Answerables.com

[00:01] SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high-performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:15] SPEAKER_02:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by Mark Wu. Mark is a veteran educator who served as an administrator, a classroom teacher, and a special education teacher, and he's the co-founder of Answerables, an immersive virtual classroom.

[00:31] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:33] SPEAKER_02:

Mark, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Thanks very much, Justin. It's great to be here. So Mark, you have a background as an educator, but have made the transition into your role as a startup founder at Answerables. Tell us, what is Answerables? What is this kind of immersive virtual platform that you've created for elementary students?

[00:51] SPEAKER_00:

Answerables is a platform for elementary school students. My career in education was in elementary, and Answerables was built specifically for younger students. What it sort of addresses is the problem that we're seeing of learning management systems, which are being used in 75% of the school districts in the States right now. And even though they started in post-secondary and moved into secondary, they're now being used in elementary as well. And what my co-founder and I thought was that it didn't make a lot of sense for the same learning management system to be used for a 17 year old as is being used for a nine year old. As educators, we know they have very different needs.

[01:28]

So the question would be, why are we giving the same learning management system? So Answerables is a learning management system built inside a video game. And it has all those features the teachers need. They create their courses and add their students and their content. But when they're doing that, what they're actually doing is creating a 3D virtual world for their students.

[01:44] SPEAKER_02:

And what's the blend of playlists versus original content versus, you know, things that you already have in the platform? Like, what are teachers putting into that virtual world?

[01:55] SPEAKER_00:

Well, that's the amazing thing. We made the platform what we call content agnostic, meaning that the teachers could bring in any web-based content they want. So if the teacher's using Google Classroom, go ahead and they can bring all their Google Classroom and their Google Doc stuff right into the platform. If they use things like a lot of teachers use places like Khan Academy, or if they use platforms like Kahoot, anything web-based can be integrated into the game. We're starting to form partnerships with other folks. We're working with a place called Florida Virtual School, which is one of the largest virtual schools in the United States.

[02:26]

And they have some amazing content, all Common Core aligned content. And we didn't go into this looking to be content builders. What we had the idea was for the platform. So we're forming partnerships with people so that the teachers who do go in will have a smorgasbord of different stuff to choose in terms of content. But we're also expecting that teachers will want to bring in their own stuff because teachers are like that. I mean, I was a teacher for a long time.

[02:48]

You have your own favorites and you have your things that you like to do. And we're really banking that the teachers will want to do a lot of that.

[02:53] SPEAKER_02:

And I think anyone who's used Google Classroom or Moodle or another learning management system that's been designed for college students or high school students has had that exact experience that you described, a feeling like for younger kids, we need an environment that's more natural to them. We need an environment that's more immersive, that's more game-like. So what are some of the game-like elements that take people through? You know, if I have a video I want my students to watch, if I have some questions I want them to answer, if I have some activities I want them to do, how does that actually show up within that video game?

[03:23] SPEAKER_00:

Okay, so when the student enters the classroom in Answerables, the first thing they actually do is choose which alien avatar they want to be. So they have a range of different little guys they can choose from. And when they enter the classroom, they're actually entering this giant floating island in the sky that has all these different colorful trees. It looks a lot like an alien landscape. So to the student, they then cross this bridge and they're on this giant island. So the student gets that game and play element that we know those younger students need.

[03:54]

From the teacher side, the teacher is creating their content and placing them inside the game on these giant, we call them web terminals. So essentially it's built inside a tree in the game, but it's a big screen that opens up when the student approaches the terminal. So when the student goes up, this big screen opens up and the content is right there for them. So that's one of the ways that the teacher can get content into the game. Okay, so let's use an example of a teacher who wants a teacher fractions unit in grade five. And they start off with going to Khan Academy and the students watch a few Khan videos about simplifying fractions.

[04:29]

And then after that, the next thing the teacher wants them to do is to go to a couple websites and do some practice. Maybe there's some games they can play or something, again, along the line of simplifying fractions. And the last thing is a Google Doc where they go and they do some sort of assessment. So what the teacher is able to do is take each of those pieces and essentially create what we call a web token, which is a game piece inside Answerables. And those web tokens are used to create a quest. So that process that we just described of going through and watching the videos and going to do some practice and then doing something in Google Docs, that all can occur in a different scene.

[05:03]

The students are then transported to a different scene where when they go up to one of those screens and they watch that con video, and once the video's finished, they get their check mark, another part of the platform then lowers, and then they run over to the next screen and watch the next video. Once they've gotten through all of them, They go and they do a little multiple choice sort of assessment, again, just something to make sure they actually did the work that they were supposed to do. And then that last piece would be them going to their teacher's Google Doc and that they created in doing the actual formal assessment for the teacher. And the cool thing is, Answerables doesn't need to be the one who collects all that information. I mean, if a teacher's using Google Classroom, we have no illusions that we're going to try and compete with how robust Google Classroom's analytics can be. That thing still gets sent, that last assessment still gets sent through Google Classroom, and the teacher can have it all in the usual Google Classroom stuff they're using.

[05:54]

So we're not trying to sort of battle some of the giants that are out there. In some ways, we're trying to work with them because we know it's a hard ask for teachers to all of a sudden say, OK, now all your analytics and all your grades or everything are going to be inside our platform. when really the teacher's doing that for the student experience. From the teacher's side, she's probably quite happy using Google Classroom, and Google Classroom's awesome, so why wouldn't they be? For the students, it's about that experience.

[06:18] SPEAKER_02:

So it's a way of building that learning experience in a way that makes sense to kids. It's not just a bunch of documents. It's not just a bunch of links. It's like a video game, and I've seen the power of that with my own kids who play certain games on the iPad that the, you know, the school provides access to a game and that has game elements in it. And those game elements completely make the difference between something that's fun, you know, that my daughter wants to do because it's fun versus something that she has to do because it's an assignment. And I think there's a huge value in that representation and that environment that you create.

[06:51] SPEAKER_00:

I'm sure you're familiar with Minecraft and Minecraft EDU that's just started, I believe, this last year. And you can see that in exactly that. I mean, my niece, I have a niece who's, I guess she's 10. And I've seen her on Minecraft the past few years as she's been doing it. And she will spend hours going in there and building these incredible structures and these tunnels and all these sort of things. And no one ever taught her how to do it.

[07:14]

She must have taught herself or watched videos or figured it out somehow. But it would have taken a long time to learn that. But she was motivated. And that internal motivation is huge. And I'm sure that it was because of the environment. It was because that she was in this place where she could build and create on her own.

[07:30]

I think what Answerables is doing is sort of building on something like that. I mean, we don't have yet in there the capability for the kids to do too much building on their own, although that will be coming. But what it does give them is a space where they feel sort of comfortable and safe and doing the same content that their teachers are asking them to do in the classroom.

[07:46] SPEAKER_02:

And what platforms are students using to go through these quests or explore that content?

[07:52] SPEAKER_00:

We started on Windows and Mac. And then when we met a district in California who was very interested in working with us, they convinced us, hey, you guys have to build to iOS as well. You have to be on iPad. So we spent quite a bit of time getting to iPad. So those are our three main platforms right now. And I'd say we're mostly used on iPad.

[08:10]

Now, I know, as I'm sure you do as well, that Chromebooks have definitely taken a share away from the iPads. And certainly in Canada, that's happening. And I see it happening in the States as well. And so what that means for us is, you know how Apple has the Apple App Store, right? And then you go and you download that. So Google or Android essentially has the Google Play Store.

[08:31]

And so our next step, and we're hoping this is something that's going to be completed by the new school year, is to build for Google Play so that when people are using Chromebooks, they can do the same thing. They can download the Android app to the Chromebook, and then they can use Answerables that way. Because of the way Answerables is, it's not something we can just put on the web anymore. It's a little bit too big. It's a little bit too robust. And because of the fact that we have our own web browser built into the game.

[08:57]

So the teacher, when they're creating those web tokens, when they're creating those websites, they're doing that inside the game. We built in a web browser. So when you try and have a platform that has a built in web browser inside another web browser. It's not good. It's like when you point the camera at the TV and everything goes all crazy. It's that sort of thing.

[09:14]

So we have to sort of stay as a download.

[09:16] SPEAKER_02:

Well, Mark, where did this all come from? How did you get into this position of moving from being an educator, being a school administrator into starting a company and building this platform? What kind of took you in that direction?

[09:29] SPEAKER_00:

Well, I was in my last years in my career as an educator, I was a vice principal and And I think maybe in the third last year, we needed a new IT teacher for the school. And so we hired a gentleman named Peter Cameron. And Peter is actually the co-creator of Answerables and the co-founder. And so Peter and I became good friends and we just started talking as teachers will. At the school at the time, we'd been using Moodle. And Moodle is still around.

[09:52]

It's an LMS and we've been using it, you know, in education. We're just starting it with the kids. That was back in maybe 2008, 2009. So at that time, Moodle was sort of cutting edge. But what I asked Peter was, except for something like Moodle, if you were going to build an environment for elementary students, where would you build it in a virtual way? And his answer really shocked me because his answer was, I would build it in a 3D MMO video game, a game sort of like World of Warcraft.

[10:19]

And I knew from talking with Peter that he's had a real affinity for video games for a long time. And in fact, he told me that he got in a little bit of trouble with his wife because of how much he really liked World of Warcraft. And he had to cut back a little bit. And so I thought that was amazing because video games are really a place where kids love to be. And imagine if you could...

[10:38]

incorporate what they need to be doing in school with a place that they love to be. It seemed like a sort of a win-win. So, you know, we were chatting about this, but at the time we really didn't have, you know, the means to necessarily get that happening. But what happened to me, and we're very fortunate as a startup because this is something that doesn't usually happen with startups, my grandfather left a considerable amount of money to an education foundation, a not-for-profit foundation. My grandfather, I'm half Chinese. My grandfather is Chinese.

[11:05]

And he actually asked me in his last few months of his life to open up a school with this money. He knew I was a teacher and Chinese value teachers very much. He wanted me to open up a school actually in Hong Kong for him, which is where he's from. And I told him at the time I had a very young family and I couldn't necessarily pick everyone up and move to Hong Kong and open a school there. But I did make him a promise that I would do my best, you know, to build something with the money that he was leaving, some kind of a school. And so after as Peter and I sort of talking, we're talking and this was happening with my grandfather, I started to realize this would be a real possibility.

[11:42]

And so eventually I went to the foundation and spoke to the board about this and made my pitch about Answerables and saying, you know, this is really following along in the wishes that my grandfather had to build a school. And the board agreed and was able to fund us so that Peter and I could leave our teaching careers. and sort of go into developing answerables and starting to market it and get it out being their use. So I really have my grandfather to thank for the position we're in right now.

[12:09] SPEAKER_02:

That is fantastic. And I think probably unprecedented, but really amazing.

[12:14] SPEAKER_00:

Well, yeah. If you've never heard of it before, and I'm sure you've heard lots of stories, then maybe it is unprecedented.

[12:18] SPEAKER_02:

So thinking about how a school kind of adopts Answerables as a platform, what are some of the early users in a school like? Because I mean, often I'll advise schools to kind of pilot things, to let early adopters try things, and to kind of get feedback from people who are more on the innovative edge. What is the ideal kind of first adopter within a school look like to you?

[12:41] SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Well, generally, it is a school or a district where they're sort of trying to build a culture around game-based learning. And there are those districts out there because game-based learning is a real thing. And teachers will tell you from when I was teaching my little grade ones, I was still using games with them in the classroom. You have to keep them engaged. So we sought out districts who had that, who were really looking at platforms that encourage game-based learning.

[13:09]

And of course, Answerables is one of those. So at the school level, what you're really looking for are what we call rock star teachers. And I'm sure you've heard that expression. They're in, you know, the districts know their rockstar teachers and which schools they're in. You know, the district superintendents know. And so they will generally point us to those kind of teachers and say this would be a perfect teacher to pilot your platform because they're really passionate about game-based learning and they're very passionate about video games.

[13:35]

And they're just an amazing teacher who's able to sort of take on the extras of piloting because piloting isn't all fun and games for the teacher. I mean, they have to sort of learn a new platform and take time and already a teacher's life is, you know, time is the most precious commodity. And they have to take that time away from what they're regularly doing, learn it and learn how to incorporate it into their platform. But I mean, we're working with a teacher, for example, in California and his district Fullerton, his name is Clinton. And he is just amazing. I mean, he is the kind of teacher who, if we could hire him away from the district and have him sort of be a spokesperson for us and go to different conferences and demo the platform and just get folks excited about it.

[14:13]

He's an amazing public speaker. He's got all the enthusiasm in the world. I mean, he's what makes teachers amazing. But it can also make you a really great salesman. So one day we're actually hoping Clinton might just decide to come with us and come on the journey with answerables. But right now, He's piloting it in his grade.

[14:30]

He piloted last year in his grade four class. And because he's a lead teacher in the district, he's getting a whole bunch of other grade four teachers also on board and he's going to train them out there. And for us, it's amazing because you've got someone sort of on the inside who's then working and getting other teachers involved. And those teachers, instead of coming, you know, asking a question to us, they can go right to Clinton and ask them, oh, we had a problem with this or how would how do I set this up and all this sort of stuff. And it really helps us out having a team player, a team member out there so we don't have to travel back and forth to California as much.

[15:02] SPEAKER_02:

And thinking about that kind of scale up, if you have a first teacher who's given this a try and has built out some content, let's say at a particular grade level, what does it look like to get the rest of their team on board? So for example, let's say I have a rockstar teacher at the second grade who loves this idea, gets excited about it, builds a bunch of content in the game. Uh, what can that look like to expand to the rest of their team?

[15:26] SPEAKER_00:

Well, that's where the, the quests come in. So let's like, and this is actually exactly what we'll go back to Clinton. So Clinton last year built a whole bunch of quests inside the game that he was using with his grade fours. And it was, it was content right from the district and, They use a lot of Google Slides and Google Docs stuff. So we essentially transform that content into quests inside the game. And when you build a quest inside the game, you can make it either public or private.

[15:50]

So you can either have it, this is just for me to use and for any students signed up in my courses, or I'm going to put it out there for everyone where the shared quests are, like a quest repository. And then other teachers can scroll through and see, oh, look, Clinton created something on grade five fractions. Let me check that out. What did that look like? And they can go through and say, actually, I want that for my kids, too. And they can go and grab it.

[16:10]

So there's a lot of sharing because teachers do a lot of sharing anyway of resources. And they, you know, team teaching is a big thing and it should be. It's much better to work, you know, collaborating with someone. You get better ideas. But the cool thing about that in answerables is you can take it to another level. So if Clinton decides to spend five hours this summer building a really cool quest on something for his grade fours and puts it into the quest repository, he can actually decide, or we are building into the platform, so that he can decide to make it public for free or public for a price.

[16:45]

And he probably wouldn't charge very much for it. He might charge $1.99. But still, that kind of a model of sort of a content marketplace for teachers where they could go out there and create stuff either for free for other people or try and see if they put it out there to sell, I think that's a really interesting idea that we want to pursue. And I think that if we got even partners involved, so someone like Pearson or other content providers involved, If they were able to do the same thing and have a storefront inside the game where a teacher could walk up and see all the Pearson grade four content that she could download and use either inside the game, I think that would also be a really interesting partnership to have. And it could be also a really interesting way to have sort of a revenue sharing with either teachers or with larger content providers.

[17:32] SPEAKER_02:

i was thinking about how with say google classroom one of the big challenges is deployment when you think about the district level or the the school level where you have multiple teachers teaching the same subject area um you know and i've spoken with some people who do curriculum and and try to provide curriculum in learning management systems you know the specific learning management systems that their their clients use And with Google Classroom, that has been a big sticking point, you know, that once something is built by one teacher, you know, how do you reuse that again next year? Or how do you deploy that to the rest of, you know, your classrooms? And some of the more legacy systems like Moodle or like Adobe's product in that space do have a way to do that. And I think Google Classroom is building it and may have it out now, but it's been definitely a challenge to...

[18:17]

To have one person do the heavy lifting and then have that shareable with everybody else. So I think that's great that you've built that in. And then to the kind of content marketplace idea, we've seen platforms like Teachers Pay Teachers really explode in the last 10 years where people are making packets and worksheets and different kinds of materials. And I have kind of a love-hate relationship with...

[18:41]

with what happens on Teachers Pay Teachers and have a lot of people whose materials have been kind of pirated into bundles on there. So I think it's kind of a Wild West space, but one that I think is going to play a big and important role because, you know, as much as we all recognize that teachers do pay money out of their own pockets too often anyway, and the idea of maybe asking teachers to pay money more for instructional materials might not sit quite right with us. But I think we also have to recognize that teacher time is not free. That if they can have hours and hours of their time saved by spending $1.99, that is a great investment. That's hundreds of dollars worth of their time that can be saved by you know simply making it possible to share that and you know it's that small payment that makes that whole ecosystem kind of work and you know we've seen people on teachers pay teachers make a million dollars in some cases from the materials that they've shared and and sold for for very small amounts of money you know not a not a huge number of teachers but you know a few have reached that milestone in that marketplace and i think if if that can kind of accelerate the adoption of you know a platform like yours and and the use of really high quality materials that are

[19:53]

Compiled and designed by teachers.

[19:55] SPEAKER_00:

I think that's a that's a fabulous thing So my hat goes off to you and in pursuing that well, thank you I mean, I haven't had a lot of conversations yet with you know, pure investors, although we're starting now But one of the more interesting ones I had I think last summer when I was describing the sort of two ways that we would try as a platform to make money one of them is a subscription model and the other one was when I started discussing this content marketplace and And so from the VC's perspective, when I was talking about subscription model, I could see his eyes kind of glazing over and saying, yeah, yeah, everyone's got a subscription model. But when I started talking about the content marketplace, I could actually see him starting to listen and seeing the dollar signs in his eyes thinking, ooh, there could be money there. When you think about partnerships with Pearson or HMH, or even if you just think about the pay teachers model, where you've got microtransactions happening, so all those.

[20:48]

And he actually said to me, if you guys can survive to the time you get to the content marketplace, come back and talk to me. So we're still, we're still about to, we're still not quite there yet, but it really was something that stuck with me because I mean obviously For startups like ours, you're always looking for an investor or at least a really good partner to help you out with things. And so, I mean, if that content marketplace can be something, once we get enough users in there and folks building stuff, and if we can get some larger content providers like Florida Virtual School in there, then I think it could be something that does take off and is quite big.

[21:24] SPEAKER_02:

Well, Mark, if teachers want to give this a try, if they want to sign up and explore in your platform, try building some things out, what's the best first step for them to take?

[21:33] SPEAKER_00:

It's just to go to the website, and it's answerables.com. Go and have a look and scroll all the way down, and you'll be able to download the platform for either your Mac or your PC, or it'll send you over to the App Store to download. It's free to download right now, and then it's a sign-up process, and you can get started. And we're also at the stage now where we actually do respond to phone calls and emails. Unlike if you try to get in contact with the contact us places, sometimes you never contact anyone.

[21:59]

You'll actually be contacting me if that happens. Or if you call the number, you'll actually all pick up the phone. So we're at a small enough stage now and we realize how valuable it is to get those teachers or those principals interested. So the easiest place to start is the website and check it out. And then, you know, if you want to just go on your own, go for it. But if you want to give me a call or send me an email and say, hey, Mark, I'd like a personal demo.

[22:24]

I'm always happy to do that for teachers.

[22:26] SPEAKER_02:

So the platform is answerables.com. Mark, thanks so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio.

[22:32] SPEAKER_00:

Thank you, Justin. It was great talking to you.

[22:34] SPEAKER_02:

And now, Justin Bader on high performance instructional leadership. So high performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Mark Wu? I hope you could tell I had fun speaking with Mark as a former educator who's become a startup founder. I just really appreciated his perspective on the opportunities that we have with technology to create new environments and new ways of learning for our students. Even within a very traditional school day, if we have the opportunity to engage students in a different way, I think it's such a tremendous pleasure to take up those opportunities. But to do that, we really have to find the right people.

[23:15]

As Mark was describing his platform and what you can do in it, you might have gotten the sense that there are a lot of teachers in your school who would have no idea what any of that means or what to do with it. And you're probably right, and you're probably not alone. Most schools have a wide range of readiness and interest in adopting new technologies like Answerables. So what I wanna encourage you to do is find the right person, find the right people. You probably have a couple of rockstar teachers in your school. And you may have rockstar teachers who are not tech people, who do not want to use a lot of technology and are just great, fabulous teachers.

[23:52]

But you probably also do have some rockstar teachers who are on the cutting edge of technology and would love to try something like this. And what I always recommend is let those people go first. Don't dive in to something new and try to make everybody do it at once. Go slow and let the people who are ready go as quickly as they would like to. And what you'll find is that they pave the way for everyone else. They can do the hard work of figuring out what works, figuring out what's worth the investment of energy and time, and they can make it easy for their colleagues who might need more support.

[24:25]

So think about that right person. And if you're interested in checking out Mark's platform, go to answerables.com and you can sign up for a free trial.

[24:34] Announcer:

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