The Exchanges

Q So, you know, as the pandemic began to unfold and as schools really began to shut down quickly, what was the economic impact on, on your business? I mean, was there a slowdown? Was there a rush to sign up? What, what did, what happened?

A So in the beginning, we didn't know what was going to happen, so we decided to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. And so we cut back on all of our expenses dramatically. We moved everybody to work from home. That meant we weren't spending as much money on travel. We didn't go to any conferences. There was a lot of education conferences where we meet, you know, principals and district administrators. We cut out all of those, and we really cut out everything that we have relied on for the past 10 years to cultivate customers. And we didn't know what was going to happen. Then I got together with my team and I said, what do we do to help teachers through this? We have to figure out a way to demonstrate our partnership. And they said, what we should do is open up the platform for free throughout the whole school year. Wow. They have many, many things to worry about. They won't have to worry about math instruction. That will be one thing they won't have to worry about. So I went to my board. I said, the thing that we should do is to open up the platform so that if a district had, you know, three of 50 schools on Dreambox, They could put the remaining 47 on for free through the end of June, just so that they could keep their kids learning at home. And we figured the best thing to do was to go to our existing customers because they were already trained. They had people in the…

AI assessment note: “within six weeks, we nearly doubled the number of students”

Q from our audience. This is from Jiguna Hillary. Um, she says she is volunteering as a teacher. She's been working with kids since schools have shut down. One disturbing thing she says she's noticed is that a lot of kids don't have access to online learning opportunities, or their parents may not even know about them. How do you make what you do and sell, um, available to every kid?

A So there's two things I would like to say here. It's really important, but the one thing that keeps me up at night when I think about online learning is that it might widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots. And we all as a society have to be very intentional about making sure that we don't lose sight of that, and that we work very hard to make sure that every child, regardless of their zip code, frankly, has access to great learning experiences. So one of the reasons we moved from the consumer approach to the institutional approach is to bring Dreambox to every child. We brought Dreambox to where all kids were in schools. Not just to the parents who happen to know about it, but to institutions and communities where parents might not be aware of it. So that's one, one thing. But we need to make sure that some structural impediments like broadband access and device access are targeted to the least well-served communities. And what I'm encouraged by is Is that the CARES Act and a lot of what districts are using with federal funds is to address device and broadband access. Now the good news is that almost 90% of kids have access to broadband and devices, but that doesn't help the 10% that doesn't. So we need to work with libraries and we need to work with foundations and we need to work with private public partnerships While we develop policies and funding mechanisms to …

AI assessment note: “moved from the consumer approach to the institutional approach is to bring Dreambox to every child”

Q Wilson. She's the CEO of Dreambox. It's a platform for learning math online. Um, this is a question from Noah Thomas. He asks, um, do you think that given that the marketplace for remote learning is already shifting and will probably shift even more post-pandemic, do you imagine just an explosion of opportunity for educational technology companies In the next five, 10 years, maybe an accelerated, uh, series of opportunities?

A I absolutely did. One of the things that we did several months ago was we studied the marketplace and we studied industries that had V-shaped recoveries that were anticipated, U-shaped recoveries, and L-shaped recoveries. So maybe a cruise line is, is not going to come back. It's an L-shape. Maybe an airline is a U-shape. But we really feel like education technology is a V-shape, and we're seeing that now. We've had explosive growth in users, as I mentioned, and we, we expect that that is going to continue for the future, because we feel like people who were trying out learning technologies as a nice-to-have complement now have been forced with distance learning to see it as a must-have, and so if they have good experiences and they see that it complements what they want to do in the classroom and at home, We don't see any end in the growth opportunities for proven, effective, engaging, and reliable learning technologies.

AI assessment note: “We don't see any end in the growth opportunities for proven, effective, engaging”

Q This is a question, um, that we're also getting from Jitor Moy Day, um, via LinkedIn. Can remote learning truly work for all children, and can it ever replicate, or even replace, or be as good as in-person classroom instruction for children?

A So there's a lot of research that shows that the most important variable for student success is their teacher. I don't think that's going to change in the long term. I think there are things that humans will do and continue to do that technology will not be able to do. I fundamentally believe that technology should be used to support human beings, humanity, versus the other way around. That being said, I think that we will not return to how things were before COVID. I think we're all moving and marching toward a new normal, and that new normal is going to have blended learning as a permanent feature of the best learning, because technologies can understand what is happening in a very nuanced way, and technologies can help personalize learning and give learning guardians actionable insights. What should I do to support Sally's growth in this moment? Dynamic information that changes and adapts to what a child needs moment to moment, and it's that modality that will help kids with special needs as well as, quote, the gifted and talented. I think all kids are talented, but for kids who need acceleration and are ready for more advanced work, the system can help alert the teacher that when the child is ready, And what specifically that child is ready to do. That's very difficult for even the best teacher in the best resourced school to be able to personalize learning instantaneously …

AI assessment note: “things that humans will do and continue to do that technology will not be able”

Q Yeah. Are there, um, are there public schools or school districts that you may know of? And I'm sure that you're consulted from time to time. Um, is, is there a part of places in the United States that might potentially be ready to open that you know of?

A So this is such a hard question. I think that in the absence of a national strategy that will optimize frequent testing and tracing, it's very, very difficult to anticipate when a school will be safe. That's the first thing. The second thing is there are conditions and requirements for the learning environment, just like the home environment or the office environment, that you would need to have in place. So Do you have sanitizers? Do you have enough masks? How do you mitigate the risk with distance requirements? So all of those things need planning, and I think the support of a national strategy in order for parents, for teachers to feel safe going in there, for parents to feel safe sending their child there, and I don't think that many districts feel that level of confidence yet. As I said, a month ago, I probably would have anticipated that 50% of the districts Will be returning in some hybrid model. I think that number is closer to 10% now. And so I feel right now we're in a pause and I feel like the next window is really after January to see how we get through the fall and the winter. And once there's a vaccine in place, and once there are effective treatments in place, I will have a different answer for you, but in this moment, I am not aware of any, many districts that are confident that they can send their kids back to school full-time now.

AI assessment note: “I am not aware of any, many districts that are confident that they can send”

Q guess When you joined the company in 2010, there was this kind of more hybrid model where parents were targeted, the consumer was targeted, and now it's really school districts. I wonder whether now if, you know, many parents decide to homeschool or to kind of opt out of virtual learning through their schools, is there a world where, where you start to pivot again and focus on consumers again?

A Well, it's such a great question, Guy, because a lot of people don't realize you're right. In 2010, we started to move toward the B to B model, but I didn't shut down the parent channel, the consumer channel. We knew that there were teachers there and administrators there in the parent channel, and we thought that if we could win their confidence, it would help the institutional side of the business. So the other thing that we did is that we opened up Dreambox through the end of August now for parents. They could get a free trial so that parents who were working from home and being overwhelmed while they were at home Would know that they could find a solution that was proven to be effective, that was engaging for their kids for mathematics with Dreambox for no cost. We offered that trial for parents, and I don't think we're ever going to move away from parents. We think parents are the X factor, and we think technology should never be designed to replace teachers. 40% of the employees at Dreambox are former educators. We don't think that technology should replace teachers. The learning guardian. We think technology should do what technology does best, which is to help understand the thinking process of children and to give them actionable insights so that they can modify their instructional strategy and personalize it to be more high impact for every child.

AI assessment note: “I don't think we're ever going to move away from parents.”