Apr 23, 2020
Today’s guest on The EdTech Startup Show is Dan Carroll, Chief
Product Officer at Clever.
As a teacher and tech director, Dan saw first-hand how data
obstacles were quickly becoming the biggest barriers to innovation
in education. Before co-founding Clever, Dan joined Teach for
America and taught science at STRIVE Preparatory Schools in Denver
before becoming their director of data and technology.
Clever brings all K12 applications into one secure portal and
provides single sign-on for everyone in the district.
During this episode, Dan and I discuss
- How Clever can help transform minutes of logging into minutes
of learning by taking something complicated and tricky and making
it dead simple, in addition to that, also making it safer, and more
secure.
- The early stages of Clever, and how Dan and his co-founders
made building relationships and improving security their top
priorities
- How they made the observation early on that when people are
adopting something new, it's not just about the technology,
but also about the people behind it.
- Dan’s approach to being a leader as a person, and as a company
in the ed-tech industry.
- Clevers’ open-sourcing privacy policies and terms of service,
and encouraging other applications within Clever to adopt using
their policies as a starting point.
- Why EdTech can be competitive because of limited resources, but
it can also be an incredibly collaborative space because ultimately
everyone wants to learn and help students have an amazing
education
- How Clever is partnering with companies like Zoom to help
provide teachers support right now.
- Why Ed Tech purchases need to have data to measure if the tool
is helping to meet classroom goals
- Clever’s tool for EdTech analytics, and how it's helping
classrooms discover what is most effective for their students.
Time-Stamped Questions Discussed During
This Episode
>>>(1:00) How would you describe Clever and
what do you do there?
>>>(4:40) As a Chief Product Officer, it seems you get
to always be looking to the future of the already forward-thinking
culture of Ed Tech, is that accurate?
>>>(7:45) As somebody who is right in the middle of new
advancements, what have you learned about facilitating and creating
successful partnerships with other companies?
>>>(13:00) What is your approach to being a leader both
as a person and as a company?
>>>(19:42) Can you tell me about the impact of
partnering with companies like Zoom, as well as the Clever
Library?
>>>(30:08) If you were to go back to teaching, what are
your top three EdTech tools you would use in your classroom?
>>>(35:13) What is your perspective on how Clever could
continue to shape things positively in EdTech?
>>>(41:01) What is the EdTech Startup scene like in
Silicon Valley?
>>>( 44:33) Anything else you would like to
share?
Links Mentioned In This Episode
Dan Carroll’s Social Media
Twitter - @bytingtheapple
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