's very exciting first , just
that we'll start there, thatthe pace of change and the
evolution is happening at sucha rapid clip that it's, it's
(15:13):
hard to say where things aregonna be in in five years. But
that said , um, you know, I,I'm a believer that learning is
inherently social and thatthere are these sort of
biological realities of us ashuman beings that that
technology really isn't gonnachange. And that things about
us that really enhance thequality of our communication
(15:36):
and our ability to teach. Andso there's obvious things like
body language and tone and eyegaze, and then there's other
less obvious things like thekind of cadence and and rhythm
of a conversation and languagethat can be lost in computer
driven interaction. And so Iworry sometimes that all of
this excitement and thisinnovation in this building, in
(15:58):
this space sometimes disregardsthe things about us that make
us uniquely human. And we knowthat learning and, you know,
the teaching component here is,is it's a , there's a social
piece to it. And you know, thepiece I wrote really was, it
wasn't a warning, but it was,it was more of a, a message
(16:20):
that, hey, let's not forgetthat, that we are human and
there's parts of us as humanbeings that we need to
integrate into this process aswe think about these AI tools.
And so I al I also really thinkabout who's creating these
tools mm-hmm .and are they hiring the people
that are specialists and, andwith an understanding of
(16:44):
developmental stages of lifeand how vulnerable, you know,
teenagers are. And, and as wego through different stages and
making sure that there'stechnology is responsive to
that, that development.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
You outlined a bunch of researching your piece , um,
illustrating the importance ofsocial engagement and social
processes on learning, which Ifound really persuasive. And I
don't want to like generalizemuch about the kinds of people
that are building these tools,but I do wonder sometimes if
they are representative ofstudents more broadly , uh, you
(17:17):
know, like yeah . The , the ,the pe some of the engineers
that I know who are extremelytalented, I think that they had
less of an interest, some ofthem not all, but some of them
in some of the social processesof learning. In many cases they
were far smarter than theirclassmates felt. Limited by
classmates Yes . Smarter thantheir teachers, et cetera . And
I , I do wonder what that doesto the ecosystem of tools that
is emerging and , and whetherit'll have an actual impact on
(17:41):
the majority of students here.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Absolutely. Why it's so important for these builders
to create diverse teams and tobring in people that are not
like them and people withdifferent backgrounds and
specializations. Yeah. It'ssomething that's very important
to me and get
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Into a classroom. I mean, it's , it's not the
easiest thing, but it's not thehardest thing. And I just find,
like, part of my work right nowamplify is to like, I have
swivels out there in the worldwith six classes piping in
video all the time. Cause wehave a huge company with people
who , uh, are doing importantwork , uh, in education and
have not themselves beenclassroom teachers. Yes . Which
is not a prerequisite for doingI important and good work, but
(18:19):
I'm just finding that droppingin a two minute clip of great
teaching from Amanda Rou inChicago public schools or Jens
Mendy in San Diego just helpsto expand people's horizons for
like, oh, like this chat botthat I am building to
approximate teacher interactionfrom the front of the room.
Right . Like, does not accountfor the ways that the teacher
like stands there for a longersecond than, than natural and
(18:40):
like raises an eyebrow and thekid like auto corrects their
response. Uh , it just, it'stough. I , I don't know , I
don't know . I'm curious howyou, how do you, you mentioned
two days a week you are, youknow, kind of doing business
development for your portfoliocompanies. Like are there ways
that you help them understandlike, ah , that's not really
how this works?
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah. This, this is a , a pet peeve of mine because
I don't understand why insectors outside of education
why there is a focus on thecustomers and that customer
experience. And, you know,Intuit, for example, their
team, they're encouraged to goin the homes of their software
users and to watch them use it.
(19:20):
And, and they have these kindof, this process called
customer journeys. And Isometimes feel that in the ed
tech sector education, theydon't appreciate the, that
experience of teachers andwhat's going on in the
classroom. And I, I, it's, it'sstrange, very few companies in
(19:41):
the sector are prioritizingthat and getting into the
classroom and really elevatethe work of the teacher and see
it as highly technical andchallenging. And in our role at
Reach, we really encouragethat, push that at the board
level and really try to getthem to set goals around that
(20:03):
and to inculcate their companywith those types of values
where they are as focused onthe customer, which is often
the teacher as , uh, as othercompanies are in other sectors.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
That's great to hear. Yeah, certainly like not
knowing your customer ineducation has not been like an
impediment to a successfulcompany . Like there's
companies that have done likelousy why we consider lousy
work that manage to besuccessful. Um, but I'm looking
at this just huge space thatyou're seeing emerging around
and education. I just feel asense of almost like
(20:33):
resignation where I'm not like,I don't feel like I need to
throw myself on the tracks tolike stop some of these
efforts. They're just, they'renot gonna be successful.
Exactly . Like, they don'ttake, they don't account for
the ecology of a classroom. AndI'm just like, well, I mean,
you know, take JenniferJennifer's advice or don't, you
know, but it's not gonna workotherwise. Yeah . So I , I
would love to know like, whatare you , what are you excited
about in terms of, you know,ai, you've mentioned like what
(20:56):
you think AI won't replaceabout teachers, a lot of the
social interaction forinstance. Um, what are some
applications that you see as eexciting from perhaps companies
that you've invested in?
Speaker 1 (21:06):
So I, I do think that we have been on this, this
journey for many decades ofspecialization of the teacher's
role. We used to call it the,the milk money problem where,
you know, when teachers were,were teaching 50 years ago,
they, they sort of did anentire range of, they still do,
but they were collecting themilk money, they were doing
(21:30):
everything that you can imaginein the classroom, you know,
soup to nuts. And now we haveincreasingly, it's very slowly
happening, but specializing thejob of the teacher while at the
same time piling a lot of stuffon, on the teacher's plate too.
So I, I think that some ofthese tools that's already
happening clearly are startingto automate certain parts of
(21:53):
the teacher's job. So we areseeing a lot of essay grading
tools, a lot of writing,writing grading. And I think
that in a few years and , andthey're quite good. You know, I
think that teachers will workin partnership with these tools
to automate some of the, thegrading. Um, we're seeing a lot
in, for your listeners themath, like starting to see a
(22:14):
lot of math has been behindEnglish in terms of the grading
because it's just morechallenging cuz of the
computational language. Uh, butthat were , I , I saw a lot of
those actually this weekend andstarting to see more and more
products in that space that arereally doing a good job of
using computer vision to parsethe math equations and not just
(22:38):
tell them the right answer, butsort of do what Conmigo is
doing, where they're pullingapart, oh, this is where you
went wrong in this problem.
This is perhaps why, and thisis how you can consider these
different solutions. So I, Ithink that a lot of the tools
that I'm seeing now are , uh,addressing different parts of
the, the teaching planningprocess. So like lesson
planning takes eight to ninehours per week for teachers. I
(23:01):
think that we're gonna have alot of tools that are going to
be supporting the planningprocess and making that easier
for teachers. So that's thepart that I'm, I'm very focused
on right now.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yeah, that's great.
I I like , I like the idea ofthe , the human in the loop as
they call it, where the theseYeah . You know, these tools
will offer some suggestions andthe teacher does that last mile
of like passing it alongthrough , um, or the , the AI
isn't , uh, directlyinterfacing with the student
just always feels a little bitbetter to me. Yes . Like I'll ,
I'll, I'll do make you a lessonplan and you can decide if this
looks right and makes somemodifications for your context.
(23:36):
Um, that sounds great. Andyeah, I love the , I like as a
positive outcome here. I reallydig the focus on like what is
the unique value that a teacheroffers. Yes . Yes . I guess I ,
I worry that the folks that arebuilding at hackathons actually
don't know, like they see thevalue that and that technology
can offer and they feel veryconfident there, but don't
(23:56):
actually, because perhaps theyhaven't had a , as much of a
need for it or haven'texperienced it directly, don't
know what the value that ateacher offers to so many
students in this world. Um, thequestion I'd love to follow up
with here, Jennifer, is like,out of these companies that
come to you and say, Hey, we'vegot the thing and we just need
a little bit of money and wegot the thing. Um, like what
has, what kinds of pitches havelike not been exciting to you,
(24:19):
given like your perspective onthe value a teacher brings and
what a classroom is like, whatkinds of ideas are you like ,
uh, I don't know about that
Speaker 1 (24:29):
To , to your earlier point about the unique value of
a teacher. I do think that,that one of the, the unique
values of a teacher that reallyhasn't shown up that much in a
lot of the products I've lookedat is the pedagogical content
knowledge. And that's a termthat, that most investors, most
people don't understand,teachers do. But that's a very
(24:52):
unique set of knowledge. It's avery unique skill set . And
incredible teachers are highlyskilled in how to teach a
certain set of students at acertain level of understanding
a new concept. And if investorswould just understand that what
(25:13):
even P C K is and how it's, howit's this unique set that's
developed over time and how weare trained in it, like, I
really do think that thatwould, would improve a lot of
the tools and, and materialsout there. So that's, that's
something that I'm hoping thatAI can free up teachers too ,
to focus more on and to, toreally think about that in
(25:34):
their lesson planning. Butstuff that's not interesting ,
um, I'm seeing so many AItutors that I , so not to say
I'm not interested in AItutors. Okay. I'm, I'm eyes
wide open looking for greatones, but I, I just like this
kind of like this chat bodything with these AI teachers.
Um, there will be a use casefor them and they will become
(25:57):
ubiquitous. No question. I'mjust, I'm just not , uh, super
excited about that as the usecase because I see the ways in
which we are going to pushforward education and knowledge
and, you know, human progressis going to come through social
(26:18):
learning. And I, I keep comingback to that because I think
it's so powerful and teachersunderstand that the unit of the
classroom is being such apowerful , uh, unit there to be
teaching within for lots ofdifferent reasons.
Collaboration, this kindashared understanding for like
the sort of microcosm of whatwe want, you know, the ideal
(26:38):
society to look like, like Iknow I'm getting lofty here,
but preach
Speaker 2 (26:42):
It,
Speaker 1 (26:43):
, these are
things that, that like teachers
uniquely understand can be sopowerful. And so I'm looking
for tools for teachers and, andproducts that can enhance that
social experience, sociallearning experience. And, you
know, we've certainly madeprogress over, over the last
decades and I think, you know,we, we continue to measure kind
(27:07):
of human wellbeing, how ha ithas increased over time. And
our, our, I think a lot aboutcircles of empathy and how we
care for one another as fellowhumans and how technology can
improve that experience. Andyou know, I wrote about this in
my, in my piece that I, that Ipublished, but thinking about
one of the first technologiesbeing the Gutenberg press and
(27:29):
how that allowed people to havean empathy for people outside
of their villages. And, and Ithink that some of the new
technologies can reallyincrease empathy and can
enhance this, this sociallearning piece.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Yeah, I love that.
And I appreciate the word on onthe virtual tutors slash
chatbots. They're likeinteresting. Um, it feels like
they might become just like a,a commodity almost. Exactly. I
don't know , like exactly likein my thinking I've tried to
imagine for myself like what ifthey're perfect? Yes . Like,
like right now they kind of dosome weird hallucinations, but
let's just like, as you said,the developments are just so
(28:04):
fast, let's just assume thatthey're perfect. Yeah . Like
the best tutor you could wantavailable via a chat interface.
And I asked myself, when woulda student want to interact with
that chat interface in theclasses that I'm watching where
students feel engaged andsocially connected and are
(28:24):
learning. And I just, I have ahard time imagining a student
wanting to say, hold , I'mgonna check outta this
conversation we're having andcheck it over here with my
chatbot and ask a question andthen come back to you. It's
just the , it doesn't to meYeah . Resonate a lot with the
classes . It could be partpersonal preference, the
classes that I love to be in orobserve, for instance. Yeah .
(28:46):
Um , one last question then,like, so we have listeners who
have never, you know,encountered open AI chat , G B
T, any of these tools who mightbe for the first time kind of
hearing about these things.
Like, I, I dunno , I have abrother-in-law in Silicon
Valley who is a specialeducator and he is like, no
one's talking about this. Noone's talking about this. So if
you were to invite someone toexperience what feels to you us
(29:08):
magical about these tools?
Yeah. They go to one of thesetools that's free chat, G P t I
don't know what, and they typea thing in and they're like, oh
wow. That's, that is kind ofmagical. Like, yeah . Do you
have an invitation to ourlisteners for like what they
might try to just like gettheir , get their hair blown
back a little bit? Well,
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Yeah , it's a , it's a good , really good point
that, but I can, as to yourbrother-in-law, your
brother-in-law's, students areprobably using AI and looking
at the data, AI is now I thinkthe number two most widely used
tool globally for studentsalready. It's the fastest
(29:46):
growing like zero to the numbertwo I've ever seen before. So
students are already using thistool. It's not just Silicon
Valley kids, it's kids all overthe, the world. And without any
technology is like the firsttime you use it, it can be like
this magical experience. Iremember, you know, the first
time I, now this is gonna dateme again too, but like, I
(30:07):
remember I was worried aboutputting my credit card online
the first time I made an onlinepurchase. Like that was a huge
deal. Or the first time I usedan Uber. So I would encourage
to use, what I have used itrecently for is for like
sightseeing or visiting aplace. Like if I'm going to
Yosemite, like what are thetop, if I'm this type of
(30:29):
visitor, I like hiking, youknow, you describe yourself and
then you ask for what shouldyou do in 24 hours or something
like that. So a lot of peopleare using it for travel. And
then when teaching, I amsurprised at like, you can ask
for socra, like give me thislesson, teach it to me in using
a Socratic method. And I'msurprised at how good the
(30:51):
results are. I'm sure your ,your listeners will find a lot
of problems with themwith people that really
understand it well. But justexperimenting with these tools,
it's, it's delightful in someways. Have you, have you used
it?
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yes. I, yeah, I type I, I came in as a skeptic and I
was like, I'm gonna type somestuff in and I'm gonna hate
what happens and I didn't hateit . And uh, you know,
like for , for for instance,like what's an engaging way to
start a lesson on topic? Yes .
X, y or z I was pretty, I waspretty, like I would prefer as
a teacher , uh, as a curriculumdeveloper, I have some conflict
of interest here, but I wouldprefer to have an engaging and
(31:27):
coherent experience forstudents across a year and not
have to do that every day .
I'll say that with someconflict. Yeah . But if I am a
teacher who has no curriculumand is forced to make it up on
the fly, what came out wouldbe, was definitely better than
what my gut would've been as ayear one teacher, like far and
away , like more interesting to, to students. Oh ,
interesting. So that was , uh,pretty cool. Well, thank you so
(31:50):
much for joining us. Uh , Iknow you're busy and it's been
, uh, extremely interesting tochat with you. And I'm always
very grateful to know thatsomeone , uh, like you, who
knows what the term pedagogicalcontent knowledge means and is,
is someone who's influencingthe, the direction of the ed
tech , our teachers and thestudents experience. So thanks
for joining us .
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Oh , thank you Dan.
Always a pleasure to talk withyou.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Well, thank you all so much for listening to my
conversation with Jennifer,Carolyn , co-founder and
partner at Reach Capital. We'llhave a link in the show notes
to her piece, what AI willDisrupt but Never Replace. I'd
love to know what about thisvision of the future sounds
exciting, sounds scary. Idefinitely hope you folks felt
from both Jennifer and me thatyour perspectives, your
(32:33):
expertise is something that issorely lacking in so many
conversations about technologyand the future and , uh, to
the, to the peril of all thesefolks who are, you know,
suggesting new products. So ,um, your work and perspective
is so valued by all of us. We'dlove it if you made sure you
were subscribed to Math TeacherLounge, wherever you get
podcasts. That way you can getthe next episode in our summer
(32:54):
series looking at theintersection of AI in math. If
you've got comments orquestions about ai, let us know
in our Facebook discussiongroup, math teacher Lounge
community, or on Twitter atmtl, show what resonated, what
questions do you have. And we'dalso love it if you rated us
and left us a review whereveryou find podcasts that will
help more people find thispodcast. And my own mother
(33:16):
reads my reviews and is soexcited to see good ones. So
make ma happy. Thanks again forlistening folks. Take care.
I worry sometimes that all of this excitement and
this innovation, this buildingin this space, sometimes
disregards the things about usthat make us uniquely human.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome to Math Teacher Lounge. I'm your host
Dan Meyer. I'm flying solotoday. Know Bethany here to
keep my , uh, my worst impulsesin check. Well , I'll see if we
regret that decision. Uh, we'vewrapped up our series on math
anxiety, and we're now gonnaspend a couple episodes talking
about something fairly topical,which is artificial
intelligence. Uh, if you are ateacher, odds are good that
(00:36):
you're technologicallyinclined, uncles, aunts,
siblings, whoever has asked yousomething about like, what does
this mean for teaching this ?
These new AI products thatwe're seeing pop up a lot of
discussion here. So to startoff our summer mini series on
AI in education, we'll talk toa person who wrote one of my
favorite pieces on the topic ofAI and math ed tech investor,
(01:00):
Jennifer Carolyn of ReachCapital. Uh , her piece was
entitled, what AI Will DisruptBut Never Replace. I always
find her so serious on thematter of building things for
classes with technology andalso teaching and how it
interacts with students. Soplease enjoy this conversation
with Jennifer. Carolyn , well,we are so happy to have
(01:22):
Jennifer, Carolyn in thelounge. Jennifer, welcome to
Matthew Your Lounge.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Uh, we have , uh, sparkling water in the fridge.
Ignore any brown bags that havenames on them that aren't
yours. But , uh, yeah, you'rewelcome to have anything , uh,
from there that you want. Butthank you for being here. Can
you just tell people like a bitabout your background? We've
intersected a lot of differentways in our, both of our time
in the Silicon Valley , um, inthe Bay Area, and you've just
had a very interesting careerpath. Can you just give a few
(01:48):
of the highlights from yourperspective?
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Sure. Uh, so I grew up in Chicago, went to school
in the suburbs, and then alsoin the city. And I had this
sort of very formativeexperience of going to a
Chicago public school mysophomore year. And this was
the year Bill Bennett declaredc p s the sort of worst schools
(02:11):
in the, in the nation. Iremember seeing that on the
front, the headline of theChicago Sun Times . And then I
also went to school in thesuburbs and had a completely
different experience. So thatreally shaped me in ways that I
didn't fully understand at thetime, but probably motivated me
to go into education. I becamea classroom teacher, a public
(02:33):
school teacher. I taughthistory at the middle school
and high school level, and Idid that for seven years. Um, I
moved out to San Franciscoarea. I got my master's in
curriculum in teachereducation. I published my
research in ed leadership andfor my master's thesis, I
studied differentiation orpersonalized instruction as
(02:56):
some call it now. I then wentto go work for a nonprofit
called New School's VentureFund, and they were combining
this venture capital model andeducation. They tried to
overlay the, the venturecapital model into education
and back educationentrepreneurs. And so I sort of
(03:17):
learned the craft of venturecapital there for nine years.
And I met , uh, Chu , whobecame my co-founder, and
Chantel Garvey was our firsthire and we spun out and formed
Reach Capital Venture Fund, andwe've been at it since 2011. We
have four funds and we aretotally focused on education,
(03:41):
technology investing.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
So I love that you have like the background as an
educator. You've been a ,you've been a , a student
yourself. You've seen schoolsystems that at their best
resourced and least resourcedperhaps . Yes . And now you're
working as a , as a venturecapitalist. Can you just
explain for our audience, youknow, high level, what , what
does a venture capitalist doday to day in the education
space, for instance?
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Sure. So yeah, I ne when I was growing up in
Chicago, I never knew what aventure capitalist was. It was
not until I came to SiliconValley and I got to meet all of
these technology entrepreneursand understand the financial
system that was kind of fuelingall of this innovation , um, in
the valley. And so I thought,could this sort of vehicle of
(04:26):
growth be used in the educationspace to bring technology and,
and different tools to thatspace? And I was particularly
interested in it because I wasgrabbing technology tools sort
of off the shelf or makingthem, we didn't have, this is
gonna date me, but we didn'thave like digital graders,
electronic graders back then.
(04:47):
We did it all in that, thatgreen , uh, that green sort of
folder that you were given onthe first day of school. And so
I was really interested becauseI was shopping online and
banking online, and I thought,gosh, this job is really hard.
I'm teaching 175 students and Ican't even get a good kind of
(05:09):
greater , automatic greaterfor, for this job. And that
really began my exploration ofhow can we bring great
technology into schools? So toanswer your question, the job
of the the VC is really capitalallocation. So we are given
money through a lot ofnonprofits, foundations,
endowments, high net worthindividuals, and we invest in
(05:34):
entrepreneurs, founders ofcompanies. In our case, it's,
it's ed tech entrepreneurs thatare building companies in the
space. So companies like ClassDojo and , um, Desmos and
Instructure Canvas and, andthese. So venture capitalists
(05:54):
back these companies early on,oftentimes when they have no
customers at all. And then wework alongside them, we partner
with them, support them overthe years. And that's, that's
in a nutshell, sort of what wedo. So my job is a couple days
a week I'm sourcing and lookingat new companies. We have about
(06:16):
a hundred companies that comeinbound per week and couple
days I'm working with myexisting companies that I'm on
the board of, and then I'm alsomanaging the fund.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
That's super helpful. Yeah. From the
perspective of , of a teacher.
Like I came to a school and wehad a bunch of tools that we
were using that were picked bypeople who were not me. And
yeah , I just , I didn't, Ididn't have a strong sense of
like where those tools wereselected from, what other
options were available, how didthose options come about? And
that, that in my mind is whereI think where you come in and
(06:49):
reach comes in. And when Iworked, you know, at Desmos you
were a , a group of people thathad access to a bunch of money
and we needed money to grow andcame to you and convinced you
that we were a good bet. Andthat's how part of our growth
story. So I think it's justinteresting to think about like
the , the choices that we haveavailable, these huge companies
that just feel like they arepart of the air, like they're
(07:10):
Yeah . Natural forces that havealways been, are actually the
result in lots of cases ofpeople like you who make
choices based in values andexperience and knowledge about
what seems like a good thing togive money to. That's a , a ,
to me, a very interesting andconsequential job.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I do. I will say though, that I was stalking
Desmos for many years. It was
we had the chance to invest.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Well, it's , so I guess I'm , I'm curious. So
you, there is a question thatyou have mentioned you get all
the time now , uh, in your roleas someone who thinks about
technology and what could workin schools and what could be,
you know, profitable inlearning by lots of definitions
of profitable. What , what isthe kind of question you're
getting? What's in , what's inthe air right now in your
world?
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah, so definitely ai, generative ai. And will AI
tutors replace teachers? Sothis is, I don't know, when I'm
seeing a hundred companies aweek, I would say now almost
half of them are, are ai,generative AI companies.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Super interesting.
We will come back to those 50in a little bit. I have
questions about that. But forthe sake of our audience, like
AI has been around for a verylong time. You know, like
self-driving cars have been apursuit for a very long time.
You know how from movies , uh,you know, from way back in the
day have been examples of ai.
But why are we all talkingabout AI right now? What's been
(08:33):
going on that's so big.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Yeah, I'm glad that you mentioned that. It has
been, it has been around for awhile and we've been backing AI
driven companies or machinelearning companies for, for
many years. We backed GradeScope and Right Lab and
Mainstay, and those werecompanies that used leveraged
AI for their solution. But thisnew generation of AI is a step
(08:58):
function different. It's verydifferent than the, the
innovations that have comebefore. So I think of generated
AI as this like umbrella termreally for this sort of
groundbreaking form of newcreative AI that can produce
original content on demand. Soit's not just analyzing or
classifying or categorizingdata, but it can use the
(09:21):
patterns in these largelanguage models and existing
data to create entirely newcontent. And that's what's so
different and groundbreakingabout it.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
And as it as that intersects with education, why
are people looking to thissector of education in
particular saying, ah, likepeople aren't thinking that AI
will disrupt every sector inthe same way, but it feels like
there's a lot of attention oneducation as a possible place
where AI can go in Yes . And gowild with it. So what , what ,
what , what about what is soimpressive about these models
(09:52):
that has people thinking, ooh ,education.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Yes. That's a , that's a great question because
it , the venture capitalistsand those sort of in this space
are really identifyingeducation as one of the first
sectors that it willdramatically change. And I
believe it's because at thecore of education is about
communication and learning andcontent. And there is a belief
(10:17):
that AI can sort ofdramatically change the way
that content is delivered ortransmitted between humans. And
it's also something that everyperson on the planet
experiences education in someform. So it's seen as a huge
market. It's seen as somethingthat is content driven and
(10:40):
anything that's large marketthat has content, I think that
people think that, that thistype of technology can disrupt,
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Right? So the , the the , the person who, you know,
fixes my toilet or runs myelectricity or whatever, like
right . It's, it's , that's nota content delivery kind of
field. We aren't thinking aboutapplications there quite as
much. Um, education is a lot ofthings obviously, but one thing
it does do is try to reproduceideas from one generation to
the next often through whatfeels like content delivery.
(11:09):
Yes . There's some like, I'm,I'm gonna say some things and
hope you learn them. So can youjust go a little bit, like
paint a little more of apicture would you about like
what things like chat G p t,like what these, these gen AI
model , like what does it looklike? What does content
delivery look like when it runsthrough one of these new tools
that has people thinking, ooh ,content delivery and education,
we should try that here.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
So there's lots of different ways that this
content gets transmitted tostudents or between students.
And there is the classroom,there is group work, there's
just all different pedagogicalapproaches to, to teaching and
learning. The tech sector hasbeen very, I would say almost
(11:54):
obsessed in some ways with thisconcept of personalizing
learning. You know, this beliefthat this one size fits all
education is not good for kidsor, you know, can be improved
through personalization. Andyou, you saw that kind of
pendulum swing in early twothousands where there was, you
know, some of these classroomslooked like call centers where
(12:16):
you had kids in cubicles Yes .
That were learning online bythemselves. And I think that
this latest technology peopleare excited about in some ways
because you can improve thatpersonalized process of
learning where, you know, in aclassroom a teacher sometimes
is gonna have individuallearning time, they're going to
do one-on-one teaching, there'stutoring that happens and
(12:39):
there's this belief that chat,G P T and other forms of
generative AI can mimic the ,uh, skills of the teacher in a
lot of ways and transmit thatknowledge maybe even, you know,
better and , and more preciselythan, than a teacher could. So
(12:59):
I dunno if listeners have heardhave used Conmigo or some of
the other AI tutors that areout there now, but they're
getting quite good andimpressive in a lot of ways.
But I think that's one of the,one of the ways that the tech
sector is very excited aboutthis is that, hey, this can
really personalize learning ina way that is automated. It
(13:19):
doesn't require much work fromthe teacher and is can kind of
target each student's zoneproximal development mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
I think that con uh , conmigo, I , I liked a lot
how it, it felt so orientedaround my assets as a learner
when I was playing with it inways that previous tools have
not Yes. Where previous toolswould be like, Hey, you got
this wrong. Do you want towatch me do it for you? And
then you can do a differentone. Um, that , that sort of
thing. Conmigo like I would getit wrong unin intentionally, I
(13:48):
should just add for thelisteners' sake here , um,
have been thinking was this.
Which , um, to me felt muchmore like , uh, uh, a
knowledgeable human instructorwas pretty interesting to me.
Um, I guess I , I'm wonderingthen you've been on record with
a , a really , uh, persuasiveessay . I thought that we'll
put in the show notes that AImay disrupt teaching but not
(14:10):
replace teachers. And so Icould you ref reflect a bit for
us on where you see like thepower of AI and the power of
teachers, like where the powerof AI stops? Yeah . Like what,
what is the difference therebetween uh , the best AI
generated teacher we couldimagine here and what a human
teacher does?
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Yeah. I should start by saying that ai, the , the
pace at which AI is evolvingand improving is , is wild.
Like, and nothing I've seenbefore. Like it's, it's really
improving rapidly. Like thisweekend I was at the Berkeley
AI hackathon and it was 1500hackers from around the US and
(14:52):
I, I think that almost 25% ofthem were working on education
products, education tools. Andit was just remarkable some of
the things I saw. So I thinkit's very exciting first , just
that we'll start there, thatthe pace of change and the
evolution is happening at sucha rapid clip that it's, it's
(15:13):
hard to say where things aregonna be in in five years. But
that said , um, you know, I,I'm a believer that learning is
inherently social and thatthere are these sort of
biological realities of us ashuman beings that that
technology really isn't gonnachange. And that things about
us that really enhance thequality of our communication
(15:36):
and our ability to teach. Andso there's obvious things like
body language and tone and eyegaze, and then there's other
less obvious things like thekind of cadence and and rhythm
of a conversation and languagethat can be lost in computer
driven interaction. And so Iworry sometimes that all of
this excitement and thisinnovation in this building, in
(15:58):
this space sometimes disregardsthe things about us that make
us uniquely human. And we knowthat learning and, you know,
the teaching component here is,is it's a , there's a social
piece to it. And you know, thepiece I wrote really was, it
wasn't a warning, but it was,it was more of a, a message
(16:20):
that, hey, let's not forgetthat, that we are human and
there's parts of us as humanbeings that we need to
integrate into this process aswe think about these AI tools.
And so I al I also really thinkabout who's creating these
tools mm-hmm .
that are specialists and, andwith an understanding of
(16:44):
developmental stages of lifeand how vulnerable, you know,
teenagers are. And, and as wego through different stages and
making sure that there'stechnology is responsive to
that, that development.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
You outlined a bunch of researching your piece , um,
illustrating the importance ofsocial engagement and social
processes on learning, which Ifound really persuasive. And I
don't want to like generalizemuch about the kinds of people
that are building these tools,but I do wonder sometimes if
they are representative ofstudents more broadly , uh, you
(17:17):
know, like yeah . The , the ,the pe some of the engineers
that I know who are extremelytalented, I think that they had
less of an interest, some ofthem not all, but some of them
in some of the social processesof learning. In many cases they
were far smarter than theirclassmates felt. Limited by
classmates Yes . Smarter thantheir teachers, et cetera . And
I , I do wonder what that doesto the ecosystem of tools that
is emerging and , and whetherit'll have an actual impact on
(17:41):
the majority of students here.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Absolutely. Why it's so important for these builders
to create diverse teams and tobring in people that are not
like them and people withdifferent backgrounds and
specializations. Yeah. It'ssomething that's very important
to me and get
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Into a classroom. I mean, it's , it's not the
easiest thing, but it's not thehardest thing. And I just find,
like, part of my work right nowamplify is to like, I have
swivels out there in the worldwith six classes piping in
video all the time. Cause wehave a huge company with people
who , uh, are doing importantwork , uh, in education and
have not themselves beenclassroom teachers. Yes . Which
is not a prerequisite for doingI important and good work, but
(18:19):
I'm just finding that droppingin a two minute clip of great
teaching from Amanda Rou inChicago public schools or Jens
Mendy in San Diego just helpsto expand people's horizons for
like, oh, like this chat botthat I am building to
approximate teacher interactionfrom the front of the room.
Right . Like, does not accountfor the ways that the teacher
like stands there for a longersecond than, than natural and
(18:40):
like raises an eyebrow and thekid like auto corrects their
response. Uh , it just, it'stough. I , I don't know , I
don't know . I'm curious howyou, how do you, you mentioned
two days a week you are, youknow, kind of doing business
development for your portfoliocompanies. Like are there ways
that you help them understandlike, ah , that's not really
how this works?
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah. This, this is a , a pet peeve of mine because
I don't understand why insectors outside of education
why there is a focus on thecustomers and that customer
experience. And, you know,Intuit, for example, their
team, they're encouraged to goin the homes of their software
users and to watch them use it.
(19:20):
And, and they have these kindof, this process called
customer journeys. And Isometimes feel that in the ed
tech sector education, theydon't appreciate the, that
experience of teachers andwhat's going on in the
classroom. And I, I, it's, it'sstrange, very few companies in
(19:41):
the sector are prioritizingthat and getting into the
classroom and really elevatethe work of the teacher and see
it as highly technical andchallenging. And in our role at
Reach, we really encouragethat, push that at the board
level and really try to getthem to set goals around that
(20:03):
and to inculcate their companywith those types of values
where they are as focused onthe customer, which is often
the teacher as , uh, as othercompanies are in other sectors.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
That's great to hear. Yeah, certainly like not
knowing your customer ineducation has not been like an
impediment to a successfulcompany . Like there's
companies that have done likelousy why we consider lousy
work that manage to besuccessful. Um, but I'm looking
at this just huge space thatyou're seeing emerging around
and education. I just feel asense of almost like
(20:33):
resignation where I'm not like,I don't feel like I need to
throw myself on the tracks tolike stop some of these
efforts. They're just, they'renot gonna be successful.
Exactly . Like, they don'ttake, they don't account for
the ecology of a classroom. AndI'm just like, well, I mean,
you know, take JenniferJennifer's advice or don't, you
know, but it's not gonna workotherwise. Yeah . So I , I
would love to know like, whatare you , what are you excited
about in terms of, you know,ai, you've mentioned like what
(20:56):
you think AI won't replaceabout teachers, a lot of the
social interaction forinstance. Um, what are some
applications that you see as eexciting from perhaps companies
that you've invested in?
Speaker 1 (21:06):
So I, I do think that we have been on this, this
journey for many decades ofspecialization of the teacher's
role. We used to call it the,the milk money problem where,
you know, when teachers were,were teaching 50 years ago,
they, they sort of did anentire range of, they still do,
but they were collecting themilk money, they were doing
(21:30):
everything that you can imaginein the classroom, you know,
soup to nuts. And now we haveincreasingly, it's very slowly
happening, but specializing thejob of the teacher while at the
same time piling a lot of stuffon, on the teacher's plate too.
So I, I think that some ofthese tools that's already
happening clearly are startingto automate certain parts of
(21:53):
the teacher's job. So we areseeing a lot of essay grading
tools, a lot of writing,writing grading. And I think
that in a few years and , andthey're quite good. You know, I
think that teachers will workin partnership with these tools
to automate some of the, thegrading. Um, we're seeing a lot
in, for your listeners themath, like starting to see a
(22:14):
lot of math has been behindEnglish in terms of the grading
because it's just morechallenging cuz of the
computational language. Uh, butthat were , I , I saw a lot of
those actually this weekend andstarting to see more and more
products in that space that arereally doing a good job of
using computer vision to parsethe math equations and not just
(22:38):
tell them the right answer, butsort of do what Conmigo is
doing, where they're pullingapart, oh, this is where you
went wrong in this problem.
This is perhaps why, and thisis how you can consider these
different solutions. So I, Ithink that a lot of the tools
that I'm seeing now are , uh,addressing different parts of
the, the teaching planningprocess. So like lesson
planning takes eight to ninehours per week for teachers. I
(23:01):
think that we're gonna have alot of tools that are going to
be supporting the planningprocess and making that easier
for teachers. So that's thepart that I'm, I'm very focused
on right now.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yeah, that's great.
I I like , I like the idea ofthe , the human in the loop as
they call it, where the theseYeah . You know, these tools
will offer some suggestions andthe teacher does that last mile
of like passing it alongthrough , um, or the , the AI
isn't , uh, directlyinterfacing with the student
just always feels a little bitbetter to me. Yes . Like I'll ,
I'll, I'll do make you a lessonplan and you can decide if this
looks right and makes somemodifications for your context.
(23:36):
Um, that sounds great. Andyeah, I love the , I like as a
positive outcome here. I reallydig the focus on like what is
the unique value that a teacheroffers. Yes . Yes . I guess I ,
I worry that the folks that arebuilding at hackathons actually
don't know, like they see thevalue that and that technology
can offer and they feel veryconfident there, but don't
(23:56):
actually, because perhaps theyhaven't had a , as much of a
need for it or haven'texperienced it directly, don't
know what the value that ateacher offers to so many
students in this world. Um, thequestion I'd love to follow up
with here, Jennifer, is like,out of these companies that
come to you and say, Hey, we'vegot the thing and we just need
a little bit of money and wegot the thing. Um, like what
has, what kinds of pitches havelike not been exciting to you,
(24:19):
given like your perspective onthe value a teacher brings and
what a classroom is like, whatkinds of ideas are you like ,
uh, I don't know about that
Speaker 1 (24:29):
To , to your earlier point about the unique value of
a teacher. I do think that,that one of the, the unique
values of a teacher that reallyhasn't shown up that much in a
lot of the products I've lookedat is the pedagogical content
knowledge. And that's a termthat, that most investors, most
people don't understand,teachers do. But that's a very
(24:52):
unique set of knowledge. It's avery unique skill set . And
incredible teachers are highlyskilled in how to teach a
certain set of students at acertain level of understanding
a new concept. And if investorswould just understand that what
(25:13):
even P C K is and how it's, howit's this unique set that's
developed over time and how weare trained in it, like, I
really do think that thatwould, would improve a lot of
the tools and, and materialsout there. So that's, that's
something that I'm hoping thatAI can free up teachers too ,
to focus more on and to, toreally think about that in
(25:34):
their lesson planning. Butstuff that's not interesting ,
um, I'm seeing so many AItutors that I , so not to say
I'm not interested in AItutors. Okay. I'm, I'm eyes
wide open looking for greatones, but I, I just like this
kind of like this chat bodything with these AI teachers.
Um, there will be a use casefor them and they will become
(25:57):
ubiquitous. No question. I'mjust, I'm just not , uh, super
excited about that as the usecase because I see the ways in
which we are going to pushforward education and knowledge
and, you know, human progressis going to come through social
(26:18):
learning. And I, I keep comingback to that because I think
it's so powerful and teachersunderstand that the unit of the
classroom is being such apowerful , uh, unit there to be
teaching within for lots ofdifferent reasons.
Collaboration, this kindashared understanding for like
the sort of microcosm of whatwe want, you know, the ideal
(26:38):
society to look like, like Iknow I'm getting lofty here,
but preach
Speaker 2 (26:42):
It,
Speaker 1 (26:43):
uniquely understand can be sopowerful. And so I'm looking
for tools for teachers and, andproducts that can enhance that
social experience, sociallearning experience. And, you
know, we've certainly madeprogress over, over the last
decades and I think, you know,we, we continue to measure kind
(27:07):
of human wellbeing, how ha ithas increased over time. And
our, our, I think a lot aboutcircles of empathy and how we
care for one another as fellowhumans and how technology can
improve that experience. Andyou know, I wrote about this in
my, in my piece that I, that Ipublished, but thinking about
one of the first technologiesbeing the Gutenberg press and
(27:29):
how that allowed people to havean empathy for people outside
of their villages. And, and Ithink that some of the new
technologies can reallyincrease empathy and can
enhance this, this sociallearning piece.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Yeah, I love that.
And I appreciate the word on onthe virtual tutors slash
chatbots. They're likeinteresting. Um, it feels like
they might become just like a,a commodity almost. Exactly. I
don't know , like exactly likein my thinking I've tried to
imagine for myself like what ifthey're perfect? Yes . Like,
like right now they kind of dosome weird hallucinations, but
let's just like, as you said,the developments are just so
(28:04):
fast, let's just assume thatthey're perfect. Yeah . Like
the best tutor you could wantavailable via a chat interface.
And I asked myself, when woulda student want to interact with
that chat interface in theclasses that I'm watching where
students feel engaged andsocially connected and are
(28:24):
learning. And I just, I have ahard time imagining a student
wanting to say, hold , I'mgonna check outta this
conversation we're having andcheck it over here with my
chatbot and ask a question andthen come back to you. It's
just the , it doesn't to meYeah . Resonate a lot with the
classes . It could be partpersonal preference, the
classes that I love to be in orobserve, for instance. Yeah .
(28:46):
Um , one last question then,like, so we have listeners who
have never, you know,encountered open AI chat , G B
T, any of these tools who mightbe for the first time kind of
hearing about these things.
Like, I, I dunno , I have abrother-in-law in Silicon
Valley who is a specialeducator and he is like, no
one's talking about this. Noone's talking about this. So if
you were to invite someone toexperience what feels to you us
(29:08):
magical about these tools?
Yeah. They go to one of thesetools that's free chat, G P t I
don't know what, and they typea thing in and they're like, oh
wow. That's, that is kind ofmagical. Like, yeah . Do you
have an invitation to ourlisteners for like what they
might try to just like gettheir , get their hair blown
back a little bit? Well,
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Yeah , it's a , it's a good , really good point
that, but I can, as to yourbrother-in-law, your
brother-in-law's, students areprobably using AI and looking
at the data, AI is now I thinkthe number two most widely used
tool globally for studentsalready. It's the fastest
(29:46):
growing like zero to the numbertwo I've ever seen before. So
students are already using thistool. It's not just Silicon
Valley kids, it's kids all overthe, the world. And without any
technology is like the firsttime you use it, it can be like
this magical experience. Iremember, you know, the first
time I, now this is gonna dateme again too, but like, I
(30:07):
remember I was worried aboutputting my credit card online
the first time I made an onlinepurchase. Like that was a huge
deal. Or the first time I usedan Uber. So I would encourage
to use, what I have used itrecently for is for like
sightseeing or visiting aplace. Like if I'm going to
Yosemite, like what are thetop, if I'm this type of
(30:29):
visitor, I like hiking, youknow, you describe yourself and
then you ask for what shouldyou do in 24 hours or something
like that. So a lot of peopleare using it for travel. And
then when teaching, I amsurprised at like, you can ask
for socra, like give me thislesson, teach it to me in using
a Socratic method. And I'msurprised at how good the
(30:51):
results are. I'm sure your ,your listeners will find a lot
of problems with them
understand it well. But justexperimenting with these tools,
it's, it's delightful in someways. Have you, have you used
it?
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yes. I, yeah, I type I, I came in as a skeptic and I
was like, I'm gonna type somestuff in and I'm gonna hate
what happens and I didn't hateit
like for , for for instance,like what's an engaging way to
start a lesson on topic? Yes .
X, y or z I was pretty, I waspretty, like I would prefer as
a teacher , uh, as a curriculumdeveloper, I have some conflict
of interest here, but I wouldprefer to have an engaging and
(31:27):
coherent experience forstudents across a year and not
have to do that every day .
I'll say that with someconflict. Yeah . But if I am a
teacher who has no curriculumand is forced to make it up on
the fly, what came out wouldbe, was definitely better than
what my gut would've been as ayear one teacher, like far and
away , like more interesting to, to students. Oh ,
interesting. So that was , uh,pretty cool. Well, thank you so
(31:50):
much for joining us. Uh , Iknow you're busy and it's been
, uh, extremely interesting tochat with you. And I'm always
very grateful to know thatsomeone , uh, like you, who
knows what the term pedagogicalcontent knowledge means and is,
is someone who's influencingthe, the direction of the ed
tech , our teachers and thestudents experience. So thanks
for joining us .
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Oh , thank you Dan.
Always a pleasure to talk withyou.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Well, thank you all so much for listening to my
conversation with Jennifer,Carolyn , co-founder and
partner at Reach Capital. We'llhave a link in the show notes
to her piece, what AI willDisrupt but Never Replace. I'd
love to know what about thisvision of the future sounds
exciting, sounds scary. Idefinitely hope you folks felt
from both Jennifer and me thatyour perspectives, your
(32:33):
expertise is something that issorely lacking in so many
conversations about technologyand the future and , uh, to
the, to the peril of all thesefolks who are, you know,
suggesting new products. So ,um, your work and perspective
is so valued by all of us. We'dlove it if you made sure you
were subscribed to Math TeacherLounge, wherever you get
podcasts. That way you can getthe next episode in our summer
(32:54):
series looking at theintersection of AI in math. If
you've got comments orquestions about ai, let us know
in our Facebook discussiongroup, math teacher Lounge
community, or on Twitter atmtl, show what resonated, what
questions do you have. And we'dalso love it if you rated us
and left us a review whereveryou find podcasts that will
help more people find thispodcast. And my own mother
(33:16):
reads my reviews and is soexcited to see good ones. So
make ma happy. Thanks again forlistening folks. Take care.
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com