Align To Open New Markets

The following transcript has been edited for readability. Timestamps have been removed and minor transcription errors corrected. Speaker comments and context have been preserved.

Opening Remarks

Rich Portelance

Welcome, everybody, to the EdGate Align to Open Markets: Special International Edition Webinar. We're going to be discussing how companies can access new markets effectively, including how mapping to curriculum speeds this process. This is our fifth EdGate Powers Education webinar. We do one every quarter, and we try to cover topics such as process technology and standards. We always do the state of the standards in Q4, and of course, accessing new markets. If you would like to suggest a topic, be a guest, or a panelist, please feel free to reach out to us. We'll be submitting material after the webinar, and there will be different ways in which you can engage with us. We'd love to hear from you and get some ideas, and continue this process as we inform and we are informed by the market that we serve.

So today, we have a great group. My name is Rich Portelance, I'm the senior marketing consultant here at EdGate, and with me are three wonderful panelists from three different areas of the education market. First, we have Gina Faulk, who is a general manager here at EdGate. Next is Mike Campbell, president of Advancing Global EDU. Finally, we have Will Gordon, head of sales for BOOKR Kids. Before each of the panelists provides background, I want to remind everyone on the call today that while your video and microphones will be muted, the questions can be submitted in the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen. 

Please feel free to do so, and if you submit a question, you're going to be in the running for an EdGate mug! These coffee mugs are awesome, they're done by Miir, and so if you submit a question, we'll run a raffle afterwards, and we'll send one lucky participant a new mug.

Also, we're going to send out the recording of the webinar along with some of the slides and other information after the webinar, probably early next week, so you can share it with your friends and colleagues who are unable to join us today. In addition to the webinar, we have recorded some podcasts. Mike and I spoke last week; it's up on our YouTube channel, and I'll be speaking with Will next week, and that will also be on the YouTube channel, so check those out. 

Without further delay, Gina, can you start us off with introductions? 

Gina Faulk

Sure! I'm Gina Faulk, and I'm the general manager here at EdGate. This is, I think, my 25th or 26th year in publishing. I started on the production side of the business, working in typesetting, content creation, editing, design, and art, so I got to see that whole world. Then, I switched over to working for an edtech company that published digital literacy curricula. There, I was able to participate in lots of different state adoptions. That introduced me to EdGate, because we used EdGate as our standards provider. So, EdGate was actually the company that was helping me get together all the alignments, materials, and the proof that our content met learning digital learning standards for various states. Then, I moved, switched over, and started working for EdGate, so I kind of have been in this world for a while, and I know how important it is that publishers have their alignments and all their ducks in a row when they're submitting for adoption. 

So, our focus at EdGate is really on helping companies, whether you are an edtech company, a traditional publisher, or even a state, ensure that your content meets state standards, international standards, and/or national standards so that your material will be used, adopted, and implemented in the classroom. 

Rich Portelance

That's terrific, thank you very much. And Mike? 

Mike Campbell

Thanks so much, Rich. I appreciate you guys having me on the webinar today. 

I'm Mike Campbell, and I am the President of Advancing Global EDU. I started in this business as a teacher, then moved into educational publishing and was in publishing for about 15 years, and then moved into educational technology, where I was involved in a startup, and then after exiting that startup, I started doing consulting about seven or eight years ago. And since that time, we've been working with startups, helping them with their sales, marketing, and go-to-market strategies over that time, both here in the US and globally. 

So, we work with companies coming to the US, and companies that are actually thinking about their strategies moving outside the US, as well as those that are from the US. As well, you'll hear in a few minutes about our latest initiative, and that is we are opening a school that is a dual diploma school that's bilingual, that's based here in the US and in Mexico. 

Rich Portelance

Oh man, that's going to be an exciting project, Mike, and we can't wait to hear a little bit more about that! 

Last, but not least, is Will Gordon. 

Will Gordon

Hi, thanks, Rich, and I am also really glad to be on this panel. I’m excited to get into this discussion and some meaty questions. 

I'm based in Durham, North Carolina, but I'm head of global sales for BOOKR. BOOKR is a European-based company, actually based in Hungary and in Budapest. My background, briefly, I'm a product of two teachers; both my parents were public school teachers for over 20 years. Also, the topic is close to my heart because I have two daughters, I have an eight and an 11-year-old. 

I've been in the education technology space for about 15 years. I got into it initially after teaching English abroad for several years, and then returned to the US to a vibrant kind of startup community, and was really fascinated to combine language learning with technology. For the past decade, I've been focusing on reading and literacy in the different companies I've worked with, working with family-owned companies, working with International groups, taking a kind of US-based content and finding homes, partners, and schools for that content, and online platforms internationally. 

My current role at BOOKR is to help expand our partnerships around the world for our classroom platform called BOOKR class, and that includes our expansion into the United States. 

So, I think one perspective I'll bring to this conversation is, you know, we are a company that is focused on reaching children who want to read, want to develop a reading habit, and a love of reading no matter where they are in the world, or what their socioeconomic level is. So, that presents interesting challenges trying to align to the standards in different countries, including the US, different states, but also, it's an opportunity to sort of focus on a mission-driven objective, which is, you know, getting literacy materials to young readers. 

So, I’m glad to join, and that's a brief summary of who I am. 

Rich Portelance

Well, thank you very much, Will. 

Discussion

Rich Portelance

And as promised, we have some diversity on the panel in terms of where people are coming from and what their viewpoints are, so let's kick in with a question for Mike. During our podcast, Mike, you and I touched on the complexities of curriculum development in light of the variations that exist today in state standards, particularly in relation to the Common Core. Can you provide us with an overview of what challenges you are seeing as it relates to those variations? 

Mike Campbell

So, yes, that's a great question. 

I think, you know, even today, the Common Core has been around for several years now, and we still see it changing year after year. 41 states are still on board with the Common Core, there are some with variations to that, and there are nine states that are not on board with that. 

So, when we look at companies who are coming from, you know, global companies that are moving into the U.S., we always tell them… they are always are so excited about coming to the U.S. because they look at the a huge market that the US is, but then we have to tell them it's like coming to 50 different states or 50 different countries because of the Common Core, the differences in the Common Core, and the different states that have not adopted the Common Core. So, I think having a company like EdGate that can help those companies align those standards and find out the nuances between those different states is a huge help, because it will make their entrance into those markets quicker and faster. 

And you have to look at those because, you know, teachers want to know or the administrators want to know how those standards are aligned, and how that solution is aligned to their local curriculum. 

Rich Portelance

So, thank you for that, Mike. 

You know it clearly is 50 different markets, and I appreciate you pointing that out. 

Will, with BOOKR, you're relatively a neophyte when it comes to the US market. You've been in Hungary and the European markets. Which of the challenges resonate with you, and what processes are you and your team putting in place to overcome those challenges? 

Will Gordon

There's an extremely long answer to that, which could probably take the full hour, but I think I might focus on a couple of key things.

I think the first key thing just focuses on making sure that we have a product or a solution that is different and unique, kind of speaking more broadly, no matter where we're bringing it to, and no matter what school we're going into in any market. So with BOOKR, when our founders created the platform, they really wanted to create a reading format that was unique and different, and so the format itself, kind of the content which is the core of the platform, is different from sort of a basic animated story with text and audio. We've built and scaffolded language learning elements, so we're really focused on English Language Learners, actually, is kind of our niche or our focus, and story-based learning in that way. So, that's kind of, globally speaking, that was an important thing to us, is to sort of make sure what we were building was globally unique. 

Entering the US market, I think two key skills to have are listening, so really listening to people, that means listening to people, and as we begin to build relationships, meet people and hear what is really needed, and also clearly communicating what we are offering. In all the partner conversations I've been having over the last couple of months, one thing I've heard time and time again is that often, edtech companies in particular will struggle if they are not clearly communicating what they can offer, not in technical terms, but based on what a teacher really, really needs, and what the teacher really, really wants. So, it sounds very basic, but being able to empathize with the local needs, or the state's needs, or even bringing it down to a very local level of “Who is the teacher and the student we're trying to serve and how can we serve them?”  

And then the third area I would talk about is sort of making sure that the product has the right nuts and bolts, that it's built in the right way to basically be able to thrive in the US. So that's where standards come in, working with Partners like EdGate and making sure that, you know, in our platform, a teacher can very quickly search the state standards using the US curriculum planner, they can find which books align to which state curriculums, and that means making sure our books are Lexile leveled, making sure that we are talking about informative assessment in the way that U.S. teachers would talk about it. Again, even though to Mike's point, there isn't a one-size-fits-all teacher, we have to be very specific about what we are offering and who we are trying to offer that to. There's more I could say, but I would say those are the three things that we've really focused on. 

Rich Portelance

Thank you, Will. I think you mentioned some really important things, you know, getting into the Lexile levels, and obviously, the standards alignment, all really critical components in understanding your audience, which makes a lot of sense. 

So, Gina. You've been in this publishing space, as you said, for about 25 years. From your perspective, what do you see as the most common mistakes made by edtech companies that may inhibit their chances of adoption at a state level?  

Gina Faulk

Well, of course, I'm going to come at this from the standards perspective, as always, and I think the thing I hear the most is when a company, whether they're in the US already, or they're an international company, they come to the US thinking that they can just use the Common Core, or the NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards), or the NCSS (National Council for the Social Studies) sets of standards, but that as we keep saying it's not a one-size-fits-all, so that really won't fly. 

It's always easier for me to illustrate something, so I asked Sharla if she could show one of my slides, and I know this is a lot of text, but I just wanted to illustrate one example I thought was really good. It's when you're taking a look at the Common Core 8 “Math Practice” standards that were created in 2010. There were just eight of these mathematics practice standards. Florida took that and expanded it into 35 standards. So, we went from seven to 35 in Florida, and if you multiply that across all the states… And this is just practice standards. So, you can see there's a trend in every state; they've taken the Common Core, and even if, like Mike said, they adopted it, it has expanded into something well beyond anything that anyone can really handle on their own. So, I think that's the number one thing that I would say is just, just remember that Common Core can't be counted on as the one and only set to go to. 

Another example, if we move to the next slide, is around social studies, 32 states adopted the C3 Framework; the College, Career, and Civic Life C3 for Social Studies State Standards. Some adopt, so 32 in the beginning, many states have moved away from it, some have rewritten them completely and/or have their own sets of standards. So, again, it's just that it can't be counted on as the uber set of social studies standards to use. And then you have states that, of course, they have their own unique state history classes, and oftentimes that's fourth grade. But sometimes they don't have it at all, so it's just a crapshoot as to whether each state is going to have its own history classes. Then, we looked at trends. Do all states talk about the same American history, even? And they don't. We looked at just an example yesterday of which states talk about the Seven Years' War, and only 24 States even mention it. So, you're really going to get huge differences in every state as far as what they cover in social studies.

I would say those are two examples, and then we can kind of turn off the slide, Sharla, but… Yeah, well, actually, there's another slide I can show you about standards changing, sorry. The other, I guess the second piece of advice I would give to watch out for is that standards change all the time, and so, that's why we are keeping them up to date for our clients. We actually publish them freely on our website; anyone can go to this as a great resource, we are tracking all the standards in our system, and we publish every month what has changed. So, the scary thing about this is that sometimes a state can change standards on a dime, and you might be preparing your content thinking, “Okay I'm writing this to the New Jersey 2025 math standards”, then suddenly New Jersey will change its mind, and then there's a new set of Standards, so that's the thing to be worried about too is that they change all the time, sometimes they don't announce it, sometimes you have to scramble, it is what it is, we're doing our best to to keep up with it. But this is a great resource right on our website to show our clients or whoever. It could even be a different state showing what has changed, what grades, what countries, and again, it's not just the US that we're tracking, there are many different sets, both international sets and then supplemental sets, as well, so there's a huge library of supplemental standards on our website, too, that you can take a look at. 

So, yep, that's it in a nutshell, the two big things to be wary of. 

Rich Portelance

Those are really big things, thank you. There's a lot to digest there.

Okay, so Mike, as a consultant in an industry where… and you're also in the midst of launching this dual degree online school, which you mentioned at the beginning, what advice are you going to give your clients, and do you also take for yourself as you launch the school regarding the changing U.S. education landscape? Especially as it concerns this new administration? 

Mike Campbell

You know, one of the key things that we're coming up against right now is this aligning, you know, much of what Gina was talking about here is the aligning to curricula. We have two curricula that we're aligning to our school as being accredited in New Mexico and in Mexico, and so, not only do we have to get the schools aligned, the two curricula together, we have to make sure that we're constantly keeping those curricula up to date, and making sure that those standards are kept up to date on that. 

And, you know, when we talk to other companies that are thinking about looking at the U.S. market, that's another thing that we talk about. Not only, you know, are we thinking about NGSS, you know, but we're also thinking about Common Core, and we're thinking about computer science. There are multiple standards that we're looking at. And now, you know, one of the key things that we're hearing a lot about is CTE standards, and that will be a big one, I think, as more companies… Because that's going to be a big area that will be funded by the new administration. You think about allied health, you think about computer science, those kinds of things all fall into that category. So, as we develop new courses for our school, and as other companies think about solutions coming into the U.S., those are kinds of things that we're offering, you know, some strategic advice about where the money is. That's going to be one of the things about where the money is going to be, is like CTE courses. 

Special education is another area that we're looking at, because we know that parents are looking for special education solutions, and those are another area that we look for and are making sure that those standards somehow can be, you know, you still have to align to Common Core, but those solutions still have to be, you know fit within those solutions that go along with that. 

And then, you know, some of the other things that we look at are making sure that we're financially accountable. You know, here in the states, we look at, you know, there are more and more states that are looking for that financial push for vouchers, things like that. Those, and the federal government is really pushing for that. You see a lot of the things that the Trump Administration is pushing now, so you're going to see a lot more state and local control. In fact, there was an article today I saw in The Seventy-Four, which is a media piece that's out there about, you know, how can the federal government push for more money to private schools and things like that, so there clearly is a push for more money being pushed down to things like charter schools, private schools, and different things like that. So, I think in the next few years we're going to see more and more of that, and as a result, you know, where companies that have come to the US have really focused on districts and public schools, they're going to have to think about spreading their marketing and sales dollars out further to private schools, charter schools, parochial schools, things like that moving forward. 

And then finally, I think there's going to be more competition out there because of that, because you're going to see more private schools come on board, because people you know will want to undo that. We are already seeing things like these microschools that are out there; there are multiple things out there. There was a conference this week called Delock that really focused on online education this week, and I've already heard from that conference alone there's been all kinds of specialized private schools that have come online for that, so there's going to be a lot of different kinds of schools, and as a such, we're going to see a lot more specialized content that comes from those. So, that's a long answer for that one, Rich.  

Rich Portelance

But a good answer, Mike. I really appreciate it. I think people have to keep their ear to the rails on this and, you know, actively watch what happens with this new administration because things are going to change. 

One of the things I want to mention before I ask Will a question is that EdGate offers, because you mentioned CTE standards, Mike, and Gina was talking earlier about Common Core, this is a free resource I want to make sure everybody out there knows about. It's really important. So, what EdGate has done is to compare Common Core and CTE, and does a comparison, so you can see at any state how close their standards are at the state level to the Common Core, or to the CTE standards, or NGSS, so it really gives you a good starting point baseline for how to prepare your content. So, that's up on the website, it's under the resource tab at the top of the site, so please take advantage of that. It's, like I said, a free resource, Gina and her team keep it up-to-date all the time, and this is also reflected in their tool, ExACT, which is the standards alignment and standards management platform, which also takes in the… When standards are updated at any state, it's automatically updated in the ExACT system, so that if you have alignments done, it'll go through and update those alignments. So that's a pretty, you know, neat resource to have available as things move quicker. 

Okay, so, Will, in your opinion, how do edtech providers show the value of their product to K-12 buyers, pushing the product over the threshold of a nice-to-have to a must-have, and how can smaller publishers like yourselves and edtech companies best position themselves for success as they enter the U.S. market? 

Will Gordon

Yeah, I think, initially, it comes back to making sure that you have something that's unique. So, bringing it to a kind of reading content… It's important that we are looking at what other reading platforms are out there. You know, I have two kids in Durham Public Schools here, and they both have reading platforms that they use, and, you know, many of us know the names of those platforms, and so we have to make sure we're not just bringing something that just repeats a little shinier version of what's already there. 

I also think that with supplemental materials, it's an even bigger challenge in some ways, because the easiest decision is just no decision, right? It's not curriculum-based, we're not selling a textbook, we're not selling a tool that covers all of the NGSS science standards, that covers math, science, everything. Even in English language learning or reading, we're fitting a particular need, and so it's important that we are aware of that, that we're listening to price sensitivities, that we are following where the budget is going, a lot of the things Mike was talking about. It's important for us to reduce friction points for a school to adopt, so, you know, we're partnering with other platforms that are already in the US market. Platforms that deal with student data, security, and things like this, because that's an example of an issue that, oftentimes, products coming from outside the U.S. don't think about, since each state might have different data privacy rules or regulations. Luckily, we're coming from Europe so they have pretty strong data requirements there

And then the last thing that I would say is don't assume that you find one great salesperson, or one great opportunity, or you have one district adoption, and that's kind of your golden egg. I think that's a mistake people entering your companies, entering the US market as well, is that they put all their eggs in one opportunity or one pilot. And we are really taking approach of, again, trying to reach children where they are, so we have partnerships in the at-home reading space going on, we are talking to library consortiums, so we have a library version of our of our platform which can be used, we are piloting with schools on the East Coast and on the West Coast, and so, we're kind of taking a broader approach in that sense. 

But I think each product and each company takes a different approach. I know of companies that have, you know, taken a different approach of opening an office in California, and hiring a salesforce there of people who really know the California schools market well, and that's their approach. But you have to really be thoughtful about what your approach is, and then really, really stick to it and follow through. 

Rich Portelance

Well, you made a point there that I just want to kind of circle back on, because I think it's so important. I was talking to a former president of a fairly large publisher last week, and he had said, “Companies today tend to go from adoption to adoption instead of planning out a lifecycle of adoptions”. You know, what does that timeline look like? What does that framework look like? How can I plan it out? And you were saying the same thing, you know, don't just put all your eggs in that one basket of one adoption, because there are many more to come. Is that correct? 

Will Gordon

I think that's right. I think even in the framing of this panel discussion, you use the word “process,” and I think that's a very good way of describing, kind of, what entering a new market means, especially in the U.S., it's a process. It's not like once you've landed an adoption, then you're in, and you figured it out. You haven't figured it out with that District because you're going to get lots of feedback, and that feedback is iterative and should go back into, you know, how you move forward with your product or your content. 

Also, the market's going to change and your next adoption is going to be different, so, you know, this morning I was on training with a large school in the Middle East that we are onboarding. A school we met at ABET, actually. And I was thinking kind of more holistically about it, and how, for us, this moment of the training is sort of, like, we've reached some sort of end. Not an end, but we've reached the end of a certain process we were in, which was to get them to buy into our platform. But for them, that was literally the beginning, the first moment, the first moment that some of those teachers had seen our platform. And so, for us, we have to think about that process as kind of an ongoing process that doesn't just begin or end with a certain moment, or a certain adoption, or a certain success, but it's kind of this rolling process that hopefully will never end if you're successful. 

Rich Portelance

Fantastic. 

So, with that process in mind, Gina, what kind of preparation are you advising curriculum companies to take to elevate their chances of success in going from one state adoption to the next? So, we talk about that process and how ExACT can help out. 

Gina Faulk

Yeah, a couple of different ways. 

One, when we see, I know we've been working with Will and his team at BOOKR Kids this past year, and I think number one is to get your materials, what we call crosswalking. So, if BOOKR Kids had already had, and I think you did already have your content aligned to one set of standards, we're able to take that alignment and crosswalk it to the U.S. states. So, that's the first step. If the material is not aligned, we start from scratch, and we're reviewing it and using both human and our ExACT technology to do a global mapping of the content to all the state standards. So, this slide kind of gives a rundown of how that works. We can do that in multiple ways. Our clients can use our internal tools, the ExACT alignment tool, to do that work, where you're accessing our standards, you're aligning your content in our system, and then seeing the results and how your content aligns to all 50 states. So, that's the first step. 

The second step is also to look for your gaps. So, there are quite a few states that make it a requirement that the content must meet at least 90%, up to 100% of their standards. So, for instance, when we do reviews for Virginia, this state actually requires a third-party review of its content, and you have to meet 90% of its standards. So, make sure that the work is done where you're actually doing a review, checking for gaps, and if you do have gaps, then you need to write content to fill those gaps. 

Texas is a state where, according to their new IMRA, the Instructional Materials Review and Approval process, you have to meet 100% alignment to the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills). So, if you're going after Texas, you really need to be spot on with your alignments. We can run gap reports automatically in our system, and that's where we'll yield a report, and it will show you exactly what standards you're missing in every state, so that you can write the content and fill in the holes. 

So I'd say those are the two things that I would suggest first if you're coming from international to the U.S. Do the alignment or the crosswalking, find your gaps, and then go from there. 

Rich Portelance

That's fantastic, thank you, Gina. And that follows along with that idea of process first and building it up so that you have something that's iterative and manageable, and it's not just going from one adoption to the next.

Let's go back to Mike here. During our podcast, Mike we spoke about the integration of AI in education. I think we agreed on its potential to enhance learning experiences, but there needs to be some guardrails on it. What are you seeing in terms of AI adoption in this space, and what warning labels should be applied to it? 

Mike Campbell

Well, I think… I mean, we've all seen this, every single day it's changing, and every single day we're seeing new solutions that are out there. But the one thing I think is that… Most of the things that I'm seeing out there for schools and school districts are that most school districts have yet to put together a regulation for their school or for their district. And as we get into this AI marketplace that we have these days, it's really important, I think, that we have some kind of, you know, guardrails for schools and school districts because otherwise it becomes like the wild, wild west, and everybody's doing their own thing, and that is not what we want. We want the best of the best in the schools and the ability for teachers and administrators to use these, to use AI, not to replace teachers or administrators, but to use AI as a tool. 

And we've both seen AI, you know, that can really be useful in the classroom, and we've seen AI that can help individualize learning of, you know, helping readers, help with math, you know, we've seen it in hardware now in multiple places, but we need some kind of areas that schools and school districts should really help provide that guidance for teachers and administrators. So, you know, I think we all have an opinion on that, and how that's going to be used in the classroom. I really, I think, you know, I was at a meeting a few weeks ago around FETC (Future of Education Technology Conference), and if you know that meeting, it's very early in the year in Florida. Someone had done a review of districts here in the states, and out of about 800 districts or so, only two had some kind of guidance in place for their instructors, and that was kind of scary that they had done that. So, clearly, we need some kind of guidance in place, but it's also a very exciting time to be in education with AI and the ability to do that. For students, especially in areas like special education, they could have an AI that is set beside them or with them to help guide them, to be their personalized, individualized learning helper, and could really change how we help these students learn and succeed on a day-to-day basis. 

Rich Portelance

Well, I would agree 100%, Mike. And I appreciate that, you know, we're at the very beginning of that pendulum, so people realize that, you know, AI is in its infancy, it's already made a massive change, and there's a lot more to come, but we can control how it affects and what it can provide if we're thoughtful about it. 

A question came in, so I just want to break the cycle here for a second and go to Gina. Jeff Dodds asked Gina, "How does a state like Texas verify alignments relative to the bar that they set if a content provider claims they have addressed 100%? How do they verify it, and do they just take their word for it, or what do they do?” 

Gina Faulk

Well, Texas does require a third-party review, so that is part of the process, and EdGate has done that work. I believe they also use teachers, too, and some of those might be volunteers, some might have a stipend, but when I've looked at the Texas site recently, it looks like they have a review process in place where they're actually going through and verifying that the content does indeed meet the standards, that there's proof. 

I think we have a slide that shows kind of what that looks like I believe in our deck, but it's the same work that we do where you're actually… Or we might have removed it, I don't remember, but where we go through and say, “Okay, of these three bulleted points within this standard, you met A and B, but you did not meet C, so it's a red flag”. So, they are doing the same thing within Texas. 

Rich Portelance

When you do this third-party review, if EdGate does it with the publisher prior to submission, those red flags can be addressed before submission, right? 

Gina Faulk

Exactly, yes. So we'll red-flag it so that the client can go back and fix it before they do their final submission. 

Rich Portelance

Okay, awesome. Thank you. 

Will, I'm going to cut over to you and BOOKR. When we talk about AI to inform the process, does what we were just talking about with Mike and Gina make sense, and does it resonate with you and what BOOKR's looking at? 

Will Gordon

Yeah, I think completely… I think the biggest difference between sort of the advent of AI, and as a new technology compared to other things that have impacted education in the past, whether it's the computer, or, you know, word processing, or Google, or Wikipedia, or whatever it is… Spell check. You know, there's always this phase where these things come in, and I remember when I was in middle school, and my teacher told me, “You cannot turn your paper in spell checked. I want you to turn it in, just what you wrote as what you wrote”. And now, you know, I occasionally volunteer at the school I grew up going to, and students are required to spell-check their papers before they turn them in. 

You know, I think the flash forward with AI, that process is happening so much more quickly, and part because AI was so ubiquitous, AI itself is kind of improving so quickly. And also, it's so, you know, there's very advanced uses for it, but using it on a basic level is very, very simple. A year ago, I wasn't using it at all in my work processes, and now I'll use it a couple of times a day for an email. You know, I'll write an email, and I'll say, “That email seems a little bit passive-aggressive, and that's not what I'm intending to do. Let me get some help, you know, improving this email in terms of tone, or something”. And I could do that, it could take 20 minutes, or I could do it with AI, and it takes two minutes. 

So, I think on the product side, the way we're looking at AI is we're seeing that people want authentic content and actually content that they feel was created by people. That may change because this is a changing landscape, but that's one real value we bring is that we have a team of illustrators and story writers who are creating the content. We use AI to expedite some different processes, but everything we create is, you know, human-created, but in the product itself, we’re using AI in different ways. Whether it's from the algorithm that's recommending books after you read a book, to the vocabulary tool on the student side, which is an AI-driven tool, or speech recognition tools that we have, they’re all AI-driven. 

And on the teacher side, there are huge opportunities, you know, teachers can create comprehension quizzes in an instant based on one book or several books, five questions or 50 questions, you know, and that is a task that would take a teacher to spend their evening after dinner creating a comprehension quiz for their class, so we're really looking at it in terms of the product. In terms of the classroom, I think you described it well. This idea that every student someday may have an AI assistant, you know, I think generally that's an accurate description of what it will look like, that everything we're doing there will be some kind of assisted element to it. 

I think initially, part of maybe why there's not a lot of regulations is there's sort of this fear of the new, but as with all these standards, ironically, once a standard is put in place or a regulation, paradoxically, what it does is I think it frees you up to actually be free to use that thing, whatever it is. You know, a math standard feels like a limitation, but it actually creates a playground within which you can teach math or learn math, so we're kind of in that in-between phase. I'm not an expert on the US AI standards, but I'll tell you my daughter's elementary school doesn't have any AI policy yet, that's for sure. 

Rich Portelance

Thank you for that, Will. 

A question came in about BOOKR. Do you have products in other languages, such as Arabic? 

Will Gordon

Very good question. This is a very common question. I would say for the U.S. market, we've got the most commonly… Questions come up in Spanish, because right now our library is fully in English. We do have a German version of our library, so we have a collection of… Actually, a separate version is used in Europe and in the Middle East to teach German and reading in German. We don't have Arabic titles left. We're working on a few Southeast Asian language titles for some specific markets, but my guess is that Arabic is in the plans in the coming months. As we say, it's in the road map, as we like to say. 

Rich Portelance

And I'm sure if there was an opportunity, you guys would accelerate that road map. 

Will Gordon

Yeah. 

Rich Portelance

Excellent. 

And a question came in for Gina. Do you have standards for the Middle East and Middle Eastern countries? 

Gina Faulk

We do, we have some select standards, and we just added some too for a client. So, there is an area on our site where you can see all of the standards. I know we just added Kuwait, but I'd have to check and see exactly which ones we have in the Middle East. I have to be honest, they've been difficult to find some of them. It's hard to reach the right people, and it seems like they can go out of date pretty quickly. They're very buried on these sites in the Middle East, so we've had to use our connections, a lot of LinkedIn reaching out, like, “Do you know this person? Can you help me find these?” So, if you can let me know exactly which ones you're interested in, we… And we can research too. 

We've done a lot of research in the past year. If you go to our website, you'll see on the standards update page how much international work we did last year. We added tons of European countries, Asian countries, and some Middle Eastern countries to our site. We hadn't done that in years, but now they're all up to date. And because we have some clients who have subscriptions to keep those up to date, everyone is going to benefit from that. 

Rich Portelance

And Gina, when you talk about, you know, we're talking to curriculum providers, people here in the market that are looking to differentiate themselves. How can companies that are clamoring  to win business find opportunity, and does AI, in your opinion, have a place for helping them advance their products?

Gina Faulk

Yeah, well, all three of us, Mike, Will, and I, were all at ABET, it sounds like, and so one of the things I heard when I was at ABET is when we were walking around, every stand said something about AI. So, it was clear that everyone is touting the fact that they're using AI to help build their product. And I had a couple of teachers walk by and say, “Ah, everyone's using AI, you know, now it's not so special anymore”. So, I think that it's great that you're using AI because it does save a lot of time to for the creation of the content, but what the teachers were expressing was, you know, what really matters in the end is not the fact that they used AI to build their product, but does the student understand the concept? Are they showing mastery of the concept at the end of the day? On the assessments, can they walk through a problem? Can they solve a math problem? Can they write? So that in the end was sort of, like, yeah, it's really great they're using AI, it's saving a ton of time, and maybe that's bringing the price down in the end for the consumer, but how does that affect the student? 

The other thing I was thinking too is that… I think, Will, you were alluding to the fact that I've seen my own kids use it, and I halfway think, “Oh, that seems like cheating. You're taking a picture of a Shakespearean sonnet and picking it apart rather than using your brain”, so that's not going to work on a test. I see the benefit of maybe practicing and learning, but I also think that this could be a really good opportunity. And I've talked to a couple of companies who are working on creating, like, either a digital literacy program that teaches students how to use AI, and then also it could be for digital literacy for safety and how to use it appropriately. I mean there's two different products you could build, and it sounds like there's a rumblings from a couple companies that are starting to do that, but I see an opportunity in that right there, because it seems like students, my own included at home, are using it in ways that I think, I don't know if that's going to fly when you're taking a test. 

But the other thing about EdGate is that we are using AI. We started playing around with AI a few years ago. We're using it on the back end, and in the end, it will help our clients save money because what we're doing is… It's helping us to crosswalk the standards. So, eventually we'll be able to… Instead of spending so much time on humans connecting all the standards across the states and internationally, we'll be able to use AI to do that work for us. So, we already have that in the works, and we imagine that, you know, it's only going to improve over the next few years, especially with CTE. We talked a little bit about, Mike, you were mentioning CTE, and yes, there's so much CTE out there, and the standards are enormous, so rather than us sitting down and having a human go and look at all of the agriculture courses across all 50 states, it's going to be a lot easier to use AI to connect the agriculture courses together using semantic matching. So, that's where we're going with AI.

Will Gordon

If I could piggyback on one point you made, Gina, which I think you're right, when you see your child using it, it's a funny feeling. But just like with any technology, the critical thinking skills that are taken to use, you know, ChatGPT, or come up with the right prompt, then receive the information, and then analyze it, you have to really think critically. And so, I think it is about teaching kids how to use it, just like we had to, you know, we had to learn how to use search engines, and be critical about the sources we were just sourcing when we're doing a research paper. You know, there was the other day, I asked ChatGPT to help me slightly revise an email that included dates in the email, and when I reviewed the email, it had changed 2027 to 2037, and so there's, you know, it makes mistakes, and so you have to really, really you know, think critically, review it, and analyze it, so it doesn't again replace the work. But I think I haven't seen products that are teaching those skills; someone's building it and working on it. 

Gina Faulk

Good opportunity out there. 

Rich Portelance

Well, I'm going to just let everybody know we only have a couple of minutes left. If you have a question, please submit it. 

Audience Questions

Rich Portelance

We have a couple of questions in the queue. Mike, this one's for you. If you could actually answer George in the chat, that would be great. 

There was a question here from Nicole, and I'm going to just ask it online or out loud here. Are there any recommendations for how to present standards in published content? For example, our content is lined up to Pennsylvania's early childhood standards, but we've sold plans in 48 other states. Can we do the crosswalk on our end? Or we can do the crosswalk, but how can we market to customers out of state when our plans specifically list PA standards? I’m going to guess Gina for you, okay.

Gina Faulk

I'm reading the question again. So it sounds like the actual proof that it meets standards is just for Pennsylvania right now. Yeah, I would suggest crosswalking it and showing, and that's something we can help with, or it sounds like you can do it in-house, but to show that not only does it meet the Pennsylvania early childhood, but it also meets the Florida early childhood, is probably going to be something that's going to be asked for eventually. 

And then part of your question was, “How can we market the customers out of state?” Yeah, I think that you would need to show proof eventually. If it's for an adoption or an RFP (request for proposal) someone's going to ask for it eventually. 

Rich Portelance

Would that be through something like the COI (Community of Inquiry)? 

Gina Faulk

Yes. You know, either a company like EdGate could help, where we have an iframe that actually the teacher can pull up and see your content and how it aligns to Pennsylvania, but then there's a drop-down menu that would then roll up to Florida, and you can show reports on how your material aligns to the Early Childhood standards in Florida. So it's something that is in the power of the teachers on your website to actually go see those reports. It's very useful, so rather than taking up your salesperson's time or your marketing team, you can actually just publish it right on your website so the teacher can pull it up. 

Rich Portelance

Excellent, excellent. Well, thank you. 

Closing Thoughts

Rich Portelance

We're going to wrap this up, we're going to take the people that have submitted questions, and our marketing person is going to draw a name, and then we'll get in touch with you via email for the winner of the mug, so there'll be a mug sent out to some lucky person who submitted a question. 

I want to thank our wonderful panel today, Will Gordon from BOOKR, Michael Campbell from Advancing Global EDU, and of course, Gina Faulk from EdGate. Thank you all for your time today, your great insights, and hopefully, the audience got a lot of positive and exciting information. Any last thoughts from any of you guys before we wrap it? 

Will Gordon

Yeah, thanks so much. I feel like we could keep talking. I feel like there's a lot I could learn from Mike and Gina, so hopefully we’ll keep this conversation going offline. 

Gina Faulk

Definitely. 

Mike Campbell

Yeah, it was a great conversation. I always enjoy talking with Gina, and great to hear from you, Will. It sounds like we've got lots to chat about. 

Rich Portelance

Agreed, agreed. And Gina? 

Gina Faulk

No, yeah, I was gonna say, Will, it sounds like you need to get your materials translated to many languages after this. 

Will Gordon

Yeah, Arabic is on the list. Yeah. 

Gina Faulk

Okay, great talking to you. 

Mike Campbell

Thank you. 

Rich Portelance

Thank you, everyone. Take care now. 

Gina Faulk

Alright, bye.