This interview was originally recorded on August 27, 2021, as part of Leoni Consulting Group’s All Things Marketing and Education Podcast.
Access this episode's show notes, including links to the audio, a summary, and helpful resources.
Elana:
Hi everyone, welcome to this week’s episode of all things marketing and education. Today I’m really excited to sit down with Adam Bellow. A little bit about Adam before he introduces himself, but Adam is an edtech dude. Most of his bios say he’s a dedicated educated technologist, that’s quite a big word for early in the morning.
He’s a father of two awesome boys, a husband of a very awesome wife, who I know very well, although not as well anymore because of the pandemic. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Breakout Edu, and I’ll let him talk a lot more about that. But super cool. It’s an immersive gaming platform that enables teachers and students to transform classrooms into basically escape rooms. And he’ll talk about it more, and maybe I’m butchering what it has turned into now.
He has served as a presidential innovation fellow for the Obama White House, go Adam. And he’s also a previous Ed. Tech entrepreneur. He created something called Edutecher, and Educlipper. And he’ll talk a little bit about that in his journey. And he’s written books, he’s a keynoter, he’s a very big overachiever, and he’s just an awesome human being. So I’m excited to have him on the show. Welcome, Adam.
Adam:
Well, thank you. Thanks, Elana, thanks for having me.
Elana:
Yeah, I’m so excited to have you on. And I think a lot of people can learn from you because a lot of educators sometimes feel stuck in the classroom, and they don’t know any other paths. And I think you have this incredible combination of someone who’s been in the classroom, and also different areas in education, and then have made the lead into edtech as well. But also not just a tech founding company too. So you’ve been on both sides, and you can just really give us the skinny of what that journey was like?
Adam:
Yeah, I mean it’s been a weird, it’s always weird to reflect back on it, because there are so many people I meet now where it’s like the conversation starts where it’s like, I want to become the founder of a company, or I want to do XYZ. And they start with like, what for me feels more like an end goal and is where I have landed. But it’s almost like this accidental journey of failure along the way where I started to teach because A, my parents were teachers. And I figured if my parents could do it then I could try to do that as well.
So I started teaching in New York City, and then I loved it. Went on and I taught high school English. And then I wound up really just nerding up about edtech. So when I went for my master’s program like I learned about “edtech” in the classroom, and specifically helping kids with special needs. And at the time it was all like Word. How do you use Word to reach an audience? It was before word actually has all these new Microsoft tools that they're using for special learning needs.
Anyways, long story short, that’s where eduTecher started. I started teaching the course that I took as a student in grad school, and I was just collecting all these different cool, what we called web 2.0 tools at the time. Which is basically anything now on the web. And started repurposing tools that weren’t intended for education or teachers.
And so that’s where eduTecher started and I did it for like six years. I always considered it a hobby. But it kind of grew into this bizarre startup edtech business. We build the first IOS app for education. We build, I say we because it sounds less creepy. It was really myself and originally it was my brother-in-law helping me with the web design. And then basically for my birthday, I think I was 27, 28 something like that. I said to my wife, I was like can I instead of getting a birthday present or doing something for our birthday, can I invest money into hiring a team of developers to build this stuff. And that’s what I did.
And so I started building with like an outside team, and I would create the mockups and do all the stuff anyway. So that kind of grew into a heavily used product or tool at the time. And then I started going to ITSE, and going to conferences and meeting awesome folks like yourself and so many of our other close friends. And I was like, “Oh I want to do this again, I want to build something else.”
And so I remember literally eduClipper was born out of talking with folks in the edtech space saying like, what do students need most? And I proposed three or four different options. I mean I literally giving almost like a survey, to the people that I most highly respected in the space. And one of the things that kept on coming up was, oh Pinterest. Like a visual sharing board for ideas. And so that’s where Educlipper started, and then it grew into like a digital portfolio tool.
But I always go back to the roots of like, I loved being a teacher. I loved being a technology training specialist working with teachers on teaching them how to use technology. And then kind of this journey of being a serial entrepreneur for lack of a better phrase. Like it gives me so much creative joy to get to build new things and share them with the world and feel like we’re doing stuff that has a purpose. But it’s not something I ever would have sat down and been like yes, this is my end goal, this is where I want to be.
Elana:
Yeah, no one knows our end goal, no one knows our journey. But I think we can all learn from your journey in particular. And I think the one thing you’re being humble about is when you’re in the classroom you obviously have a passion for education and teaching the kids and the impact. But you have a passion for teaching other educators as well, and that’s how I got to know you.
So I got to know Adam probably on Twitter prior to everything. But in person, do you remember our first in person?
Adam:
Now I’m trying to think of our first in person. I remember so many specific things like in person at Edutopia. Was it at one of Edcamps?
Elana:
It was at 140 Comp.
Adam:
Oh, that’s right. That’s right Jeff Pulver’s conference. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Elana:
That was back in the day when Twitter was kind of on something really brand new. I think it was maybe three or four years old at the time. It was just coming out of south by southwest as debuting. And Jeff Pulver had this conference called 140 Comp.
And it wasn’t 100 percent education-specific I feel like at that conference, but it was New York City, I went alone and I’m a west coaster, so it was a little bit of an adventure for me. And I don’t even know if I said hi to you before you went on stage. So he was doing a mini keynote, [unintelligible 00:07:20] or something because it was 140 Comp. It was something like that, but I remember you had like 140 slides to mate 140 Comp.
Adam:
I did, I did. And I got made fun of when Jeff introduced me. So that was the best part because I was so nervous, I had not been a presenter for a long time at that point. I literally maybe had presented for a year or so in smaller venues. And so I was excited to go in and do this at the 92 Street Y. It’s New York City, it’s in front of so many people that I now am just honored to call friends. Yourself, Chirs Leman was there, Marybeth Herts was there. So many people were at the event.
And I got up, and here’s the dirty secret behind that: that was a presentation I had built for ITSE for an hour-long session. And I just couldn't imagine a week later, I think it was in late August and ESTY obviously late June, so the three weeks or whatever in between I couldn't imagine coming up with something completely new at the time. So I just said, “Well I’m a New Yorker and I talk very fast, let me just shrink it down.” I took out some stuff but I was like let me see if I can do it really, really fast. And sadly that’s kind of a style that has attached itself to me, is like this very rapid-fire high visual whatever piece.
But I remember that. And I remember afterward I was so, so nervous, but Jeff Pulver, I remember his reaction was like, that was incredible. And in fact he actually that night, I went out to dinner with him and the organizers of that event, it was just five or six people. And it was just the most amazing experience.
Elana:
Yeah, and I guess I mentioned that because I obviously knew of your passion and you were always online sharing, like so many people like the early ed. chat folks on Twitter. But, when I saw you in person and the way you kind of gracefully went topic to topic, but in a humorous but approachable way of EdTech. Like we know what we started with EdTech, why we wanted to get the smartboard in the classroom. And then you would show pictures of post-its on top of a smartboard and things. So really bringing attention, and just really showing your passion.
Because as an edtech entrepreneur if you don’t have that I mean what’s going to get you going and keep you going in those hard days that we were talking about prior to this podcast. It’s hard starting your own company and keeping it going. It’s the most unsexist thing you would probably do. But unfortunately, people just see your peaks, and they go, “Oh they're killing it.” You’re like, what day am I killing it?
Adam:
Yeah, yeah. And there are days where you feel like you’re killing it and completely falling apart hour to hour. It’s that, the startup rollercoaster, but it’s not even a startup it’s just a company rollercoaster of like there are these high highs and low lows, and it’s just like every day it could be a mix of stuff in between. So it’s definitely interesting.
Elana:
Yeah. So let’s rewind slightly. You talked about your role in education, but I’ve never asked you this, but what drew you to education initially? Obviously, we have so many ideally I’d like to say choices when we get out of college, what we want to do. What’s said in your mind, “I want to be an educator, I want to work with kids?”
Adam:
Yeah, so I did not originally say that. I wanted to be a film director, and I went to film school, and I had a film that was like an honoree for the student academy award. And my film debuted in the New York City film festival. And I went to see it in the movie theater, and it was like, you talk about highs and lows, that was what I wanted to do.
And then I fell in love and my now wife, girlfriend at the time before became my fiancé was literally like, “I’m in law school that’s a career. I film really something you’re going to do? Or if not you’ve got to have a job.”
So I was like well, and I think I referenced this before, but my parents taught and I was like, “well I’ll give that a shot.” I loved being a camp counselor. I loved working with kids. I’ve always loved kids just teaching different things throughout my teenage years I would work at camps and teach programs or whatever. So I was like, “Oh I could give that a shot.”
And low and behold some schools hired me as an assistant English teacher and I had the most incredible mentor in the classroom, and I was like, “I love this.” I was working with kids with language-based learning disabilities and it absolutely blew my mind how I could help these students kind of come into their own and support them. And from there obviously, I went to grad school and all that stuff. But that was the career of I want to work in education.
Elana:
I think a lot of educators struggle with this question, and this might be a hard question for you to answer, but when you were in the classroom, how long were you in the classroom for?
Adam:
I taught for five years as an English teacher. And then worked at a district for three years as a tech training specialist. So I was a teacher on special assignment.
Elana:
OK, so you were a TOSA. So you had eight years total. So at that end of the eight years, was there this moment that you were like? And you talked a little bit about your intro about how it kind of culminated where when you were in grad school it just seemed probably natural. But where there any moments like, especially with our audience of educators that sometimes feel like they could potentially do another path. Are there signals they should be looking for, are there moments? What really drove you to say, I’m going to try this?
Adam:
Yeah, I think it was literally like, I always needed something to keep me busy. I don’t do sports, I don’t do, my hobby is watching TV I guess is a hobby. But there’s so much of that that you can do. I love to build things, and I’ve always liked to do creative projects. So for me going back to Edutecher specifically, I could have easily made a google doc or a pdf, or a static piece of content with the list of all the tools I was finding.
But for me, it was like, well why don’t I just build the tool in the vein of these tools that allows me to post them, to make video reviews of the tools, to share them with people. There was no fame and fortune in that like there was never a thought in my mind that that would be a leaping point to anything else. It was literally like for my students let me create this experience.
And I remember starting to get emails from people outside of where I was going to school, and they were like, incredible. I remember getting one specifically from Japan. “I’ve been using your site it’s amazing.” This was a year in and I was like, wait. I’ve been designing this for like the 30 kids that sit in front of my class, and this guy in Japan is using it. Because of course, it didn’t dawn on me, oh it’s the web anybody can use it.
So I think for people that are looking to get started, and again, I think it’s more about that journey piece, than saying oh I want to go build something. It’s literally just build things from need and try to fulfil your own needs. So for me it was almost like building it for my kids, but also selfishly it was for me as a list so I didn’t loose all that information. I was creating my own information base, my knowledge system.
And so I think creative purpose, and keeping yourself passionate and excited. And as teachers, we use lifelong learning all the time, and you were saying for me it’s like I love to share. That’s genuine, and I feel like it’s very much I love to share because I love to learn. I mean I always, always, even to this day like my nine to five or really 12 AM to 12 PM, is sitting here ad helping to vision and run Breakout. On the other hand, I’m always open to hearing about new tools, and new ideas, and how we can make those things better and come to life.
So I feel like that’s key for anyone. It’s like take something you’re interested and passionate about, be on fire about it, and then good things seem to happen when those are in the mix.
Elana:
Yeah, and especially that passion piece. Because I remember talking to you a couple ITSE’s ago and we sat down and you said, “You know Elana I’m still doing customer service.” And I was like, “Why are you doing customer service for?” And then I started thinking about it, the differentiator what I think about your company verses a lot of ed tech companies I see is that, you were previously an educator and you’re in everything.
And I know that can be hard as a founder at times too. But it’s really nice to connect to you. So if I send an email sometimes, I might get an email back from you. I might connect personally with your awesome team and create relationships and learn from them, ad create my PLN with a quote on quote vendor, and that’s amazing.
Adam:
Yeah. And it’s a tent pole for our business. It was out of necessity at first. But even to this day, we’re very much a small team that takes what we do very seriously. And at the same point, those connections are ultimately what’s most important. Being able to know that you can reach out and get a real person.
It’s funny because for so long people thought oh it’s this big company. If you do a decent job at branding that’s the problem, is that you have brand awareness and recognition and people think it’s, especially with a physical product they assume that like, oh it must be a large team since we’re manufacturing something and we’re doing something. It’s like at the time it was four or five people.
So everyone wears lots of hats, and I feel like we all very, very personally take on this role of the Shepard for the product, and ultimately the customer and the student experience with the product.
Elana:
Yeah. And I guess as we mentioned the product, we really didn’t talk about what it is. So why don’t you just give a brief overview of Breakout right now? And then we can transition to I’d love your take on as an educator jumping into a second CEO role, or either CEO role. What really prepared you as an educator that you felt like, oh I had a leg up. Compared to other people?
But maybe talk a little bit about Breakout for a second so people have context of what it is and a little bit of your role there?
Adam:
Sure, sure. So Breakout Edu, our tagline is that we unlock the love of learning through games. And specifically I think you referenced it before, these games are based on the idea of an escape room, where instead of locking kids in classrooms which is by the way fairly illegal. We created a product and it’s behind me somewhere over there.
But this box that literally locks with padlocks, and each padlock is related to a piece of academic content. So students work together in small groups collaboratively to literally unlock the box. Inside the box there is discussion cards that are based on each of the four C. And it really is like the most perfectly genuine vehicle to get kids to collaborate, work together, unlock those four C and SEL skills which obviously today are just more important than ever.
So Breakout we have that physical side of our business, and we also created about three years ago, we created a digital platform. And what I love about the digital platform is twofold, one is the games are ready to go, you don’t have to set up the kit, you can just literally share the content link with the students and let them work in small groups to break into the game.
But also, we have a game design tool, and a whole series of course materials to allow the students to become the creators. And in all the companies I’ve worked in, or tried to build, it’s like the idea of student creation and student ownership is so important to me. And so that’s why we love the idea of kids being able to create their own games. And it’ just such a higher level proof of learning where they get to literally take what they know, take this consumption of knowledge, and take the filter of all the stuff that they’ve gone through and all the educational span of their class, and create something that’s actually fun and that can challenge other learners in their class.
Elana:
Yeah, and it’s not just for kids. Because when you were first getting on the conference circuit with Breakout, I remember you having those buses. Remember you had the Breakout -
Adam:
Yep, I remember it well. It’s the Breakout bus, yeah. That was ITSE 2016. We had that bus.
Elana:
It was so cool. And having educators being in the seat of learning exponential experientially was just, I could see the joy on their face when they figured out everything and they were hi fiving it at the end. And we need more learning. We need it more when we learn as adults, we need it more as we’re students navigating classrooms with all the standards we have to hit. And how can we work critically and collaboratively to have fun? That’s the stuff that you learn experience. I don’t mean to preach to the choir.
Adam:
No, no, no, but it’s absolutely true. And I think it’s interesting like with Breakout particularly like if you experience it, you completely understand what it is. As a teacher I think it’s one of those, for a while we had a very hard time explaining it to people because escape rooms were not omnipresent. People didn’t have that background reference. They were just like, what I don’t understand, you have a box of locks and you have to set this up.
But you get a teacher to go through that experience and instantly it’s like, oh. It is literally we talk all the time guide on the side, versus sage on the stage. And this is the perfect opportunity for students to actually own their learning, and for teachers to see a different side of the student and what they know and how they work together. It’s really a fascination. I mean I’ve done literally, probably a thousand of them over the last five or six years, and watched all of these different people play at students, teachers, professionals, etc. So it’s been really interesting.
But I want to answer the other part of that question which was what gave me a leg up or potentially could have given me a leg up? I think that with all people that are in the edtech space, and I’m not just talking founders, I’m talking just people that are working on a product. It could be that they're in a customer service role, it could be that they're doing manufacturing, sales, whatever it is.
It is so important to understand your customer and understand the purpose of what it is that you’re doing. So when we say customer, it does sound obviously very businesslike, but in reality, it’s like for us we really have three customers, right. One is the school that we have to prove this is a valid form of learning. This is something that you should support financially for those teachers and kids. And it’s sometimes the most difficult because they're the most withdrawn from the actual experience.
Then you have the teachers who you have to say, listen this is like a valid form of learning, and it’s well worth all of the time and investment to get this up and running in your classroom. It’s worth it adding it to your already packed schedule a day. And to consider it. We take very seriously the fact that we’re brought into classrooms. Like it is a sacred space, and it is a very time crunched space, especially now where it’s like there’s a lot of uncertainty in what’s going on.
And I feel like for us we look at that relationship and we look at that placement in that classroom as something really special. And I think that the third “customer” is kids. And it’s literally looking at those students and saying we want to make this fun, we want to make it engaging, we want to make it educationally valid, and don’t waste their time.
Because being a dad and being educator I think are the two things that have best prepared me for working in the ed tech space. I care very, very deeply about the end user in terms of kids, because I want my kids to be doing stuff in class that I think is worth their time and helps them and pushes them. And luckily, I’ve been able to facilitate Breakout in their classes, and ironically my older son his teacher gave them all Breakout digital games to create as their final assessment for his program this year. Unbeknownst to me, like wasn’t hey you should do this, hey this is a cool idea. He just came home and was like, “Oh this is the product I have to make for my end of year project,” which was so cool.
But, in terms of a leg up I think it’s knowing how important time and space are, and how difficult the teacher’s job really is. People might say from business standpoint it’s knowing how to talk to talk to teachers. I don’t think that that’s it. I think it’s really knowing and understanding how difficult it is to actually be a boot on the ground doing that job. Having those days where like the technology wouldn't work, or all of a sudden, we got this new program and I had to get training for this and that and the other thing.
So I feel like just being so conscious of how special it is that you wind up getting to grace that classroom and work with those kinds as a product, obviously not even coming into the room. But I think that that’s really important. And I think a lot of time tools forget that. They build for flashiness, like oh it’s like a lot of pitches I’m sure you’ve heard from an EdTech space. It’s like, oh it’s like this for the classroom without ever thinking did we need that in the classroom? Or thinking about what’s the implications of that. A lot of times edtech gets very I would say duplicative, right. Like all of a sudden, a company launches and it’s like, oh we help make text messaging to parents easy. And then I know four other companies that said, “Oh remind is really doing well let me build exactly that functionality into my thing.” Which not only copies something that’s working, but it overcomplicates a product that they’ve already created.
So I feel like the leg up is really just understanding how special that space is. And then being able to critically look at it and be like, will this actually matter to those kids? Will it make the product better? Will it make the experience better? Or is it just something that we’ve done for the sake of doing it?
Elana:
Yeah. And the one thing after talking to many, many edtech startups and working with a lot of our clients too is, sometimes as a founder or somebody leading a brand in education, you get so excited about the product right. You’re like, “We’re got this cool feature, we got this, we got that.” And you’re talking about you, and you’re talking about your product.
No one actually cares about your product. And that’s hard truth is no one cares about your product, they have challenges, they have boots on the ground as you said, are looking to solve the problems, right. So I would say don’t talk about you give them value. Give them value as much as possible. And that value may or may not come from your product when you initially starting your relationship with this person.
So for you, for example, you might want to talk to your customers and now you not talk about Breakout all the time. And I know you guys don’t, you talk about the four C, you talk about the things that you are passionate about bringing into learning as well. And how can we help you, how can we give you value every day? And then increase relationships with educators that I am just helping you as much as possible?
Adam:
That’s such a good point because it is what is the value prop for that teacher. And I think with our product in particular like you can boil it down, and if we come in and say, “Oh, it’s a game that you play. Or oh it’s these puzzles that you have to solve. Well, there are lots of products and companies that have their own take on what that looks like in the classroom. Gamification in the classroom. Whether it be a quiz-based experience, or a game show type of thing.
The challenge I always give to our team, and let me just say quite frankly, that they give to me. Because I think that we are nothing but a collaborative team of really dedicated people that eat and love and beath this stuff all day long. And we challenge ourselves to be better. So I don’t want to, we get to sit here and say oh I’m the CEO, but that’s fine. I am nothing without my incredible team that works with me and does this world because it doesn’t happen in a vacuum for sure.
But what we offer exactly what you said, it’s like the value prop of that experience. And I think that the joke is that Breakout did start as the experience, but the reality is within a few months of starting we realized that the biproduct of that experience, the four Cs, the collaboration, all of those skills that are almost impossible to teach, and certainly harder to capture organically. Because you and I, if I said we’re going to work on our collaboration right now, I’ve already framed this wrong. But if I have a student that’s like, “Hey we’re going to solve this problem and there’s this locked computer screen and you have to get into it by solving these problems, you can work with your neighbors. Now it’s like OK well clearly, we’re going to work on all of those four C skills, but they haven’t been told directly to do so. And then after the fact that you come back and revisit those.
So it really is giving those people value. If it was just for the quick hit of how it’s a fun, you know things in classrooms yes, we want kinds to have fun. But if it’s just fun, it’s not really to me personally its’ like, all right there’s a certain amount of fun that I think is essential. But if you can do fun and have the fact that learning and fun are not dichotomous, that’s really special and important.
Elana:
Yeah, and you talk about the SAMR model. I love the SAMR model. I think that might be a natural transition to what we’re talking about, is not using technology just to purely substitute or glamorize certain processes that are archaic in learning already. Do you want to talk a little bit about SAMR and potentially how Breakout fits in there?
Adam:
Yeah. I mean I guess like SAMR I feel like, it’s funny because I feel like in recent years it’s gotten its own, oh it’s long in the tooth and people talk about different models that come into a trend or not. But if you look at SAMR and you start talking about the fact that you want to do something more than just replication, with our students we really do want to get them to read up on what that experience is like. And so through doing the actual physical experience whether it be the kit-based games, whether it be the digital games like we’re hoping that students can go in and realize that the technology can be used to build something completely different. And allows them to be the creator.
So it’s definitely a different model. It’s a different way of looking at the tools than what I think a lot of teachers on face value take those as. Like oh we’re doing technology today. And I remember when I first started doing technology training specialist, like that was the thing. It’s like we’re working on the smartboard, I’m going to teach you how to use the tool. And very quickly it was about highlighting what you can do with it. With Breakout it’s the same thing. Like we want to really focus on hey, it’s very much not the product itself, it’s the biproduct of the experience, and it’s all about how the students can use out tools to make something that goes far beyond a simple lesson or a simple model.
Elana:
Yeah, and for those of you who don’t know the SAMR model, we’ll put links to it in the show notes. And Adam maybe I’ll ask you what you feel like a follow-up on some good SAMR links because there’s a lot of them out there?
Adam:
Sure. I think Kathy Schrock, like her articles on SAMR are probably the go to with her coffee cup SAMR models.
Elana:
Yeah, she’d be at the top of my list as well. I think when people think about technology though immediately the first carrot is can we get them to replace it? And so sometimes when you’re a TOSA in particular right, it’s like how can I get them to use this? And then at the same time once they're bought in good technology, great technology in a classroom not only replaces, but it changes the entire experience of learning, right. And you wouldn't be able to do it without this technology.
It creates this new experience, this new way to understand that just want possible without the technology. And that’s the continuum of what we want. We want intentional technology use in education?
Adam:
Yeah. It needs to be, I mean I think Chris Leman had the quote from years ago, “It needs to be ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible.” And like oxygen, right. That was his quote, like oxygen. And it’s true. I mean that’s still exactly true today. It is not about the technology. Every kid has, most of the students have access to devices, some multiple devices. And as the devices get more and more impressive, and the kids are doing more things with the device on their own, it’s not about the flashy toy and it’s more about what we can get these students to do with that. focusing on the product, not on the how to or the technical side of it.
Elana:
Yeah, and that Chris Leman quote reminded me a little bit of Adam Smithies where it’s this invisible hand, where you really shouldn't be focusing on it, and you really shouldn't be bragging around we use this, we use that. We are learning in ways we are never thought possible, and here’s now we know we’re learning, and here’s the impact on student learning?
And we just get so caught up, and if you go to any technology conference sometimes it’s the 70 apps you’ll learn in 10 minutes, those sessions. But really show me that it’s truly impacting learning, and it’s intentional and in it’s use, and it’s not just a gimmick, right?
Adam:
And that’s the hardest part is I think that it’s the magic trick right, it’s proving OK so it’s not a flash in the pan, great. And I stop doing those sessions years, and years ago. That’s kind of where I started because everyone in the 2012 spot was doing 20 apps for 20 minutes, and that type of thing. And it’s much more methodical about evaluating what works for your students.
And Steve Dembo and I actually wrote a book year’s ago, and the joke was that the tools we talked about in the book were super old. And it was literally looking at like we’re not talking necessarily about the hottest things in the classroom, we’re not talking about the newest things. We’re talking about things that are probably the most impactful, and some o those are still very true today.
Elana:
So we’ve kind of talked a little bit about everything, and I know we can talk forever about edtech, because we’re both so passionate about it. I’m wondering, switching gears to our other audience, we have a lot of marketers. Because I’m a marketer, our teams are marketers and community builders. What advice would you have for anyone who’s leading marketing?
And you have that leg up because you can fundamentally understand what it’s like to be an educator. You’ve put that at the highest honor of their time. How would you talk to anyone leading marketing efforts for education brands that come in potentially with little or no education experience, it’s daunting?
I work with a lot of them, they're very smart, they bring lots of things. But sometimes knowing your customer is the hardest thing. do you have any advice for them on how to get up to speed in such a complex industry?
Adam:
I do a little bit. And I think you get a big shoutout here because I think I’ve said this to you before, like the work you did previously with Edutopia is to date some of the highest polished, most poignant educational voice that I’ve seen in the edtech space. And that’s what, and I mean this honestly. Like those posts both the fun ones, as well as the content that was being promoted through social, always spoke to me when I was a teacher.
And being respectful of a teacher’s time and not just throwing out memes, and not just throwing out like oh these folks will work for coffee. I feel like there’s two veins right now, it’s like one help the lazy teacher. Which even if the idea is that we are going to create something that will help a teacher make their classroom better. The construct of like, oh they're looking for a quick thing, they're lazy or whatever. It’s like, no, you need to provide value.
So I do think that talking about the value you’ll provide to that teacher and to their students is super important. And not like there’s a fine line between having fun with it and being denigrating. And I think some brands go to this very cliché, like silly teacher memes, but I think that there’s leaning into the value you provide to teachers. And I think you said it before about Breakout, not always self-promoting. So you can self-promote what you’re trying to do as a whole. But like there are lots of times where like, we did some work with Flip Grid and some other companies reach with their stuff, like their stuff. If it’s a really good educational piece of content, there’s no harm in you exposing that content to your viewers because it’s going to help them too.
And then the last piece I would say is social proof. And this is something that we’ve been very, very fortunate with Breakout is like, without being told people post pictures all day long on social media of them doing Breakout with their kids. And sometimes you do it better than others, but like engaging with those folks who went to the trouble of basically providing you with a commercial and sharing your product with the world through their own account, is always fun.
And so writing back to the schools, writing back to those teachers, and kind of nurturing that experience as best you can I think is always that organic community building piece which allows you to have brand authentication and have a real voice in the space.
Elana:
Yeah, and in some other spaces it might be more appropriate to do hard sells, right. To come in and say hey you’re an educator let me tell you about my product. In education it is a very selfless endeavor, I think educators go above and beyond, especially on social media to help others they don’t even know. There is an assumption that vendors should be doing that as well but we don’t see that as often as I’d like.
So the advice I would have is value first. Like we were talking about earlier. But just help as much as possible. And sometimes your product may not solve all of their problems. And the world of education there’s amazing voices. On your end your job should be to elevate voices as well. And you can elevate voices that are related to the things your passionate about. And I work with companies in saying, OK if you’re a PBL company let’s look at some really great voices in PBL that are not coming from your company and elevate those as well.
We are too small, everyone is too small, I don’t care how big you are, you cannot create all the content in the world related to your topic. Nor should you. Too often we live in our own chambers, and in education we need to work together and elevate voices as much as possible. And that was what I loved, loved, loved about Edutopia. Elevate as many possible voices around what’s truly working in education and do it often. Help others, just that. And then the other stuff will happen. But if you go for the hard sell you will lose people immediately too?
Adam:
Yeah. I think yeah, I can't even add to that. That is so perfectly true.
Elana:
All right, well I know we’re getting at time here, I would just love to get in the mind of Adam and have you inspired others like you inspire so many people on your team and educators from keynotes, and books, and all of the things you do. But I also know you are a very busy person so you may not have an answer to this question. But are there specific things that you are reading, or watching, or doing that’s inspiring you that you think might be helpful for other?
Adam:
Yeah, you know it’s funny. This year has been strange because I feel like I had turned down a lot of speaking things virtually because I just didn’t feel like my voice was the one that was relevant at this moment. I look forward to getting back out and doing more sharing and stuff as things change.
But I definitely have been taking a lot of inspiration in other people that have been looking at the education space in this time. Especially like social education like Jose Vilson and so much of the great work that EduColor has been doing and so many of the other bloggers that have come up with just talking about what it’s like to be a teacher now. And reading it for no other reason, and vibing a lot of that content for no other reason than just like empathy. Because often people like, “Oh, can you imagine what it’s like to be a teacher right now?” And it’s like, “No,” my honest answer is I absolutely can't.
I taught during some rough days, but not rough years and I don’t. I see it through the eyes of my kids and their teachers, and I have nothing but respect for them. So I’ve been doing a lot of social stalking. It’s almost like the reverse of like you become a known person on Twitter and you constantly are pumping out content. But right now I feel like I’m the lurker, and I’m learning again what’s relevant. Because I don’t want my voice to, I don’t want anything I share to be ill-informed. I want to be, and I think that this goes for our company and what we’re trying to do, but it also goes for me as a learner, I just don’t want to kind of just throw content out there.
On the other side of things in terms of just like trying to consume content and better myself, I’ve been watching a bunch of documentaries both about people that are creator and about people that are entrepreneurs. If you haven’t seen it, this is a really, totally random, nothing about education but there is a documentary called Val. About Val Kilmer, it’s on Amazon Prime. Commercial for them, but brilliant. Did you see it Elana, or no?
Elana:
No, but I keep seeing it pop up on Twitter about how it’s really affected people personally and I was wondering.
Adam:
Yeah, it’s great, I definitely would watch it. I mean it’s one of those stories that just hits the heartstrings. So it’s very inspiring. I’m not going to give anything away about it, but I had so much more respect for Val Kilmer as an actor and as someone who practiced his craft. Because I think that you said it before, like with the edtech space people only see the highs. Whether it’s a presentation like people are like, “Oh you’re a great presenter.” It’s like yeah, but it took me a year to build the ITSE keynote that I gave way back when. It takes me a very long time to do things, and it’s practice and practice, and practice. And they don’t always land. There are definitely times where it’s a miss.
And I feel like I have such appreciation for people building that as a craft, and Educlipper is a great example of that. It was a product, it was a company, I believed in it, we built it. It had adoption, but ultimately it didn’t find mass success. And I feel like those lessons learned and attaching and following stories that are like that, that have different outcomes, I think are really important. And it’s inspiring to hear about the people that find the success, but it’s also just as inspiring sometimes, or just as reaffirming to find about people that have struggled to get there.
Elana:
Yeah, and I think as we meander in this conversation, you know there’s a lot of similarities obviously between you and me. But some of the things I’ve noticed seeing you present over the years is, you don’t just present or create for the sake of creating, you push the boundaries.
Like I remember one ITSE that you went to you hacked what was it, hacked PowerPoint. And so every time you would say something it would be an automatic tweet based almost in real time with what you were saying. And everyone was like blown away. But it was a challenge for you, it bugged you. You went and took probably way too much to figure it out and hacked the system. And that creator in you just said, let me do this.
But also when I do something potentially, I don’t want to do the same boring things that have been done over and over again, how can I reinvent how we learn, how we experience?
Adam:
Yeah. And it’s definitely, again I always joke that like I told you before I was going to film school and I wound up not become a filmmaker. But I always that’s still very much a piece of me, like wanting to present a show. Wanting to present something that’s edutaining.
I want to get the content out there, but I want to do it in a way that’s memorable. And if not, why do it at all. Like I love conversation but I feel like if I’m going to be asked to speak to x number of people and I have the ability to create something different, why not try to do something different.
And that Twitter thing, that was I think Alan Lavine actually had done it a year before I had done it. And then it had broken and I had to work with his APIs and whatever to fix it. It was a learning adventure for me, but exactly right, like I did it because I just was sick of like, “All right well I don’t want to sit in the same presentation.” I would totally do that again, that was super fun. But you have to try something different.
Elana:
Yeah, all right. well last one, it’s kind of a big one, but I think it’s something that hopefully you’ll look back and maybe 10 years from now you’ll think of, all right I was on this podcast with Elana and I got to reflect on my journey so far as an educator, as an EdTech entrepreneur. And at that time here’s where I thought my path was going.
Here’s the big question, what do you ultimately hope to accomplish in your journey within education? Either as an educator, lifelong learner, and an ed tech entrepreneur? Like if we were saying not here lies Adam, but you know?
Adam:
Yeah, living the first line of my eulogy. I think for me I think it’s really about, and I referenced it before, creating something truly meaningful for kids to be able to create. And I think Breakout is an incredible, incredible tool for creating learning experiences. And I think that where we’re looking to go in the next couple of years is about deepening that creation tool as well. So very much leaning into the four Cs, and the SEL skills that are so core and important. And I would like to keep working in that space. Because I’ve seen how impactful it is for kids.
There are so many times where it’s like in previous things I’ve built I knew that there were 400,000 users on Educlipper and blah, blah, and the stats of who used it and what was being done with it.
But with Breakout, I hear stories from teachers every single day about the meaningful connections that students, you know the quiet kid was the one who was able to solve the problem. And they were made fun of at lunch but then they were the hero after lunch when they were able to like help their class win.
Creating moments like that, and being able to be a part of a team that makes a product like that, and again shout out to our amazing team. I want to get to work with awesome people that are dedicated to making positive change in education. I still have a lot of ideas left for where Breakout can go. But I’m also not you know, the future is long. And I’m hopeful that whatever I wind up doing, it is something that is truly meaningful and impactful that allows students to have, that values their time. And create meaning and purpose in the classroom.
And again as a dad, that’s what I come back to. Every day I’m like this is what I want my kids to be doing. This is what all kids have the ability to get to do as well.
Elana:
Nice. Well, last question and this one is an easy one, is how can people get to know a little bit about you, connect with you, or Breakout EDU?
Adam:
Sure, so with me, I’m on Twitter still from all those years ago, just at Adambellow. And Breakout it’s easy it’s Breakoutedu.com. And if you wanted to reach me at Breakout it’s Adam@breackoutedu.com. I’m happy to answer any emails and questions, and get to know people. And hopefully, we’ll get to see each other and get out there soon. But I’m an easy person to get a hold of for sure.
Elana:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time Adam, I am just beaming with inspiration talking to you as always. I know that that will transfer over to anyone who’s listening. I thank you for all of your dedication and passion to education. We need so many more people like you coming in and coming from all aspects of education. So boots on the ground, coming into the edtech entrepreneur space. And now leading big teams and really showing people what it’s truly like, and what it can be like to reinvent learning. And I think now more than ever people are open to that prospect of how can we do things differently. And how can we do it in remote environments, but also value the in-person, and what does that bring in terms of the collaboration. So I thank you so much for spending time with me.
Adam:
Thank you.
Elana:
And being nerdy and all of the things to do together. If anyone wants to learn about all the things we talked about, pretty much every topic we’ll be giving you related resources to link in our show notes, at LeoniConsultinggroup.com/2. So this is our second episode, thank you so much for being out guest Adam. And all the best. Have a wonderful weekend and hopefully we can see each other in the future.
Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. If you liked what you heard and want to dive deeper you can visit Leoniconsultinggroup.com/podcast. For all show notes, links, and freebies mentioned in each episode. And we always love friends, so please connect with us on Twitter at Leonigroup. If you enjoyed today’s show, go ahead and click the subscribe button to be the first one notified when our next episode is released. We’ll see you next week on all things marketing and education.
Elana Leoni, Host
Elana Leoni has dedicated the majority of her career to improving K-12 education. Prior to founding LCG, she spent eight years leading the marketing and community strategy for the George Lucas Educational Foundation where she grew Edutopia’s social media presence exponentially to reach over 20 million education change-makers every month.
Adam Bellow, Guest
Adam is a dedicated educational technologist, father of two young boys. He is the CEO and Co-Founder of Breakout EDU, the immersive gaming platform that enables teachers and students to transform classrooms into places of discovery and inquiry-based learning. Previously, he served as a Presidential Innovation Fellow for the Obama White House, created several edtech learning platforms including eduTecher and eduClipper. Adam has written numerous books about educational technology and speaks internationally on the subject of education and technology.
About All Things Marketing and Education
What if marketing was judged solely by the level of value it brings to its audience? Welcome to All Things Marketing and Education, a podcast that lives at the intersection of marketing and you guessed it, education. Each week, Elana Leoni, CEO of Leoni Consulting Group, highlights innovative social media marketing, community-building, and content marketing strategies that can significantly increase brand awareness, engagement, and revenue.
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