At ISTELive 2024, I had the great privilege of speaking with Todd Mahler, Chief Product Officer at Edmentum. He was kind enough to show me around the Edmentum booth and talk about the direction the company is taking and how technology can help students by expanding the way educators interact with them.
Making students the mission
In speaking with Mahler, it was clear that Edmentum’s current focus is on creating and maintaining a student-centered path throughout their educational careers.
“Edmentum is a learning acceleration company,” Mahler said. “Everything we do is backed by evidence and research. We use that research to help kids stay on track, help them catch up, help them follow their own path. Every solution we offer, from digital curriculum to assessments to instructional services, is designed around that learning acceleration paradigm.”
ISTELive 2024 presented a unique opportunity for Edmentum to reinforce its values while making clear how they intend to serve students and educators.
“We’re focused on a couple of key areas, one of which is how do we help schools design interventions for the entire system, from elementary through high school,” Mahler said. “Our key secondary focus this year is very much around career and technical learning, or CTE. We’ve introduced a new CTE catalog. We know there’s a big push across the country for CTE programming to want to help our district partners with the courses they need.”
<h2 id="preparing-students-for-an-ai-laden-future”>Preparing students for a future filled with artificial intelligence
Mahler was adamant about her desire to prepare students for a future in technology and ai while emphasizing ethical use and safety practices.
“It’s important for us to prepare children for a technology-based future,” she said. “We need to continue to work with our districts to help them understand how to embrace technology. How do you use it ethically? How do you use it safely? How do you integrate it into the classroom? There’s no future where that doesn’t happen.”
Mahler suggested that ai has already been a part of education technology for more than 20 years, helping to drive personalized learning. “It’s now in everyone’s hands,” he said. “It’s become a consumer product. But the same challenges still exist. The (ai) tool has to be something that you can put in front of a student with confidence that it will be accurate, unbiased, and that students will actually engage and learn from the tool.”
While ai tools should help students achieve their goals, Mahler made it clear that teachers should also benefit from ai in the classroom.
“On the part of teachers, it has to be something that saves them time,” she said. “So everything we do, and we continue to explore different applications of technology, is about saving teachers time and ensuring that students can engage in a way that is supported by evidence.”
