In this episode of All Things Marketing and Education, Elana sat down with Thor Prichard, President & CEO at Clarity Innovations—a mission-driven, K-12 education-focused professional services and consulting firm. Clarity Innovations specializes in everything from education strategy and content creation to engineering and design solutions.

You may remember Thor from our last conversation about the challenges of creating effective EdTech products and the importance of designing with learning outcomes in mind.

Thor shares his insights on some of the most fascinating trends and innovations in education technology. Elana and Thor discuss the impact of generative AI, the importance of integrating EdTech products into the everyday practices of educators and students, and the different business models shaping the industry. They also explore the evolving role of family-school partnerships and future trends in product development.

Thor concludes the conversation with thoughts on what he believes are the keys to creating lasting and impactful products in education. This episode is packed with valuable insights and is not to be missed. Enjoy!

Questions Asked:

• What types of products and services have you and your team developed in the EdTech space, and at what stages of product development do you typically focus?
• From your experience, what are the most critical elements that a product needs to have during the design and development process?
• How do you ensure that a product achieves product/market fit, effectively meeting the needs of buyers, users, and the business?
• How do you approach prioritizing feature development, and how do you determine when a product might have too many features?
• Is it better to develop a product that excels at one or two key functions or one that offers a broader range of features? How do you balance depth versus breadth?
• How do you continuously evolve your product to stay aligned with the changing needs of users and buyers, while also meeting your firm's and clients' objectives? Can you share any examples where things didn’t go as planned and any warning signs to watch for?
• What’s something you’ve read or watched recently that has inspired you?

Elana Leoni:

Welcome everyone to our podcast, All Things Marketing and Education. I'm Elana Leoni, and I've devoted my entire career to helping education brands build their brand awareness, engagement, and ultimately grow their lead. Every week, my guests who range from educators to ed tech entrepreneurs to experts in the field, will all share tips, strategies and insight in either social media, content marketing and community building. I'm so excited to be your guide to help transform your marketing efforts into something that's truly authentic and consistently provides value for your audience. Enjoy.

Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education. This week I chatted with Thor Prichard, he's the president and CEO at Clarity Innovations. Clarity Innovations is a mission-driven K12 education-focused professional services and consulting firm, which means they really provide everything from education strategy to content creation, to engineering services and even design solutions.

You may remember Thor from our last conversation about the challenges of creating effective ed tech products, and that is a conversation to not miss. We'll put the episode link in the show notes for those of you that haven't had a chance to listen to Thor.

In this conversation, Thor talks about some fascinating trends in innovations and education technology. Selfishly, I feel like I just got to pick his brain. He's been in the industry for decades and I said, "Just talk to me about what you've been seeing over the years." We talk about the impact of Generative AI. We talk about the shift towards making products an essential part of educators and students everyday practice in ed tech, which is key. We also talk about the different business models in the industry, and how that really shaped the innovation and the moving and shaking as ed tech as a whole.

We also explore the role of family-to-school partnerships and the future trends in product development. So, so, so much, every single thing he talks about, I rewound and I listened to again. He is full of wisdom. I loved how he ended with some deep thoughts on what he thinks are the keys to creating lasting and impactful products in education. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Enjoy.

So, Thor, thanks so much for joining All Things Marketing and Education. It's very rare I get to talk to a... I don't want to boil you down to a brain like yours, but to someone who's uniquely... You describe yourself geeky in terms of product design, product innovation. You also have a hand in implementation, in professional development and you've worked over almost three decades in the industry within ed tech with a variety of different small brands, big brands. So this is my selfish attempt to talk to you about just ed tech in general. What's the industry like? I think for anybody who's listening to this show, you could be a novice just coming into ed tech of what the trends are, what are the unique value propositions, what are the differences between getting into ed tech versus we'll get into some nitty-gritty stuff and some nuances of just what the industry's like, maybe some prediction. But thank you for coming.

I think maybe I'm not going to throw a big general ball of questions at you like that to start, but why don't we talk about just what we've seen in this year alone in education technology as it relates maybe to product design or however you want to take it, but just a high level of we're kind of after the pandemic. Everyone says that each year is going to be easier and easier, but what we're finding is it's actually we're dealing with different ramifications and challenges as a result of the pandemic, but also just as a result of changing and learning in new atmospheres. So maybe talk to me about what you've seen working hand in hand with clients this year in some trend?

Thor Prichard:

And so we really look at what are other people doing and seeing what their uses are and what the use cases are and using that lens to help figure out what it would look like for education. But in the last year or last couple years, we've seen that differential trait to the point where other industries and education, education is not lagging like it used to. It's really right there behind it. But it was this last November that everybody all got hit the same time with a brand new idea for what technology could do, that would be the Generative AI, and that was really an explosive on the scene kind of thing of wow, this can transform everything all sorts of different ways all at once. And it wasn't unique to one industry or another. Everybody started rethinking what their industry could be like with this kind of technology.

Now, there's all sorts of different kinds of AI, and there are all sorts of different kinds of ways it's going to affect things, and still obviously early product mutations about what that could look like. So I won't really go into making predictions or anything, but it's going to change. Everything's going to change. Certainly, the only constant in the universe is change.

But the other thing we've seen really is that, coming out of the pandemic and the education space specifically is just thinking about, it's really that focus on how do you make it part of their essential practice? Because there's a realization of the S or dollars for temporary funding, their one type funding, historical level of funding for education to invest in and support the student needs and the educator needs to help recover from a pandemic. And there've been a lot of different kinds of models for that, a lot of different kinds of technologies used for that.

And thinking about tutoring, thinking about online support, education resources, interactive assessments and pieces like that. There's half a dozen different things. In fact, there's a taxonomy that HolonIQ, H-O-L-O-N IQ put together. It looks like it's got 28 different kinds of categories of product that exist nowadays. From robotics to site tools to apps to content resources or open education resources and everything in between. And that's what we saw in the pandemic. Everyone and their brother had something out there to offer. But now it's that sort of, I hope it's not going to turn into Hunger Games where it's like fight to the last dollar is left kind of situation. But I have that uncomfortable feeling it might be where we're really trying to figure out what is those kinds of products that really do have an essential practice in the classroom. How do those products really become part of the regular educator's experience or the learning experience for students?

Which one of those things really make a difference and move the needle in student outcomes? That's going to be really a test that we have to figure out, and products need to be and you should always be thinking about that. But I think what we're realizing is a lot of startups may not have had that as their primary focus. And so that's okay, that's market dynamics. The stronger will prevail kind of thing, the weaker will be cast aside or recycled. That sounds very dark, but that might be what happens. But I think we're going to see some interesting things come out of it.

Now, the whole AI disruptions last fall is going to change a lot of things and it's a whole different undercurrent about what is product development going to look like? What kinds of products to be built with AI? Is it about making artificial intelligent tutors or automating the educator? No, teaching and learning is a human experience. It's a human interaction based on the relationships you have between your educator and students and students among students and educators, among educators. Everybody's a learner, right? So you're not going to be able to automate that out of a job kind of thing. So, it's going to be interesting to see what's ahead and honestly, I think.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, and there was a lot to unpack because there are so many little nuances and trends that you put in there, but technology is speeding up. The adoption of technology and ed tech is speeding up, and that was something that you illustrated. But the kind of narrowing down and kind of casting off technology that doesn't turn or complement essential practice with the educator, that may take longer, but that also would you say it's also speeding up. Even though I've talked to you in the past and you've talked about education really moving at a glacial pace and that metaphor is moving around now with climate change, but I think that sometimes there is a misconception that people jump into education and say, "Well, I get into a district, hey, I get into LAUSD or some big district, right?

The stickiness of that, I really have to mess up for them to take me out of contract, right? There might be a little bit of truth to that, but I don't think that that's something that you can bank on your business model on either. You're saying, "Gosh, there's a lot of innovation being injected into education that potentially is creating a lot of competition. It's presenting a better way to do what your product is doing in a quicker way.

Thor Prichard:

And the fundamental intersection between those two is the pedagogy. Pedagogy does not transform rapidly. It is about the human science of learning, and it's about how we interact and how we convey information. How do we model? How do we practice skills? How do we conceptualize ideas? How do we synthesize that information?

There's some basic fundamental ways we learn and the technologies that do that are timeless. That's the kind of stuff to focus on. Even though the cycle of technology seems to go really fast, you could have a cool technology or actually a very simple technology, but if applied in the right way will make a lasting impact in the education space. And that's what I think is important to take away from that uncertainty of, oh my gosh, AI is going to disrupt everything. It will, but it won't disrupt necessarily content knowledge or the pedagogies involved and how you convey that knowledge and those skills.

Elana Leoni:

Mm-hmm, and maybe let's talk about business models in education. And I think that that can directly correlate with product design and prioritization of needs and things like that. So high level overview, we got B2B, where we're selling to schools and districts. Sometimes people characterize that as B2G, so selling to governments, whole entities.

We have B2C, where it's that direct to consumer, which some people call it D2C. So we throw out all the acronyms to people. But that is if I have a freemium product going to teachers, or if I'm actually selling out to parents for the learning experience around that. Or if I'm selling just directly to teachers, instructional coaches, whatever it may be, complimentary curriculum.

And then there's a combination of both, right? And we see the ebbs and flows of what becomes more fundable in the venture capital space, and what rises to dominance in ed tech right now. Can you maybe talk about what you've seen and maybe tie it to product development because ultimately they need to prioritize the needs that pay the bills and keep it financially sustainable? So how is that trend affecting you all?

Thor Prichard:

Yeah, it's a great questions. It's interesting because sometimes it's part of those questions are not ones we're really as much involved in, but usually have a lot of opinions about. So when we talk to clients, we ask them questions like, "Why are you picking B2C for B2B?" For example, they might be thinking, "Oh, this is we're going to make this cool widget that's going to be for educators, and we're going to sell it to teachers." I'm like, "Okay, that's valid." But why if it doesn't have a way for teachers to work with our teachers, which we know is a great way to improve practices if you have teachers co-teach or collaborate and planning together. So if you were to make it a B2B type product, now a district or a school could have a way for those teachers to collaborate and work together using your product to improve their instructional practices.

Maybe it's a tool for helping organize and delivering lessons or it's a tool that helps students organize their thoughts into a multimedia presentation. Well, that's something that you have different users, like as a student login or a teacher login. If you're doing B2C, you're not going to get that audience if it has any kind of student facing material because the district needs to be the owner of that license, not the individual educator, right?

So we often have those kinds of conversations. But there is also the other thing about is it's interesting to see with the pandemic, B2B has been the bread and butter of the kind of stuff we've worked with. All of our clients are more B2B, but the opportunity the pandemic made was basically every parent became an instructional assistant overnight. And that's amazing. But the industry had not woken up this opportunity of, well, how can we leverage that?

How can we help parents be better instructional assistants, and what kinds of products or services could parents use to help their children? And feel more connected to their children's learning, and ask the right kinds of questions. So instead of asking your kids when they come home, "What'd you learn at school today?" And they say, "Nothing," you actually have information that you could use to say, "Oh, it looked like you learned about isosceles triangles today. Tell me what's the difference between isosceles and an inclinable triangle." Or, "What's one of those in our house today right around us," right?

So a way to help parents be more empowered and capable of asking good questions that their children might actually be interested in answering, right? So that's an opportunity in the BDC space that I'm surprised we haven't seen in the local Walmart, Target, etcetera, of this is software or this is a package or a subscription. Parents could have to do things to help them feel more connected to their child's learning or supporting their educator's work at home, right? But it's also that's new to the institutional side of education. That side just doesn't think about parents as customers.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. And I think that with some of these recent reports that come out and reinforce whatever we want to call it, learning loss, academic recovery in certain subjects that we've decided that are most important to learning, which is debatable for the future of our learners but-

Thor Prichard:

Absolutely.

Elana Leoni:

... I would say that the emphasis on family, school, learner partnerships I've seen pop up more. And I think you're hinting at that as it relates to product development. I mean during the pandemic, I've certainly saw people go, "Oh my gosh, we're going to sell to parents all of a sudden," and did not change their product, which is a big no-no people.

Thor Prichard:

Big no, no, yeah, saw that.

Elana Leoni:

And you're saying, "Hey, there's also opportunities for other players to come in because market is quite huge too." But I've also seen ed tech companies say, "Okay, great, we have this great product. We're going to introduce all these features and then just charge a subscription model for parents to follow along." So we're seeing a lot about that, but overall, people are recognizing more so than ever that recovery efforts to this scale. If we truly care about the math or reading scores from A-P-E and things and so forth, we're not going to be able to do it alone as educators. And there has to be effective parent, guardian, family type of partnership.

Thor Prichard:

Yep, yep, connect because it takes a village to raise a child. It's not just the educators, right? We're human systems, and human groups don't follow clear boundaries, so students aren't the only learners, right? So all of these things are true, and we don't have good systems that... Because even if you had something for parents, that's great for parents, but how do you get data to and from that Jack to schools?

Well, that's a whole other sticky can of worms to work out because you've got student data privacy. You got to make sure you're getting right access to the right people, to caregivers. Who's authorized, who's not, and what kind of information are you exchanging, and how is it being exchanged? How's it being stored? All those are kinds of questions think about too.

So it's evolving and it's changing, and that's what's exciting about it too, is trying to question some of the assumptions. Some of them are not assumptions. Some are good policy and practice and law about privacy and security, but other things about why is it that the student doesn't own their own data and can take it to use it wherever they want, right? Now, if you're a fourth grader, that's probably not too practical, but if you're an eighth grader, a 12th grader, maybe that is, right?

Elana Leoni:

And can we have the flexibility and ownership to decide what to do with it so it doesn't follow us along too, because there's negative aspects of data, too.

Thor Prichard:

Absolutely. Yeah.

Elana Leoni:

So many things we could talk about with trends in education, but why don't we move, and I'll use a Germany word called pivot. We can pivot towards the future a little bit, or you can kind of take it more of what are you most excited about, because we certainly got some really exciting technology, but when I talk to you, you always ground it to, "Yeah, so what. How does it map to pedagogy, and how does it really embed into an educator or a student's everyday learning pattern?"

But with that in mind, do you have certain types of technology? We certainly have the Generative AI that you're talking about hitting us over the head. We've got immersive learning accessible and available to us more so than ever. What are the things that you're like, "Oh, yeah, I could see our team designing learning experiences this way or whatnot." Do you feel like there are some signals to some trends you might see for the future in terms of product development and innovation? Or are you just excited about a certain trend you want to talk about?

Thor Prichard:

No, no. That's great. Yeah, there's lots of things, but I think the things that excite me are it's the confluence or the sort of aggregation of several things we've seen emerge in technology, in education over the last say decade. There was the big idea of personalized learning and recommendation engines, and those were really hard to get off the ground, and they were kind of clunky and not quite great. But they were the right idea, like how do we personalize learning towards just in time, the right kind of level on adaptation, etcetera.

Well, I think with the kinds of AI tools we're getting out there and starting to look at AI analysis and a longitudinal data of a student's learning, that might make for better predictive recommendations. So that's interesting to see what might happen in that. But there's also the aspect of using kinds of tools that do that kind of analysis to not necessarily make really colorful dashboards for administrators and teachers who don't have a lot of time to look at dashboards.

But if it could just boil it down to say, "As an educator, tell me who are the five students who have improved the most in the last two weeks? Tell me who are the five students who have struggled the most in the last two weeks?" That kind of tool that just did that would say, "How much time for an educator who'd have to go to four or five different products to log in, check a dashboard, measure the results, see the difference, create our own spreadsheet to try to figure out is that actually a difference or not, and report that back to their principal or to their co-teacher." That's a lot of effort that one product could solve by doing and looking at that. Now, a lot of that's like, oh, well, how could you do that, Thor, there are so many different data systems and vendors, etcetera.

Well, that's kind of doable. A lot of those tools are using interoperability standards. A lot of the tools that are already doing data sharing and data warehousing. It's just a matter of building very simple front end to it that makes it easy for educators to interact with. An example of this is one tool that was sort of under the radar for the longest time, but suddenly popped up and got lots of exposure because people think of it as an AI kind of product, and that's TeachFX. TeachFX is a very simple product. You turn it on when you're ready to teach, it records what's happening and does the audio recognition, the auto... not translation, but recognition to know how much time of that period. If you're, let's say a middle school science teacher, how much time would you spend talking? How much time were students talking, which students were talking? So you can get feedback immediately.

You say, "Hey, you talk too much teacher," or, "Hey, you're calling on the same student all the time. Here are three different instructional strategies you could use to avoid that," right? So that kind of tool, which is very simple, doesn't have some big AI behind it other than just speech recognition to know and recognize the different voices it's hearing is a great way for an educator to get that sort of private feedback from an app to tell me, "Oh, hey, I didn't think about that. That's great coaching advice. Here's some things I can do."

Elana Leoni:

I know-

Thor Prichard:

So that can...

Elana Leoni:

... think about, sorry to interrupt, but around-

Thor Prichard:

No, please?

Elana Leoni:

... video and the role of video playing in the classroom, it felt like it was a exception to the rule definitely 10 years ago. And really the only type of educators that were using video to professionally develop were national board certified teachers because it was required in the process, right? At the time, it wasn't even embedded in their phone. They had to bring a camera. All things, think about how easy it is to really get real time feedback that can contribute to those light bulb moments that you're talking about of like, "Gosh, if I'm using a Harkness circle and we're doing a reading discussion, what are the types of students that are fundamentally always raising their hands and which voices are not being heard? And what am I doing to create an inclusive environment to encourage them."

They can alter the trajectory of a student's life. It's powerful stuff in the way that you're talking.

Thor Prichard:

Absolutely.

Elana Leoni:

And TeachFX when they... Even just that light bulb of we think it common sense, but once you put the data in front of you, you're like, "Oh, geez, I talk too much."

Thor Prichard:

Exactly. And it's great insight. It's actionable insight. Its makes it part of your essential practice, right? We're working with a client teaching channel, if a renaissance coming about video coaching and thinking differently about it now where the technology makes 10,000 times easier. We now have technology can start to do thing like TeachFX to record the audio, recognize the difference talker speakers. And doing more analysis and looking at, okay, the Danielson framework and what does that look like for teaching practices?

And gosh, this video is showing you doing it not quite right, and here is where, and having it ways... Not necessarily AI doing the recognition, but easier tool sets for you yourself to evaluate your own teaching or a co-teacher or your principal. It doesn't have to be evaluative. It can just be simply mentorship and coaching actions that you can act on as a professional, as an educator. That's amazing feedback to get.

Elana Leoni:

And tools like that. Sometimes it feels overly simplistic, but within education that things do tend to move slower and there's a lot more built in. There's a lot of nuances and challenges and roles that you would think of. Even the relationship potentially between an administrator and a teacher and the role of professional development as an educator. We really need to hit the ground, kind of dispel the mist there and say, "What would professional development look like if I took ownership, and I really wanted to develop and had goals and I wanted to use tools like video. And what teaching channel is doing is quite exciting around that." So sometimes we talk of overly simplistic things, but there's reverberations into identities and nuances and stakeholders in education.

Thor Prichard:

Yeah, it's an interesting thing you mentioned about oversimplification because it's an aspect of the most effective products are the simplest and easiest to use. And sometimes we think in education and technology that you have to have lots of bells and whistles to equate to a high price tag or a high value product. It has to slice, dice, julienne and chop all in one thing.

Well, no, if it's a really good knife, the user, the educator or the student under good adult supervision, can do all those actions themselves with one really good knife, right? So thinking about the tools and technologies, I think sometimes the product development we get worked up into, we got to have lots of bells and whistles. And really if we just took three of them and made them really well, really well crafted and really well-designed and aligned to the needs of educators, that product will have legs for a long time to be in the field forever. So it's interesting to see, when we think about trends, it's really not the buzzy trends. It's these lasting trends that will make a difference.

Elana Leoni:

And then the irony, sometimes there's the more technology we have, the more we are fundamentally reminded of the power of the relationship and the expertise and the supportive nature of an educator. There hasn't been a technology that can replicate that. And nor are we trying to do that. What I like about what you've said in the past too, how can we make sure that that gets to shine, that maybe we have more time, and we alleviate the nuances and mundaneness that sometimes they're embedded in the profession of education, so we can let that shine, that relationship-driven aspect of what truly works in education.

Thor Prichard:

Right, right. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Elana Leoni:

Well, I know we could talk about trend, ed tech, all of the things, but we'll definitely have you on. Maybe we'll dive into more implementation and professional development and the role that that plays in ed tech.

Thor Prichard:

Oh, yeah.

Elana Leoni:

But to end this episode, I would love to ask you, because you run an agency, you've been doing it for decades now. It is very rewarding. I love how I can have a dotted line to, okay, I know that I'm fundamentally making a difference in this world, but it doesn't mean that it's not draining. And so when you have those days where you're like, "Don't talk to me. I just need to look at a blank wall or whatever it is." How do you get up the next day and come into work and get excited until recharge? What are those activities that nourish you to get you back up to speed?

Thor Prichard:

But the other thing is thinking about that I like to do is just try to get in touch again with educators. It's really when I hear the stories and whether it's the trials and tribulations, the joys and the times of just drives into tears. I want to be connected to educators as much as possible. And it's one of the reasons why we as a policy as a company that anybody on staff wants to go work in classrooms. They got at least, I think it's a day a year we do with that.

Probably more like once or twice a quarter maybe, that you can do a volunteer in the classroom because we want that. A lot of times we do partnerships with schools where we want to help beta tests or just do focus groups and be connected. Do some what we would call ethnographic research, be in the classroom, monitor, listen. Probably act as an instructional assistant because we can't help it. We love it.

And have that partnership and relationship with a real-world classroom teacher and seeing and interacting with the students to better ground our work to make sure it's still aligned with those needs and interests of educators everywhere. So that's always a way I fill my cup is just be inspired by what educators... I think my job's hard sometimes, but then I see what they're doing and dealing with and it's like, "I've got it pretty easy compared to that." So I'll strive harder, I'll work harder to make their job easier every day.

Elana Leoni:

A hundred percent. Sometimes on my toughest days, I go, "Gosh," I go and I listen to our... We help manage a community of teachers that every day just help support each other. But also are honest in their challenges and their struggles. And I embrace that and go, "Gosh, they just go through so much and they give their heart and soul." Being able to ground myself to that really also gives me energy. Is why I love how you framed it with the educator voice.

Well, thank you so much, Thor, for all of your wisdom. I've learned so much. I know our audience will walk away with at least five things, and anyone that's super inspired into education, technology, the future, the trend, we will put in some related podcast episodes as well into the show notes. And I'll connect with Thor if there's any other resources he wants to put in the show notes to really just say, "Gosh, we are moving quickly, but also slowly, but we need to move in with intention at the same time," right?

Thor Prichard:

Absolutely. Yeah.

Elana Leoni:

Also-

Thor Prichard:

All about the teaching.

Elana Leoni:

Thank you so much, Thor. Everybody, we will see you next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Thank you all for listening and take care.

Thanks again for listening to All Things Marketing and Education. If you like what you heard and want to dive deeper, you can find more episodes at leoniconsultinggroup.com/podcast. You can also continue the conversation with us on Twitter, at Leoni Group or on LinkedIn. And don't forget, if you enjoy today's show, make sure to subscribe to our podcast and leave a review. We're so appreciative of every single subscriber and review we get, and it helps us reach even more people that need help. So we'll see you next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Take care.