Mastering Content through Personalized Learning

Thank you all for being here with us today. We are going to talk about two of my favorite things treasure and the goonies. So how many goonies fans do I have? I will absolutely have a cock with all of you afterwards, we are now friends. So this is great. Awesome. I am Doctor.

Rachel Book. I am the chief business development officer at Lincoln Learning Solutions. Lincoln Learning Solutions is an EK early kindergarten through grade twelve, curriculum provider, digital curriculum. We work in fully virtual, blended, and hybrid environments, We have a nice homeschool population as well. I've been with Lincoln Learning Solutions for about nine years, and we can play in Canvas starting today.

So we're very, very excited to launch our partnership with Canvas and be here at our very first instructure Con. I have brought some really great people with me today. I am gonna let them introduce themselves. So, Mr. Kevin kickbush.

I'm Kevin kickbush. I am a part of the k twelve community as well. I am the director of technology services for genesee intermediate school district in Michigan. We serve our local county in Michigan. That's how ISDs are ran in Michigan.

But we also, on our online side, we are we service the whole state of Michigan both in asynchronous and, synchronous learning and in hybrid situations. Which is how we are, developed this relationship with Lincoln that we've had for about ten years now. So And Derek. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Derek Root.

I'm the, k twelve business development manager. With Amazon Web Services. You may have heard of us. I am a recovering K12 CIO. I like to say.

I was, served as CIO in three different districts. Most Charlotte mecklenburg schools in North Carolina, and two other districts in Maryland before that. I come from a background of engineering and technology support and cybersecurity And I like to say my role at AWS is sort of like that of the Lorax. So I sort of speak for the trees with you all being the trees. I work in the space that lives between customers, partners, resas, ESAs, and and my state department of education.

So I I kind of live in that space between it and hopefully make matches and and serve as a good dating service in thanks for having me, and thanks. Awesome. Welcome gentlemen. Thank you so much for joining me today. Alright.

So I have a couple questions. I heard instructure Con as a party. I was told no dress clothes. So as a recovering second grade and kindergarten teacher, the shirts tell it all from Lincoln Learning. My great team is back against the the wall back there.

So we are here to answer any questions you guys have. If you need anything throughout, raise your hand, they'll help you out. But what I need to know from all of you is in a classroom, in education, across the board, whether it's virtual, hybrid, whether it is fully, in the classroom brick and mortar traditional, what is that treasure? What is the treasure you're trying to provide? I have learning. Okay. Great.

I was gonna say I have prizes. Student agency, learning, engagement. I love that. Student success. Awesome.

So what I'm hearing, all of those things come around the treasure that Lincoln Learning Solutions can provide. So a few months back, we partnered with AWS to build something really cool, and we're gonna talk about that. And one of their, team members said, What are you guys trying to share? We say curriculum. We say lessons. We say, you know, a lot of the things that we heard just now.

And Lydia, great partner. She says, you have a treasure. And so comes this presentation. Because Lydia is right. We have a treasure that we can provide to those students.

Right? Lots of different things make up a treasure chest. We have Ruby and Emeralds and we have pearls. We wanna focus on those gold coins. We feel that Lincoln Learning Solutions content is the the base of that treasure the gold coins that you want to get to those students. So our treasure that we're going to share with you is the Lincoln Content Bank.

That is the, product that we're launching today. We have other products. This is the one we wanna focus on and we're providing in booth demos of. We're gonna talk about it here today. It is the meeting your students where they are when they need it.

Personalized learning is, you know, it's a word that we throw around all the time, but what does it really mean? It means meeting our students, where they are with what they need when they need it. All the buzz right now is AI. I also wanna call out that teachers are super important. All the AI in the world won't replace teachers. And so this is a tool that will be driven by teachers.

Lincoln Learning Solutions has over a hundred and ten thousand learning objects. Our learning objects are derived from the national and state standards We take the entire standard. We broke it down into tiny learning objects. So bite sized learning pieces. We coined them our its.

So we have read it. It's gonna be the meat and potatoes. That's gonna be the lesson. Think of it of think of it as a textbook page, right? Gonna give you all the context you wanna teach for that lesson. And we have play it.

Those are games that are still tied to that same learning objective. Back to that same standard. Really pulling down those pieces to know that a student might not have mastered this standard. Was it the whole standard or was it pieces of the standard? So working through multiple modalities of learning, games, videos, practice sheets, All the things that you want to incorporate to make sure you're reaching your visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners are within this learning content bank. Familiar.

We know these folks, right? These kids had a passion. Can any does anybody remember? I mean, it's been a couple years since I had my children watch the goonies with me. What is the, what is their passion? Why did they go on this treasure hunt? Save the house. Right? They had a passion. They came together for that passion.

Is there anyone in this room that is not passionate about our children's future? So we're coming together to provide our students and our children with the treasure of learning. Kevin is gonna talk to us a little bit about how our treasure has helped his students within the schools that he works with. So like I said, we service, students from all over the state of Michigan. And, as the ISD and through the programs that we have, we actually have multiple providers that we have worked with. Lincoln is one of our The partnership that we have with Lincoln is Barn on fantastic.

That is sets the bar really high for for what we do the content that they have really kind of speaks to itself, like where Rachel was just saying, and that's what has drawn some of those schools to Lincoln. So, Lincoln's become very popular. We've watched our enrollments with Lincoln just go off the charts in the last few years. And it's because of that content that they have. We have one school who's up in the the UP, as we say, not for peninsula.

And they have used Lincoln, and they've had a change of people recently who are overseeing their program. And in a very short time, the new person that's overseeing that program has seen the benefits of Lincoln already and can speak to that, which I think says a lot. They, came into starting to use Lincoln as a school district, during the pandemic. And, their they say that the students have preferred their the layout and the content that's there. And I think that says a lot, when the students can say that, And one of the things that they had said, that they're looking forward to is state align.

So for us in Michigan, that we have state aligned content that's coming. Thank you, Lincoln. That is great news for for that school. And there's other states as well. I encourage you to talk Lincoln team about, the states you're representing.

Another school district, has been a long time user of Canvas, and has come to Lincoln, within the last couple of years. They didn't start off with Lincoln in the pandemic. But they realized that there was some shortcomings, and they said, oh, let's check out Lincoln. And they are sticking to it, and they absolutely love it. Some of the it's that Rachel was talking about.

They mentioned those as well, the showettes, the assesses. Those are things that they really see the value in, and being able to keep their kids, on task and kind of progress monitor where their students are at, which is really important to all of us. But as in their words, was really important to them. Another school, that we've had a a really long, partnership with, working with them. And they've used Lincoln for, quite some time as well, and they use Lincoln, like, ridiculously a lot.

For they have a great program. If there's a model district, that we service, for doing any type of remote or online learning. It's this district. And, probably the biggest thing that what speaks to me why that is done so well is because they are very involved in finding that student success as well. So they pair mentors with those students, which I think is really important and it's beyond what is required for the state of Michigan.

They have a lot of mentors, partnered with those students. And really help those students walk through that success. And I think, above everything, just like what that school is saying. They wanna see their students succeed. We wanna see the students succeed whether they're in our county or in our state or in our in our whole country.

And that's also Lincoln's mission too. So I think that's what's really made our partnership, a really great and has hasn't strengthened over the last few years, especially. Awesome. Thank you so much, Kevin. So I I say this all the time Again, recovering elementary school teacher.

So we have a lot a lot of opportunities out there for curriculum. Right? I talk to folks if what we have isn't gonna work for them. We talk about that and we understand why. So we try to build those partnerships like we have with the genesee ISD. Because we want to build a relationship for the student.

The student always comes first. So we are not salespeople. Our team is all previous educators. And we're there to build relationships. I I often, coined it as we're like a little boutique store, not the Kaufman Sears, Macy's, Macy's of the world.

We want to, we're we're small, but mighty. We have a very close knit team, and we extend that out to our partners. So that's something really important to me. As an educator. If you would have told me when I was going to school for education that I was ever going to be in were a nonprofit, but I say corporate because it's I'm working for a larger organization and not a school, I would have thought you were crazy, but the the my ability to see the success across many districts and across, many schools and seeing students succeed is really, it's the key to why I do what I do.

So, our team is very passionate and very appreciative of partners like Kevin and Gennessy ISD. Rachel, if I'm if I may, one other thing that kinda she touched on to. The relationship that we have, there's a whole bunch of Lincoln friends in the back. And I get to speak with them regularly, and and I think that's really important. She talked about being nonprofit and sure there's profit comp for profit companies that can, have the heart in the right place and do things well.

But I, but I think the, the nonprofit status that really shows you why you do what you do. I think that's really, really huge. I appreciate that. And our that's probably one of my proudest moments is when we get to reach out to, certain organizations in schools and help them create a lab for their, autistic room. They we build it.

They let us name it and we've seen huge success with that. So those are the things we like to do when we do build revenue. We have to pay employees and all of that, but when we have that, philanthropic give, it's really, it's really special. So we have the treasure But now we need to find it. So, again, we talked about a party.

I would like all of you to take a second and look under your chair or close to your chair to see if you can locate your treasure chest. Look around, help a friend out, We're doing this together. Friends helping friends. Does anyone not have a treasure chest? Raise your hand if you don't. We have friends that wanna share.

Lincoln team. Can you help friends share, please? So everybody gets one. Awesome. Alright. We have extra treasure.

Here's an extra treasure chest. If anybody needs one over here. Awesome. So I have to tell you because I'm kind of a chocolate snob. I grew up with a chocolate candy castle in my hometown, and that's where that chocolate's from.

So it's really good chocolate. It's not the the cheap chocolate. We can get it, you know, the dollar general. So it's good chocolate. I promise.

You're gonna love it. In side, the lid of your treasure chest is our QR code. So you're absolutely gonna wanna check out that that QR code and enjoy your treasure. What I wanna know is how did we find that treasure? We looked. So was really gonna hide them everywhere but didn't know if I'd have enough time and the numbers looked large and I didn't wanna cause like mass chaos.

So I did modifications and just put them under everybody's chair or close to everybody's chair. With that, we needed a path. We needed to find a way to get our treasure that Lincoln content out to the masses. Our CTO, Dave Whitehead, led us in a great direction. Into a very phenomenal.

I can't there aren't even words to describe the partnership with the AWS team. So Derek is here to tell us how he helped us and their teams helped us to build a treasure map to get to that content. Yeah. Thanks Rachel. And and if I may, before I start, just a quick show of hands, does anyone in the room buy anything directly from AWS? Anyone? Does anyone buy? Yeah.

Exactly. So our partner network is so critical AWS. Like, I can't reiterate enough how poor it is for our partners that build on AWS and work with AWS. And so thank you, Lincoln, like from the bottom of my heart, the bottom of our heart. Thank you.

We appreciate our partners so So in that spirit of highly collaborative partnership, and I I apologize for using notes, but I have a lot of really important things I wanna cover in a short period of time. We worked really closely with Lincoln, to build the content bank and some of its underlying capabilities. And, I'll tell you all from my time in k twelve, I've been kind of chasing this white rabbit of interoperability for a long time. There have been so many resources coming from so many different directions. Those of you that work in Canvas every day understand how that is.

And in this tool, I really see a hit. Like, we we've got a tool that is truly interoperative. It it will bridge the gap between Lincoln Learning Learning academic resources, your teachers, the treasure chest, your curriculum developers, and all of that within the Canvas LMS. So there's a lot of power in that that when you when you all start to dig into this a little bit, you're gonna see some great stuff. You talked about a hundred and ten thousand learning objects and growing.

So all of that's available to you. At the that was supposed to happen at the end of my thing. On cue. Somebody got the timing wrong. All through a mouse click, through search tools.

Under the hood, we're using native AWS services, LTI one point three compliant, of course. So we're were interoperable, with the Canvas LMS. Most of this is available within minutes providing, security scalable and reliable solutions. And I and I talk about that, as a bit of a plug for partners that build on AWS and for AWS itself. Security's job wanted Amazon.

Everything we do is built with security in mind. No one gets in our data centers. I can't get in our data centers. I don't even know where they are. It's a need to know thing.

Scalability is the bigger thing though. And again, another show of hands for those of you that were around during the pandemic. Raise your hand if you had a tool that tried to get into and it didn't work because it was overloaded from too many students getting in at the same time. Right? All of us experienced it. Scalable means that doesn't happen anymore.

When you build in the cloud, that scalability, that elasticity is there with everything you do. So they have built this really great LTI compliant, reliable, scalable solution that will be available to your students as you need it when you need it. How do you get to the in the information through the search engine? I think we see on the screen here. It feels just like the search were engines were all used to using every day. You type in information.

It gives you back, the content you need. So whether you're adding something to an existing course or building a new course. The information ideally is gonna be right there at your fingertips when you need it. And there's objects are there to embed in your coursework. And while the content bank is new, right? It's twenty twenty three and we have to talk about AI.

So we that's a must. Right? So, again, we don't, at Amazon, don't see AI ever replacing teachers. Our AI will never be, like, publicly available. Like, you'll never get on the Amazon GPT and and have it write papers for you. Ours is built in underneath the hood with our partners in the search engines, just the same technology you're used to using when you shop on Amazon and it's suggestions, you're gonna find that same type of technology powering, link and learning, and when you're looking for objects, it's gonna suggest things to you you found this, it worked for that.

Maybe you want to take a look at this too. It's pretty simple stuff, as the end user. So I think In conjunction, the teamwork, we can just keep moving forward, and it's gonna be an awesome experience. And and I really can't say enough great things about what you all are doing. Thank you so much.

We feel equally as grateful in the partnership. And I I mentioned earlier that we're that boutique and it's still, I can I'm gonna speak for him. He's here our our CEO Bob Clements. He and I thank him for the vision of our company and where we're going and, the resilience that we've had. But he said it best I think when we were talking to our team at AWS and kind of a wrap up meeting and We're little.

We're a small company with big hearts and really great, opportunities for schools. For for Amazon web services to take a chance on us and then have the feedback they had for us. It was extremely complimentary and in just a great a great vision for us moving forward and continuing that partnership. So thank you again. Alright.

So we found our treasure, and we're gonna help with the success of all students everywhere. We need your help to do that. So what I would like to do, our, booth is booth sixty five. There's a fabulous photo booth there. During happy hour, come see us.

We have on-site demos. We are offering a three month free trial of the learn linking content bank. So if you are not a teacher, but you have teachers that could benefit from that, please stop and see us. We really wanna make sure that we are providing you all with the resources to really help the students at the end of the day. I think we talked really fast and we have twenty minutes.

I'm not gonna hold you hostage. I promise. But I would like to answer any questions all of you might have, today. Yes. You mentioned that it was a line to national standards.

Yes. But if you're in a state that has its own standards that are not common for, like, do our teachers have to find the crosswalks on their own, or is that embedded? So that's a great question. Lincoln Learning Solutions does have crosswalks for all state standards from the national standards. So common core ngSS C3 shape for physical education because we go beyond ELA math science and social studies. This has art music physical education.

They're all in there. So we can assist you with that crosswalk. Right now, it is at the national level, but it is evolving and developing. Just like Derek had alluded to, we're still going. And with it being launched today, it is the national standards with all of those state standards in the vision.

Great question. Thank you. Yes. Great question. So we have approximately forty to fifty developers.

They're not my team, so I'm not positive on a number, but we are in perpetual, perpetual enhancement mode. So they are reviewed. I know Britney could answer this question at the booth really well, but they are enhanced. And, Britney, if I'm saying something wrong, just give me the we are enhancing on an annual basis. We have, everything is updated and added to annually for all of our courses.

Great question. Yes. This is currently early kindergarten through twelve. Grade twelve. Yes.

So another great question. And, another question for Britney. I should have brought her up here. But we are looking at after today's conversations, We know that I that's why I was super happy to see so many case while being here because the majority of the folks at this conference are higher ed. So we've learned a lot about that, and I think that it's something that we're gonna take back for our strategic planning, especially for those transitional students.

We heard a lot We heard a lot of folks talking about the freshman year not being quite prepared. So the opportunity for us to enhance our eleventh and twelfth grade English language arts math courses is a great opportunity for us. So I I see that being on our strategic plan, and I'm getting a head nod back there. She's saying yes. Yes.

So I would love to be able to do that, but I don't know if the internet is gonna work. I had to download this because it wouldn't it wouldn't curate it. But it's like a three minute demo at the booth. So I I do apologize. I'm afraid to try to pull that up and it not be effective for us.

And, yes, no, don't apologize. I can't remember what you call it. Learning content bank? Yeah. And not necessarily courses. Absolutely.

It is a totally separate product. The learning content bank right now, we're looking at less than two dollars per student, and then offering site wide license to a school, a district, however that may be. Preated twelve. Absolutely. Any Nope.

Yes. So I was going to go about CT courses. Power client, Michael education. Is that a subsidiary or partnership it that is a partnership. So we do not have those in here because they're not linking content.

So point full education is its own company and because we believe we know really, we wanna do what we do really well. So we stick to core and core electives, and then we vetted, CTE companies and partnered with pointful because we believe they're best in class. Anybody back there? Yes, it does. Yes, it does. See, this is why I I'm only as smart as the folks I am surrounded with.

I promise, and that's why they're all here. Yes. Thank you for that question. Anything else? Yes. Go for it.

No. For both the student experience and the teacher experience, are they choosing things like saying we implemented the learning? Content Bank. Good. You're good. It's fine.

Is that all with in con Canvas, or do you need a teacher, like, have to Nope. It is in it is in addition to Canvas. It will be right in. You would subscribe. You would be there the whole time.

Yeah. Absolutely. To add on to that canvas is built on AWS anyway. So when you start embedding these objects and pulling from the content bank, you're staying within the AWS architecture and you're never out over the big eye Internet or getting on to a different platform. It's all happening within the infrastructure that we've already built in Yeah.

Awesome. Thank you for that. Any any other questions? Awesome. I just wanna thank you all for taking the time to be with us today. And if you have any additional questions, we have a really big booth with a lot of purple.

And, we have some really great stuff down there. So, socks. We have socks that say we stick together. It's really good. So come see us and enjoy the rest of your conference. Thank you very much.