EdTech Startup Showcase

Pedagog.AI
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You're listening to the EdTech Startup Showcase, an original series produced by the BE Podcast Network. Hey everyone, and thanks for joining us. My name is Scott Schutte, co host of the Fabulous Learning Nerds, and your host for today. I'll be taking you through the stories of some of the wonderful emerging companies in EdTech.

In this episode, we're going to hear all about Pedagogy. Cloud. We'll find out how they got started, their vision for transforming teaching and learning and the way They're currently supporting educators just like yourself. My guest today is Preetan Shah, founder and CEO of pedagogy. cloud and pedagogue.

ai. Preetan is a visionary education entrepreneur and Harvard alumni, leading United for Social Change and pedagogy. cloud, blending extensive teaching experience with technology. Preetin's dedicated to innovating learning [00:01:00] and integrating artificial intelligence to prepare our students for the future.

Preetin, welcome to the show, my friend.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, not a problem. Listen, we gave a quick little overview for you, but I know our audience is hungry for more. Could you give a nice little overview of where you're from, how you got started, and how you got to where you're at, with this amazing company you've

Yeah, I have a very weird pathway through education, and education technology. my first venture was in high school, and so as a sophomore in high school, we were doing like peer to peer tutoring as a non profit, that I had founded to provide, there was like an under resourced neighborhood nearby.

And then we started thinking about which ways we could use technology to make all of this more accessible and grow our impact, and that was the first time that I, picked up, a coding book, tried to figure out how to build a website and build a two way platform. Back when this was not, a dime a dozen, that was the first time I actually, started to think about how technology can make, change in education and kind of help us solve some of the perennial problems in education.[00:02:00]

And then that's like progress as the different crises have emerged in education. And for example, U4SC was born a lot out of like, see, the like, discourse, effective public discourse, and like the effect of civics education. I was like a freshman in college at that point, , and I started thinking about the fact that like there were really cool things I was learning about how to be a good citizen in the world, like at Harvard.

But that was not accessible and like the price tag on that, uh, like the elitism, the restrictiveness around it, met that like things that I think everybody should be learning at earlier ages was being taught only in very restrictive, environments. And so , that was like, that was second project that kind of helped me start thinking about how can we make civics education more accessible using technology.

And that's kind of how we've been thinking about U for a C. And then we like, started working with folks, to do really cool, innovative things. We started thinking about what are ways we can better serve our students, how do we use mastery learning in platforms, and we built custom mastery learning solutions for folks.

During COVID 19, we spent, those years, helping fields figure out how to, like, mentate, academic extracurriculars online, innovate online, make them more exciting, and not just, like, sitting in a Zoom box. And we're also helping [00:03:00] schools transition to Zoom. So we kind of did a whole range of things, with that crisis.

And then, with the AI stuff coming out, these were conversations that, you know,, were really like, armchair conversations for me, before, 2023, we were talking about. Oh, like this is the North Star for when this technology becomes more accessible. We can do this for students. We can do this for students on this platform.

We're like, this would be really cool to do. And then we started seeing that all of them became possible really quickly once this technology became more accessible. And we started working on it and that's when we were like, folks weren't really matching our energy for it. And we were getting a lot of folks who were much more scared off by people talking about the plagiarism angle, the cheating angle.

And no one was as excited as me about, like, all, like, all the cool things we can do with technology. And that's really where a lot of the current projects have borne out of is getting folks to, A, deal with the crises that it has created, because that is a real problem, the problems that AI has created.

But also start to see the potential for where we can be as an education system.

Excellent, awesome. So help me understand the opportunity as you see it today and how your organization is kind of meeting learners and [00:04:00] educators in that space to solve for it.

Yeah this is one where I think we still have a pretty hard time as a country, getting folks to build out the digital literacy that I think is needed in order to fully embrace what the potential of the AI technology is and deal with the challenges it's creating unfortunately my go to example for this is during the pandemic, we spent a lot of time building really cool things.

What we, the bulk of my time was spent helping folks train teachers how to mute and unmute their microphones on Zoom. That was, that's just the reality of where tech literacy was across the country. And folks were still learning how to use Google Docs for the first time, and Google Classroom for the first time.

And there was this, there was basic tech literacy that we were building out. While we were also doing some really cool innovative things and starting to think about like, what, what, what push, what can we do with technology? And these days that's that's, it's similar. There's lots of time I spend inside schools working with individual teachers, showing them the difference between a Google search box and making a chat GPT account and putting in a simple prompt.

And then we're building really cool tools that I think will hopefully be the kinds of things that will make education much more interesting and engaging. And so we're trying to handle it from both angles, getting people caught up to where technology is and also trying to keep innovating and [00:05:00] start to see, like where we can be.

Yeah, the pandemic was a pretty big wake up call for all of us, right? All of a sudden Whoa! How I used to do things, I can't do them. the way I used to and now I'm forced to do them a different way and we all really struggled through that. So it's really essential that pedagogy is around for folks to help them hone in their skills and really try to think forward.

Like What's some of the things that I've been noticing in the series is there's a real need for us to change our paradigm. Right? So the paradigms that used to work for us are not necessarily valid or relevant anymore. And, that's where ed tech startups like yourself become, crucial for us to move forward.

But without that idea or the safe, shouldn't say the safety net, but the the comfort, so to speak, to be open to change and open to shifting your paradigm, sometimes radically shifting our paradigms from a learning perspective becomes [00:06:00] really, really problematic. Help me understand your primary product is pedagogue.

ai, correct? Could you explain to our audience what's that about and what advantages it brings um, to what they do?

Yeah, so Pentagon. ai was born out of trying to be a one stop shop for folks for all elements after getting caught up with AI in education and so we have everything from an online accredited three credit graduate course in AI in education to a crash course for someone who is just like what, I just was ignoring all of this, but clearly it's not going away.

We do in person PD. And then we built cool text solutions. And so we have a suite of text tools in our library where teachers who don't want to really figure out their prompts and just want to start seeing what exactly can AI do can use it more drag and drop type situation.

Put in some answers to questions and it gets you some lesson plans, worksheets uh, Bloom's taxonomy, scaffolding. Um, I think we've got an essay prompt generator today. So all kinds of little tools our teachers can start to see like what AI is even capable of doing without spending a lot [00:07:00] of time learning.

What is chat GPT? What is Claude? All that kind of stuff. We're also working on solutions for teachers to use in their classrooms. So we are starting to see more teachers who are like, have taken our courses, read the books that we've put out gotten the background knowledge about where the technology is, now want to think about the internet of tech.

And that's really where I'd like to be. And a lot of the other work we're doing is just trying to, is the word to get caught up and get everybody caught up in the conversations necessary for us to embrace that technology. while we're primarily an ed tech company, we spend a lot more time doing like the teaching, the education, and the thought leadership in the area.

Because that's, I think, necessary in order for that tech to actually have true value in the space. And then, so, and we're working on, like, the tools, right? So, like, the SOCRAT tool, for example teachers can kind of assign custom chatbots for their students, and they can see a transcript of the conversation.

It's much more safeguarded limited environment for the teacher to have a Um, I use AI in their classrooms and it kind of solves some of the initial pain points we were hearing. Folks were like, oh, like, we don't want the students to talk about anything, we want to see what they talk about. But still use their creativity, so it's not like, they're not pre fixed assignments that a teacher can put out.

They're really like, [00:08:00] you can kind of fill out a form and assign us to create a dialogue about anything you're teaching in the classroom. Or have the student use it for, as a study guide um, for you to use in the classroom. So we're trying to like, blend teacher creativity with the tech in these spaces and not try to Provide really rigid solutions it kind of allowed for like that the symbiotic like innovation between both the teachers and the technology.

So it sounds to me like you've got a solution not just for people who might be, dare I say, completely lost. Which is fine, right? Especially in today's environment, like, I don't know where to go. I'm going to go to Pedagog AI and we're going to get started and I'm going to learn about this stuff because I need to learn about this stuff in order to meet the demands of the workspace today or our education today.

And also those people that, man what is possible, right? So I know a little bit about, or more than dangerous about where technology is, but I really need some tools, really great place to, to get some tools as well. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's right. And for those folks, we also like offer are working on lesson plans. So, we put our [00:09:00] regularly weekly lesson plans for different creative ways that they can integrate AI into their classrooms. Everything from using our tools and not using our tools. But we're just like, how would you use AI to teach outlining an essay?

How would you use AI to happen a conversation about George Washington or maybe teach students and make it engaging? And so those are for the folks who are like pro AI Gotten all that baseline knowledge are starting to embrace it But I just want to start thinking about what are all the various ways that we can like start innovating on the things that we Already need to do education, right?

Like there's There's larger conversations we can have about like where what kinds of systematic and paradigm shifts we need in our educational systems But those aren't coming in attempts In the meantime, like, we need to start thinking about, like, how do we build on what we're already doing? How do we meet the standards that we already have to meet?

How do we get students prepared for the tests that aren't going to disappear overnight? But using the new technology that we can kind of use, while still talking about why we should get rid of the tests and, innovate beyond that in the long term.

That sounds great. Do you have any favorites? Like, not to give away all of your intellectual property, but is, are there a couple of them that, this is so cool and I'm glad I thought about this. , I want to share this with folks.[00:10:00]

Yeah, so this one is actually not out yet. It will be at the end of the month but Socrat is going to be able to customize, custom set of questions for different students interests. And so basically, like, if there's math problems or math work problems a student can kind of go in and have a profile with, oh, like, I'm interested in, like, Disney, baseball, and, ninjas and the math problems are customized to those particular context areas.

And that's a tool we're really excited about, because that really starts to show, like, how we can still achieve, like, shared curricular goals but, like, start to make them more engaging and fun for students. And that's where we sort of really think like, what is, what is the next level of like integrating these things beyond just like chatting as a chatbot?

There's so much more we can do and that's, so we're pretty excited about getting that out.

That sounds wonderful. That's great. So talk to me a little bit about your vision, right? So you're doing a lot of really great stuff, but where do we take pedagogy? Where does it go?

We're starting with a lot of like catch up work where we're trying to reach the school districts who haven't spent the years like thinking about all the different education technology solutions that have come out and are finding themselves like a little bit more flustered because [00:11:00] they're They have to, there's a little bit less of a choice than there was a few years ago.

And this is where, like, I think during, even during COVID, some of these school districts got away with not building that digital literacy because there was an end in sight. We didn't know when, but like, we all kind of knew that this was like, we didn't need to completely revamp education forever.

And so a lot of these districts spent some years, putting these band aid solutions which we, we were a part of, and so we thought that was, that was the right way to, like, get things quickly. Appropriately fixed for students but now we need to actually, like, spend the time building that digital literacy, building that tech literacy getting folks to see where the technology is right now, where it can be in a few years, and what that means for everything we're doing, right?

There's so many larger applications to this that involve just conversations. And so a huge part of our work is just going out there and talking to folks like and getting them convinced that this technology is not going anywhere and then we can do cool things with it.

So that, that's, you know, like our, Our like next five year plan is probably to like reach as many school districts as possible and start these conversations about what do your teachers need to know in order to like actually make use of this technology. Know what the students are doing at home with the technology and also what can you be doing to solve the problems that you've [00:12:00] been facing?

There's ways we can solve problems that the school districts have been trying to like, figure out solutions for that have become much more easily solvable, like student engagement problems differentiation problems. Those are all problems that like AI already, the technology that exists today makes easier.

And this stuff is gonna be at rapid pace. And so the kinds of problems we'll solve even in six months will be even more exciting and even more, like longer lasting.

Yeah, that's really great. Talk to me a little bit about your journey. Like, where are you at now? Who are you talking to now? And then where do you want to build in the future?

Yeah, so I mean right now this is where like I think we're having these fun conversations with a lot of folks who have started to think about these things. And so, there are lots of conversations we'll have with admin staff, and they're like, I've been trying to push for mastery based learning in my school system for years and now I finally have, like, a, like, I'm sure a robust reason for why it's urgent to use the jar of mastery based learning because that might be a better outlook for students in terms of assessment criteria getting students engaged in um, feel motivated to actually like do the assignments when everything can be plagiarized, quote unquote.

And there's an incentive to plagiarize this [00:13:00] higher with like this is the great base system that's like punitive. And so those kinds of conversations are great because those are the kind of conversations that I think can start thinking about, okay, like now how do we build tech based mastery learning solutions that helps students do the right amount of practice, get tested multiple different times with whatever ways make sense for them to show their mastery in the topic area and then build on that.

And so that's where, like, I think this is where so many of the technology solutions we do are custom built. So we work independently with like different nonprofits and smaller schools and we build them solutions that make sense for that. So, a particular school might have a particular curriculum they already want, and like the boilerplate, like, here's what we already have for everybody approach works at some large scale institutions.

But we find that like, lots of smaller schools that are trying to meet the needs of a particular student population like the option to have something custom built. Even though it's SOCRAT, that's the model we're taking. We're working out building like custom school built SOCRAT bots where they're like school mascots.

It's not SOCRAT, it's like school mascot where they're talking to they're engaging in like assignment types of the admin, those teachers have like collaborated on and thought about together. And that's kind of the vision we're [00:14:00] seeing, Chris, is we can really build, custom tailored solutions for different student populations using this great technology and a lot of this is gonna require, really great conversations with folks about, where we're headed what we can do and why we should even think about doing this at all.

Yeah, that's really cool.

In your journey, I'm sure there have been some learnings, right? Could you share a couple of those? with our audience. I really hope that this would have gone this way, but it went this way. And here's what I learned from this, and this is how, we're delivering something new and better.

Yeah, I mean that, that first, the first lesson I think that like, that is like really top of mind right now is the like, the excitement difference between the tech folks and the tech folks and like an average teacher and I think I'm just like, I realized how much of a bubble I was in when I was thinking about the AI stuff because I just, like, it wasn't real enough for me to have had enough conversations with folks on the ground about it.

And so I was kind of in my bulb for years about, all the potential cool things and excitement and, looking at the research coming out and thinking about all, like, you know, I had nerded out about, learning Sanskrit using large language models in college. It was just like, this was all just, [00:15:00] fascinating and cool and interesting.

And then that realization that, everyone is excited about the same things as you. And that there's fear and other emotions at play that you're not feeling and then trying to understand those and build solutions that tackle those first. That, that's definitely been the biggest lesson of the last year, at least.

Even like the book, when I initially, I conceptualized like, oh, we can talk about all the different things that our education system needs to do with the future and our meet the needs of AI. And my publisher's like, well, maybe start a little bit further back and just tell people not to be scared of this person right there.

She was like, we need to like start a little bit with like, why this stuff is even not going anywhere? What are the basic implications of it? Like, what why should we not just like, shoot banning from all of our classrooms? Because that's where a lot of these conversations still are across the country.

And so well, yeah, I'd love to sit here and talk to you about, what this means for, how to conceptualize the purpose of education. What kinds of, amazing solutions can we do to help students, become better humans long term. That's, we're not there yet as a society. And so learning that, like, all that excitement that happened in the armchair isn't really practical.

That's been the hardest lesson to learn, [00:16:00] I think. A little bit of disappointment there.

Yeah, I mean, we're human, right? So, most of us are allergic to change. You know what I'm saying? Like, there's a way that I The way I run my week, it's the same, and if you throw a curveball at me, not so much, and I, it's so funny that you say that because I think a lot of us I, I'm just like you in, in many ways, like I'm a, I'm a learning nerd.

I, I love stuff like this, right? I love new tech. I love to talk about it, but not everybody's there. And I remember distinctly when ChatGTP was first coming out in, into the public realm, it where a lot of people were talking about it last year and I quickly signed up at OpenAI and I went to my team and I said check this out and I wrote a video script which would normally take me, I don't know, an hour in 30 seconds, right?

And it was pretty good and they were all like wow that's really cool and then we never talked about it again because they were so afraid of it they're like oh my gosh this is going to take my job well no it's not going to take your job but it can help make your job a little bit easier and so you know there are people that you [00:17:00] dive into the deep end of the pool and are ready to get going.

But I think a lot of us really just prefer the, hey, I need to kind of wade in from the shallow end and, and feel good about that. So I think that that's a really great learning and really glad that you shared that with us. It's super important, right? So yeah, getting people all on board and providing that visibility to what could be and how it could be better, I think is a lot more challenging than we think it is.

And then again, the gut check for people like us is. This is so cool. You can't you see, can't you see how cool this is? This is so cool. And folks, it really is cool. It really truly is. And that's where I think pedagogy can really, really help you. So I think that's awesome. What motivates you if you're thinking about this and, you know, I think about the journey that you're on and where you're going, like, what are you thinking about?

What, what, gets you motivated each and every day to provide more

Yeah. Wow. That's a, that's a deeper question. I think the, the crux of my projects is about figuring out how we can get our students to enjoy the learning process. and I [00:18:00] think tech is like my favorite tool, so like, I like to describe myself as like a philosopher who codes rather than a coder who philosophizes because I think the crux of it is , how can we build a better society, how can we get students to , show up to school and enjoy the learning process intrinsically how can we all have healthy relationships with the world around us?

for each other, whether it be like interpersonal, like daily lives or as societies. And so I think tech is a very, useful tool to do some of those things. But that the core motivation is, is that I think is the, is that can we figure out ways to make our, Make it a bit trappier, I think through the learning process.

and make the world a better place. I think that's, I think that's really awesome. Tell us a little bit about your book. You know, you wrote this book you know, share with our audience a little bit more about it, the process and that, what it's about.

Yeah, so, the book, it kind of does what I've been, like, saying is, like, where we think we, the starting place for a lot of this is. And so, it assumes, like, no background in artificial intelligence, machine learning, or really not even, like, a heavy background in any sort of education technology. And it walks a, like,, a average teacher um, at K [00:19:00] 12 higher ed level through what are the basic implications for this today, like how are students using it to, like, plagiarize, what are your initial concerns about it.

What are some innovative ways you can use it in your, so there's examples of how you can use it to create those lesson plans, create those worksheets, use it to do your own professional development and then it leaves folks with a lot of questions. So this is where the philosopher's side comes out a little bit more, where I think there's, there's a lot of like, there's a lot of things that will change about our society as a whole.

So like, I think sometimes these conversations, having them at tech circles is really siloed to like, oh, like. We can build this tool, we can do this really cool thing, and solve this problem that we've always had. But like, there's an outside world that's also dramatically going to change because of the AI.

Like, this is not isolated, this change is not isolated to technology or technology and education. And we'll have to ask really big questions about like, how do we, what is our economy based off of? Like, what is, how is labor produced? Like, how do we value human labor versus AI labor? All those kinds of big questions will be necessary, like have to be answered within it, right?

Like, The near future, I think it's near and those folks realize it is and that has implications for how we teach, [00:20:00] like what is the purpose of fundamental purpose of education um, is dramatically influenced by what is society looks like and so some of those questions are, are there, so we can start thinking about them.

I don't pretend to have any of these answers but it's definitely supposed to start the conversations. I could hopefully, as these changes happen, sort of adapting

well, this is really exciting stuff. Like, as you think about artificial intelligence, you think about it's impact and we can't, you kind of briefly touched about its impact on, on society as a whole. Like, are you, are you optimistic or what, what gets you really excited about the potential? If you could leave some kind of feeling, especially for those people that might be, eh, I don't know about this.

And there's plenty of those people. What would you say to them?

Yeah, I think they're right. I think the book takes this middle line stance too, which is that I think there's there should be guarded excitement. And I know like when I'm sitting in like my, office like coding, it's very easy to just get caught up with excitement. But if the reality is that the guardedness is appropriate, because I it's not it's not taking for granted that this is only good potential outcomes.

There are [00:21:00] really large ethical questions that we have to ask about how the technology is built how we value the labor that's put into even like, you know, the human reinforcement, learning behind it, the environmental cost of the technology and then what it means for the job market, what it means for folks who can't compete in the job market, for how, like, How we train folks to adapt quickly when jobs disappear overnight.

Universal basic income and whether or not we implement those kinds of things. Like there's, There's real big questions that if we don't handle properly, it will be like, harmful to a lot of folks and not helpful. The optimism and I think the excitement comes from the fact that if we have these conversations now if we're thinking about it early enough and we're shaping how the technology is regulated and built and who's in charge of it and even like what mindset are the developers going in with I think we can embrace all of this stuff to be possible.

At the end of the day, we, like humans, are in control of the technology right now. And so if we're, finding ways to think critically about it, deeply about it, to make it productive for society, I'm optimistic that that is, that can be, you know. But I share the guardedness about like, I'm not sleeping soundly at night thinking that everything will be 100 percent okay [00:22:00] without a lot of influence from a lot of different folks playing a role in that.

I think that's the world we live in today, really, is this idea that, the responsibility and the onus around all the change and what I'm going to learn from it is really up to me, right? So I, you know, it's really important that we educate ourselves. It's really important that you you know, whatever information that you get, that you get a second opinion, that, that you.

that you're well versed in all this kind of stuff. I think we've had a decade or or so of just kind of listening to what everybody's going to tell us and I think it's really important for us to be educated, to be to be learned in in what's going on around us so that we can lead people forward in a way that is based on.

You know, based on what we've learned and not necessarily what somebody else might be telling me, which is cool. We're getting to that point where we're, gonna need to start wrapping up. So what I'd like to do is give you the opportunity to, share with folks some things that you think are really important that we haven't had an opportunity to talk about yet.

And kind [00:23:00] of leave them with a summary of where you're at, where you're going and what's important to you.

I think the key message is that, everything that motivates us as educators has not changed overnight. The kinds of things that, people go into education for, the kind of impact they want to have intrinsically what excites them about the life of moment in a classroom what makes them feel nice about a particular letter from a student years later all of those things have not changed dramatically, and so while there's a lot of rhetoric about education being completely, revamped overnight, and everything being, like, everything as we know it being done.

The human elements of education are the same. The elements that, motivate teachers, the reasons why we want to have a public education system, those are all the same. And so, I'm hoping folks can kind of take some time to think, okay, there are lots of differences out there. And how can we reconcile those two things?

How can we continue to enjoy the parts of education that we find fruitful continue to do the things we want to do for our students, but use the technology that's out there in ways that serves them better and not stuff. And I'm hoping that some of our work helps folks start to see some of those pictures and do some of that as well.

Fantastic. Could you do me a favor? Could you let our audience know how they can get ahold of you?[00:24:00]

Our Instagram is by first place that I recommend folks check out. It's at pedagogycloud. We post whatever updates are most necessary for teachers to know. We post prompts and examples on there all sorts of like, whatever you need to say about AI in education, you kind of want to filter out the noise.

Our Instagram is a great starting place. And then AI in the Future of Education, Teaching in the Age of Artificial Intelligence is the book. And it's available anywhere you buy books and the audio book should be coming out in about a week. So, if you're someone who likes to listen to.

Podcasts and audiobooks that's an option as well.

That's fantastic. Did you read the book?

I was not the narrator, they uh, yeah. I'm like, I think I'm thankful for that, so, I'm gonna,

Hayton, you have more important things to do than to read your own book, which is fantastic. Preetan, thanks so much for showing up folks. The book is AI and the Future of Education. You can get it today at amazon. com. Preetan, thanks so much for joining us today and we'll see you next time. Hey folks, could you do me a favor?

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