Podcast Episode
Episode Description
In this episode of The Balance, I chat with Sunil Gunderia, Chief Innovation Officer at Age of Learning, the company behind ABCmouse. Sunil is driving efforts to design AI-powered tools that personalize learning for young children while keeping safety and effectiveness at the center.
We discuss how AI can support rather than replace teachers, the importance of guardrails and evidence-based best practices, and the role of personalized learning programs in helping young learners build strong foundations in reading and math. Sunil also shares how programs like My Reading Academy are helping thousands of pre-K students develop confidence, resilience, and a love of learning.
Episode Transcript
This transcript was generated using AI transcription tools to support accessibility and provide a searchable, readable version of the podcast. While we’ve reviewed and lightly edited the content for clarity, there may still be occasional errors or omissions.
Catlin Tucker
Welcome to the balance. I’m Doctor Catlin Tucker, and today my guest is Sunil Gunderia, the Chief Innovation Officer at Age of Learning, the company behind ABCmouse. . At Age of Learning the company behind ABCmouse. And I had the pleasure of meeting Sunil when I was at a leadership symposium and he was facilitating a session on AI and really this kind of potential of AI in education.
Catlin Tucker
And so I thought it’d be really fun to have him on the program and just talk about the work he’s been doing as a chief innovation officer, what he’s learning about AI and best practices for implementation as it relates to learners and specifically younger learners.
Catlin Tucker
Well, I am thrilled we finally got to connect for this conversation. So we met at an Age of Learning kind of symposium for leadership. Coming together, talking about my specific conversation was about AI in education and using it to elevate design. So I’d love for you to start by just sharing a little bit about your journey in the education space.
Catlin Tucker
Like what? A little bit into kind of your role and what it means to be like a Chief Innovation officer? For those of us who might not really understand what that entails.
Sunil Gunderia
Absolutely. Catlin,, thank you for, the opportunity to be on your podcast and, and reach your, your, your amazing audience that I know is super engaged with your work. We met at a forum that we held for leaders at Age of Learning, school leaders at Age of Learning, around our two products. But before I start to talk about that, you know, Age of Learning is best known for ABCmouse, which, we’re proud that, over 600,000 teachers have used ABCmouse in their, their, classroom, and many more have even used it as parents at home with their or their children.
Sunil Gunderia
We’ve had over 15 million kids use age of, ABCmouse wow with their children across the world. And it’s, something that we’ve really focused on from the get go. And I, I was taking a look at your last, podcast with, Rebecca Winthrop and Jenny Anderson, and they talked about engagement at the teenage years.
Sunil Gunderia
And, and you look at engagement and learning and how important that is. And starting out early. And a big part of, ABCmouse’s success has been that we. Yes, 100%, you know, research based learning is very important and understanding how to do that. But that goes hand in hand with engagement. And I think that is something that we’ve done in spades with ABCmouse.
Sunil Gunderia
And it’s we’re it works for kids. So kids going up to the time they go to school. And ABCmouse is offered to parents directly to use at home. In addition to offering it free to teachers to use in their classroom. That product in particular really has built trust of parents, because it’s not just something that kids do for fun.
Sunil Gunderia
They do it because they learn, but they have fun learning. And it really sets up that mindset of that. Learning is fun. And unfortunately, a lot of times when kids transition from being in home to going to school, learning doesn’t loses that element, of delight. And it’s something that we really try to capture in our products.
Sunil Gunderia
And it’s something that I, you know, we care deeply about. Now, you know, my title is, unique. And I’m sure the title Chief Innovation Officer means a lot of different things, a lot of different companies. I would say that, the core of it and, and really the, the experience that I’ve had at Age of Learning has been to build off of our understanding of what motivates kids to learn what, what empowers the adults around them to support the kids and learning and look at spaces that really need to, that we need, need to address.
Sunil Gunderia
We’ve been really fortunate as a company that we’ve had a lot of success on our consumer product with ABCmouse and I for the last ten years have been able to focus on, all right, how do we solve, the, you know, the next big challenge, which if you look at it from, a overall US perspective, it’s a proficiency in math and reading for young learners with, you know, over 70% of our kids not reaching, proficiency in math and reading.
Sunil Gunderia
And that has been kind of become something that, we felt like as a company that we had a lot of the data, a lot of the research, and honestly, a lot of the, financial wherewithal to start tackling. And that allowed me in a role at the time I was chief strategy officer. But it’s very similar.
Sunil Gunderia
You know, it’s focused on R&D and looking at how do we make systems change and what that involve was like, what, you know, breaking down what goes into learning, to start with. So if you think about the learning sciences, you know, how do we as humans best learn, what should children’s learn? And a lot of the stuff you talk about in terms of how do we personalized learning so that it works for every child, that allowed me to develop out of team of expert, PhDs, teachers, master teachers who really understood learning.
Sunil Gunderia
And then our focus was then how do we create a create products, which we have my math academy in my reading academy that work towards that was the end of improving outcomes for all children. And, that involved creating a personalized mastery learning system, that we have three patents on, and then taking that system because not enough to have patents, it’s not enough to have research, but then showing what can be effective.
Sunil Gunderia
And that’s what we’re really proud about is the evidence that we have that our products, my math and my reading Academy, have 25 studies that show they work in classrooms. And not only do they work in classrooms, they empower the teachers and the parents that use them to use data to better inform their own instruction and support a child’s learning.
Sunil Gunderia
So that’s a lot to say. I would say the last part of it is now, a lot of my work is focused on how do we actually make that system change. So working with policymakers, educators at the district level, at the teacher level, to really understand what evidence is, to understand how we focus on outcomes and, and make sure we’re, we’re we’re looking at the end game being about student results and not just technology and tools.
Sunil Gunderia
It has to be about results.
Catlin Tucker
Know for sure. And so there’s obviously a ton of excitement and fear around AI and education, the role AI is playing in different programs and edge tools that are popping up. How do you kind of see AI being thoughtfully integrated into learning? Because I know there’s from my very first, appearance at a symposium, they’re talking about the role of AI in some of the work you guys are doing.
Catlin Tucker
And you just got back from, an event at Harvard around AI in early, literacy or early education. I’m just curious, like, what is the thinking for you all around that what are the what’s the excitement? What are maybe the fears you have at your level when you think about the expanding role probably of AI?
Sunil Gunderia
Yeah, yeah, I think we have to start with that. AI is not a solution. It’s a tool and a tool that can make our solutions more impactful and more effective. I, in use of AI within whatever we develop must fall, you know, has to follow science and has to be supported with, with evidence of its effectiveness.
Sunil Gunderia
So, you know, we can’t we can’t trade off speed for child well-being. And I think that is something important. And, you know, as a at this, symposium at Harvard, which was it’s really interesting. Also in, in your listeners might be interested in the work of Doctor Michael Rich, whose organization, the Digital Wellness Lab is, who sponsored the, the actual workshop, which included academics, you know, policy folks, ethics folks, and that industry folks.
Sunil Gunderia
On how do we establish guardrails for the effective use of AI, specifically with young kids ages 2 to 6? And, and I think this cross sector collaboration is really essential, because we don’t know all the answers other than we have to, kind of balance between technology that’s moving really fast with AI and, and, and research that tends to move really slow.
Sunil Gunderia
And we can’t be absolutist about. No, we can’t do X, Y, and Z. Otherwise you’re going to lose a lot of the industry participants and, and, or they’ll just do what they want to do and you won’t be able to, but how do we create, you know, guidelines and frameworks that really help understand what a child is capable of, what they where they are developmentally?
Sunil Gunderia
What does the learning science tell us? And, you know, strong, strong belief around how do we enable humans, whether that be a parent, whether that be an educator, whether that be, you know, another caregiver to really support the child in the learning process. And I think those are all things that come came out of the, the symposium and yeah, we do not have an answer, but we have, you know, what we have is a, just an understanding there’s a need to do more and to, provide tools to the developer community to ensure that, look, this is this is, something we want to do in a very safe
Sunil Gunderia
and effective way.
Catlin Tucker
Were there any like, I mean, obviously you guys didn’t like solve anything necessarily, but like were there any surprising insights or tensions that like surfaced when you get all these different kind of voices and perspectives in a room talking about AI in early education or AI in young children?
Sunil Gunderia
Yeah, sure. There’s a broad agreement across the sectors that we need guardrails. Now, how do we get there? I mean, there’s the tension is what I spoke about. It was like, tech is moving really fast and research and regulations move slowly. And I guess the tension was around. There is a tendency, a lot of time to make pronouncements like, don’t do this, don’t do that.
Sunil Gunderia
And, and I and the tension, the tension from an industry perspective is, is going to be, well, what is the evidence tell us. Yeah. You know, is that actually a thing or is that just a desire. And, you know, how do we balance the, the, the desire to do well or do good for kids with the, you know, also holding on to sometimes, strong rooted beliefs that may not be in evidence, for example, that tech is bad or, you know, even like with the, with, a lot of conversation around screen time, there isn’t consensus around screen time for young kids.
Sunil Gunderia
That’s based on evidence. It’s so. And also what it means when you say no screen time. That includes TV. So we know that would include YouTube. And then there is differences if something like what we offer is which with, you know, 30 to 45 minutes use per week, with our two product, with our school based products produce real outcomes.
Sunil Gunderia
It’s interactive, it’s engaging, it’s under the supervision of either a parent or a teacher that actually makes a difference, you know? And you what you see is a lot of times just, you know, based on preferences, just ban everything. And, you know, that’s just not going to work. So the tension is around, like, how do we know what’s going to be effective and how do we limit harms that we may not know in the immediate term?
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, I, I was thinking about the screen time piece when you were talking initially because I do hear a lot of, you know, it’s interesting, I work with so many different educators where kind of the conversation around technology in classrooms is almost like it’s just this huge nuisance, right? Like, that the technology is such a distraction or kids aren’t where they’re supposed to be online, or they’re just looking at a screen all day.
Catlin Tucker
And I think when we talk about technology in general and then obviously now like AI and the role, the expanding role that AI tools and apps might play in classrooms, I’m curious what you think, because I have my own perspective about what these tools and what this technology can allow educators to do that they’re not currently able to do in classrooms.
Catlin Tucker
I’m curious what you think. You know, when you hear people express concern about like AI taking teachers jobs and, kind of eliminating human connection in a classroom at do you think that like, really it’s not about AI, you know, replacing teachers, but maybe allowing the role of the teacher to evolve in ways that really needs to start happening?
Catlin Tucker
I’m just curious, you’re I’m sure you guys think about these things all the time.
Sunil Gunderia
But do we do we think about it a lot and we strongly believe in, in teacher augmentation using technology. I mean, that’s been a real core to our work. If I, you know, I mentioned our patents around my math and my reading academy, which are personalized mastery learning systems. And I know, Catlin, that’s something that you believe in, that we need to, go, you know, move away from the one size fits all model and realize and be able to teach to the great variability that exists in the classroom.
Sunil Gunderia
And what programs like ours allow you to do is take student data on where they are in their learning process based on, and the way a student would enter, our programs, my math or my reading academy, is that we have a, one. And both of the programs are game based. So a student comes into this with, learning that’s in context that we use games to, allow them to learn.
Sunil Gunderia
And, but what we start with is a, is a placement test that understand. And when I say test, it’s a game. But the game tells us what a student brings into the learning situation, and then serves them up, what they’re ready to learn next and provide scaffolded support. And they progress to mastery. So every single child receives a personalized, a personalized, learning path for their progress.
Sunil Gunderia
And what we do because we realize that learning on our platform does not mean that learning is going to transfer. And we enable the teacher then with, you know, rich data on what every where, every child in their classroom is. And now when the when this teacher interacts with the student, they’re able to do it based on where the student is in their learning trajectory and what they can do next to either help transfer that knowledge, support them if they’re struggling, or, you know, or bring in, you know, extra curricular stuff because they’re doing so well.
Sunil Gunderia
And we’ve seen all of these scenarios through our data. And yes, so this the model shifting, it’s knowing that we have this great struggle with so many of our kids not reaching proficiency in foundational subjects like math and reading does suggest that we need a different way to approach, education. I and technology products can enable that.
Sunil Gunderia
And it can, I believe, enrich a data driven approach to education where the educators can really focus on being, or, or they can add to that focus or do more around enrichment and, and support and coaching for the student in terms of, you know, learning. And I think that’s, exciting, especially if we start moving the needle in terms of outcomes because we have to do that.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. I there is an interesting graphic that somebody, I think the first time I was at this symposium shared and it almost looked like, kind of a student walking up, kind of like a brick road. And it was showing how so often, like, there was green bricks and red bricks, and the red bricks were like the concepts or the skills where they weren’t proficient and they, they hadn’t mastered those.
Catlin Tucker
But then showing how so often we’re building on this increasingly weak foundation for learners and how using some of these personalized programs, really, to your point, helps us to identify and target what are the concepts or skills students haven’t mastered? Where might they need a teacher to intervene with some kind of additional instruction guided modeling support? Or, you know, to your point, like assisting transfer so that students really can develop the firm foundation on which they’re going to need to build, especially when we’re talking about things like math and reading and those kind of literacy skills.
Sunil Gunderia
What you saw is our what we call our architecture of understanding. And we think about that for every student is, and you think and learning is works at that, right? You, you learn the most basics and then you build on those skills. But if you have weakness in your foundation or practice, as we like to call it, what we find is that those cracks, we reemerge over and over again, and you can imagine for a first grader coming in or a teacher with 25 kids in their first grade classroom, they have they have 25 kids that are coming in that are going to be all over the place.
Sunil Gunderia
And, I’m a big fan of Todd Rose and, the end of average. And, you know, we know and it relates a lot to the work you’ve been doing and how you think about, personalizing learning. Is it’s unfair to ask a teacher to be able to do that for 25 kids? You just you just don’t have the time or resources.
Sunil Gunderia
I mean, we’re breaking it down. Let’s say that you have a 60 minute math session. You basically have two minutes per child. If you have just over two minutes for a child, you know, in a 60 minute period. So how much can you personalize? So I think where this really works is where technology can serve to identify where red bricks are and to, to, to, strengthen the foundation, where, you know, a first grade teacher where a kid has or a student has issues with pre-K skills or kindergarten skills.
Sunil Gunderia
Those can get handled, you know, through the program. And yet a student that’s ready to advance is ready to move on to second grade or a or above can also do that as well. And, you know, the teacher then can make a decision on where do I want to focus my time, what do I need to do with small groups?
Sunil Gunderia
And, you know, how do I just make it so that I can actually address the variability that exists in every classroom?
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. And it’s so interesting because I work so often with educators around how do you design in order to be able to work with small groups and pull them? And there’s still this, like tension of, you know, no, I need to present everything to the whole group and then whatever, it doesn’t work. I’ll fill in those gaps and holes in small group, and I wish we could really find those tools and opportunity to, like, release some of that load over to tech and over to programs.
Catlin Tucker
So teachers are really free to say, I don’t have to march this class full of different learners in different places with different needs through this kind of set lesson. Instead, I can allow them that opportunity to self pace a little bit through a program, follow the pathway that really speaks to their specific needs so that now as a teacher, I can do I can have a much bigger impact by pulling those small groups for whatever specific instructional needs that they might have.
Catlin Tucker
And I feel like we’re at this moment in education where, like teachers know, the whole group approach isn’t really serving them or most of their students, but just this intense fear of like letting tech do what tech does well. So like, we can do what humans do well and work with these small groups to meet their needs. It’s it’s fascinating.
Sunil Gunderia
You know, it’s, rethinking that approach. And I and I know it’s hard the and so much instruction is, I do we do, you do and perhaps it needs to be flipped. You do and then I do based on it being based on what you’ve done and what I understand about you. I mean, our data is pretty clear.
Sunil Gunderia
There isn’t. You know, we don’t see averages emerging, right? And there’s so much variability within a class that there is not a, a, a, a, cluster around the norm right there. So how much of that I do from a teacher, you know, stage on the stage teaching is actually who’s it reaching. If anyone in the classroom where they’re right at their zone of proximal development.
Sunil Gunderia
So you know, and it also then impacts engagement because if you.
Catlin Tucker
Oh yeah.
Sunil Gunderia
You know I, you know I come out of the games business I worked at Disney for 11 years working on mobile gaming. And you know, the idea of, of flow is, is really similar to the idea from Vygotsky, about, you know, zone of proximal development that you, you have to be in to achieve optimal, motivation. You need to be at that point, what a if you’re playing a game, what you’re ready to take on in the game next, if you’re learning what you’re ready to learn next, it just needs to be at that, right level of difficulty.
Sunil Gunderia
And that optimizes motivation and interest. And I think that is, where, like, you know, my background in gaming and then, you know, kind of the work we’ve done and why we felt like a game based approach would be so, so empowering and, and make a difference from a motivation perspective for, for students.
Catlin Tucker
Absolutely. I, I go into so many different classrooms and I’ve, experiences myself as an educator, but I think so many of the, the classroom management issues that teachers encounter, so much of the frustration around lack of student engagement, a lack of general motivation for learning, is blossoming out of the misalignment between the pace at which the learning is moving and the pace at which learners actually needed to move.
Catlin Tucker
It’s also the kind of like in the mismatch of the complexity and rigor for what they’re ready for. To your point, and if we could find ways to kind of meet students where they’re at individually, allowing more control over that pace and pathway, I just think so much of that just challenge in classrooms would be dramatically reduced if not eliminated for from my perspective.
Catlin Tucker
So, I think the engagement motivation piece, which is something a lot of teachers talk about, is a real benefit of, like, hey, let’s reimagine some of the ways that we do this work. So hopefully we’re keeping these kids excited to learn and engaged in the process.
Sunil Gunderia
Indeed. And, you know, that is, you know, in addition to the research that shows that our product, accelerates learning, improves results, gets better outcome outcomes, are we our research also tells us, because we interview and survey teachers as a part of what we do, that not only the teachers are seeing that gains those gains that we’re reporting to our research.
Sunil Gunderia
It in their classrooms, they’re seeing three things that, that are really, I think, long term important. And it was intentional in our design. We, we designed for motivation and, and it’s improved interest by the student in their learning. And that’s the subject areas of reading and math. More confident in their abilities in reading and math and more confident overall.
Sunil Gunderia
And the third one is more confident overall as a learner and identification of themselves as a learner. And that learning happens through some trial and error and making mistakes. And the you, you know, and the you know, the last piece of it is like the resilience that you gain because you know that. All right, I’m going to make a mistake.
Sunil Gunderia
But I can learn from that mistake. And so rather than say, I don’t know something, it becomes I don’t know something yet. And through a learning process I can learn anything. And I think, you know, changing that mindset will have benefit not only especially because we start at such a young age. Our programs are focused on kids from pre-K to second grade.
Sunil Gunderia
Yeah, that if we can get them there with both the mindset and confidence and interest in learning at a young age, and we can get them with the actual, foundational skills they need, I think we do create an environment where more kids will thrive and flourish.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. And honestly, like the young ones as the disengaged teenager authors like share in that book, young kids are generally really positive about learning. They’re really positive about school. They’re excited to be there for the most part. But I think part of what I have to imagine happens for learners after third grade is there are a lot of changes that happen in the way I think that we approach teaching third grade and up in elementary, but I also think like third grade stuff starts to get hard.
Catlin Tucker
And without that foundational strength of like, I have what I need to be successful to build in terms of these math or literacy skills, then I can see kids just getting so frustrated and disillusioned with like, wow, I don’t feel like I can be successful in here. Which is why I think that focus on foundational skill building for really young learners is probably critical to set them up, to continue loving school and being excited about this experience.
Sunil Gunderia
And in, in, you know, putting going back to the architecture, my understanding is it’s really especially hard if you have weakness in your foundation. Getting into third grade to third grade does get so much more complex. And, you know, the expectation is that you’re going from learning to read, learning to decode, to actually reading with, you know, with a high level of comprehension and vocabulary.
Sunil Gunderia
And as we know, we have a very diverse population that has a lot of different lived experiences. And, you know, a lot of the context that’s missing in reading, is about prior knowledge. I believe in some of the things that we see. So if you can’t decode, going into second grade and third grade or you having issues with decoding, yeah, you’re going to have, you know, school becomes really difficult and really hard.
Sunil Gunderia
And, you know, that’s why, it’s so important. And we’ve seen some really great gains. I want to talk about one example in really early, in, pre-K with my reading academy. And this also speaks to like some of the role as a chief innovation officer because it is at Florida’s, we had a, implementation.
Sunil Gunderia
We’ve been implemented in Florida, in Palm Beach County, which, despite what people think about Palm Beach, it’s actually a very diverse county with almost 50% of the students there. Eligible for free or reduced price lunch or, you know, being title one student. So there’s, there’s, you know, a lot of different parts of Palm Beach.
Sunil Gunderia
We, we work with the early learning Coalition of Palm Beach there, to offer my reading Academy to about 8000, 8000 students, of which 5000 actually used our program and, or my reading academy over the course of a school year. Florida’s added, measurement in, in pre-K to determine whether, we determine progress. They as a business community, and as from a legislative perspective, they have a target by 2030 of getting all kids kindergarten ready.
Sunil Gunderia
That means ready to read. So they come in ready to adjust school, you know, very important and I think very interesting that a the business community, because this is backed by the Chamber of Commerce, the blueprint Florida blueprint to actually move the needle in terms of early learning, because they’ve identified that as so powerful in terms of changing the trajectory of their workforce and the ability, to grow and thrive.
Sunil Gunderia
Both as an economy and for their populace. And so we worked with, the Early Learning Coalition there to offer our program 37 minutes of using my Reading Academy per week on an average of just about 20 weeks over the school year. So a 45% improvement in literacy results at the end of the school year, based on looking at pre and post results and that kind of moving the needle and you know having and Florida system is universal access.
Sunil Gunderia
So anybody can go to pre-K. It’s available to all. You know now that allows us to have conversations at the state level, not only in Florida and say, look, high quality programs that are offered. Yeah. And I forgot one thing. The model is also interesting in that it’s a, mixed delivery model. It’s not just to a district school.
Sunil Gunderia
It can be a child care center, privately owned, publicly owned, parochial. It doesn’t matter. They’re all eligible to offer, pre-kindergarten classes, and all students can go there, without any eligibility requirement. So there’s no limitation on income. That so now you can have a conversation about like, look, you have a program that’s really lifting results, making a difference.
Sunil Gunderia
What else can we do? How else may we want to approach this legislatively. And, you know, as you look at the investment in pre-K across the country, does this now start serving a model so other states can replicate? Like, not only do we want to offer pre-K because it’s good and there’s really, you know, a lot of relationship, building and social emotional skills that happen during that time that you want to develop.
Sunil Gunderia
But can we get academic results that are really going to help our low income populations, thrive when they come into a district environment, into the K-12 environment?
Catlin Tucker
Wow. No, that’s really exciting because I know there are so many, so many conversations happening in education about early, you know, education and how to strengthen it and how to make sure kids like, to your point, are walking into kindergarten with the skills and, you know, the basic foundational stuff they need to be successful right off the bat.
Catlin Tucker
So that’s exciting. So when we think about, like, AI and young children, is there anything for you as chief Innovation officer or like moving forward, thinking about your products and offerings? That is something that concerns you or worries you or is just on your mind because, I mean, we talk about AI even like when I talk to secondary teachers who are experimenting with certain AI tools, there’s like concerns about everything from what kids share to safety to accuracy to all those pieces.
Catlin Tucker
I’m just curious from your perspective for early in education yet such young learners, is there anything specific that you think about or you’re concerned about?
Sunil Gunderia
Yeah, I would say that, first, you know, look at and we’ve talked about this previously. Innovate. Edu offers, something called the Ed safe. I framework that it’s called safe. It’s, you know, is the technology safe, accountable, fair and effective? I think, you know, looking at, for all of us looking at it through that, a level, that lens, AI does tend to have a lot of bias.
Sunil Gunderia
And, it can go off the rails and we hear a lot of horror stories about that. But I think the most basic, the basic way to look at it is it’s safe and safe, you know, is, is, a big word. And, you know, as an educator, you need to be you need to be certain or as a parent, that is what are the potential harms and what can I find out about that?
Sunil Gunderia
For a product, is it grounded in how kids learn? If it’s a learning product, is it developmentally appropriate? You know, think through that lens. And then, you know, as a, as a, with a big focus on evidence, is it effective? Look at what research they’ve done. Is it going to improve? What is it going to help?
Sunil Gunderia
Look at the theory of change at a minimum, like what is this product going to do for my child and or my student? And using that as a lens I think is really helpful. I would say that, I’m, I’m a techno optimist, but also a techno realist and that, I see, there is, great potential, but I you got to weigh the peril as well.
Sunil Gunderia
And I think that, you know, I wish I could have a clear answer on this. It is, incredibly great times to live in. We can do so much more. We see with ABCmouse in our in our, in our company that we’re able to do things that we couldn’t do. One of the things that we just recently launched that would have taken, you know, a long time, multiple years to develop.
Sunil Gunderia
The for is multilingual support in our, in our reading and math products. Right. So how can we you know, now we can do it, you know, address a lot of languages, not only for the student as they use our product, but also at home for parents that we know in the school setting are going to speak many, many different heritage languages so we can get them more involved as well.
Sunil Gunderia
Those are all on the potential side. Again, I think on the, parallel side, we just have to continue to evaluate, you know, use a lens of is it safe and, and, and keep vigilant about that. Yeah. I, I that is, that is the way I would approach it or how I think about it.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. And so there’s obviously so many conversations happening about I. Do you have any advice you’d give to educators or families that are really just trying to kind of like make sense of the noise around? I, I know that a lot of educators and a lot of parents are like, I feel inundated by AI and the conversations about it, and I don’t really have a clear sense of how to make smart decisions for my students or for my children.
Sunil Gunderia
I mean, I can empathize with that. All right. I’m sure you are as well. I, I am inundated by AI for my own use. My kids use everyone’s use. Right. I think it’s, you start with them just, you know, don’t be afraid to ask for proof. You know, ask those direct questions, you know? How do I know?
Sunil Gunderia
What say you know, how do I know that? It’s not bias. How do I know, that it’s effective? You know, those questions should be something you’re thinking about, or you should be asking developers, you know, send them an email, send them, you know, if it’s in a school setting and you’re asked, during your actions, you know, a new product that’s coming out, ask those questions like, hey, how do I know this is this is going to benefit my kids or my students?
Sunil Gunderia
And then I would say, save for the parents at home and, you know, in the classroom setting, what outcomes are you looking for? Let those drive your goals, not the tech. It’s not about tools. It’s about outcomes in all ways. You know, think it through that way. Like, this is what I need to achieve for my kids.
Sunil Gunderia
This is what my classroom looks like. These are the students that show that are there. This is where they’re from. This is what they tend to know and not know. And then how does how does your technology program support who I am responsible for? I think that’s the way to approach it.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. And I would love to see school leaders really not just like getting excited to this conversation about the AI tools themselves. Like, yeah, they’re great, but are we actually providing that professional learning support? So that educators know how to kind of like, pull it into their practice, weave it into the fabric of a lesson so that it is truly elevating the instructional, the learning experience, the quality of learning.
Catlin Tucker
But also like, did teachers know, okay, if kids are using this product and doing this self-paced work, what should I be doing? How do I read this data? How do I pull small groups? What instructional strategies can I use? Because I think so often it’s like, hey, here’s this tool we’re adopting that you’re going to use. And professional learning is all about like navigating the tool instead of like, what does this mean for the way we’re actually design learning experiences?
Catlin Tucker
And for me, that’s like an area I feel like needs more investment.
Sunil Gunderia
And I do think that’s going to be a, a big part of the future is these tools are, especially when you when you look at human in the loop tools that focus not just on a single part of this experience, but look at it holistically. You know, one of the parts of the work we did was we, we looked at a personalized mastery learning ecosystem, which not only looked at the student data, but how the student data informs the what the teacher can do and what the parent can do.
Sunil Gunderia
I mean, we have this incredible opportunity to use learning data on an individual student basis to inform, better support, better, better, transfer better intervention on this, on the, on the teacher side. And then at home, this incredible opportunity to really engage as a parent with what your kid learned, not at the end of a quarter or a semester or a week or on an exam, but every day.
Sunil Gunderia
And, you know, if your child learns to count to 20 and you’re able to say, I heard you learn to count that I’m so proud of you, and why don’t you do that for me? That is going to really change the whole perspective, that learning isn’t relegated to this classroom I go to. But it’s it’s at home and my parents care about it.
Sunil Gunderia
My grandparents care about it. And then I, you know, as a parent, you know, you know, they’ve learned to count to 20. Let’s go. Here’s some activities to do with you, with them when you’re in the grocery store, in the car. And that can, you know, really transfer to like learning isn’t just for the classroom. It learning is for life.
Sunil Gunderia
And that is you know, and I think that’s our goal as educators.
Catlin Tucker
I love that so much because it is creating, you know, I always say like learning is a partnership between teacher and learner, but it also is a partnership with the parents and the families at home. Right? The more we create kind of connection to your point about what’s happening in classrooms, create like little windows into the work kids are doing in the successes they’re having, and have a better sense of how we reinforce and celebrate and kind of, support that in the home environment.
Catlin Tucker
I could see just how much more powerful the learning happening in the classroom would feel for students when they’re like, ooh, I can like, do all kinds of stuff everywhere with these things. I’m learning.
Sunil Gunderia
It. Absolutely. And it’s a I think it’s it’s a one of the big if you think about AI literacy for all of us is that this idea that learning is terminal and ends, you know, when you graduate from high school or graduate from college is no longer a reality that we live in, we are going to need as humans to continue to learn and adapt as technology moves really quickly.
Sunil Gunderia
And, you know, our roles change and our jobs change. And I think that’s, you know, across whether you’re teaching in a classroom, or you’re, you know, a parent like you and I are in our jobs, they’re really going to change in what we do and how we deliver what we do and the value of it is going to change in the way we stay ahead of it by just committing ourselves to being lifelong learners.
Sunil Gunderia
And I think that if we can establish that early for, for our, for our, our, our, our students and our kids, that don’t approach learning is and that’s why that motivation aspect also is so important. You know, if we can make a learning something that is both, interesting and practical and, and, and thoughtful about the human learning experience, I think we’re going to have a lot more, kids, embrace that is learning is something I want to do.
Sunil Gunderia
And I love to do.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. Oh, my gosh, I love that. Well, I always conclude our conversations by inviting my guests to share any like, tip routine kind of strategy that they use to create some semblance of a healthy work life balance. To the name of the podcast. So I’m curious what works for you.
Sunil Gunderia
You know, and then I thought about this question a lot, and I’m like, what are my strategies? And, oh, it’s really interesting. And this is, from a balanced perspective, I love what I do. I love my job and, and I, and I really gain a lot of, of, peace of mind by, by even in my free time, you know, when I’m on, you know, what would I like to do is I like to go on hikes and, you know, like to read.
Sunil Gunderia
I like a podcast, but, you know, using those moments to expand my, my understanding knowledge about what learning is, how education works, what it’s going to look like in the future. I find that really fulfilling. I mean, it’s not in front of a screen necessarily, but it is, something that I like to look at. Anything. Look, I like to read, near science fiction.
Sunil Gunderia
It’s, really interesting to me because I feel like I love seeing, like, what we’re doing now and what it may look like from the lens of a futurist that’s thinking about what impact it’s going to have. And in ten years, 15 years, 20 years. So, I don’t know that, you know, if you can find something you really love to do, then it doesn’t.
Sunil Gunderia
It’s no longer work. And that balancing works out. It’s certainly an ask for me.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, yeah. Well, it seems very appropriate that’s your reading as an innovation officer. Always thinking about thinking forward about the next thing or the possibilities. So thank you so much for joining me. I am thrilled that we were able to connect. I appreciate all your insights and just appreciate you being here.
Sunil Gunderia
Thank you for doing what you do. It’s it’s, it’s, great to have gotten the opportunity to see Scotland. And I look forward to listening to this. Thank you very.
Catlin Tucker
As I reflect on this conversation, one of the things I keep thinking about is kind of the disconnect between the rapid pace of change when we’re talking about AI and how it’s being used in all different sectors, but particularly in education, where we’re using it with learners who are young or learners really of any age, and not really sure exactly what best practices are, because the research is so much slower to be done and published and out there compared to this rapid rate of change.
Catlin Tucker
And how important it is, like the, Harvard conference or symposium that Sunil was referencing about the importance of getting lots of different stakeholders in a room together, having conversations about how we’re using AI, what are the things we’re concerned about, how do we keep students safe in this moment where the AI is changing so rapidly and it has so much potential, but there are really real challenges and dangers associated with it, too.
Catlin Tucker
So I really appreciated his perspective as somebody who is like in it kind of co inventing AI powered personalization, kind of learning systems to shed some light on where we’re at in this moment as educators with AI. So as always I want to thank you guys for spending this time with me. If you have any questions for me, you can reach out on, social.
Catlin Tucker
I’m on @Catlin_Tucker I’m on Instagram @CatlinTucker. You can always leave me a note on my website. CatlinTucker.com. And I will also include Sunil’s contact information for anybody who wants to reach out directly to him. And I hope you guys have a wonderful rest of your week.
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