Speaker 1: You are listening to Bloomberg Business Week. So our next guest,
Speaker 1: we'd last talked to him at what was a really
Speaker 1: rough time, was more than a year ago. Here's someone
Speaker 1: who has brought innovation to education, really changed the space.
Speaker 1: Socn is the founder of con Academy. It's a nonprofit
Speaker 1: that set out to provide a great education to all
Speaker 1: students around the globe and with more than one billion
Speaker 1: children worldwide impacted by school closures because of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: kN Academy, we saw them step up in a big
Speaker 1: way and providing their free resources. Sal is back with
Speaker 1: us on the phone in Mountain View, California, South. It
Speaker 1: is so nice to have you back. How are you.
Speaker 1: I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. Well, it's good
Speaker 1: to have you here. We did talk to you in May.
Speaker 1: Tell me what's been going on with you and con
Speaker 1: Academy since then? Yeah, back last year. It was one
Speaker 1: of those moments where we look left and look right
Speaker 1: and realized that uh, this was us something to get
Speaker 1: them through all of the school closures and the disruptions
Speaker 1: keep them learning. Over the summer, and we saw our
Speaker 1: traffic go about three xx of normal. Normally we see
Speaker 1: about thirty million learning minutes per day. We saw that
Speaker 1: grown about eighty five nine. The pandemic kept going longer
Speaker 1: than folks expected, uh, they continued to lean on it.
Speaker 1: In twenty we saw twelve billion learning minutes on conic Academy.
Speaker 1: About half of that six billion as students and families
Speaker 1: coming on their own. Six billion has been what we
Speaker 1: call teacher directed teachers getting students to use it, and
Speaker 1: we've just been trying to keep up with the demand.
Speaker 1: We've accelerated a whole series of course. Is we're gonna
Speaker 1: be launching science within the year. We've always had science
Speaker 1: on con Academy, but this is comprehensive practice assessment, feedback,
Speaker 1: middle school, high school, early college, chemistry, biology, physics, econ
Speaker 1: other things. UM, So we're excited about that. And on
Speaker 1: top of that, as part of the pandemic response, this
Speaker 1: time last year, we we started a prototype another nonprofit
Speaker 1: called Schoolhouse dot World to give everyone free tutoring, and
Speaker 1: since then that's grown, that's gotten some film tropic funding
Speaker 1: behind We've had a bunch of states signed on because
Speaker 1: everyone's talking about tutoring, but no one knows really how
Speaker 1: to scale it. And the way we're scaling it is.
Speaker 1: We're getting high quality, vetted volunteers from all over the
Speaker 1: world to tutor people from all over the world. It's
Speaker 1: incredible the network that you've created. You were founded, I
Speaker 1: think right back in oh seven, I remember doing a
Speaker 1: piece on you as you had kind of started out.
Speaker 1: What's changed in terms of the work that you're doing,
Speaker 1: the groups that you're reaching, and how people are looking
Speaker 1: at you and your role in education. Yeah, I means
Speaker 1: you mentioned back in two thousand seven. You know, there's
Speaker 1: multiple possible starting points for con Academy. Is two thousand
Speaker 1: four I started tuting family, two thousand five, I started
Speaker 1: making soft before them, two thousand six I started making videos.
Speaker 1: And so two thousand seven was the very early days
Speaker 1: of con Academy. I was still working as my day
Speaker 1: job as an analyst at a hedge Funds and um By.
Speaker 1: You know, it wasn't until two thousand nine that I
Speaker 1: quit quit that day job, and in two thousand ten
Speaker 1: we got our first real film, tropic funding to become
Speaker 1: an organization. But what's changed in the mac grow environment is,
Speaker 1: you know, some of these ideas that learning should not
Speaker 1: be bound by time or space, or that personalized learning
Speaker 1: or that you could get really high quality learning and
Speaker 1: practice on the internet. Those were avant garde ideas in
Speaker 1: two seven. Now those are mainstream ideas, and the pandemic
Speaker 1: accelerated it. Another big I would say condition that has
Speaker 1: changed is in two thousand seven, it was unusual even
Speaker 1: for reasonably well resourced schools to have a decent Internet
Speaker 1: access and devices. Over the last ten years, at least
Speaker 1: in the school setting because the programs like e Rate,
Speaker 1: you've actually seen that close within. The pandemic has put
Speaker 1: a spotlight on the digital divide at home, but hopefully
Speaker 1: it's accelerated people wanting to address that in terms of us.
Speaker 1: You know, in two thousand seven, it was me and
Speaker 1: my closet doing it as a hobby. And you know,
Speaker 1: now we have a twenty million registered users. There's there's
Speaker 1: fifty six languages. We're trying to cover all those subjects
Speaker 1: and grades. We're thinking about even ways that masteryon Kon
Speaker 1: Academy can help you get into college or or help
Speaker 1: you get a job. And and you know, we're continuing
Speaker 1: to expand the number of subjects. We're going into tutoring
Speaker 1: with that related entity called Schoolhouse. So yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot going on. Well, you know, it's stuck out to
Speaker 1: just many things. But you also talked about the digital divide,
Speaker 1: and I think it's interesting on a day where we
Speaker 1: had President Biden come out and you know, hopeful about
Speaker 1: his physical infrastructure plan, you know, and that includes, you know,
Speaker 1: the digital infrastructure that's in our country, how much from
Speaker 1: what you are seeing, the schools you're talking to, the
Speaker 1: individuals you're talking to, how much of that creates a
Speaker 1: real obstacle when it comes to learning in this country. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you're not going to be able to engage in the
Speaker 1: types of things that we're talking about, leverage econ Academy,
Speaker 1: leverage of school house, dot world unless you have some access.
Speaker 1: And we saw this during the pandemic that it was
Speaker 1: hard for schools to figure out even how to create
Speaker 1: a hybrid learning program or a distiss learning program. But
Speaker 1: it was that much harder if you're in a urban
Speaker 1: school district where students did not have sufficient access. And
Speaker 1: even in cases where people might have had a computer
Speaker 1: at home or a cell phone, you you still would
Speaker 1: have had a situation where five family members would have
Speaker 1: to share that same device, or students didn't just have
Speaker 1: the right supports at home, their parents might have been
Speaker 1: essential workers. And so I think, uh, you know, by
Speaker 1: putting a spotlight on that where people have done some
Speaker 1: pretty heroic efforts at trying to solve it. Hey, what
Speaker 1: I want to ask you too is summer programs, summer
Speaker 1: school We see some school districts providing learning over this
Speaker 1: summer as a way to catch up from some learning
Speaker 1: missed as a result of schools being shut down by
Speaker 1: the pandemic. One point two billion in federal funding has
Speaker 1: been allocated for what they are calling evidence based summer
Speaker 1: enrichment programs. What summer programs, what summer schools? What summer
Speaker 1: learning makes a difference in your view? I think with
Speaker 1: all things, it's something where one you have to do
Speaker 1: it regularly, You almost have to create a habit of it.
Speaker 1: And for us, if you can, if students can engage,
Speaker 1: you know, the technical terms is in their zone of
Speaker 1: proximal development, which is a fancy way of saying they're
Speaker 1: learning edge. If it's too hard, they're not going to
Speaker 1: be able to learn much. And if it's too easy,
Speaker 1: they're not going to be learning much. And what technology
Speaker 1: and what kind of academy has always been focused on
Speaker 1: is how do we help a teacher, How do we
Speaker 1: help an educator or a parent, or even a student
Speaker 1: on their own. How do we help them practice and
Speaker 1: finish any unfinished learning right at their learning edge. So
Speaker 1: we have camp con which is a summer program. Anyone
Speaker 1: can use it around the world. It's free, it's all
Speaker 1: not for profit. Where we're saying, hey, come spend twenty
Speaker 1: minuts a day, build that habit, learn at your at
Speaker 1: your learning edge. We have what's called get Ready for
Speaker 1: grade level courses if you want to bone up and
Speaker 1: refresh the things you need going into the next year,
Speaker 1: or you can go into the grade level courses and
Speaker 1: get a head start on things. If you do that,
Speaker 1: and I recommend that to anyone I meet, I try
Speaker 1: to do that with my own children. You're you're going
Speaker 1: to have a leg up when you get back to school.
Speaker 1: Now everything isn't just about the academics. We know that
Speaker 1: we just got out of a pandemic. People have felt
Speaker 1: socially isolated. So also the more time, especially younger kids
Speaker 1: can get outside with friends now that the restrictions are
Speaker 1: starting to listen, that's going to be really important as well.
Speaker 1: We've been talking a lot about the learning loss and
Speaker 1: the academic stuff that matters, and I've called that a
Speaker 1: disaster recovery projects going into the summer and next year.
Speaker 1: But I think that social emotional side is also not
Speaker 1: getting enough attention. You know, it's interesting to con and
Speaker 1: I mean, sal, I wonder your your take on this,
Speaker 1: because you, I mean, my daughter used Academy, loved it
Speaker 1: for whether it's math or science. You know, just a
Speaker 1: great resource to understand sometimes really complicated things. You've figured
Speaker 1: out really how well to connect with students in the
Speaker 1: online world. We know the online learning experience so especially
Speaker 1: for younger kids, wasn't Ohay's so productive and didn't work
Speaker 1: so well during the pandemic. So what's the key to
Speaker 1: getting it right, to getting it or to doing it wrong? Well,
Speaker 1: I think and well, I think there's a couple of
Speaker 1: pitfalls that people get into when they think about online
Speaker 1: or technology use. A lot of times they think about
Speaker 1: the technology first and they say, Okay, let's just use
Speaker 1: the technology, just do something modern, and that's the that's
Speaker 1: that's the backwards way of looking at it. You say,
Speaker 1: what's your pedagogical goal? Here is your pedagogical goal to
Speaker 1: allow for personalization to let students learn at their own time,
Speaker 1: and pays to let them finish any unfinished learning they
Speaker 1: might have had. Then think about what tools. The tools
Speaker 1: might be chalk, it might be the human being in
Speaker 1: the room, or it might be software. It might be
Speaker 1: a kind Academy or something like that. I also think
Speaker 1: a lot matters on the implementation of the idea or
Speaker 1: of the technology. It was a blessing that Kind Academy
Speaker 1: started off as a project for me tutoring my family
Speaker 1: that allowed me to bring up I would say, an
Speaker 1: eccentricity and informality authenticity to the content, whether it's the
Speaker 1: software of the videos that wouldn't have come natural to
Speaker 1: a large company um and even now as we've grown
Speaker 1: and scaled, I try to maintain that with our team.
Speaker 1: I remind folks that when when you have a distance
Speaker 1: between yourself and the learner over time and space because
Speaker 1: of the technology, it's even more to let your It's
Speaker 1: even more important to let your humanity shine. Most people
Speaker 1: do the opposite. As soon as the cameras on, they
Speaker 1: start talking like a robot or a GPS device. It's
Speaker 1: even more important when you're doing a video or when
Speaker 1: you're writing software, that you're passionate about it, that it
Speaker 1: shows in the work. If you don't sound excited, the
Speaker 1: students not going to be excited. If you don't let
Speaker 1: yourself be low stress and comfortable and laugh at yourself,
Speaker 1: well then it's going to be stressful for the student.
Speaker 1: If you're not interested, the students not going to be interested.
Speaker 1: So how do you how do you believe that the
Speaker 1: educational system well entrenched in this country? And I know
Speaker 1: you work on a global basis, but I'm just curious
Speaker 1: about the u S where we know there's tons of
Speaker 1: money spent, but depending on where you live and your access,
Speaker 1: you can get a much better education than others. How
Speaker 1: is it can something like kind of academy and how
Speaker 1: are you working with schools that are maybe undersourced under
Speaker 1: resourced as well that can kind of up the game
Speaker 1: for the kids who are are at those schools. We've
Speaker 1: seen over the last ten years there's fifty efficacy studies
Speaker 1: done on con Academy. I believe we're the most researched
Speaker 1: technology and technology platform out there that if students are
Speaker 1: able to engage in their zone, approximal development in their
Speaker 1: learning edge for even thirty five minutes a week that
Speaker 1: they're growing faster. But we realize that it's great that
Speaker 1: all of these teachers on their on their own, hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of teachers and parents and students have decided
Speaker 1: to use it in a grassroots way. But if we
Speaker 1: really want to serve all students, we have to work
Speaker 1: more formally with districts, and we have to integrate with
Speaker 1: other things that they're doing. We have a partnership with
Speaker 1: n w e A, which is a standardized testing body
Speaker 1: administer something called the MAP Growth Assessment. It's taken by
Speaker 1: twenty of students. Historically, one of the biggest critiques of
Speaker 1: standardized testing is, Okay, it's great to measure where you are,
Speaker 1: but then what do you do with that? So our
Speaker 1: partnership with the n w e A is all about, hey,
Speaker 1: you take that standardized test and then that can inform
Speaker 1: what your learning edges, that can inform a personalized learning
Speaker 1: plan on con Academy. And that's what we've been doing
Speaker 1: systemically with districts. Our partnership with the College Board around
Speaker 1: the s a T, where the official practice partner for
Speaker 1: the s A T. We've seen a lot of school
Speaker 1: districts want to also use that once again, they're integrating
Speaker 1: these different pieces that have always exists as the map,
Speaker 1: growth test, the s A T. But now they're integrating
Speaker 1: that with personalized practice so that they can really meet
Speaker 1: these kids where they are. I'm thinking about the parents
Speaker 1: that are listening uh and thinking about their kids over
Speaker 1: this summer. What's your advice for parents and caregivers on
Speaker 1: what they can do with their kids this summer. I
Speaker 1: would say, depending on the age of your child, target
Speaker 1: thirty to ninety minutes a day of continued academic learning.
Speaker 1: The summer is always an opportunity to refresh and maybe
Speaker 1: even get ahead, but this summer is going to be
Speaker 1: that much more important. Take a look at con academy
Speaker 1: dot org, take a look at Schoolhouse dot world. If
Speaker 1: you have younger kids between the ages of three and seven,
Speaker 1: check out our app. It's available on Android and iOS
Speaker 1: con Academy Kids. It has hundreds of books. It has
Speaker 1: active the social emotional learning, math, reading, writing. But on
Speaker 1: top of that, you build that habit every day and
Speaker 1: ideally continue that habit as you go into the school year.
Speaker 1: Thirty minutes of math and science on con academy, do
Speaker 1: some reading together, do some journaling, get into the habit
Speaker 1: of writing, have something interesting to talk about every day
Speaker 1: at lunch or at dinner. And then on top of that,
Speaker 1: just make sure that that the kids are getting back
Speaker 1: into the pattern of social socialization, getting time outside, getting
Speaker 1: their blood flowing, uh, which you know kN academy doesn't do,
Speaker 1: but it's just as important as the academic. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: always hopeful when I listened to you, what's next for
Speaker 1: you just got twenty seconds here? Where else can you
Speaker 1: take this? We continue to expand into you know, fifty
Speaker 1: plus languages where you have the science push the schoolhouse.
Speaker 1: Dot world just released something called Series where people can
Speaker 1: join essentially a class for multiple sessions over the summer.
Speaker 1: I encourage people to check that out. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's not as delusional to imagine a free
Speaker 1: world class education for anyone anywhere. It's so great. You
Speaker 1: just kind of mind blowing when it comes to education.
Speaker 1: SALTH thank you, Soll Con He's the founder of con Academy.
Speaker 1: Jutting us on the phone in Mountain View, California,