WEBVTT
00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:01.024
Hey, what is up?
00:00:01.024 --> 00:00:04.208
Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.
00:00:04.208 --> 00:00:36.390
As always, I'm your host, brian Lofermento, and you all already know how much I love entrepreneurial stories that truly make the world and society a better place, and that's why it's no surprise to me that this year, we are featuring so many incredible entrepreneurs within the educational space, because that is deeply meaningful and important work for all of us, because the downstream effects, the upstream effects, it impacts the way that our world works, and that's why I'm so excited to introduce you to an incredible entrepreneur who's doing very important work in this realm.
00:00:36.390 --> 00:00:36.972
His name is Dave Martelli.
00:00:36.972 --> 00:00:48.130
Dave is a visionary leader in STEM education with over 20 years of experience designing innovative facilities, creating transformative programs and building platforms that prepare students for the future.
00:00:48.130 --> 00:01:07.427
As the founder of Guild Learning, guild Hall Learning and president of Global Educational Advancement, david is on a mission to revolutionize education by equipping educators and institutions with the tools, strategies and foresight needed to meet the demands of today's learners and prepare them for the opportunities of tomorrow.
00:01:07.487 --> 00:01:18.670
And I would imagine, in a world where AI is rapidly progressing and technology is going crazy, dave's job has become even more important in preparing tomorrow's leaders, so I'm excited to learn from him.
00:01:18.670 --> 00:01:21.120
I'm excited to hear how his entrepreneurial mind works.
00:01:21.120 --> 00:01:22.722
So I'm not going to say anything else.
00:01:22.722 --> 00:01:25.647
Let's dive straight into my interview with Dave Martelli.
00:01:25.647 --> 00:01:34.484
All right, dave, I am so very excited to be joined by a fellow New Englander here in today's episode.
00:01:34.484 --> 00:01:35.308
First things first.
00:01:35.308 --> 00:01:36.251
Welcome to the show.
00:01:37.019 --> 00:01:39.566
Thank you so much for having me Super cool opportunity.
00:01:39.566 --> 00:01:42.322
Hope it'll be a fun conversation, heck, yes.
00:01:42.382 --> 00:01:45.350
And when you get two extroverts together, who knows where the heck we're going to go.
00:01:45.350 --> 00:01:47.867
So first things first, take us beyond the bio.
00:01:47.867 --> 00:01:48.390
Who's Dave?
00:01:48.390 --> 00:01:50.087
How'd you start doing all this important work?
00:01:51.260 --> 00:01:59.495
So my background as a kid actually was I was really good at being bad at basically everything.
00:02:00.320 --> 00:02:05.584
So, as you imagine, in a traditional school system that means that I failed almost every school I've ever attended.
00:02:06.820 --> 00:02:23.063
Once I got beyond kind of the standard grade school, high school, starting to get into college, I really started having a passion both for building businesses because there's something that I could do kind of on my own, and it's something that I had.
00:02:24.407 --> 00:02:36.861
It was an interesting problem to solve how do you get the people that you want to find that you can help the best, and then how do you make the resources available to them in a way that they understand and that they can really take action on?
00:02:36.861 --> 00:03:06.582
Over the time, I ended up getting a bunch of interesting jobs everywhere, from high level positions at startups all the way to, eventually, northrop and the Department of Defense, and what I was noticing is I failed quite a bit of my educational experience, but I was having pretty good outcomes and a lot of the people that were much better off in school system were having not quite as nice outcomes and they were a lot of times very sad with their life.
00:03:06.582 --> 00:03:08.489
So I thought that was a really interesting question.
00:03:08.489 --> 00:03:14.760
So I decided why not structure a lot of my life around trying to figure out why that is and how I can maybe help with it?
00:03:15.543 --> 00:03:21.063
Yeah, I love that overview, especially because you start with failure, and that's something that we all need to embrace as entrepreneurs.
00:03:21.063 --> 00:03:22.085
It makes me think.
00:03:22.085 --> 00:03:23.067
I think so frequently.
00:03:23.067 --> 00:03:29.463
I think think it's an Albert Einstein quote where he said if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it'll live its whole life thinking it's an idiot.
00:03:29.463 --> 00:03:32.056
And, dave, you and I, we're entrepreneurs at heart.
00:03:32.056 --> 00:03:35.929
That would never be able to be taken out of us, and I know that so many people feel that way as well.
00:03:35.929 --> 00:03:37.942
I wish I was introduced to these.
00:03:38.522 --> 00:03:49.768
It's funny saying alternative paths, because it has become much more popular now, but I feel like we were only told one way forward get a job, work for 40 years after we get a bachelor's degree.
00:03:49.768 --> 00:03:53.201
There were like so many rules that we were taught on that.
00:03:53.201 --> 00:03:54.788
Not everybody fits that mold.
00:03:54.788 --> 00:04:02.485
So I'm super curious to hear your perspective on the entrepreneurial level, but also with that educational hat on of what's the state of the educational space today.
00:04:02.485 --> 00:04:03.187
You clearly want to make it better.
00:04:03.187 --> 00:04:03.872
What does that look like to you?
00:04:03.872 --> 00:04:05.278
On of what's your what's the state of the educational space today?
00:04:05.278 --> 00:04:06.944
You clearly want to make it better.
00:04:06.944 --> 00:04:08.510
What does that look like to you?
00:04:09.955 --> 00:04:10.056
a.
00:04:10.056 --> 00:04:26.761
So I've had a lot of interesting conversations recently with universities and nonprofits that are trying really hard to get kids that don't necessarily have the the greatest outlooks based off of either socio, either socioeconomic status or just what they have around them.
00:04:26.761 --> 00:04:29.047
Maybe they're neurodivergent, all those things.
00:04:29.047 --> 00:04:38.517
And when talking to some of the universities there's a lot in micro-credentialing that's going on right now.
00:04:38.517 --> 00:04:47.149
So alternative pathways, right, so you can get certifications, you can go over and get badges, coursera, all of those kinds of things to kind of level up your own personal skills.
00:04:47.149 --> 00:05:02.973
Colleges traditionally seem to be against a lot of that, at least the majority of the kind of indentured ones, and the reason ends up being is because Coursera and all these other things are accessible to everyone.
00:05:02.973 --> 00:05:22.872
Coursera and all these other things are accessible to everyone and that means that kind of they feel the type of student that's getting in there isn't traditionally what they would believe to be of a high enough standard.
00:05:22.872 --> 00:05:25.959
The other problem that they're having is that it's traditionally schools are looking for kind of competencies versus skills.
00:05:25.959 --> 00:05:37.764
So if I get a computer science degree that shows that I have some competency in computer science, but it's very, very hard to track back the skill pathway that led me there and it's obviously very diverse depending on what school you go to and kind of what pathway you take within your school.
00:05:37.764 --> 00:05:41.997
So all of these kind of things that are popping up.
00:05:42.038 --> 00:05:59.764
With skill-based versus competency-based, a lot of the universities are saying I want people to be able to work really hard towards the not necessarily practical knowledge, but work really hard towards the theoretical knowledge so that they can build more knowledge.
00:05:59.764 --> 00:06:06.002
And if you want to be a researcher, that is amazing, like there needs to be researchers in this world right now.
00:06:06.002 --> 00:06:12.185
Right, there's medical research, there's AI research is an entire class of people that want to have a technical skill level.
00:06:12.185 --> 00:06:45.512
They want to be able to go and kind of get right to the point of saying this is kind of what I want to do, or maybe I don't want to know what I want to do, but I want to be able to start moving and playing around with it so that I can really start understanding what these landscapes look like from a practical, skills-based working environment.
00:06:45.512 --> 00:06:49.357
And that's what's lacking a little bit right now.
00:06:49.357 --> 00:06:57.023
But what is the biggest demand seems to be for right now, and colleges are having a hard time keeping up with that for a lot of reasons.
00:06:57.483 --> 00:07:09.451
Yeah, I would imagine that they are and I would argue I'm obviously very biased here, but I would argue it's because amazing entrepreneurs like you are bringing real life things to the marketplace faster than traditional educational institutions can.
00:07:09.451 --> 00:07:15.333
So, dave, I would love for you to introduce Guildhall Learning to our listeners because obviously I've seen the work that you're doing.
00:07:15.333 --> 00:07:19.846
You kind of tease a little bit about your different programs and, more practical, I'm also going to interject.
00:07:19.846 --> 00:07:26.293
I love that STEM has become STEAM these days science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics.
00:07:26.293 --> 00:07:28.749
So, dave, introduce listeners to Guildhall Learning.
00:07:29.680 --> 00:07:47.396
So Guildhall Learning was kind of my throw-out-there-to-the-world testing platform to figure out how a new model of education could exist that keeps skills and student individuality at the forefront.
00:07:47.396 --> 00:07:49.944
So a little bit of background.
00:07:49.944 --> 00:08:06.552
I used to be the head of computer science and engineering for a school, but the school was from three years old up to high school, right, so it was younger kids and one of the things that I tried doing as an experiment with them and they were very much on this cause they were very forward thinking.
00:08:06.552 --> 00:08:12.990
Uh, school was how do I make it so every single kid has a completely um individualized curriculum pathway.
00:08:12.990 --> 00:08:20.062
Not all of them doing the same projects, not even all of them are learning the same thing, but I can still track that Right Um.
00:08:20.062 --> 00:08:29.475
Me as a person was able to do that for at least a little while up until COVID striked and trying to do all of that over zoom turned out to be very impossible.
00:08:29.475 --> 00:08:36.206
I just didn't have the tools necessary to just look at all of their, look at all of their projects and whatnot.
00:08:36.206 --> 00:08:38.460
So that sounded like a great software startup.
00:08:38.460 --> 00:08:46.335
So, as you do, I built up a small team of software engineers and we started building a software.
00:08:46.335 --> 00:08:51.111
So Guild itself actually stands for Guided Universal Intelligent Learning Device.
00:08:51.111 --> 00:09:08.847
It's meant to be an AI system that individualizes each system, finds out all of the resources that they have available to them to continue on the pathway, learning what they are the most into, while still hitting all of the rubrics and all of the requirements to be able to say that they're working.
00:09:08.928 --> 00:09:24.366
In our STEAM class, our computer science and engineering class, we ended up releasing it after about six months to about six countries, about 12 different schools testing, and it worked in about 20% of them, which was actually a little bit more than I expected.
00:09:24.366 --> 00:09:31.936
One of the problems was that there are too many variables for us to be able to control.
00:09:31.936 --> 00:09:40.265
In Argentina, school has different resources and different limitations than a United States school.
00:09:40.265 --> 00:09:44.653
So right at the end of the COVID pandemic, my wife actually runs schools.
00:09:44.653 --> 00:09:48.461
She runs daycares and elementary schools.
00:09:48.461 --> 00:10:01.783
So we're like, hey, why don't we take our resources, put them together and make kind of an enclave for us to be able to test these things and limit our variables, figure out how what systems actually could work and then kind of expand from there, right?
00:10:01.783 --> 00:10:22.100
So we started off building out the software and the hardware, making a big shop that's got wood shop, metal shop, it's got VR and AR, jewelry labs, 3d printing all this cool equipment that kids can come in and we individually interview every single kid that comes in and say, hey, what are you into, what are you terrified of and don't want to touch with a 10 foot stick?
00:10:22.100 --> 00:10:34.586
And then how do we figure out your pathway and over time we give them the resources to be able to bend their pathway to their will, while we're kind of making sure they're continuing to go forward.
00:10:36.210 --> 00:10:37.133
I was kind of the beginning of it.
00:10:37.133 --> 00:10:40.067
Now we've gotten to the point where we've structured that.
00:10:40.067 --> 00:10:43.462
The main question that I had was I know I can run it, can other people.
00:10:43.462 --> 00:10:53.234
So we hired, hired a bunch of instructors and I got out of the teaching seat for a little while and started looking and doing more like podcasts and doing more outreach to other schools and whatnot.
00:10:53.234 --> 00:10:57.225
It turns out that other teachers could also successfully do this.
00:10:57.225 --> 00:10:58.831
It wasn't just me, I'm not that special.
00:10:58.831 --> 00:11:03.166
And then now we're working on bringing into other schools.
00:11:03.166 --> 00:11:08.154
So now we work with educational institutions to train people on this methodology.
00:11:08.860 --> 00:11:30.645
We work with large nonprofits to handle massive events of hundreds and hundreds of kids all doing STEM related activities and I love that you brought up that they're bringing in art STEAM, because I can have the best app in the world, but if it doesn't look good and it doesn't feel good and intuitive to me as a human to want to use, then I will probably never use it.
00:11:31.200 --> 00:11:40.909
So therefore, having that art component in there really brings the humanities and the human nature into the engineering work that we do, so that people actually want to work with it, right.
00:11:40.909 --> 00:11:50.825
So we put all of that into our app design that hopefully the kids will go out, use and be able to make their own learning paths on their own in their own spare time and then come to us also right.
00:11:50.825 --> 00:12:06.263
So right now we're really building it out, trying to get in front of as many large organizations as we can to test more and figure out more how we can help as many kids, as many types of kids, as possible, and so far it's been super successful.
00:12:06.263 --> 00:12:09.511
People have been now finding us, which is cool.
00:12:11.221 --> 00:12:13.788
I love this honestly so much.
00:12:13.788 --> 00:12:22.010
To me, this is the quintessential view of how entrepreneurship positively impacts the world, because it's deeply meaningful work that you do.
00:12:22.010 --> 00:12:34.609
I obviously always have my business hat on and I can't help but think in business terms, and I'm hearing you talk about so many different stakeholders who are all aligned in your mission, which is the students probably get so excited.
00:12:34.609 --> 00:12:37.610
Gosh, I wish you were operating in Massachusetts when I was a kid.
00:12:37.610 --> 00:12:43.125
I imagine that the teachers it's so rewarding for them to see their students doing things that light them up.
00:12:43.125 --> 00:12:53.551
I would imagine that educational institutions that want to provide this experience for their students this is a match made in heaven and, of course, the nonprofits who share these missions as well, can help you bring this to life.
00:12:54.162 --> 00:12:57.460
Then, where my head goes from stakeholders is the so-called competition.
00:12:57.460 --> 00:13:02.620
It's the one concept in business I've never really agreed with, because I don't think we really have competition.
00:13:02.620 --> 00:13:05.409
But who is viewing it as competition?
00:13:05.409 --> 00:13:06.947
Are the schools totally on board?
00:13:06.947 --> 00:13:08.787
What are those conversations looking like?
00:13:08.787 --> 00:13:13.450
Because I would also imagine, dave, that this is a bit disruptive of an approach that you're bringing.
00:13:14.091 --> 00:13:16.764
Yes, what's kind of fun about it.
00:13:16.764 --> 00:13:19.448
So, personally, I don't believe in competition.
00:13:19.448 --> 00:13:24.823
It's a weird thought that I have when you're dealing with children, right.
00:13:24.823 --> 00:13:27.789
Right, it's hard to think like a business person.
00:13:27.789 --> 00:13:30.677
Because you care about these kids, right?
00:13:30.677 --> 00:13:37.966
So you'll make like what I would consider probably pretty dumb financial decisions to make sure that you can support those kids.
00:13:38.488 --> 00:13:45.371
At the other half of it, you have to make sure that you have a viable product that can continue to grow and continue to iterate, right?
00:13:45.371 --> 00:13:48.447
So having the kids involved in it, that helps.
00:13:48.447 --> 00:13:59.197
They know that they're having an active role in developing the business right, and I encourage them to help and come to me with ideas and what's working, what's not.
00:13:59.197 --> 00:14:03.235
As best as I can, as much as they are comfortable with it.
00:14:03.235 --> 00:14:06.267
So that's helping For me.
00:14:07.389 --> 00:14:22.500
So, with that vein, I want more competition, because that means that it will get out there sooner and the surrounding ecosystem to support this sort of stuff will be more readily available.
00:14:22.500 --> 00:14:25.134
So I'm building out AI tools.
00:14:25.134 --> 00:14:39.264
I don't have the time to develop all of the infrastructure that NVIDIA has brought out to be able to train systems on everything that I would need them to do, so the fact that they exist helps me move forward faster.
00:14:39.264 --> 00:14:43.432
If more curriculum companies come in involved and start doing this.
00:14:43.432 --> 00:14:55.591
That helps me because there's more test data going out, there's more proof, so that more people feel confident and comfortable seeking solutions, such as myself, right?
00:14:55.951 --> 00:15:00.186
There is an unimaginable amount of people in this world, right?
00:15:00.186 --> 00:15:04.434
So I'm not so worried about me having a problem with competition.
00:15:04.434 --> 00:15:18.573
I'm more worried that not enough people are aware that this is even an option, or not enough people feel confident taking this as an option, because they need the notoriety, they need the proven examples, right, so I hope more people get into it.
00:15:18.573 --> 00:15:20.951
We've been working.
00:15:20.951 --> 00:15:41.573
I had a conversation with a New Hampshire University last week and they know, on the digital badging front, right, the micro-credentialing front what would really help the students, but they're such a large organization that they're having a very hard time convincing their stakeholders and the uppers of the university.
00:15:41.573 --> 00:15:49.767
To even be able to say yes to what they all know and believe would be a great way forward, just because the proof isn't there yet, right?
00:15:49.767 --> 00:15:52.312
So more competition would be nice.
00:15:52.572 --> 00:16:03.029
That's maybe weird to say, but that's kind of my opinion on that, yeah, honestly, dave, it's part of why I admire your work so much, because I admire the entrepreneurial mindset behind all of it.
00:16:03.029 --> 00:16:07.528
Of course, it's an abundance mindset rather than scarcity, and I think that this is part of that.
00:16:07.528 --> 00:16:10.455
New wave of education is learning that.
00:16:10.455 --> 00:16:12.678
It's one of the earliest business lessons I've learned.
00:16:12.678 --> 00:16:14.371
I started when I was a freshman in college.
00:16:14.371 --> 00:16:35.240
I was in classrooms during the day where my professors would tell me to be wary of our competition, and then in the evening, it was my competition that was accelerating my success and giving me access to things, and I think that that's such an important entrepreneurial lesson Continuing down this business path, because I love the fact that you also equally love business Such a cool part of the way that you think who's your customer.
00:16:35.304 --> 00:16:46.191
When you plot out the biggest way that you can make a change in the educational world, who are those key stakeholders that you're talking to that have that ability to sign off and say wait, hold on, dave, please implement this.
00:16:46.191 --> 00:16:47.855
This is going to serve our students.
00:16:48.966 --> 00:16:52.206
So during COVID it started off as teachers.
00:16:52.206 --> 00:17:01.572
Very specifically every engineering teacher, that encoding teacher, was having trouble teaching what they were doing because they couldn't be in front of their kids.
00:17:01.572 --> 00:17:13.147
So when we put out the feeler to get a dozen or so schools out, we filled up our spots and I think it was two days or something like that and we weren't even really trying right.
00:17:13.147 --> 00:17:16.855
So that was our initial After.
00:17:16.855 --> 00:17:25.805
We realized that we had some work to do before we could get a product out that would be as useful to them as what we believed it should be.
00:17:25.805 --> 00:17:30.916
We turned it into almost like an afterschool program so that we can test more.
00:17:30.916 --> 00:17:35.401
So with that phase we're like our primary goal is to get as many students in here as possible.
00:17:35.401 --> 00:17:52.852
The easiest way for us to do that, as it turns out, has been approaching nonprofits and Boston public schools and libraries and everything like that, because we ourselves can bring in I don't know like 50 kids a day or something like that to our programs and we have memberships so they can keep coming in.
00:17:52.852 --> 00:18:01.038
But we can impact the most people by going out to where those kids already are, which is obviously in schools, libraries and programs.
00:18:01.038 --> 00:18:28.609
So our target market very quickly shifted into finding as many large organizations that were doing good work with a variety of types of kids so different nonprofits for different types of kids usually and then reaching out to them and saying, hey, we love what you're doing here, right, and we do research them to make sure they're doing good work, that they're reputable, you know, and they're not just like trying to grab money from every place they can possibly go.
00:18:28.609 --> 00:18:32.257
They have a mission that they care about, right like trying to grab money from every place they can possibly go.
00:18:32.257 --> 00:18:34.622
They have a mission that they care about.
00:18:34.642 --> 00:18:36.085
Right, we love that you're doing this work.
00:18:36.085 --> 00:18:39.876
You have a gap in what you can offer right here because you don't have anyone in your organization that specializes in that.
00:18:39.876 --> 00:19:02.140
We would love to come in and see if we're a good fit so that we can enhance your program in this way, which will, from your perspective, make it so that you're offering more things that are in the need right now STEM and STEAM is huge right now, especially with the amount of AI research and discoveries that are happening in just in the last two years.
00:19:02.140 --> 00:19:22.111
So we help them by giving them a massive capability that they can then market to gain more kids that will be aligned with what they're trying to do, and then we also benefit because we find more kids that are into what we're trying to do, and then we recruit them into our programs as well.
00:19:22.111 --> 00:19:25.659
With that Over time, now is starting.
00:19:25.659 --> 00:19:29.055
We're trying to get into schools also, but that's the next step.
00:19:30.144 --> 00:19:30.665
Yeah, dave.
00:19:30.665 --> 00:19:36.009
Adding onto that, you brought up the word mission, and I'll be fully transparent with you here while we're together on the air.
00:19:36.009 --> 00:19:36.310
Is that?
00:19:36.310 --> 00:19:44.646
Even before I had the chance to speak with you today, one thing that was very clear to me is that you are a big thinker and I think that you have a unique ability.
00:19:45.067 --> 00:19:48.636
I interview entrepreneurs for a living, and so I see work every single day.
00:19:48.636 --> 00:19:58.432
It seems to me from the outside like you have a really unique ability to zoom in and also out.
00:19:58.432 --> 00:20:12.655
It just seems like you have a very big vision for your business but at the same time, you're able to make those small steps, and I know, as an entrepreneur for 16 years now, how paralyzing big visions can be, because we want all of the things and we want to do them right now and we all are crazy workaholics and we have the ability to act on so many different things.
00:20:12.655 --> 00:20:15.208
Talk to me about your executive mindset.
00:20:15.208 --> 00:20:26.575
I want to get into that founder brain of yours and understand how you think about that big picture and that big mission that you have, the big dreams that you have, but balancing it with the day-to-day and the execution.
00:20:31.984 --> 00:20:34.529
So I'm going to give credit where credit due and bring up my wife for a moment.
00:20:34.529 --> 00:20:35.352
So my wife I laugh.
00:20:35.352 --> 00:20:39.078
We both started our first business type things when we were about 12.
00:20:39.078 --> 00:20:53.619
So she grew up in Russia, moved here about 20 something, 30 something years ago and she started a syndicated, actually a television program for for following kids that are making big waves in their community.
00:20:53.619 --> 00:21:08.292
And I started a printing company where I made business cards and stuff like that, right so, and by the end of it every single person, including all the superintendents of the schools, all had my business cards and stationary Anyways, the.
00:21:09.265 --> 00:21:22.615
She is the kind of grounded, aggressive, day-to-day side of what we do, whereas I'm a lot of the big vision of what we do.
00:21:22.615 --> 00:21:37.493
To tell you how much this runs deep within our relationship, on our third date we founded Global Educational Advancement, the nonprofit you mentioned, and we kind of went from there.
00:21:37.493 --> 00:21:42.989
So we grew as a relationship, as also business partners at exactly the same time, in tandem.
00:21:42.989 --> 00:21:49.795
For me I tend to think of vectors of growth.
00:21:49.795 --> 00:22:22.490
So I in my mind see a scaffolding required to make it so that there is educational opportunity and resources for all types of learners that have the ability to individualize based off of each special case, that is, each student, right, while also looking at where's the industry is going and you know what will likely be needed in you know, five years for our skills, right?
00:22:22.490 --> 00:22:32.926
So what I try to do is look at that big overarching thought, right, and I will it down to what I have access to right at the moment, right?
00:22:32.926 --> 00:22:37.698
So when I was a teacher, the thing I had access to was kids directly in front of me.
00:22:37.698 --> 00:22:46.535
All right, so let's start testing what I have from there and, as it grows, I say, okay, the next big step that I need is to see if other people can do this, right, other teachers.
00:22:46.535 --> 00:22:51.407
So now's the time to start a physical location and hire a bunch of teachers to see if they do it.
00:22:51.407 --> 00:22:52.009
Okay.
00:22:52.009 --> 00:22:57.689
And the next step on that is can those teachers then go out into other programs that are not ours?
00:22:58.349 --> 00:23:06.657
And then, what is required for scaffolding for other schools or other libraries or whatever, to be able to run the kind of programs that we're trying to build.
00:23:06.657 --> 00:23:20.300
And we just build the scaffolding out as the, as the reach increases, right, as far as the, the real, like day to day, the, the bio that you read right all of that.
00:23:20.300 --> 00:23:42.169
My wife partners with me for a lot of those things to be able to make sure that you know, kind of slapped me in the back of the head a little bit to say, hey, I know you want to build out this big AI system that will be able to gamify the entire process as a two-year program and we have rent tomorrow, so let's see how we grow our program to make sure that we have the money to be able to support that.
00:23:42.169 --> 00:23:54.730
And from a from a business and spreadsheet kind of kind of perspective, I've never met anyone that is more, anyone that's faster at making good decisions than her, right?
00:23:54.730 --> 00:23:57.315
So, yeah, so that's been, that has been.
00:23:57.596 --> 00:23:57.836
I would.
00:23:57.836 --> 00:24:02.964
I would argue that anyone that wants to build anything big, it's impossible for you to be able to do that on your own.
00:24:02.964 --> 00:24:18.536
So I would find a co-founder, find a person that can be the opposite side of your brain, where you both have the same vision, right, but you can balance each other out and be okay arguing with them.
00:24:18.536 --> 00:24:29.674
It's, you know, because that's all a part of it, but know that you, you're really trying to achieve the same thing, right, and that those skirmishes and all of the happiness and together.
00:24:29.674 --> 00:24:31.239
That's all a part of it, right?
00:24:31.239 --> 00:24:33.490
And yeah, that's it.
00:24:33.490 --> 00:24:43.277
It's just starting with where you are and then tracing the path to where you want to be and being okay, wiggling around as you go as opportunities present themselves.
00:24:44.065 --> 00:24:45.431
Yeah, really well said, dave.
00:24:45.431 --> 00:24:49.717
I can't tell if you were talking about business or marriage there, because, luckily for you, you've got both.
00:24:49.717 --> 00:24:51.550
Huge shout out to your wife.
00:24:51.550 --> 00:24:56.709
I think that that's a great example of true in-house talent that you have at your disposal.
00:24:56.709 --> 00:25:01.590
So huge kudos to both of you for the way that you think and the way that you execute together.
00:25:01.590 --> 00:25:04.645
That is so at the core of all these things that you're sharing with us today.
00:25:04.645 --> 00:25:22.721
I knew that time would fly by, but we have to talk about ai, so I do want to bring that up in today's conversation, because anytime I talk to, I've got a seven-year-old niece and nephew and they have computer class and I always wonder when they're going to be introduced to this wonderful world of AI, aside from just talking to the apps that I let them play around with from there.
00:25:22.721 --> 00:25:27.269
But I would imagine middle school, high school, college those have changed so much because of AI.
00:25:27.269 --> 00:25:30.894
Talk to us about where the heck we are in the world of education with AI.
00:25:32.055 --> 00:25:34.037
A lot of people are very scared about it.
00:25:34.037 --> 00:25:44.405
I'm not in full transparency, there's not a lot about it, that kind of freaks me out, but I also try to work with it on a daily basis.
00:25:44.405 --> 00:25:51.851
From a student perspective, there's some things that I think AI probably shouldn't be used for.
00:25:51.851 --> 00:26:02.096
So if I have a essay that says, write about your opinion about Christopher Columbus or something like that, right.
00:26:02.096 --> 00:26:08.800
If I go directly to ChatGPT and I say, write me an essay about that and I hand it in, I am not being honest.
00:26:08.800 --> 00:26:12.465
That's not my opinion, that's ChatJPT's opinion, right.
00:26:12.465 --> 00:26:20.188
If I scaffold something and I say, hey, this is all of my thoughts about it, can you make this more elegant, right?
00:26:20.188 --> 00:26:23.314
Maybe that's okay, depending on what you're going for.
00:26:23.314 --> 00:26:39.476
But for, like, when a student is asked to speak from their experience in their heart, in their place, I think AI shouldn't necessarily be used for that, outside of maybe researching a couple of dates they might not remember.
00:26:39.476 --> 00:26:48.309
Where it should be used and be used more is for the practical, skill-based projects.
00:26:48.309 --> 00:27:06.755
So I think it is less valuable for me to teach you a programming language and then tell you to make the same runner game or Flappy Bird game that I have made and you will now learn how to make this one Flappy Bird game.
00:27:06.755 --> 00:27:19.311
I think that's really good teaching you a couple of basics about programming language that will likely change soon, anyways and it teaches you that one specific programming language that you probably might not use in your actual career if you chose to right.
00:27:19.311 --> 00:27:23.724
It'll only teach you how to do that one kind of enclave thing.
00:27:23.724 --> 00:27:23.924
Right.
00:27:23.924 --> 00:27:30.567
Ai is really good and allows me to be able to go to a student and say hey, I want you to create a video game.
00:27:30.567 --> 00:27:40.883
I don't care what you use for programming language, I don't care what tools you use in order to create this, I only care that you figure out how to do it.
00:27:40.883 --> 00:27:45.641
I, as a teacher, will be here when you get stuck and I want to help you along that.
00:27:45.721 --> 00:27:55.972
But this is turning into an exercise of how do I ask the right questions, how do I find the tools that I need to be able to make the thing that I want to make Right?
00:27:55.972 --> 00:28:02.289
And then how do I gain the resiliency when it doesn't work the five times the first five times I try to make it right.
00:28:02.289 --> 00:28:05.948
So in that case, ai knows potentially where to go.
00:28:05.948 --> 00:28:06.609
I can ask it.
00:28:06.609 --> 00:28:10.461
Hey, how do I make a database that can hold all my top scores for my game?
00:28:10.461 --> 00:28:30.628
Right, and that allows each student to, instead of learning a programming language, allows each student to learn how to create something that happens to be using a programming language, right, and that is more like what they'll likely see in the world moving forward.
00:28:30.628 --> 00:28:44.107
So, just like an encyclopedia is a tool to look up some information, right, and that encyclopedia holds the information that I need for the specific question that the teacher is asking me.
00:28:44.107 --> 00:29:01.276
Now the teacher has the ability to ask a substantially more broad question and you can use AI to research the specifics of that question without worrying, if you have the right type of book or encyclopedia or whatnot hanging around, right for that kid to access, so it really starts bringing it.
00:29:01.355 --> 00:29:07.415
What the kids really should be training in, in my opinion, is how do I start asking good questions?
00:29:07.415 --> 00:29:14.428
How do I start breaking down my problems into modular steps so that I can figure out how to build things step by step?
00:29:14.428 --> 00:29:32.326
And then how do I solve problems using this technology that wasn't available two years ago, right, and the difficult thing that educational institutions are going to have a hard time with, a difficult thing that teachers are going to have a hard time is figuring out where that line is between.
00:29:32.326 --> 00:29:38.022
I want the kid to tell me and speak from the heart, and speak from their experience, right Versus.
00:29:38.022 --> 00:29:39.746
I need this kid to learn a skill.
00:29:39.746 --> 00:29:44.082
How do I teach them how to learn that skill on their own right?
00:29:44.082 --> 00:29:45.967
Technology is moving so fast.
00:29:45.967 --> 00:29:49.121
They can't, possibly right now, especially in grade school.
00:29:49.121 --> 00:29:53.691
They can't teach the kids what will be relevant and needed by the time they graduate high school.
00:29:53.691 --> 00:29:55.034
It's impossible, right.
