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Welcome to the premiere episode of the EdTech Startup Showcase, an original series produced by the Be Podcast Network. This series is all about spotlighting and amplifying some of the most innovative emerging companies in edtech.
Today, Inkwire founder Aatash Parikh joins the show to discuss his company’s efforts to empower students to build and share their body of work. Aatash is an educator and engineer who has worked at companies like Google and Khan Academy, and also as a middle school teacher in the Oakland Unified School District.
Hear about:
- Aatash’s journey from classroom teacher to edtech founder
- What authentic digital portfolios mean for student learning
- The results students and teachers get when they engage with the Inkwire platform
- The launch process and initial school successes
- Vision for the future of learning
About Inkwire
In a world in which generative AI has called into question the value of traditional curriculum and assessments, Inkwire is a platform that engages students in real projects and helps them demonstrate their original thinking & skills through portfolios. Learn more: https://inkwire.co
About today’s guest
Aatash Parikh is an educator and an engineer. Aatash has worked as a software engineer at companies like Google & Khan Academy and as a middle school teacher in Oakland Unified School District. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from UC Berkeley and an M.Ed. in Educational Leadership from the High Tech High Graduate School of Education. Learn more:
About today’s host
Scott Schuette is a Learning and Development Executive with years of experience driving the creation of innovative, multi-million dollar learning platforms and education programs for major corporate enterprise companies.
He is cohost of The Fabulous Learning Nerds, a podcast sharing new ideas, learning tools, approaches and technology that increase learner engagement and impact — All while having FUN! Listen to the show and subscribe here: https://fabulouslearningnerds.transistor.fm
Creators & Guests
Host
Guest
What is EdTech Startup Showcase?
This series shines a spotlight on the innovative edtech companies working to make a difference for students and educators.
Through conversations with the founders and CEOs, partner organizations, and the educators who are using their products in schools today, listeners hear about solutions relevant to their chronic challenges and opportunity-expanding ideas to go into uncharted directions.
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome everybody to the premiere episode of EdTech Startup Showcase, an original series produced by the Be Podcast Network. My name is Scott Schuette. Perhaps you've heard me and my co hosts on our other Bee Podcast Network show. The Fabulous Learning Nerds. I'm going to be your host today and for each of the next four episodes of the EdTech Startup Showcase.
This series is all about spotlighting and amplifying some of the most innovative emerging companies in EdTech. In the coming episodes, you'll hear from our founding cohort of amazing startups, including Be More Colorful with their premier product, CareerView XR, Classroom Mosaic. Connected Class, Pedagogy.
Cloud, and specifically its AI service, Pedagog. AI. And in today's episode, Inkwire. Without further delay, I'm pleased to introduce today's guest, the [00:01:00] founder of Inkwire, Aatash Parikh. Aatash is an educator and engineer who has worked at companies like Google, Khan Academy, and also as a middle school teacher in the Oakland Unified School District.
Aatash, it's a pleasure to have you here on the Showcase.
Thank you, Scott. Great to be
Listen, um, I had a little bit of an intro for you there in the beginning,
but could you do our audience a favor and kind of get
them up to speed on your journey, where you started from and how you got to, uh,
uh, where you
are today?
Absolutely. So my journey in education and ed tech started when I was a student, a college student, and I. got into a good university, I was a stereotypical good student up, through high school, but when I came to college, I found it harder and harder and it's, it's then when I started to reflect on all the ways, you know, school as a system disengages
learners at all levels and, and really wanted [00:02:00] to, wanted to do something about that, uh, around that time, uh, Sal Khan of Khan Academy also came to our university and gave a talk and that's when I caught the EdTech bug and, and realized the power of, of technology to actually impact students.
the system that I was,
you know, starting to think about so much.
And,
and since then I've been on a journey. I, I worked as a software engineer. I
worked in schools, I was a middle school teacher, and then for the last few years I've been building Inquire.
Excellent. That's a great segue, inquire, help me understand, help our audience understand, The opportunity in your space, right? So there's lots of opportunities to education, lots of opportunities when we think about how kids learn or preparing them to create a better place for all of us, like how, what was the inspiration that you had to create? Inquire in what solution are you hoping bring to the ed tech
In terms of the inspiration for Inquire, I'm [00:03:00] going to mention kind of two points of inspiration that, because the idea has,
has kind of simmered for a while and, and. In terms of what, how it resulted in what it is today. The first one was when I wanted, I knew I wanted to work in ed tech. I wanted to create a tool, create a product, but didn't feel like a lot of the ed tech I was seeing around me was having that. transformative impact on teaching and learning that I was excited to have and inspired to have. And so I went on this journey with a friend, we called it the self guided education masters.
We visited schools, we interviewed teachers, we read books about education reform, learned that people have been trying things. for a long time.
and we didn't actually have that many new ideas. And one of the, one of the conclusions from that experience was just that There are already amazing educators and amazing schools out there, and [00:04:00] often the challenge is that our assessment systems and the way we measure schools, measure outcomes, measure students, limits what, what gets captured, what gets communicated. And so a lot of the magic in, in, in these classrooms that we were seeing was kind of lost, you know, in that translation. And so. I started thinking about this idea of the digital portfolio and the portfolio as a way to really capture the full story of learning and help a student
show what they can really So that was the first, the first kind of spark. And then it really, it really solidified for me when I was actually working in
schools and working in the classroom. The first school I worked at was called High Tech High. It's an amazing project based learning school in San Diego, California.
And that's when I saw this magical learning happening where students were creating, they were building, they were collaborating, and [00:05:00] they had a portfolio system. and so I got really excited about how a portfolio could help spread the type of learning I was seeing there. Um, one of the things I learned there, and that, That I actually carried to me when I became a teacher and I taught middle school computer science in Oakland Unified School District was this idea of the authentic audience.
as a teacher, I had students with amazing skills, but often were disengaged in a traditional classroom environment. And one thing I learned from my experience at high tech high and this project based learning organization, was if you can give students It's real work to do and a real audience to present that work to do the present that work to, the spark you see in, in, in their eyes and that sense of purpose and motivation, it's, it's pretty amazing. And I, I felt like, again, this, this idea of a portfolio or having a place to, for them to show their work, tell their story. I got excited [00:06:00] about that opportunity again and started building something and I used it with my own students and it's kind of grown from there.
So this idea of relevancy in work, really, really important, especially for, you know, a younger audience. So much of what we give our students today is like. If there's no with them, what's in it for me? Like I if I don't see the value, if there's no relevancy, then they just tune out and you're going to get what you get so I think that's really inspiring that you're, Hey, here's some relevant stuff that we can work Um, and then you go ahead and see the results from that fantastic idea. you're you're adding in portfolios, you're adding in some relevancy to the work, so what's the goal of inquire? How, what are those systems and structures that you put into place to expand on even some of the results that you've got, from the relevancy
That's where I felt the opportunity of the technology to really support that process. If you just look at. Social media and, and the way young people use these tools to express [00:07:00] themselves and communicate. how can we take some of the good from that and the things that The practices that they have around storytelling and sharing? can we bake some of those into our learning tools, right? So with InkWire, we make it really easy for students to demonstrate their knowledge, not just through a written response, but through an audio recording or by recording a video.
When they upload their work, they get a chance not just to turn it into their teacher and get a grade back, right? It's something that's shared with an audience so they can get feedback from peers. You can invite experts from outside of the classroom to give feedback to the students. They're building up their portfolio. And so this idea of documenting of digital storytelling, those are kind of the tools that we're building into the Inquire platform. and we're hoping that, that's where the technology can really support that process.
Okay. So Inquirer is a platform then that students use to engage with their [00:08:00] learning. So, I'm a student, uh, I'm in, Professor Barnes's class and I'm learning about Subject A. So how do how do I interface with Inquirer and then what do the tools and systems and structures on the platform do to help me have a better
Good question. So there are two. Two ways that students can engage with InkWire. One is independently, and the other one is through, you know, through an educator, through a class, through their school. And so independently, students can go into, go onto inkWire, start to upload projects, artifacts, work that they've done. And then very quickly be able to curate it into a story, into a website, into a presentation, reflect on those different artifacts, and do it in a way where they're not having to learn a lot of these fancy website building tools or portfolio builders. [00:09:00]
Inquire really focuses on just getting, uploading your work, capturing it, and then being able to reflect and tell a story with it. So students can do that independently. where Inquirer really shines is when the, when the educator is involved. So we've built a place for teachers
and educators to actually design Full, learning experiences, projects, performance tasks, and it could be a full, you know, multi month project, or it could be just a few different milestones at which you're helping students collect process work, right?
So I think when it comes to the portfolio, oftentimes many people think about just that showcase, that final portfolio, but the portfolio actually it can enter the process much earlier and, there is something called the process portfolio or the learning portfolio where students are actually documenting and reflecting on their learning. throughout that journey. And so we allow the teacher to actually scaffold that process for [00:10:00] students. You go in, you create the milestones, and you can create places for students to capture and reflect on specific prompts. And then over time, they're just building up their body of work, and so when it is time to create that more showcase side of the portfolio, all of their work is already in Inquire. They can click a few buttons and have a presentation that they can present to the class, to their parents, something that they can use to apply to college or
amazing. Like I think back to my learning experience and okay, spoiler alert. I'm old, right? So, teacher would give me an assignment and I would do my best to create something out of it. and that was cool, but never in that process that I ever had the opportunity to kind of take a look at my journey. through that learning process, right? So one of the things that I think is absolutely amazing about what you've got is not only do I have the ability to create something really cool that is uniquely mine and relevant, but I also [00:11:00] have not just for me to see, but I also my, my educator, my teacher, my professor also has the opportunity to see all those things that went into that project, right?
So I can go into the portfolio, I can take a look at well, we gathered, this, this, and this, and we created these ideas, and we had these discussions. And I'm sure there's a multitude of other things that we can see in there. So it becomes really easy, not only for those people who are evaluating my work to be able to say, did Scott learn but. Also to be able to take a look at the effort and the amount of the amount of learning that can go in there. Um, and dare I say, I can go and reference that for future opportunities for learning and engagement and kind of build off of that. That's fantastic. That's great. So help us along the journey, right?
So you got this, how did, how did you first propose, you know, inquire to the community? Tell us a little bit about some of those, um, initial. learning, so to speak, when it, when it, came to launching this amazing product.
[00:12:00] I mentioned a little earlier that I was a middle school teacher. I think one of the biggest things working in schools, you get a lot of empathy for just how much is on educators plates and how. hard it often is to introduce new tools and new systems, and that it was really important for me to build that empathy in terms of thinking about what to actually create and whether it was useful, but also knowing what it would take to help have something spread and be likely for folks to actually adopt. And honestly, the best way for me to do that initially was just to be the first user of what I was building. And so I started building Inquire while I was in the classroom.
And the first, the first educator user was me and the first students. on it were my students in my classroom. And, and so, I was getting daily, daily feedback and human centered [00:13:00] design, from the students that I was working with every day and so I spent a good amount of time just, just iterating that way and, eventually I shared with, some, with educators in my network and folks that I had met while I was at high tech high, other educators, that I've been working with in Oakland and just started to email folks, you know, get folks to beta test, didn't do a, map, you know, a big marketing campaign. It's been kind of a slow journey of, of spreading to folks that believe in what we're, what we're doing and kind of expanding from there.
I think it's really great that you have learned while doing and that you involve your class in that process, right? So real time feedback. Yeah, this isn't working or, Ooh, I really like that. What were some of the early learnings you received in that building process? Like, I'm really curious, um, about that.
one thing you'll notice This, uh, in, in InkWire is the way it looks, really, I think the design, the colors, you know, in the [00:14:00] platform. One of the things I learned is that the way in which the work is presented, the way it looks, really impacts how students feel about it, their sense of ownership over it, their sense of pride, the more beautiful the kind of platform, but not in a distracting way, like we're not trying, we're trying to really highlight the actual work that the students were doing, but the more we could do it in a way that was helping them put their best foot forward with, with the work that they were uploading and really making it look nice. was important for students, and so that's been a really big design value that we've carried.
the other big learning was really that idea that I referenced earlier around the authentic audience. And it was just that if If students can have that opportunity to share their work, not just with me as a teacher, but with folks outside of the classroom, folks who are invested in the quality of their work, that completely [00:15:00] transforms how they relate to it. And often that was as simple as them creating a portfolio to showcase to their families. During a parent teacher conference,
So that, that's become one of the biggest This kind of use cases that I didn't expect early on you know, I was, I had all these fancy kind of projects in mind that students might be doing but just that, that use case of students collecting the work they were doing and, Putting together this this artifact and presenting to their families actually had all these, all this impact on the way they approach their learning throughout the school year.
That's really awesome. So, you know, the proofs and the results, right? So doing something for fun is great. We all, we all love that. We all love new stuff. Um, but I know the people that I support are like, what are the results, scott? What are we getting? What are some of the other results, tangible or otherwise, that you saw through the early days of inkwork?
I think one of [00:16:00] the big things is the dialogue that it promotes amongst teachers. So when students are capturing the work, it's not just making the student work more visible. It's actually helping the teachers make their own practices more visible and increasing that transparency. And so one of the things I've been most excited about is seeing how creating this documentation process. For students really helps transform what the teaching looks like or what it could look like.
And so one of the districts that I work with, uh, it's, it's a district called Bullitt County in Kentucky, and, and they're doing a lot of great work to transform traditional learning models and classrooms into some, into learning that's more. accessible. Project based, more performance based, and that's really engaging for students. And it's been really exciting to see Inquirer spread in their district as teachers are creating [00:17:00] templates, sharing with each other, they're getting inspired by seeing each other as examples. and so that's, that's the piece that I'm most excited about because it has the potential to actually be. Transform, you know, the classroom experience for a lot of
Yeah, so no more, um, Ferris Bueller's day off Bueller, Bueller. Okay. Maybe I'm dating myself again, but
um.
I figured it.
I gotcha.
No, I think that's, that's great. Like as an educator, those are the things that we want. Like I want my. Students to be inspired like I want my students to have a thirst for learning and knowledge like we all have to learn and grow today, even more so than yesterday. Right? So I think that's really cool. in in a moment of humility, were there some things that you, uh, that you tried that didn't work out or any learnings from any of the things that kind of didn't go the way that you would
You know, a lot of things have been, been challenging and lots of learnings along the way. I would I think one of the things is [00:18:00] just that, especially when it comes to helping teachers design new kinds of learning experiences, I definitely underestimated, you know, how challenging that can be and how, how much time it requires for teachers
That they really just don't have. And so one of the things that that continues to be challenging and that we're trying to find some creative solutions around now is how do we help teachers. generate ideas, generate curriculum, generate projects that doesn't, in a way that doesn't require them to do so much
legwork. You know, I think one of the things with InkWire is it's been such a, it's flexible tool for a while for teachers and they've been able to create things and especially the teachers that have clear ideas of what they want to do. The platform works really well for them. One of the things we're trying to do is for the teachers that know they want to go in a certain direction. But need a little help to get started, what can we do to help them, whether it's, you [00:19:00] better instructional materials for the, for our users, better templates, ways for them to get started? Uh, we're thinking about AI and how do we use AI to help teachers create new curriculum? This idea of getting teachers started when they're so busy, you know, I think that's a challenge with, with all edtech, but it's something that we're kind of actively thinking about, especially in this, in this world where we're not just trying to take an existing teaching and learning process and digitize it or make it more efficient.
We're actually trying to shift You know, practice. and so you're, you know, when you're trying to shift practice as well as get folks to learn a new technology, you know, I think there's a lot of moving pieces there. And so, that part has been challenging. but it is what we're trying to do. So. just got to figure it out.
Yeah,
no, that's So help me understand, where are you today in your journey[00:20:00]
and what's your vision for the future? Help our audience understand a little bit
Yep, so we
are in about 35 schools
right now and they're a mix of traditional public school districts, we have some alternative charter schools, and so and and kind of anything in between.
This idea that I was just
mentioning about shifting practice.
A lot of folks have have been on that journey. A lot of our early
users have already been on that journey. The next stage for Inre is being able to,
To reach folks that want to take that leap, they want to do more performance based assessment, more projects. I think, especially in
this world in which generative
AI is
calling into question a lot of questions about, you know, what is original student work? You
know, is that, is a five paragraph
essay still the best assignment? I think there's,
a renewed [00:21:00] sense
of interest
in authentic, relevant assessments,
learning experiences, and so
our vision
is to really make that easy for, for schools and educators to adopt.
Whatever we can do to, to make that easy from the technology perspective and
just reaching more folks with what we're building. That's kind of the goal.
Yeah, the one thing that I think is really incredible, again, your platform is it really does showcase
that thought process, right? So if we talk about AI and okay, everybody's talking about it,
like I can go ahead and go to chat GTP today and have it right. What I need, and then how
do I discern if that's really right or
not? What I can't do
is I can't go to chat
GTP and
say, could you show my thought process on how I got from A to B in my learnings and all that, like that, that's a very human relevant thing.
So I think. [00:22:00] From a,
oh my goodness, from a longevity kind of perspective, from a, from a future proofing what you wanna do, I think that that's a really great, great solution. So, Yeah. How do we,
let me backtrack.
What are some of the things that,
as you think about the growth of Inquirer, really gets you excited?
What motivates you do this kind of
What motivates me is Really
thinking back
to my time in the classroom
as a, as a
teacher and the students that I worked with and
those moments
in which I could
see the spark in their eye. I could
see
them stand up a little bit
more straight because they were doing work that they were really
proud of and they, they were excited to show it to the world.
I want more
students to have that experience and I want every classroom to, to create
those [00:23:00] kinds of experiences for students.
And so I, I'm excited. to help enable that, help
that happen in more places.
I'm excited about
AI
because of, of the things that we mentioned and, and potentially that opening that it's
creating for us to, to rethink what learning looks like.
I'm also excited about the potential for AI to help
teachers and, get to that place where they can
create these types of experiences
more easily. And, and so that's given me a renewed excitement of the possibility as well
for
me, what motivates me ultimately is this idea of
students having purpose
in their learning,
feeling proud of their work,
and, and just knowing that that completely changes their relationship to school.
And, you know, if
we can do that, that's, that's what's exciting to
Ultimately, what's the, what's the impact that you really want to create with, inquire?
[00:24:00] From the student
perspective, I want every student
to be able to build an amazing portfolio of work
that allows them
to connect to future opportunities.
You know, I'm,
I'm imagining that, you know, as time goes on, that portfolio is really what
Is the bridge to whether it's college or other post secondary opportunities, their
internships, jobs, so really empowering every student to have an amazing
portfolio of projects,
Right, I think that's one thing, that would be amazing and I, and I think, you know, to back to what I mentioned earlier around assessment
systems and
incentive structures and what drives behavior
in schools, if we can get to that point where
we are looking much more holistically at what students
can do and what learning looks like,
the trickle down
effect that could have into the classroom
and, the [00:25:00] relevancy of of the learning that's actually happening
in the classroom.
That's, you know, that's the ultimate impact I, I'd like to
have is, is what school looks like and what classrooms look like.
So what's next?
What's next for inquire?
I'm pretty excited soon. We're going to be launching
a, tool for teachers
to input. What kind of standards they want to cover, various constraints that they have, and then really leverage the power of AI to, to generate curriculum for them that's actually high quality,
differentiated. Um,
there's a lot of tools out there that are AI
these days. And,
what we have the ability to do
is take some
of our
domain expertise and
some of our vision of, of pedagogy and, and build something that's really
good. And so we,
we've started to do that and I'm
excited to be launching some of that pretty soon.
yeah, we're just
sharing the word about Inquirer. We have some exciting, product
pieces and, stories and
things that
we want to share. So just a [00:26:00] lot of things that, that are in the pipeline for us.
Well, Tosh, this has been an amazing conversation and I'm really, really happy
that you were our partner. First
episode because I really, really found it, to be inspiring and really laying the groundwork for a lot of really cool,
ed tech conversations that are to be coming up
with that being said, as we begin to wrap things up, are there some takeaways
that you'd
like to leave with everyone.
Or is there some things that you really wanted to talk about today, but we haven't gotten to yet. Like
give you some time to kind of wrap some things up and share some
we, covered quite a bit. I would say just to, uh, just to emphasize one of the things that we, that we did talk about, um in the context of chat GPT. And, and I know that's something that's on a lot of, a lot of educators minds these days. And one of the biggest things folks are thinking about is, You know, the originality of student work [00:27:00] and cheating
and some of the challenges around that. how do you detect, you know, when students are using some of these tools to, to do their work? And I think there is some important solutions folks are creating for that. And, it is a real challenge. what I encourage folks to think about is what does AI resistant learning look like? what does it look like to develop, you know, these experiences that we've talked about that almost require students to demonstrate original thinking or talk about. their thought process that went into the work, and, and maybe we need to, it. to kind of shift the actual tasks that we're having students do, and so I don't have, you know, all the answers on that front, but I'd love to, to start that conversation and be a part of that conversation, and then hopefully make that easier for folks to do, Cause it, you know, it's a challenge. I think that's a lot, a lot to put into teacher's plates to, be able to, you know, address some of these things. [00:28:00] And so, uh, whatever we can do to help support that as, you know, I'm happy to, to explore that and to be a part of that conversation.
We should be really, really proud of the conversations you've already started and should be really proud about the conversation that we've had here today. I loved it. Um, could you do me a favor? do our audience a favor, let them know how they could connect with you. They want more information about Inquirer. Where'd they go.
Absolutely. Inquire is spelled I N K W I R E and our website is inquire. co, so yeah, check it, check us out there. Um, there's a contact form on there, so feel free to reach out with any questions.
Aatash, thank you. Thank you so much for your time. I wish you the best of success with Inquirer. thank you so very, very much.
Thanks Scott. Had a lot of fun.
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