This interview was originally recorded on September 29, 2023, 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 Leoni:
Hello, and welcome to All Things Marketing and Education. My name is Elana Leoni and I've devoted my career to helping education brands build their brand awareness and engagement. Each week I sit down with educators, EdTech entrepreneurs and experts in educational marketing and community building. All of them will share their successes and failures using social media, inbound marketing, or content marketing and community building. I'm excited to guide you on your journey to transform your marketing efforts into something that provides consistent value and ultimately improves the lives of your audience. And now, let's jump right into today's episode.
Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education. This week, I am so excited to sit down with Thor Prichard. He's the president and CEO of Clarity Innovations, which is a mission-driven, K-12 education focused professional services and consulting firm. They do everything from providing education strategy, to content creation, engineering and design solutions. That is why I'm excited to talk about all things EdTech products with him, how to design EdTech products with learning outcomes in mind. We talk specifically about that. We talk about the challenges of creating effective EdTech products, and all of the UX and UI considerations in the world of EdTech, which includes non-negotiables from an educator's point of view. I learned so much from Thor, and you need to listen to the part in this episode where Thor insists that effective implementation and professional development are just as essential to product design.
So, pause for a second. That means you can't just design a product in EdTech. We have to invest in implementation resources and effective professional development so your educators and your education leaders can actually use the product. We even talk about the design thinking process and the significant of user-centered design in this conversation, and it doesn't end there. We end our chat highlighting current trends in product design for EdTech. So, please enjoy. I have learned so much with this. This is a must listen for anyone in EdTech, in product design, or if you're an educator listening, fascinating talk. Enjoy.
Welcome, Thor to All Things Marketing and Education. I'm excited to have you on, and you've been in EdTech for so long, I'm surprised our path hasn't crossed sooner, and I really do thank, a shout-out to Rich Dixon, who introduced us to you and your wonderful organization called Clarity Innovations. So, welcome. I'm excited to just learn from you in all of the decades you've had in it.
Thor Prichard:
Oh, thank you. I like to think of it as, we're timeless. There's been a lot of change over the years and there's still a lot of things that remain the same in some ways, but it's been a wild ride for sure, and been a fan for a long time, actually from the long, long ago days when you were doing Edutopia, I believe.
Elana Leoni:
Awesome. Well, thank you. I think your vantage point, why don't you talk to the listeners about what your organization does, because I think it's critical in your vantage point, and also your expertise of what we're going to be talking about today around EdTech product design and user experience. So, talk to us a little bit about what your organization does and who you serve.
Thor Prichard:
Sure. Well, we got started almost 30 years ago. Basically looking at that intersection of technology education and seeing that technology is being used in a lot of different fields, a lot of different industries, but in education, it wasn't really having the same uptake. It was a fringe thing. It was kind of being used for different things, but it really never changed the process and practice of teaching and learning. And so, we got started looking into that more carefully and realized, well, it's really about, how do we use technology in ways we could never have used and taught before, right? Well, how can we unlock new ways of learning and teaching with this? And that's a much harder problem to solve. So, we really dug into that. And so, our team is basically former practitioners from the classroom, teachers, instructional designers, trainers, graphic designers, user experience designers, product managers, developers and software engineering folks who really, as a collection can help our clients, who are really the industry side of things, look at their product and figure out where are those blind spots, and help improve and fix those things?
Because we have that unique perspective of being former practitioners, as well as knowing the business side, as well as being a little geeky, a little technology. So, we know how to do all those kinds of things and really help focus on that one question of, how is this product going to improve the process and practice of teaching and learning? That's really our core mission. That's what drives a lot of what we do and the kind of work we've done with companies large and small over the last three decades.
Elana Leoni:
Let's get into a little bit about that. We've actually never had anyone on the show talk about how to design a product, and how to design a product and actually build a product with learning outcomes in mind, and having all of the expertise in the room, because sometimes inherently you probably get a product that missed the educator voice or missed the user experience, but had the educator voiced. And you're saying, "Hey, let's bring everyone to the table and let's design with the learning outcomes in mind."
Thor Prichard:
That is absolutely true. That's one of the things we try to do a lot with our clients, is really help provide those other voices and perspectives they might be missing. They might have great market data, great understanding of the problem they're trying to solve, but that last mile problem, okay, well what does it look like in the classroom? What does it look like from an educator's perspective? How is it saving them time? How is it making their job and life a little bit easier? But also, how is it really enabling them to teach in ways they couldn't have taught before, or teach the materials in ways it's more engaging, more relatable, more of interest to students? How do you make it easier for the students to engage with the material? What ways is using the technology differently going to help achieve that?
So, we really try to do that in our product development work, but it's also sort of many layers of it. Sometimes it's in the conceptualization of a product, sometimes it's in just understanding, well, what problem is it we're trying to solve? And realizing that that's actually, when you unpack that, two or three other problems. Some of those are so entrenched they're not easy to solve with one simple solution, but thinking about, well, how do we leverage other kinds of tools and practices in education? So, for example, anybody who's doing product development knows today or at least should know, don't ever create a separate user login for your product. In schools, it should be single sign-on. It's a non-starter if you're trying to require yet another username and password, every educator will hate you. So, don't do that. Instead, use the systems out there. Take advantage of the products that allow for the single sign-on functionality to work because that's what schools are expecting now.
That's one example. Other parts of the product development cycle involve the content, and thinking about, how do you teach with that product? How do you actually, when you're an educator thinking about when am I going to start talking about the concepts I want to convey and what kind of pedagogy am I going to use to teach with my students? How am I going to have my students interact? How are they going to synthesize information? Where does this product fit in that sort of process, in that learning cycle? Is this something I use to introduce concepts? Is this something I use as a wrap-up activity? Is this a formative assessment? Is this something I'm using to apply the concepts they're learning?
All of those are questions that sometimes don't get asked, and that's why we're at the table. That's why we're asking those questions, helping our clients understand, you need to be thinking about that in addition to all the cool bells and whistles and features you want to add to your product. But you really need to be thinking about, what does that look like for the educator's experience, for that learner's experience at the end of the day?
Elana Leoni:
And that made me think, I was more curious on my side, but there are lots of different paths for product design. And I'm wondering, do you mostly work on new products? Like, "Hey, I'm starting out. I need to engage a bunch of experts." Or mostly, "I have a product and it's not quite there. Maybe there's some user testing that show it's not really meeting the needs, but I'm not sure where to go. I need to bring some experts in." So, is it kind of aligning a product that's not quite hitting the mark, or is it in that world of featuritis, where we need some new bells and whistle like you called it, or to the new product line, or is it all of the above that you work in?
Thor Prichard:
Yes, it's a little bit of all of it and it really kind of depends. I would say most of it isn't brand new products out of the gate. Most of it is, "Gosh, we've spent a lot of effort and time and have made a really good product for the market and it has a lot of uptake and a lot of use, but it's not what they expect." A client might be disappointed either in renewals or it might be like, "Gosh, I thought they'd be using more than just that one feature." And our job is to really help them understand, well, it could be how you position, how you talk about the features, how you talk about the use cases with educators. A lot of times, the other core part of our business is professional development work with our clients, to help talk about the instructional uses of your product.
So, many times a client's product or service might be the training they do when a school district bought it, is all about implementation. "Here are the bells and whistles, here's how you generate reports, here's how you log in. Here's the step-by-step workflow of the app." Problem is, you've not put it in any context an educator's going to understand. You haven't talked about, "As a biology teacher, here's when you would use the science probeware. Here's how you would teach that lesson differently because you now have a way to model and explore 3D models of molecules. Instead of using the clunky pieces you might've lost pieces to in your dress drawer."
So, what we do is think about flipping the script on the professional development, the implementation support, and say, "What are the kinds of practices and processes teachers are using? Is this a project-based learning classroom? Is this a constructivist classroom? What are the ways they're teaching? Now, let's talk about how your product supports that. Where is it that you use those bells and whistles, those features at the moment that the instruction is happening?" So, it's now really set up as the context for the teacher in their process of teaching. It's something more familiar to them. So, that's another example of where we try to take it.
Elana Leoni:
And I'm processing as you're saying this because you're saying yes, and the bells and whistles, what you end up doing is prioritizing them and aligning them with real use cases in the classroom. And you also said that product development doesn't exist in a silo of, you just build a product and they use it and it's awesome. You have to have meaningful implementation, professional development, support in EdTech. You can't just have one or the other, and you can't just assume you have an awesome product and people are going to know how to use it in their own unique context.
Thor Prichard:
Right, right. That's an essential part of the product development cycle. There's the obvious product development cycle, which is the engineering, the app, the visuals, the look and feel, the content, that's all there. But then there's this whole other separate cycles that have to go along with it. One of them is that PD support materials, the content surround, as we might call it, that goes with the product to the schools when you're doing the implementation support, but also how are you helping those districts in their implementation? You might give one training to their trainers, and then they're giving trainings to all the other educators, right? Well, what other support materials are you providing them? What kind of exemplars are you providing? What kinds of instructional support materials that go with the product, that have really nothing to do with the product, but are all those essential pieces of blue that will help them get it out to the classrooms and show it an effective use, so that they're not just using it for one feature but are actually making it part of their essential practice?
That's the key piece for how you do renewals. That's how you demonstrate this has sticking power, this is making a difference because my teachers are demanding it, are using it more than just once a year or once a day kind of thing. They have something that it allows them to use in a lot of ways to improve their practice as an educator. That's essential.
Elana Leoni:
And you're growing with their use, right?
Thor Prichard:
Absolutely.
Elana Leoni:
Because a lot of the times educators will go, "Okay, here's one use case and I can use this use case all day, but maybe I only use it in the beginning of the year." And that's not going to facilitate renewal conversation, like you said.
Thor Prichard:
No, and that's great. There's a whole aspect. The irony is that education is all about scaffolding learning, but in product development, we don't think about the product user experience as scaffolded experiences. We think of it as, you have all 80 features all on the first day. And the hard part is, how do I know which features are the most important or how to use them? And that's one of the things we hear from a lot of clients over time has been, "Gosh, we have a great product and it has all these features, and we thought these five would be the most salient and most popular, but they're only using one of those five and they're using these three other features. We had no idea it was going to be important, but that's where all the usage is."
And that's partially just because you don't know what the market, how they're going to use it, but it also goes to, how do you make sure you got some good alignment, but also good supports in how to teach with it, how to use it for instruction? And that might be whether it's a teacher-facing product or if it's a student-facing experience. Those are two entirely different kinds of products. And sometimes the thoughts are, well, I'm just making something for education. Well, no, you're making it for two audiences, and not just the consumers and the deliverers.
Elana Leoni:
Well, even potentially three, right? Because you got the students and then you got the teachers implementing it and having their own controls and processes, but then you've got the decision-makers that need the analytics, potentially. And I'm probably missing parents on some of the applications too.
Thor Prichard:
Oh no, you're totally right. Yeah.
Elana Leoni:
For so many, right? It's complicated.
Thor Prichard:
Yeah, that's absolutely right. The buyers, the influencers and users, and this is my completely anecdotal armchair rationale for why game-based education is so difficult to do, because in order for a game to be exciting, engaging, and wonderful to students that want to do it, from an educator's perspective, it'd be like, "Well, I'm not sure there's learning happening there." But from a buyer's perspective, it looks like, "Oh, that's a waste of time. There's no learning happening." So, you can't make an experience that meet all three audience's needs. Now, there's a lot of issues about how you think about that in, what is game-based learning, and how does that really work, and what is the role of play and serious play? And there's still a lot of work to be done.
I think that's the other problem, is what the audiences think they need or want may not actually align with what some of the science is showing, or what actual practices are working really well in the classroom. So, that's, I think what keeps me really excited and interested in this field, is it's not the technology that's changing. We've seen technologies come and go, and that's not the part that's exciting. The exciting part is the pedagogy. It's really, I would call it more the digital pedagogy nowadays, of what do you do, and how do you do it with the tools that you could have in teaching ways you never have taught before? And that's the exciting part and seeing, where's the learning science happening to facilitate that?
Elana Leoni:
And I think we get so myopic into shiny bells and technology and we're like, "AR, VR, immersive learning." And we went into that when we're not asking the right questions pedagogically, and we're not saying, "How is the fundamental role of teaching shifting, and how are learners needs changing, and how we learn?" Those fundamental questions. And then technology is just a tool that you execute. You brought that home for me right now. So, thank you very much for that.
Thor Prichard:
Right. Yeah. No, you're welcome. And that's one of the big things that we champion around here is, an underpinning of it is the whole TPACK model. And if you haven't heard of that one, it's the T-P-A-C-K, which is technological pedagogical and content knowledge. And it's this model that came out of the higher ed space, but it was really brilliant, thinking about, a good effective instructional experience has content knowledge. What is the content and concept you're trying to learn or teach? You have a whole sphere of the pedagogy. What are those instructional strategies and teaching practices and learning methods you're going to use to learn that content? And then there's the third big circle, which is the technology or technological aspects of, what tools and mechanisms, means are you going to use to do that? And you'll notice that in the EdTech sphere, we can be really great at building technologies and we don't really think about the context.
We assume publishers and the Basal companies, the publishers who do the textbook take care of content knowledge, and obviously educators know that part really well. But there's that third bucket, which is that pedagogy, and that's obviously a bucket that educators know really well, but products don't think about it very much. It's always an afterthought, and that's where we really try to advocate and say, "You realize these all intersect, and that they all have to go together, right?" So, we really try to evangelize about, product isn't just about the features in terms of what the software does, but it's also in the methodologies of that teaching or that instruction or that learning, because they aren't two separate things. They really go together.
Elana Leoni:
Yes, so many challenges and nuances, and I love that you're exposing them, and we aren't in this industry for the sake of easiness. And I think for every single expertise I'm like, "Gosh, I never even thought of that." But that's a challenge too. But it's also what keeps us excited about the profession, like you said.
Thor Prichard:
Absolutely. Absolutely does.
Elana Leoni:
So, you mentioned single sign-on as a number one thing. You're like, "That's a non-negotiable when you build a product." Are there other non-negotiables or really essential components to a product that you look for and say, "No questions asked, you got to have X, Y, Z right now."
Thor Prichard:
Yeah. The two other that go into the pile of not very exciting things but must have things are accessibility. And it's not that it's not exciting, it's actually quite exciting because it gets more to the learning science and perception cognition, which is kind of my geeky background, but that's a non-negotiable as well, accessibility. And it's not just about whether they're a disabled person or a person with blindness or those kinds of things. It's also just basically any kind of accommodation. It's about making sure you're being universally welcoming to any kind of user, with any kind of circumstance they might have. And that's the key piece of it. So, accessibility, a lot of people think that means, "Oh, that means the Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 at Level AA." Well, yeah, sure, that's one part of accessibility. But the other part of accessibility is really Universal Design for Learning.
If you really want to be making your product approachable to every audience, to any learner, you got to be doing UDL. Now, UDL is actually really exciting and that's not the drudgery part of it, just making sure things work right, but it's really, that's a core part of how you think about the content experience in any kind of product. The other big one is, again, not super exciting, but is essential, is your data privacy and security and how you approach that. Just like accessibility sometimes gets treated as an, "Oh yeah, afterthought, we're about to go live, we should take care of this stuff." Those are three things that have to be done upfront. How you're thinking about what data you're collecting, how are you securing it, how are you using it appropriately? And really, those kinds of principles of, what is the least amount of data we need to collect to actually do what we want?
We have a lot of clients we've worked with, where we've been able to convince them, "You probably don't need to collect any data, and now look at your apps, are super easy to use because you don't have to worry about the data being collected. You don't have to worry about where it's being stored, how it's being used, et cetera." Now, obviously, not every product can work that way. If you're trying to do any kind of longitudinal data of a formative assessment, summative assessment, progress showing, anything like that, or recommendation engines or pretty much any other kind of use, you might need to have some login data through a single sign-on or whatever. So, you need to be careful about how you use that data, and there's lots of resources about that. But there's also the security aspect. As we know, we're in a very not great world where technology is not exactly as secure as we would like it to be.
It's still an issue, and it's a little scary how many different times you hear about data breaches or incidences occurring with school districts. So, don't be surprised if you take 50 states times about 200 districts, that's how many different kinds of requests you can get about your data security and privacy parameters. And so, making sure you build your products to think through all of that upfront is going to be a lot easier, so when it comes time to close your sale, you're not scrambling at the last minute trying to document that. Build it in from the beginning, just like you would with accessibility, just like you would with Universal Design for Learning.
Elana Leoni:
I have been head nodding every single moment you've been talking about it, because I am going to put that in slow motion on repeat, and before many different channels so people can hear that, especially... Well, a single sign-on, yes. But the accessibility part is something that is fundamentally discriminatory, and in education we should have even more of an emphasis on it. And I still unfortunately see it as an afterthought. Student data, but privacy I think, sometimes I run into salespeople that don't even know what COPA, or FERPA, any of the child privacy laws are, and to accurately explain how you are securing that data and you're thinking thoughtfully and you've built it from a foundation, not an afterthought. Just, thank you.
Thor Prichard:
You're absolutely right. Yeah, those are all good things to be looking at. And there are lots of good resources from lots of different providers, which I can't always remember which ones are the most current ones, so I won't try to give a sense of recommendations right now.
Elana Leoni:
And we can also follow up with you. Anybody listening to this podcast that wants to learn more about these things, know that we'll be thoughtfully connecting with Thor and putting resources into... What this podcast is, just of how can I get inspired, how can I learn more? And then the show notes will have links of resources that can propel you into action as well. Thor, we talked a little bit about all of the different needs and nuances of building an effective product that aligns with student outcomes, but also somewhat satisfies administrator needs and teacher needs. Then potentially, depending on the app, maybe parent needs, we talked about those challenges. We talked about the must-have features in EdTech, in a product. But one of the questions that always, I struggle with because I've seen the ebb and flows with all of the different EdTech products and what gets funding and what gets users, versus what actually makes money in the industry.
And I'm wondering, what's kind of a fun, would you rather, would you rather develop a product that does one to two things really well? Say they have efficacy studies, they've got high engagement, but fundamentally it's a very narrow product that does these things very well, or would you like to have a product that does a whole lot of things and you get users using it in different ways and maybe they come in and just use one or two of the features, but it sells because it has a very broad reach and is very flexible in what you can do with it. So, I think it's the classic depth versus breadth question.
Thor Prichard:
Right, right. Well, yeah, there's a couple ways we look at that one. One of the things we try to keep in mind is, you remember as a kid you may have had a Swiss Army knife and everybody had one that maybe had six or seven tools, and then some people got the ones with 14 different things, and all of a sudden you see these ones that had 36 different things on them. And I actually have a picture here that has 80, and it's like this big. It's bigger than a bagel, right? Well, how is a knife with 80 different features? It's like a leatherman tool, it's got pliers, it's got screwdrivers, it's got scissors, it's got a can opener and a bottle opener, times 15 more things. How is that thing the size of a bagel going to fit in a pocket anymore?
Sure, you could do anything with it. You can repair a bicycle, set up a tent, whatever it might be, even do a satellite repair in space, who knows? But that's not exactly very portable and usable because you have to figure out and dig through all 80 features to find the one or two things you might use regular. So, that breadth problem is one of the things we try to avoid. We think about it more of in terms of, focus on what is that instructional application, what is that teaching practice that you're trying to elicit, support, facilitate, grow, and what kind of instructional, whether it's a problem or opportunity to work on with your audience? Who are the users, whether it's a teacher-facing product or if it's a student-facing product, what is it they're really trying to do and accomplish? And make sure you're fundamentally addressing those kinds of needs first.
And then look at, what are the sort of ancillary pieces that might go there? But the other problem is that you can also think about it as in terms of what I would say, sort of closed purpose product like this is a tool or a utility that performs a function versus an open-ended tool. Something like Microsoft Word let's say, is an open-ended tool. You can write blogs, you can write letters, you can write a novel, a thesis, whatever you want to do. It doesn't matter what kind of output you create with it, right? Or Google Workspace, same idea, could do anything with those kinds of tools. That's an open-ended tool. Now again, it also has 150,000 different kinds of features you may not even know are there, but that's at the extreme. But you can make very simple open-ended tools that allow you to do things that are about content creation, content synthesis, content analysis.
Those are all core higher-order thinking skills you want to have students be doing. So, some of your listeners might be as old as I am and remember back in the day of products like inspiration, which was a visual concept mapping tool. It was open-ended, it lets you organize your thoughts and your ideas, your main ideas, and now you had an outline you could use for writing your paper. It was extremely brilliant and widespread across America. A whole bunch of schools were using it K-5 into high schools. It was the number one selling product for a decade. This is all pre-internet pretty much folks, but it really transformed the writing process in teaching it because it was a tool that finally got the connection between organizing ideas and how they're visually organized, and now writing it in a linear fashion. It unlocked that.
So, it was a very open-end tool, but very simple user feature set, right? Draw me some circles, draw me some lines, connect the dots, turn it into that one. So, that idea of, is it breadth or depth? It can kind of go two different ways. Another classic tools that we've developed for some of our clients are like virtual manipulatives. If you're teaching math, you've got lots of things like a geoboard or number line and things like that, that are physical things in the classroom. Some of them require lots of little pieces and counters and things, to do the math games. Well, you could do that virtually, but now when they're virtual you can do different kinds of things like measuring area on a geoboard, and you don't have to worry about everyone shooting rubber bands at other kids in the classroom. And they do that, right?
So, those kinds of virtual apps are also open-ended because you can use them to teach lots of different concepts, not just one thing without having to have lots of features to do it. So, it's kind of a continuum, I say, almost on two dimensions. One is, in terms of just the sheer number of features and complexity of your app. And then the other dimension is really just, what is its intentional scope of that product? Is it about fixing or addressing one kind of thing? Is this about practicing the reading, or is this about generating content and doing open-ended exploration type things? That's a whole nother different dimension that we try to help folks think about. Ideally, you say focus on an open-ended, but a small number of feature sets is a cool sweet spot to be in for your product, but not all products going to fit that, obviously. The market has a diverse number of needs.
Elana Leoni:
I don't know, it just feels like the more we talk, as we saw in the pandemic, lots of technologies getting adopted. We had this technological bloat, if you will, we have a lot of technologies in district. Some of them are not being used as much as they used to be in the world of virtual learning. But overall, now we're getting into, okay, we got to get rid of some of this. We got to cut this bloat down. And what I'm hearing and we aren't quite there with all the districts, and we won't be for quite a while, but it is the Holy Grail, is that, let's cut the things that don't directly map to improving student outcomes. And we know the state of efficacy is quite low in EdTech right now, but let's say in that world, if they end up going there, the breadth type of product, or sorry, not the breadth, the depth type of product will be the one that wins the day around it.
And as you were talking, the TPACK model, the SAMR model, and we'll put all of these acronyms and resources in the show notes folks, but I think for the SAMR model, I'll probably put the Kathy Schrock live binder around it because it is the truth. And maybe Steven Anderson's, I learned about TPACK from conferences of listening to him, but maybe I was asking the wrong question, is more of, how do you do the feature sets that you have, have the best ingredients or probability of success to get to those learning outcomes and fundamentally transform the learning experience?
Thor Prichard:
And here's the hard part, and this is not necessarily, tragedy is probably too strong of a word, but the real worry I think maybe is the right word for this, that I have is, efficacy is a hard thing to measure. Schools and education in the system moves at a glacial pace. And I used to say that all the time. Now I realize with climate change, that pace is actually increasing, but schools aren't increasing in the pace. So, part of the hard part about efficacy is it takes time and research and effort.
And one of the things that's interesting people may not realize is that a lot of educational research efficacy is about longitudinal studies, taking a, looking at 3rd graders, 5th graders, 8th graders, 10th graders. We have lost a consistent data set for that fair, and the comparison for data prior to 2020, and probably will be another 12 more years before we can be able to do longitudinal comparisons, because we had such an interruption for those 13 grade levels that it's going to take several years, a dozen or so for that bump or dip or however you want to call it, it's going to take that much longer to get through the whole system so we can get back to comparing apples to apples in terms of, okay, what were 3rd graders thinking and feeling and knowing at this age, versus 8th graders versus 12th graders?
Because right now, when we try to do that comparison, kids in those grades during the pandemic are going to have wildly different kinds of results, because we know that from the data. So, it's premature going back to the really good efficacy sites because we don't have the right data, doesn't look good in the middle because of the pandemic. So, the other hard part is, there's a budget constraint. We have the idea of the ESSER fundings running out and we need to make those decisions about, what do we keep, what do we let go of? And you're right, it's going to be a tough one. The thing I think about is, it's not just necessarily the efficacy, or is it moving the needle in learning outcomes? Which absolutely is a fundamental one.
It's also, which ones are teachers really using? Which ones are teachers making part of their essential practice? Because part of the problem is, it might take an average educator several years before they get in the rhythm of understanding, what are the ways and capabilities this app or this service is going to really change my practices? It's never going to happen overnight. It's never going to happen in one year. It's really two or three years before you finally get the level of proficiency, the level of confidence and the amount of time invested by educators to really start to rethink how they might teach with that technology. Year one is just understanding, "Okay, the district just gave me something new. How does that relate to my immediate needs? Okay, I can see where it can save me two hours here. Great."
Year two is going to be, "Okay, this is kind of interesting. I'm kind of curious if I could teach this one unit differently because of this other feature and this other content, the way it's representing it? Great." Year three is now when I'm actually going to be more confident in experimenting and trying more and more things. So, we're talking three years later, you might have enough time and effort and interest to get to the spot where, "Oh yeah, this is worthwhile keeping."
So, the hard part is that we're barely into year three when we have to remember our educators are really burnt out, are really struggling, are really questioning their interest in staying in this industry when it's been so hard on them. So, I used to say teachers have hardly any time to do new tech adoptions, new product, new evaluations, things like that. Now, you have to show your product is actually saving them time or is a miniature time machine, because they need to find a way to save time so they can have more time to work with their students, take care of themselves, do the professional growth they want to do.
There's just such a cost, the price of their attention is so high. So, you have to make sure it's a really good payoff in the end. So, the hard part is that, getting back to your question, we have so many products out there that do a lot of great things, but there hasn't been enough time for teachers to explore, to understand, to build confidence, to really see how those products can help them and their students move the needle ultimately on the student success. So, I think just because of the nature of economics, we're going to have to see a pullback in what products are in the schools, because schools need to be able to meet their budget requirements, et cetera.
But then, I think we need to find a way to get them excited and interested in trying those products they had to let go again because there's lots of stuff that are just are going to have to fall by the wayside. There's going to be some tough choices being made there. But that's why we've always talked about it as in product development, your ultimate goal is, make it part of their essential practice, not something they only do once or twice a year or once or twice a week, but something they rely on all the time because they use it as a way to teach.
Elana Leoni:
But the way you are scaffolding your product in to get that essential practice built up over time, is you're fundamentally bringing in a carrot and dangling and saying, "Okay, how do I triage Maslow's hierarchy of needs, of the most primary needs of an educator?" Which is very smart.
Thor Prichard:
Absolutely.
Elana Leoni:
Because the way you talked about it, the burnout is at an all-time high. And I say it every year, and it gets higher. And how do we tell them and map to their critical need, not like, "Oh, you can do this really cool thing and then they can experience it in AR." It's more of, "You have zero time, let's get practical. Here's the carrot."
Thor Prichard:
Absolutely.
Elana Leoni:
I love that. So, Thor, I know we can talk all day about product design.
Thor Prichard:
Yes, we could.
Elana Leoni:
This has been fun. You are the first guest to really talk about it in All Things Marketing and Education, so I'm excited to get this episode out. But to close out this episode, we like to kind of bring it back to maybe Thor as a human, as a curious learner, and what is one thing that you've listened to or read that's inspired you lately so we can kind of create this reverberation out to our audience of, we don't all just talk about education, we love it, but there are some awesome things too that can get us inspired and inject that inspiration into our day-to-day in education too.
Thor Prichard:
Yeah, well, it's interesting you mentioned that one. I was trying to think about some good answers to that question and one of them was, part of it's having the conversations with others in the field, and I talk a lot with clients and topic industry side of folks all the time, but I really do make it a point to try to get on the phone or on a Zoom or whatever with educators, folks who have been doing this stuff or living this stuff every day, day in, day out, and understand better what their needs are. My rule of thumb for anybody at Clarity Innovations is when we're at conferences, your job is to go buy a drink to any educator, because one thing, their district's probably not going to pay for it. But the other thing is that it's about sharing appreciation about what they do every day.
But also to ask them, "What is it you're struggling with? What is it your pain points are? What are the kinds of things you hate about teaching or hate about the technology? Or what's your thing keeping you up at night?" We want to know, because we have the ears of the industry to help get them aligned better to address those needs. So, we always try to do that. But it's also, just recently we were working with Makey Makey on doing some content strategy stuff and one of the things we were talking to with Jay Silver, the guy who helped invent Makey Makey, and he comes from a background of constructivism and constructionism, and it's fascinating. Again, it's very much core to my own values and beliefs as well about technology and teaching and learning and all that, but it's just thinking about the world differently. Those are the kinds of voices we need to hear more of, to be more aspirational about what could be done with technology.
Let's not forget about Seymour Papert and what he was thinking about in Mindstorms, which I admit, I've only read once and I need to read it one more time because the last time I read it, it was 20, 30 years ago and it still, so much is in there to unpack. But the other thing that's a quirky thing about me personally is, I also like to read fiction that has nothing to do with education directly, but I have a very narrow niche I like to do because it kind of hints at that. And that is, I like to read near future hard science fiction with a dabble in the social studies aspects. I'm not about dystopian futures or aliens and that kind of science fiction, but what does the world look like if we have AI? What does the world look like if we have artificial intelligent tutors for students and every student has that on their wrist? What are the kinds of stories we can tell when we have those kinds of things?
Some of them are boring, but some of them are interesting and they just unlock different ideas. And now of course, I'm forgetting the one book that reminds me of that really well in education, but there are a couple that really tie into that really well, that just sort of inspire, "Oh, I hadn't thought about that. That's going to be an interesting thing to figure out." Ready Player One talked a lot about online virtual education in the metaverse, so that's a whole other way to unpack and thinking about the interactions or roles of people and society and communities, and being part of a neighborhood online, in a virtual environment. It told obviously, an entertaining adventure story, et cetera, but there's also just implications for education. And so, that's one of the things I like to do personally is just, "Oh, well, what books might tangentially talk about education but are really focused on, there's some thriller about science technology going crazy or whatever, but happens to have implications for thinking outside the box for education?" So, that's a good geeky insight to wrap it up.
Elana Leoni:
Those are awesome. Yeah, because sometimes we get so caught up in our little vertical that there are so many other trends and bigger things that will end up affecting us, and I love how you kind of broaden the scope there, and if you do come up with some favorite titles, let's put them in the show notes for people too.
Thor Prichard:
Will do.
Elana Leoni:
Thank you so much Thor, for allowing us to get into this beautiful world of product design and EdTech. For anybody interested in following up with Thor, we'll put his contact information in the show notes as well. Thank you so much Thor, for joining.
Thor Prichard:
Absolutely.
Elana Leoni:
And we will see everybody next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Take care.
Thor Prichard:
Wonderful. Thank you again.
Elana Leoni:
Thanks so much for listening to All Things Marketing and Education. We know your time is incredibly valuable and that you have tons of podcasts to choose from. So, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for spending your time with us. If you liked what you heard and want to dive deeper, grab the show notes that include all of the links and freebies our guests mentioned at leoneconsultinggroup.com/podcast. And we always love friends, so please connect with us on Twitter @LeoniGroup. And don't forget, if you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe to our podcast and leave a review. Every subscription and review truly matters to us, and we're so grateful for your support. We'll also be doing some very fun subscriber-only podcasts in the future, so make sure to subscribe, and thanks again.
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.
Thor Prichard, Guest
I lead the team of technology-savvy learning experience designers and education-savvy product designers and software engineers at Clarity Innovations. We create solutions for our clients that help improve the process and practice of teaching and learning. My professional interests are focused on the intersection of technology and learning. I keep current on emerging policy, instructional, and technological trends to inform when a combination is right for potential emergence in the K-12 education market, generally 3-5 years from now. Having worked at this for over two decades, I’ve seen the work of education happen from multiple perspectives. Whether that’s for clients the likes of Intel, Adobe, Sphero, NWEA, PBLWorks, Kindercare, Common Sense, Math Learning Center, littleBits, AWS, Microsoft, or ISTE, it all comes down to improving pedagogy to enrich the lives of learners everywhere. And in my free time, I enjoy offshore sailing.
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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