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Edtech Insiders
Edtech Insiders
GESAwards: Breaking Barriers with Innovation in AI, Music, and Prison Ed
In this special episode, we spotlight the GESAwards, often called the “United Nations of EdTech,” with founder Avi Warshavsky of MindCET and three inspiring finalists from around the world. They share how they’re harnessing AI, rethinking prison education, and transforming music learning for millions of students.
💡 5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- Why GESAwards are built on local partnerships
- How AI levels the global EdTech playing field
- Designing learning platforms for prisons
- Music education’s link to wellbeing and STEM
- How global collaboration fuels EdTech visibility
✨ Episode Highlights:
[00:02:15] Avi Warshavsky on the GESAwards’ biggest achievement: global community
[00:04:34] How regional partners uncover hidden EdTech gems worldwide
[00:07:19] AI as an equalizer for startups in small markets
Finalist Interviews:
[00:12:02] Chen Berger, COO of StudyWise.io on AI for assessments & adaptive learning
[00:18:28] Jessica Hicklin, Co-founder of Unlocked Labs on Prison education reform
[00:31:18] Tom Gale, CEO of Solfeg.io on Music education for engagement & wellbeing
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[00:00:00] Avi Warshavsky: I think the key probably is the fact that each of the partner has a very strong incentive to lead the competition in his region, and there is no organization that really. In a way sponsor this. So there is no like another interest in that. Like we all joined forces to do this initiative together. And you get it when you have any, any of those interactions.
You see it very quickly. We have sponsors, we have partnerships, but the core of the GESAwards, it's a really shared space based on local organizations that really. Very democratic, very equal, and it's very different. In this sense, I would say.
[00:00:44] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry from funding rounds to impact to AI developments across early childhood K 12 higher ed and work. You'll find it all here at EdTech Insiders. Remember to subscribe to the pod. Check out our newsletter and also our event calendar.
And to go deeper, check out EdTech Insiders Plus where you can get premium content access to our WhatsApp channel, early access to events and back channel insights from Alex and Ben. Hope you enjoy today's pod.
We are here with Avi Warshavsky. He's the CEO and founder of MindCET, the EdTech Innovation Center. It's been around since 2012, a global hub driving educational technology innovation. Avi also serves on the board of directors at the Center for Educational Technology that's set where he previously held senior leadership positions as head of Humanities and Social Studies, and the director of ebook initiatives pioneering new models for digital learning in Israel's.
Education system. Welcome to the podcast, Avi Warshavsky. Thank you Alex. Uh, great donor to be here. Oh, I'm so happy to see you here. So we are here talking about the GES awards. They have been around for over 10 years, and you are giving out these awards globally to people who are doing really amazing work. What do you see as the most significant achievements of the GES awards in this decade?
[00:02:15] Avi Warshavsky: Well, I guess the biggest achievement is probably the community. We started this initiative. From an urgent need. Israel is a very small market, and we realized that if we really want to help our startup to grow, they must have some other markets that they should be knowledgeable about. And when we started this journey, we discovered that the same goes to many other countries.
Including even big countries in Europe that are not big enough to be a market. And it began to be a community and startups helping each other and supporting each other and sharing their experience. And this is really amazing to see.
[00:02:51] Alex Sarlin: It really is, and as you mentioned it, really innovative. Ed tech happens all over the world, but many countries are too small a market in and of themselves to really.
Be super sustainable. So they have to go international and they wanna be visible on the global stage. So how do you feel like the GES awards have impacted the startup ecosystem at large? You have built a community within all of the awards and all the people who are winning, but what do you think it's done for the EdTech ecosystem at large?
[00:03:17] Avi Warshavsky: Well, I think there are some blind spots in the ecosystem. There is a very vivid startup activity, for instance, in Latin America that not always exposed to the stakeholders because they're not being invested in the same way that they're being in other countries that are investing in companies. So they're not in the way of analysts.
But it's a huge market. There's very interesting companies and, and the same goes to other regions in the world as well. And I think putting aside part of this blind spot, I think it's a very important mission.
[00:03:49] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. I'm always surprised when I, I always hear of these Latin American ed tech companies that have these huge audiences.
They grow really fast. There's a lot of tutoring happening there. There's a lot of ed tech penetration. People are using apps for all sorts of things in education in in Mexico, in Brazil, in Argentina, and then we've never heard of the company at all here. Yeah. It's just like not even on the radar in the us We try to be global, but it is really hard.
It's really hard to have visibility. It's. The global ed tech ecosystem, it's enormous and it's just hard to find who's doing what. Tell us about how you find these companies. You have a big database, you've been following global ed tech for a decade, and you just like have your eyes everywhere, you Latin America, in Europe, African companies.
Tell us about how you become aware of people doing really interesting work all over the world.
[00:04:34] Avi Warshavsky: I think the key is really the Partners GESAwards is, is a very wide partnerships, and we were lucky when we started this journey that we didn't have any budget for this, so it was really bootstrapped and each partner is a real partner.
And the local partners are the best to know what's happening in their region. So let's say the French partners finds the most interesting French companies and the Colombian partner find the most interesting Colombian ones and the Nigerian one find his. So in the end of the day, we really have like insider, uh, kind of information that we could never reach in a cold call through social media.
And in this sense, I think it's a very effective model.
[00:05:16] Alex Sarlin: And there are all of these amazing groups. You have, you know, EdTech, Finland, EdTech, Columbia, as you mentioned, these are all these local groups that are fostering the EdTech ecosystem and then you bring them all together. You've been doing the GESAwards for a decade and working with these regional partners, you know, people.
All over the world to highlight and amplify the stories of really meaningful education innovations. What do you think distinguishes the GESAwards from other innovation competitions in education? There are a few other ed tech awards out there. What makes GESAwards different?
[00:05:47] Avi Warshavsky: I think the key probably is the fact that each of the partner has a very strong incentive to lead the competition in his region, and there is no organization that really, in a way sponsor this.
So there is no like another interest in that. Like we all. Join forces to do this initiative together, and you get it when you have any, any of those interactions, you see it very quickly. We have sponsors, we have partnerships, but the core of the GESAwards, it's a really shared space. Based on local organizations that really are very democratic, very equal, and it's very different in this sense, I would say
[00:06:27] Alex Sarlin: it's almost like United Nations of ed tech where you have all of these different equalizing playing field.
I'm curious, you know, three or four years into the AI era of ed tech where there's so many different startups that are really focusing on natively using AI in their ecosystem. It feels to me, and we've talked on the podcast a lot about that being a real leveling of the playing field. You know, you have your frontier models creating these, these huge models, but everybody downstream, everybody using Claude or everybody using the GPT models is getting these incredible power.
It enables smaller companies to move faster. And I'm curious if that's something you've seen in terms of the global ed tech ecosystem. People in small countries, people in countries with small teams, or without a lot of investment communities, they maybe without a lot of money. Could still do really incredible work because they're using these AI tools.
Is that something you've seen across the board or starting to see so far?
[00:07:19] Avi Warshavsky: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. We see lots of initiatives that I believe we wouldn't have seen a few years back, like educators who have an idea and and develop the solution bootstrap based on vibe coding or whatever. But I think in the end of the day, it also generates sort of a challenge because you have really to define between.
Commodity and a real product. There are startups that in the end of the day are using some kind of commodity smartly in the same way that we used to have platforms to generate websites a few years back, and it became to be like doing a PowerPoint or something like this. And still, there are companies who are really solving a, a very deep problem and, uh.
What requires to, to scale and to grow. And when we are looking into startups, I think we mainly look for companies who can change the world. And those companies, probably the ones will be able to grow. For us, it's a bit challenging really to. To identify the, the real products there.
[00:08:21] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, that's fair. Well, we're gonna be talking to three GESAwards winners today at Chen Berger.
From StudyWise, Jessica Hicklin from Unlocked Labs, really interesting work. And Tom Gale from Solfeg.io. Tell us a little bit about these companies and how they came on your radar. What excites you about each of these winners?
[00:08:40] Avi Warshavsky: Actually, those three are great examples of the type of companies that, uh, we're looking at in the GESAwards.
StudyWise is an Israeli company, and we first met because they were part of our accelerator in Israel, and uh, afterwards they were applying to the competition as well. And I think what's interesting about them is the fact that they are really quick movers. They were one of the first that I know that, uh, really translated the potential of generative AI to the world of assessment and, and testing, which from my perspective is probably the most.
Interesting space in, in the potential of disruption, like when the disruption will reach to this world. We see lots of changes in the whole chain. So this is why I find this company extremely interesting. Jessica has an unbelievable story. I don't want to be a spoiler, but I can say that. Uh, hair mission to change the world of people who, who were entering the world of jails and prisons.
Is extremely important. Through her experience, I learned a lot about this world and I think the way she designed her solution is really extremely interesting, even beyond this world. But it's a very good example of a startup that, uh. Have a very deep understanding of the audience that he wants to serve.
And, and I guess that wouldn't happen with someone who doesn't know this world very deeply and understand also the limitation. There's lots of barriers when you want to generate a solution for, uh, prisoners who have some limitation on their internet access and many other aspects, and still learning is probably their best way to get out of this wishes cycle.
And Tom Solfeg.io I think is touching one of the areas that, back in the days I, I'm many years in the ed tech, teaching music was something that you looked as a very cute kind of, uh, companies, but, but not, not a mainstream. I believe we are gonna see a change in this field. We already see change. It's a huge market and the acknowledgement of the importance of this market is just growing.
I think the investment in these areas. Even in the US in, in the big districts is huge because I think it's important in general like developing our personality through arts, but it's also prediction of stem. Like we know there is a very strong correlation between music and coding, for instance. Yeah. And they have a very interesting solution.
Each one of them is also coming from different geography, like they're coming from Europe, Jessica from the us, uh, StudyWise from Israel, and each one brings. His uniqueness and unique, just putting in the same room, those kind of companies is already a very interesting experience.
[00:11:28] Alex Sarlin: I totally agree. So without further ado, let's talk to some of these winners.
Uh, thank you so much, Avi. We are gonna bring in Jessica Hicklin from Unlocked Labs. We are here with Chen Berger. He is the founder and CEO of StudyWise.io, specializing in AI solutions for education and leading the company's go-to market effort and sales. With over 140,000 users and 300 partners worldwide hen is driving innovation to empower educators and adaptive learning for students, and they are of course, a GESAwards winner.
Welcome to the podcast.
[00:12:02] Chen Berger: Hi. Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
[00:12:05] Alex Sarlin: Absolutely. So first off, for people who don't yet know what StudyWise.io is actually doing with ai, tell us about what you are offering for educators.
[00:12:13] Chen Berger: Great question. So actually we save around day one, walking day a week for educators and faculty members on all the processes of creation, evaluation, feedback, and insights on exams and assessments so they can focus on what really matters, engagement with the students in empowering the students.
And we also offering adaptive learning experience for the students where they can learn from their mistakes and based on their knowledge gaps. And we do it by an AI based platform, of course, that automates these whole processes and also integrating seamlessly into their existing LMS platforms, so it'll be part of their workflow.
So this is mainly about the platform and as you mentioned, we are already operating worldwide, established many partnership with some well known company. From all across the globe, and this is mainly us.
[00:13:03] Alex Sarlin: That's fantastic. And you're a great example of a true AI native company, one that is using the incredible scaling power and sort of the built-in intelligence of AI to be able to do many different things.
Saving educators a full workday a week. That is like a pretty astounding accomplishment. So tell us a little bit about how you've. Scaled. You're an Israeli company, you're working internationally already. How have you sort of worked in terms of localizing your AI solutions, both for educators and for students to make sure they meet the needs of many different people in different types of school systems?
[00:13:36] Chen Berger: That's actually a great question. As you probably know, uh, very well educational system, uh, variety, widely in the structure, terminology and learning objectives and students engagement patterns differ across regions. So to address this, we build the flexible AI framework that allows us to customize content, uh, examples and feedback based on local curricula and student behaviors.
Mm. We also work closely with our partners and the local educators to ensure that our solution are culturally relevant and pedagogical effective. Allowing us to maintain high learning outcomes while respecting the original differences. And this is something which I think is very important to note, which really believe in, uh, the listen and execute, uh, method means that we are working close with the market.
We listen to the educators and everything that we build and improve is based on their feedback. And I think this is one of the reasons that. In so short period of time, we reach such a large scale. And this is, I think, also a reason why uh, they love us so much.
[00:14:39] Alex Sarlin: Absolutely. And you know, we've seen in the US education, in the ed tech system, some of the fastest growing AI companies are ones that do.
Some of the type of work that you're talking about, you're a really serious efficiency tooling for educators work directly with educators to create their feature suites and and to adapt them and evolve. We've seen companies like Magic School and Brisk teaching each grow to over a million teacher users in the us.
You are coming at it from an international perspective, and I'm sure people are incredibly excited about what you're doing all over the world. I'm sure in the us What do you think is next for StudyWise? This is a fast growing space. It's a competitive space. Frankly, there's a lot of people now that you are a fast mover, as were the ones I just mentioned, now a few other folks are starting to catch on to, hey, you know, doing really great solutions for educators to support them, to save them time, to be able to get them what they need is a really valuable and powerful way to do ed tech.
How do you plan on staying ahead of the competition and keeping moving to evolve StudyWise?
[00:15:37] Chen Berger: So I think that, as you mentioned, one of the major challenges is to ensuring that our technology scales effectively while remaining locally relevant and personalized and ahead of our competition. So to tackle this, we're investing in enhanced AI algorithms that can quickly learn from diverse educational context.
Hmm. And I think like as the technology evolves, it makes it much, uh, more possible. Another thing that we are doing is expanding partnership with local educators and institutions, and strengthening our support infrastructure to provide seamless experience for students and teachers worldwide. So ultimately our goal is to make personalized learning accessible and effective for learners across all regions we serve.
And another thing that I think is very important is, as you mentioned, you need to be a fast mover. Yes. To stay like as, uh, much ahead of the competition as possible. So I think that when you're working with the market and close to the market. You will have the competitive advantage and with, you know, some fixes and try to get the technological mode, which today it's much harder to get, but uh, it's still possible when you have the right team.
[00:16:46] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. You build sophisticated enough technology, you can build that kind of mode. That's powerful idea. And, and tell us a little bit about your experience has been, like with the GESAwards, you have a deep relationship with MindCET and the GESAwards. You have been a finalist in the GESAwards. What has that been like?
And tell us about how that's helped build your visibility and build a community within EdTech.
[00:17:06] Chen Berger: So actually when we reached the GESAward, we were in a totally different place, uh, when we are today. So first of all, the GESAward gave us access to reach global network and also exposure to key leaders that would've been much harder to reach otherwise, especially for us as smaller company, uh, from Israel.
And when we joined, we already achieved product market fit. And what we actually needed most, uh, were the right connections to scale. Many of the partnership with StudyWise form came directly through the GESAwards, helping us expand, uh, for instance into Asia, Europe, and the us. And I believe this made the program, uh, through Catalyst for Global Growth.
[00:17:45] Alex Sarlin: That's really exciting. Uh, Chen Berger is the founder and COO of StudyWise.io. They're doing AI solutions for education on both the teacher educator side and the student side, building a technological MO with some really interesting tech innovations and he leads the company's go to market efforts and sales.
If you haven't looked at StudyWise.io definitely recommend it. They're doing some really interesting work to, as he says, work directly with educators. In many different continents and countries to localize and create meaningful AI solutions. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much.
Chen Berger, COO of StudyWise.io.
[00:18:22] Chen Berger: Thank you very much Alex, and have a great day. It was pleasure coming here. I.
[00:18:28] Alex Sarlin: We are here with Jessica Hicklin, the co-founder and co-executive director at Unlocked Labs, which does incredibly interesting and really impactful work with education for incarcerated populations and others.
Welcome to the podcast, Jessica. Thank you.
[00:18:43] Jessica Hicklin: Glad to be here and I'm really excited about the conversation today.
[00:18:45] Alex Sarlin: I am as well. So before we get started with anything else, tell us about what Unlocked Labs is and a little bit about your experience with the GESAwards.
[00:18:53] Jessica Hicklin: Sure. So at a very high level, unlock Labs is a tech nonprofit that's focused on building education systems for prisons.
That's the functional work we do on the ground, but at a higher level. We're really trying to work with state departments of corrections, especially here in the United States, with such high levels of incarceration to really rethink how prisons function and how education plays an essential role in the success of not only the incarcerated folks, but the society as a whole.
The more we provide access to education, the more successful people are, the safer our society is, and the better everybody does. Gesa for us was a particularly interesting and exciting award because we're generally thought of as a criminal justice reform organization. Like most of our work is like how do we change the way that prisons work?
And Gesa was sort of outside of that. It was just a chance to talk about the education technology we built specifically and it's potential impact for the broader learning tools engineering community. And I was honestly really honored by. Having a non-criminal justice reward given to our organization because we aren't just building prison tools, we're rethinking critically how education as a whole not only benefits the disadvantaged portions of our population, but when done well, provides the opportunity for everybody to be healthy, happy, more successful life.
So.
[00:20:10] Alex Sarlin: Yes. And I mean, you have an absolutely astounding personal story. You met your co-founder before your 18th birthday and then took this project because you were doing it yourself with doing, doing these really impactful education. Mm-hmm. And scaled it from Missouri to a nationwide movement. Tell us about that story and how you built a system that can scale nationwide within the really tightly constrained prison system.
[00:20:34] Jessica Hicklin: Certainly, and the implication there is like, why am I building prison education tools? And the answer is because I come to this problem organically. I, as a 16-year-old was arrested in the United States and sent to prison for life without parole. So I was decided that I should spend the rest of my life and one square mile behind bars.
And during my time there, I. Really quickly saw what's wrong with prison. Like why doesn't it work? Why? I mean, in the United States, 83% of people that are released are gonna be rearrested like this isn't working. And the answer is sort of the most obvious one, which usually the real answer is, which is people come in three outta five incarcerated, adults in America are functionally literate, and seven outta 10 not have a high school diploma.
There's no success in workforce and everything else on the other side of that. And if you put somebody in prison for 10 years, then you. Don't change those two factors, then we know the outcome and sure enough, the data proves it. And so experiencing that and sort of some of the influence from my background, like I grew up in a world where like education is equivalent to agency in life.
I was in college when I was arrested and really fortunate to have that access. And so along the line there was like real milestones. Kind of guided the rest of my path, which was one, I did meet my co-founder when I was 18 and we were both juveniles serving life without parole in prison. And similarly, he had come from that same background of like, education is empowerment and.
Everybody we see here, there's like three fundamental problems why people go to prison. And it's not 'cause they're criminals, it's because they have some kind of mental health they need to deal with, could be exacerbated by substance abuse. So those go together. Financial empowerment, which directly ties back to lack of education.
And so he was a GED tutor in the prison and I became a GED tutor as a volunteer. And we did this for years. Like we're doing what we can, right? The chalkboard textbook kind of way. And then there was this sort of catalyst moment where the prison system decided they weren't gonna continue to pay for teachers to teach in these maximum security prisons.
And so all of a sudden there was classrooms that just didn't have people in and a bunch of technology lying around. And so we went to administration. It's like, Hey, what if we took that technology and made like a closed circuit television station, like let us broadcast some education stuff? And they're like, sure, what's the harm?
Right. So we started doing this ghost circuit television station and now my co-founder and I are sitting there with like, education can be scaled through technology. And then our aha moment was in the process of getting content. We got Khan Academy. Like Khan Academy used to build, able to download it and looking at it, the aha moment was like, well, where?
Where's the Khan Academy? For like prison skills, not only academic skills, but like financial literacy and emotional social wellbeing. And that was like this, we need this. So I contacted a friend and got a bunch of textbooks and. Taught myself to code without the internet and started trying to vote Khan Academy for Prisons, which in retrospect was really audacious.
'cause I had no programming sciences whatsoever. But I made a prototype, and again, we went to administrations like, Hey, what if? And again, they're like, what's the harm? And so that was really kind of the first version of our product. But as audacious as I can be, sometimes also had. Awareness that there's a difference between building a prototype of an education platform and a functional web, uh, streaming video type application.
So I reached out to a local nonprofit in St. Louis and said, that teaches like coding bootcamp. It's like, Hey, well I have my friend do this, but like, hey, wild idea. I need to learn real skills so I can do this. And that's how I got connected to my third co-founder. He himself. And fast forward several years.
She started sending me the curriculum that they taught. We made it work without the internet. Started teaching. I'm like, Hey, this is a work skill. We'll focus here, and as all this is going on, laws are changing. Now I'm looking at it that, well, I'm gonna face the same problem. I went in at 16, I'm gonna come out at 42.
I got a GED, that's it. And 26 years of prison later, and a million dollars spent by the state to hold me there. I'm gonna leave the same way I came in. So like the urgency to fix my problem became the urgency to fix everybody's. And my co-founder Haley's, like, was experience of teaching g and the prison systems in DC and had a view of this world.
She sort of had the foresight to say like, wait a minute. The tools we are building here aren't just tools for this classroom. And that became like, we have a product, what do we do with that product? And so we partnered with a, a higher education prison program, Washington University in St. Louis. And we signed a pilot and started building towards how do we build these tools for colleges who teach in prisons?
And I came home 2022 and quickly learned essential lessons here, which is, one, don't fall in love with your solution because. The world doesn't need another LMS. There's like 10 of them you can get for free, and they're pretty good quality. So the problem I'm trying to solve still exists, but the solution I have is ridiculous in building an LMS from the ground up.
And so we adapted and started to say, well, what is the missing component? Why can't I just put canvas in prisons and solve this problem? Answer becomes obvious. Most existing LMS are designed towards like the, the university academic business model, a single institution providing education. They're all around adminis that the correctional learner experience is.
Consortium style. It is a competency based education and a consort style. Like you have skills you need from, you're gonna get them from 15 different providers and somewhere in the midst of all that, we need a transcript of your experience so that we can gauge what you're missing and what are your, what are your prerequisites to successful life?
That platform doesn't exist. And so that's what we started building and quickly started seeing like we're now in five states. Our last month we just crossed the $10 million of like input between revenue and funding. 25 people on my team. We have since grown our product suite to, we're more of like a technology integrator now.
Like we go from network to platform to security, to provisioning to everything else. And so at the end of the day. This goes back to gsa. The learning tools industry in general still continues to build towards the university business model. Yep. But what learners need, like learner-centric tools build towards the, I need skills from different providers will translate to things in the world.
And that's, that's what we're building on. And the recognition and guests that sort of solidified this for me, that that's, I could continue to build this tool set for prisons because, well. Real need. Now I'm refining products, but there is a post unlock labs world. I think where I start looking at SDG four and how we reshape the way we think about education.
School,
[00:27:03] Alex Sarlin: a lot of the listeners to this podcast are in, in the EdTech industry, and also care about that goal of breaking some of the existing structures in the education system and in the ed. How EdTech is designed to serve existing educational institutions. What might it look like if they were designed to be learner centered, as you say, and get learners the outcomes that they mm-hmm.
Specifically need. We've seen some great movement in that area, but breaking down barriers is the goal of education. Breaking down barriers into prison populations, which are, that is a tall order. Tell us a little bit about some of the outcomes you've seen so far in the time in unlocked. You say you're in five states.
What are some of the success stories and how are you helping move the needle on? Access to education and learning outcomes.
[00:27:43] Jessica Hicklin: I'll give you one example from three domains here because there's like individual success stories from an employment side because it's important to take all the sort of experiential expertise that comes from people living in prison and apply that to design.
And so we had a guy, Preston was our lead engineer, reor through the state to employ him from his prison cell. So he's a senior engineer making a hundred thousand a. Workflow for a team of six and he just took a job with another, with a database company building a rewriting SQL light and rust. So get that fun to you.
But he'll be walking outta prison after 12 years into a full career and, and no need for social services 'cause he is covering. So that's a success in that we have worked on what it is to think about the workforce related to this population before they come home. When it comes to like just learners.
Last year at this point, I think has issued almost 70 degrees. Through utilizing our technology, we have provided AC access or increased the quality of access to over 10,000 incarcerated learners at this point. So there are many stories of people getting their degrees or getting education opportunities that they weren't having.
So, looking forward to we're, we're like on the, we're on a growth curve right now, so if we had this conversation in a year, it's probably gonna be closer. And then from a model perspective, like how are we changing this world? How are we centering education as the important tool? We are now in this technology consulting phase where state departments of corrections will, they don't use as just a vendor they use as a partner.
And concrete example is the state of Alaska. There's no technology and very little education going on. And we just did a project where we installed internet enabled devices. Well, we provided laptops to, to incarcerate learners that are connected to the internet and are growing their catalog of things that they can access and working with universities to come.
So we have successfully demonstrated that if states will invest in education, infrastructure and opportunities, they can stop spending money on electric differe defense. And so we're, we're really seeing models shift now. It's been great. In some ways, the market for what we're trying to do didn't exactly exist, and the market that does is, is incentive misaligned for.
Like social good. And so we are seeing the market we've been trying to create for three
[00:30:02] Alex Sarlin: years
[00:30:03] Jessica Hicklin: emerging.
[00:30:04] Alex Sarlin: It's really incredible. And those are, yeah, yeah. Outcomes in terms of scale outcomes, in terms of individual changes to people's lives and career outcomes that are incredibly meaningful and. Biggest of all, potentially, you know, outcomes changes to the schema of how we see prison education or how we think about learner-centered education in general.
It's really amazing what you've been doing. Thank you so much. This is Jessica Hicklin, co-founder and co-executive director at Unlocked Labs. Definitely look them up. They are making huge changes to how we think about education, especially present education. Thanks so much for being here with us on EdTech Insiders.
Thank you so much. We are here with Tom Gale. He's the founder and CEO of Solfeg.io. That's Solfeg.io. He's a product builder, an agile coach, and he's raised over a million dollars in venture funding and scaled products to over a million users. He's a university lecturer, he's a consultant, and he's an advisor in.
Tech, education and strategy. And most of all, he's passionate about inspiring the next generation of learners. And with Solfeg.io, he's doing it with music education. Welcome to the podcast, Tom Gale. Hi Alex. Thank you. First off, tell us for people who do not yet know about Solfeg.io, you're a GESAward winner, what is Solfeg.io and what are you building for education and ed tech?
[00:31:18] Tom Gale: Yeah, sure. Thank you. Solfeg.io is a music education platform that is inspiring the next generation of music practitioners, and we're doing that through schools. We're in 25,000 plus schools, mostly in the United States, and music teachers use Solfeg.io to engage their students to play popular songs together. And to embed music theory inside those songs, using quizzes related to songs students like.
But then most importantly, what we want to achieve is that students actually continue learning music also at home. And that's why we also have mobile apps for learning ukulele, piano, guitar, drums at
[00:32:02] Alex Sarlin: home as well. That's awesome. And bridging that gap between school education and informal education at home, especially for something like music is transformative because those are two pieces of education that don't go together nearly enough.
So I'm excited to hear that you're bridging that gap. Tell us about what's been like winning the GESAwards and what that's meant for your company's journey.
[00:32:23] Tom Gale: Yeah. Well, winning GESAwards has been, of course, absolutely amazing for us to be selected as the. Best EdTech solution globally from so many startups.
That is incredible validation. I think the prize money also helped us to maintain our tech infrastructure, but honestly, the recognition itself has been way more valuable. And when we tell educators, Prudential partners and investors that we have won GESAward, it's kind of just a different conversation than it used to be.
And many partners, investors are reaching out themselves as well.
[00:33:01] Alex Sarlin: So it is just amazing for visibility, and when I talked to Avi Warshavsky about the GESAwards, one of the things he mentioned is that it's just an amazing platform to amplify. Really, really interesting, deeply technical, really thoughtful, pedagogical work that's happening all over the world.
And I think SIO is a fantastic example. Tell us about, you started the company in 2017 and tell us about sort of how you started it and what it was like going from. Local to regional to international. You mentioned most of your customers are in the us, but you're not US based. Yeah. We started
[00:33:32] Tom Gale: with Global Mancell from day one.
We started piloting in Sweden and probably that's because there's a lot of pop music culture there, but we quickly grew into United States, and I think that's where most of the teachers really felt the problem, how to engage the students, how to. Shift their lessons towards more contemporary music, something that students would prefer more, and we just grew organically in the United States and started working on this market from maybe day two.
[00:34:06] Alex Sarlin: And it makes sense. I mean, Sweden is 8 million people and I think, are you based in Sweden?
[00:34:10] Tom Gale: We're based in Latvia. Then we have a smaller branch in Sweden and smaller branch in the United States. But we're actually a USA company.
[00:34:17] Alex Sarlin: Oh, so you're a US based company. I didn't even realize. That's really interesting.
Yeah. I mean, but that's such a perfect example of what modern ed tech looks like, right? You have people in multiple continents, in multiple countries, but when you're looking for a solution, you're looking for product market fit, what region, what type of user is gonna get the most out of your product? And it seems like you got it in the us.
The US famously doesn't always invest in the education for the arts, like art and music. I'm curious what you've found as you bring this really great, very popularity base. You know, it's like kids are learning songs like Bruno Mars, they're learning songs they actually wanna learn to play. How do you think it sort of changes the conversation around music education generally?
I'm sure it's something that sometimes schools don't always invest in, but they might think, Hey, this is something kids actually are really loving. We wanna go deeper. That is a topic we think about a
[00:35:04] Tom Gale: lot as well. I bet. So one thing that works for us is that we give our products to a lot of schools for free, a limited version, but it's anyways for free.
And that has helped us to gain traction and gain the word of mouth between the teachers. And, but of course, like to monetize this is. Sometimes difficult conversation with, with principals, with district leaders. Are they're ready to sponsor arts or no? This is a challenge, I would say. This is still a challenge for us as well, but I think if you show the results, what the kids can achieve, what are the engagement rates, how this product actually helps.
This is a different conversation with the principals, with district leaders. They see the results. They're, and they're ready to invest.
[00:35:57] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. It makes sense. Uh, one other aspect that you do that I think is really interesting is you talk about sort of holistic music education and the idea that music can help build wellbeing and engagement.
You mentioned sort of in passing that you do collaborative music playing. It's not just about student. Sitting there with a keyboard or a, you know, or a ukulele all on their own. It's actually about working together, which is something that is something people often worry about for modern schools. You, we have an anxiety crisis in schooling.
We have a lot of, you know, a lot of issues. We having students just feeling good about their school experience, and this is something you offer through music. I'd love to hear you talk about what that conversation looks like with a district or a principal.
[00:36:36] Tom Gale: No, music is amazing. There's so, just so many benefits associated to that with cognitive skills, emotional wellbeing, and, and just even like grades improving by 25% for those who are lack in music.
Yeah. But when we're talking to districts, I think we really emphasize the problem that we are solving as a product. And that's, it's really difficult to. Actually play music together for a class of 30 people like how to do that. And it's practically impossible without PHA and a tool that can facilitate that.
And this just unlocks different level of communication, different level of collaboration between students. And that's something I've seen sometimes principals come into classes, seeing how the students actually perform the song together. And that's when we see like, this is what we need. This is definitely what we need.
Yeah. You have some videos on your
[00:37:35] Alex Sarlin: website of sort of whole classes, as you say, whole classes of students performing and working together on songs that they actually wanna play, all playing different instruments and sort of using your notations scheme. It, it is a, a really exciting vision of how school should feel and look, especially as music gets back into it.
I, my personally, I have experience with this 'cause I remember I took piano lessons as a kid and I only got into it when I started learning. Popular songs and songs I actually knew and wanted to play and that was the unlock that made me, you know, have a lifetime of, of music education. I'm sure you see that type of story all the time.
[00:38:08] Tom Gale: There's one more thing, Alex, I can also tell. I think this is something I really wanna share with everyone listening, and that's like the broader vision we're trying to achieve and what we're seeing is there's no reason why music education and music playing at home shouldn't be. At the same level as exercising or doing sports.
There's no reason for that. This is something we're trying to achieve so that everyone just do it and it's easy and it's fun and it's for relaxation and it all starts in schools where you get inspiration, where you get the basic skills for that similar as it as it is for sports. And that's the vision we, we believe in.
We're kind of seeing Solfeg.io as the next Nike of the music education field.
[00:38:56] Alex Sarlin: There you go. I love it. Tom Gale is the founder and CEO of Solfeg.io. They're doing music, wellbeing, education through music. They have their own notation system. It works for both in school and personal accounts. They have apps so people can take their, their music education, both in and outta school, and of course, a GESAward winner.
Thanks so much for being here with us. On EdTech Insiders. Thank you, Alex. Thanks for listening to this episode of EdTech Insiders. If you like the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more, EdTech Insider, subscribe to the Free EdTech Insiders Newsletter on Substack staff.
