Disruptive Dialogue: Education Thought Leader Michael Horn | Ed on the Edge

Hey, everybody. It's really, really a privilege for me to have the opportunity to have a conversation with my longtime good friend Michael Horn, who, in my view, is as thoughtful and strategic as any person I know in the education technology space. Michael. He's ubiquitous with his podcasts, his books, the different writings that he does on an ongoing basis, really providing insights to what's going on in the world. His most recent book is From Reopen to Reinvent, which I'd like to talk about more because I do think the concepts that you talk about in that are incredibly important is how to reimagine what the opportunity is today with Disrupting the Class, which was written with Clayton Christensen in 2008, is probably the Bible as it relates to thinking about how technology can not only disrupt, but improve education, which is, again, really, really an important piece if you haven't read it. So, Michael, welcome.

Yeah, thank you. It's good to see you. I feel like very, very high praise coming from someone as prolific as you are as well, so thank you.

Wow. It's very, very, very sincere. So let's. Before we talk about your current thinking, how did you get interested in the education technology space to begin with?

Let's be honest. It was total, you know, sort of dumb chance, if you will. I had gone to business school to get away from the world of public policy and writing. I was super interested in media businesses and wanted to be on the business side of that. And while I was at Harvard Business School, I took Clay Christensen's class on disruptive innovation. And it just totally changed the way I saw how the world worked. Like, it explained all these, you know, why did these giants fall? Right? And it all of a sudden made a lot more sense. And he had this opportunity to co author a book with him on applying his ideas to public education. He literally. I mean, this is how unique a professor he was. He, you know, he's the preeminent, the father of disruptive innovation theory. Some random November after class, at the very end, he says, anyone interested in writing a book with me about public education? Stop by. And I stopped by. I wasn't even his first choice, by the way, but he eventually said, let's write it together and you'll actually be a co author. And, you know, I gotta be honest, like, at first I was like, so technology's gonna do what? And then we started working on it, and I was like, yeah, it could do those things. And. And obviously, the bigger pursuit of helping build a world in which all individuals can build their passions and fulfill Their human potential has just become its own life mission now.

Yeah. And thank you for that. After writing the book, in 2008, you moved out to Silicon Valley, where you opened up the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation. I remember meeting you over in San Mateo, right when you were opening up your office. What were some of the key things that you learned when you came to Silicon Valley and with this kind of specific focus on innovation and education.

Yeah. I mean, coming from Boston, where for someone like me who is a nobody. Right. When I wrote the book, I found it really hard to break into and network to influential, impactful people doing important work. Whereas when you went to Silicon Valley, it was like, you have an idea, doors are open, let's talk. And it was just such a different vibe and transparency and openness around that. Like, it really made you believe in the Michael Porter idea of clusters. Right. Like that the exchange of ideas and information just starts building each other. And you remember those years, I mean, it was so cool where all of a sudden, like, there's edtech funds popping up, there's all these startups coming up, there's accelerat, like imagine K12, there was all these charter schools creating blended learning models using education technology. Like, there's all this activity and to be part of it and in the midst of it and trying to, like, push the entrepreneurs and investors right around, it was just really cool. And I don't think I appreciated how interesting it would be when I moved back to Boston. I will say, in 2013, while it's easier for me to get a meeting than it was in 2009 when I moved out to the Bay Area, it's not the same dynamism, it's not the same sort of, okay, you're doing this, let me build that. Right. It's just, it's. It. There's something about that culture, at least then, that was really cool. And didn't care about pedigree, it just cared about the quality of ideas.

Exactly. It wasn't who your parents were, it wasn't where you went to school. It was, what was your idea, how big idea, how. How much energy and hustle and, and excitement did you bring to this idea? And people would be attracted to these ideas. I remember conversations you used to visit with me, and again, it was everywhere. So, like in Washington, people talk about politics. In New York, you talk about finance. In Silicon Valley, you talk about ideas. And I remember being at the old Pro with you having some great conversations. But that's what, you know, was just amazing. Right? It was an amazing environment to be part of.

Yeah, it was really cool. And I remember every. Every Friday afternoon, I could just stumble out of our offices, first in Mountain View, then later in San Mateo, and I guess we were a couple places. But just always drive into Palo Alto and meet you there and have conversations, kick the tires on different entrepreneurs, different ideas. And I remember my wife and I commenting on this as well. Often the conversation of interest when you were there was not just your idea. It was where are you from? Stuff like that. Whereas in Boston, it's like, where'd you go to school? Or something like that. Right. It's just a different kind of interest in conversation.

Yeah. It was a special place to be. And amazing things, obviously have come from there. So talk about what you're doing now. How does Michael Horn fill up his week with a lot of things, but how are you thinking about what are sort of the kind of key things that have got your interest right now?

Yeah, I mean, so when I left the Christensen Institute in 2015, I really wanted to assemble this portfolio, sort of lifestyle, right. A gig economy, where I could. And it's evolved. You know, initially, I was spending a lot of time with Entangled Ventures, then Guild Education. Now it's really. I want to lean in on the thought leadership. I sort of feel like that's my unique value. Add in the space where I can make the biggest difference is trying to chart a vision for what educators and entrepreneurs ought to be striving for when they create this future in which our kids and grownups are going to be developing talent. Right. And so I'm teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in the fall, writing books, writing substack newsletter. A lot of podcasting. I think it's three podcasts I do now, as you mentioned, and then just continuing to speak. And so it's really, I will tell you, like, coming out of the Harvard Business School, for someone who loved management so much and was so excited by the doers, I've had to sort of like, make this piece with myself that the doing of creating content and thought leadership is actually plays an important role in the ecosystem, number one. But number two, I realized, Michael, I just. I love sketching out that vision. I love performing. I love playing at that role. And I think it does inspire people. And so hopefully it helps move the needle on. On this big, sticky challenge we got.

So I want to talk about this big sticky challenge in a second, but you. I just. I don't want to lose the thought. You know, you talked about Your initial interest being media and that was sort of your passion. And now, I mean one what kind of ironic, well, continuum do you see between education me, where there's, where there's similarities, where there differences, what you know, effectively leverages off of each other. But also as you think about what you're doing now, you know, you're immediate. You're a media guy.

Yeah, no, I think that's right. And that's, I think that's been part of my evolution is like, oh my gosh, like when Jeff Selingo and I are, you know, doing future you and thinking about offshoots and stuff like that, or going into a college campus and producing a campus tour show. We're doing media now and so it's kind of full circle and very cool in that way. A lot of the content creation is, is, is stuff I'm passionate about in that way. I think more broadly, obviously media and the forms of media play a big role in how we've changed the entertainment of ourselves and also the education of ourselves. I think what's, you know, there's a few things that are different, obviously, but one of them is in entertainment. We acknowledge when a disruptive innovation comes along and now, you know, I'm watching clips on YouTube or TikTok instead of a full length movie or TV show and we acknowledge that that's entertainment. Whereas when I'm learning in an informal way on YouTube or you know, social media or whatever else, we don't call that education. And I think that's a shame. Right. Like we sort of. What's occurred to me over the years is a lot of the stuff we're writing about is occurring outside, as you. As you'd predict, right. The formal education structures. And so. But we sort of don't count it. And that's a shame. I think the second thing, I guess I'd say that's apparent parallel is media at some level is about creating great stories. And we know from cognitive science research that storytelling is one of the best, if not the best way for someone to learn. And so I think a lot of times, like, you know, with what our friend Michael Crowe is doing with the dreamscape stuff and the virtual reality, all the hype is on the virtual reality, but the real magic there is the storytelling. 100% Hollywood writers together to write cool stories that engage a learner. And so we should be doing more of that piece.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, you look at, I mean, how many people learn more about American history from Hamilton than they did the classes they took in high school. Sure. Or if I asked you and you're younger, but you still, I think, will get the answer right. How long was Gilligan's tour, people? 50, 40 years after the show's been off the air, people know the tour was three hours because the stories mean the things that help people learn things. So I think we miss a lot of that. And I think that's a big opportunity. Particularly so, as you talk about this idea of it's not captured when ultimately what's going to matter is not this degree. I mean, degrees are going to. Degrees matter, certificates matter, other kind of formal ways to represent. But ultimately it's really about what you know, what your capabilities are, what your knowledge is and how you can apply it, and how you gain that is going to come a variety of ways, or at least that's my thesis and I think it's yours.

Mine as well. Yeah, mine as well. And I think capabilities is the right word because it's sort of. Or your assets, right. It comprises your skills, your knowledge, also, I suppose, your degrees and things like that, that have value in the labor force. Right. And allow you to get access to opportunity, but also your social capital and your connections and who you know, which is something that we don't pay nearly enough attention to either, frankly, in the education world, is when we think about opportunity. My life is one where I got to know the right people at the right times. Your life right through football and some of the experiences you had that led to Wall street and then ultimately out to Silicon Valley, people played a big role in that. And that's the other side of the equation. I've come to appreciate that. I don't think I did when I wrote disrupted class.

Well, and again, I think thinking about how to create that in a more formalized, systematic way, because I can guarantee you my opportunities were created by people that I got exposed to and either them helping or at least seeing a path of what they did, because people have, you know, it's just. It's natural. They have trouble imagining something you've never experienced. So how can you enable that for people? I think that's critical.

Yeah, I totally agree.

So reopen to reinvent. And some of what you talked about there is again, it's a bit sort of the natural way that people behave, which is they don't necessarily reimagine. They effectively try to jam something to an existing kind of framework. But talk about some of the key points from reopen to reinvent and what you think the opportunity could be. Today?

Yeah. You know, I wrote the book I thought I was done writing for K12 education, to be totally honest. I wrote the book because during the pandemic, I was just like, we need to be doing and imagining more. Like this is an opportunity to really reshape how our schools work. And educators, it seems to me, need a set of ideas for what that could be. And then they need a set of tools for how they can manage that change. And we have ideas on both. Right. And so, you know, the first thing is, I think as the habits of the present were broken and people started looking for other options and thinking, gosh, maybe 8 to 3 isn't the right hours for school, or, you know, maybe I want to be personalized for, for my distinct needs, that you can reimagine schooling as a positive sum experience instead of a zero someone. And what I mean by that is my success doesn't come at the expense of yours. That when we master material, we both progress and can find our unique way to contribute to the world. And to do that, that means you got to look at mastery based learning. Get rid of the credit hours, Carnegie units, all that junk of time. That's the formal system. And instead look at what you said, your capabilities. Right. What do you know and can do? And what I really want to do. And your partner, Deborah Cuazo, gave me this turn of phrase is guarantee mastery of the foundational concepts for every child. If it takes me five days, it takes you two days. That's okay. Because through digital learning, we can vary the pace, right? We can vary the path. That's not a hard thing to do anymore. And then give educators the way to think about managing that change. They don't have to flip everything upside down at once. You know, create these spaces. A micro school in the district, a school within a school, a new way to do math, whatever it might be, where they have the autonomy to reimagine how these experiences work to create more supportive environments for teachers, more supportive environments for students, and a better functioning system for parents.

So talk about the progress that's been made of replacing the time and seat versus the mastery around the United States, because I do think it's encouraging.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's good sides and bad sides to this story. Right. The good is that I feel like when Disrupting class came out and I was at the Christensen Institute, spending a lot of time in state legislatures, first few years, I would talk about, gotta make, you know, right now, time is the constant. Learning is variable. You gotta flip it you gotta make time the variable and every student's learning constant guarantee mastery. And people's eyes would glaze over, they're like, what the heck are you talking about? Why does that matter? To your point, this is a common, like people get this now, right? Like it's on the radar. Carnegie foundation, ets like big organizations are thinking about we've got to overthrow time as the unit of currency in our education system. You interviewed Scott Pulsifer, Western Governor's University. Right. Like best example in the world of competency based or mastery based learning, some 200, I don't know, 15, 20, 30,000 students. Right. Who all learn based on mastery, not credit hours in effect. So there's been some real progress in that way. I would say on the downside, you know, the existing schools, you could change policy. There's been a lot of credit, like a lot of waivers from seat time policies in states, which is great. But you know, Clay used to describe that you would go into like an automotive manufacturing plant and there were not actual grooves in the floor about like the different processes that a car would take between stations or, or welding to this to that. But it was like metaphorical grooves. Right. The processes were so ingrained. And that's true in our schools as well as, you know, like you go into them and like, why do we do the master schedule this way? Well, we've always done it that way. We never thought about another way. Right. Why, why did teachers show up? I don't know. We just always. And they are so that culture and those processes. It's just not just a policy problem. You really need to upend so much of the traditional structures. And so I think, I guess the other part I'm really excited about is all these micro schools that are emerging and all these options outside of the formal schooling structures, they're fundamentally, I think a lot of them mastery based. And so that's pretty exciting. I think that's where the real, that's where I get my real energy at the moment is I think parents have made some really cool choices to empower their kids and educators who are opting out of the traditional public schools to create their own micro schooling environments. There's a world of good happening there.

Obviously. Just completely agree. And what's exciting and I think a challenge, but both an opportunity is how you can take the learnings. A lot of these innovation labs, for lack of a better word, are finding out that would really work in resin, how that cross pollinates with all this different innovation that's going out there. I want to go back just because, I mean, this isn't linear. But I would be remiss if I didn't get this insight from you, because, you know, I think it's. You've had such a unique opportunity to work with one of the most strategic and innovative thinkers in the history of the world, Clayton Christensen, who sadly passed several years ago. But what were some of the lessons you learned? I mean, you referenced kind of how his. Kind of inquisitive and kind. But what were some of the key things that you learned from working with him? What made him so special?

Wow. You know, one of them was Clay did not care if he was right. He wanted to find the right answer. And so he would put forth theories, and when people would come to him and say, I think you missed this nuance or you got this wrong or it didn't actually work that way in that industry, he would just say, tell me more. And it's like the Adam Grant, right? Tell me more. And he would take those anomalies or errors and he would say, okay, great. Like, let's work on this together and make this better.

He.

He didn't defend his ideas. He wanted to learn so that he could produce insights that would actually be actionable to managers. Like, that's what motivated Clay. And that was gen. Like, that was deep in his core and genuine. And. And I think the second piece of that was that he thought genuinely that he could learn something from every single individual.

When.

When he would call you into his office, he was kind of like Abraham Lincoln and like, he was trying out his new story on you every time to see how you'd react and just trying to get it better and better.

But.

You know, every individual, he felt like, could teach him something about whatever problem he was noodling on, and he took such a genuine interest in their lives and what they could teach him from those perspectives, that sort of humility, something I can do better at. But it was just so cool to see, and I think it's what made him so expansive and a powerful thinker was because he didn't have this fixed mindset of, my idea is right, and yours must be wrong. Instead, it was like, okay, you've. You've. You've seen something that doesn't make sense. Let's dig back in together and roll up our sleeves and make it better so it can be more actionable.

Yeah, that's awesome. I think what life has shown me, anyway, is the smartest people are the best listeners. It's not the People that espouse their opinion the loudest. It's the ones that really are great listeners and understand you can learn from basically everybody.

Yeah, I agree.

Okay, so now what are you seeing in the marketplace? Let's talk about, I mean the elephant in the room, artificial intelligence. You've written about it, everybody's talking about it. Talk about how you see the state of play today and, and what you're encouraged by what you think needs to get figured out and how do you see this evolving?

Yeah, well, it's so exciting and you all have obviously jumped on it and put out such great information out of GSV and, and I know at the, the summit this year there's going to be a really cool show so I can't wait to learn from that. But it's been interesting to watch it unfold because in the sort of big tech if you will, ecosystem, I think the Ben Thompson's of the world are right that it's largely been implemented so far as a sustaining innovation that it is helping the Microsoft's and Google's. Obviously OpenAI is its own thing but by and large it's helping those players Amazon Meta do more better and it's expensive and like they have used it to largely create products. Huge question by the way for Google in that, right? Will it upend search or will they be able to figure out a way to do it as a sustaining innovation? Let's watch. But, but I think there's a good set of arguments there. But on the education side, while all the big companies have obviously started playing with AI in some pretty cool ways, I mean Power school has some really cool things you can do with AI now and so forth. I think it's also going to start to create both new startups and you and I are both seeing a lot of them that really rethink some of the fundamental tenants of, of, of how school has always happened. Empowered by these technologies to really personalize learning for, for each kid and, and you know Conmigo is the easy one to see right? The personal tutor. But grading feedback like there's going to be a lot of really cool things that start to come with that are AI powered. But even more so I, I think like new school designs powered by AI that fundamentally are more personalized, help accelerate everyone's learning, make it easier to be a teacher, lower the fundamental cost in both K12 and higher ed and workforce settings like those are the things that I think are going to be really neat to watch. I'll just give you one example as you know, I'm on the board of Imagine Worldwide, which is a nonprofit that has basically proved the case that we can put tablets in the hands of kids in Africa that often don't have access to school and help them become functionally literate and able to do math. Really cool. And now it's helping as an ecosystem player set up all the schools in Malawi to adopt these innovations. The solar power, the tablets, the software, everything. Well, the cool thing about AI is that because actually it puts a lot of the computing power in the hands of the device again as opposed to the Internet. In places like in Africa or others where Internet connectivity is struggling, you can now basically have an AI powered solution in the hands of kids on devices and create whole new schooling models, you know, community school model. Like I can't wait to see. Obviously you know, Bridge was like the big, I'm blanking on their current name right now, but renamed but right. Like they were the big breakthrough in that part of the world some years ago. I can't wait to see like the entrepreneurs come up and start to build new schooling designs around this kernel plus AI. Because we've got the cost of this Solution down to 6, 6 or $7 per student per year. It's going to be, it's going to be amazing what you empower in the new schooling models you create. Now think about the micro schools we could create, think about the new universities we could create with that. I think it's going to be really exciting. And so that's one on the personalization. Two, I think it's going to unlock for students the ability to create cooler things. Right. Like a lot of research already that AI complemented with your lowest performing employees really up levels them so that they can create way, like be way more productive. How cool is that going to be when we teach students to intentionally use AI, not to just like plagiarize an essay, but to use it intentionally to write something that really helps them express their, their, their novel thinking in cool ways or, or build a video or, or whatever it might be. I think that's going to be really cool. And then I guess the last part of this is just, I think it's going to unlock some really cool entrepreneurial ventures and business models underneath all this, which I guess I already said, but like it bears repeating. I think we're gonna, you know, tutoring is impossible to do one to one everywhere. This is just going to make new models of tutoring way more affordable and accessible and unleash a lot of disruption in a Positive way.

I believe you wrote this, but if you didn't write it, you cited somebody. But I agree with the thought, which was, it's not that AI is going to replace people. It's that people that don't use AI are going to be replaced by those people. Which I think is a great point just to just kind of an observation of what you just said, which I think, again, is wildly exciting. So I, you know, 25 years ago, I gave testimony to Congress about education technology. And in that time, the biggest impediment for education technology being adopted was that teachers were intimidated. 80% of the teachers in 1998 were intimidated by using technology in the classroom. Well, now, you know, the teachers are digital natives. They want it. And I saw some, some polls cited in one of your articles talked about, you know, basically, teachers embrace AI more than even the students do. Yeah. So I think that's really different and exciting. Second is a point you just made about the cost. You know, we, you know, we were talking about, like, how do you get the cost down to, you know, can you get. Could you get the cost down to like $100 per. We're talking about at levels that is extremely affordable. Then you compound that with this mega trend that we named our firm after gsv, the global Silicon Valley, where the mindset of innovation, entrepreneurship is spreading throughout the world. So these entrepreneurs that are working in this environment, solving these problems with these new powerful technology, just imagine what's going to happen. So I think that's really, really cool. Really, really exciting.

Yeah, I totally agree with that. I can't wait to see, you know, in a community, someone create a new schooling model that just blows our minds. Right. Of the professionals that can be in there. You're talking about social capital. How do we formalize, you know, the who, you know, part of the equation? Like what, what happens when we turn school inside out so that, you know, children get to interact with professionals as part of the day or people in their community and then they can see, like, hey, I can be an entrepreneur too and solve, you know, my village's water problem in or whatever it might be. Right. Like, I just, I think there's gonna be so many opportunities to stop thinking of school as, like, the four walls. You go, here we block the world out and much more open communities that let the world in and let students collaborate at a much earlier age with the world's problems and build a knowledge from there.

So what are some technologies, you know, that you're seeing some, maybe some startups or technology you're seeing that you are particularly excited about. You talked about Calmigo as a great example of what Saul's doing. And it's very cool. What else you've seen out there that you're going, okay, this could be really impactful.

I'm really excited, Michael, about the technologies like Autumn Mark as a startup in this space. But others that can make assessment like a matter of seconds, right? They take your essay, they give you immediate feedback on it so you can uplevel your performance as a student. Because we know, I mean, that's another thing we know from the learning sciences, that feedback, tight loops of feedback is so critical. You know, you know this from football, right? Like having a coach there watching you run a play and giving you immediate feedback so you can go back and do it again. You wouldn't improve if you didn't have that, right? And so those feedback cycles are so critical to any learning venture. And AI can do that now, like matter of seconds. So one of the biggest limiters to giving interesting work was that, well, I mean, I know this right now, teaching, like, it takes me forever to get through all the student papers or projects or whatever it might be. Now the AI can do it instantly. And I'm not saying that has to be the final grade. Let's wait till the human being can do the final arbiter. But what I tell my students in my class is like, I want every single one of them to get an A because if they don't master the material I'm teaching, what the heck's the point? Like, they're wasting their time and I'm wasting mine. And so for AI to be able to help with that, I think some of these startups are really cool on that front. Another one I will say is I just hadn't anticipated this. The ability to see where a student is struggling and suggest a playlist, right, almost of activities that they might do to unlock where they're struggling, whether that's for teacher lesson plans or to the student themselves. Slightly different from a tutoring. But some of these companies are really cool on this front as well. And then I think a bunch of these teacher productivity tools, like in terms of a lot of the busy work around lesson planning or managing class rosters or keeping track of attendance, like, some of these things I think are pretty cool as well, because productivity gains to spend time on what a teacher ought to be, which is like the relationship and really making sure you develop deep understanding, much better use of a teacher time. And so, you know, even some of These apps, some of these are older, right? Like Teach Effects, but that, like, basically monitors talk time in a classroom to make sure that students are the ones actively learning. These are cool tools out there that I think are game changers.

So how kind of insightful is it for you? Obvious answer is very insightful, but I guess maybe a better question is what do you learn from being a teacher yourself? So you're not just seeing cool technology, you're not just talking to smart people. You're actually working with students and you're learning kind of what do they want? And how do you see the world changing in a way that can really, you know, meet up with, you know, what they want, with what's available out there, what needs to be created to do that?

I think I get so much energy from it, Michael, because they, they're keeping me current, right? In many cases, they know startups that I don't know or they are pushing on me about innovations in their countries. And I think it's. I, I don't know the exact percentage, but over half of the Harvard Graduate School of Education is not from the United States. So I'm getting a lot of information about, you know, this is how the Indian education system, obviously you know a lot about, a lot more about that than I do, but this is how this works here. This is how it works in China. This is how. Right. So that, that's helpful. I'm getting energy from them. And frankly, I had not expected this. I think when I signed up to teach, I thought I'd be teaching a bunch of teachers or, you know, people intending to be school leaders. The majority of my class wants to be education entrepreneurs. And so they're, they're bringing me their ideas, they're put, they're bringing me their business plans. I was looking at one the other day that's going to translate, you know, scientific research for creators, influencers around good scientific advice or health advice rather for individuals. I didn't expect to have that. Like in, in my ed school class, like a lot of these people are going there because they like, sort of want the short shortcut. MBA with a, with a soul. And I get so much energy and I learned so much. And I love just offering ideas and trying to push them to aim for something bigger in some cases, you know, swing for the fences. You can do this. I had another student meeting with her the other day. She's like, is this crazy? I want to go back to my country and start a new university because this is the quality of all the universities. And she was describing, I was like, no, it's not crazy. You should do this. Like you need to do this. The world needs you to do this. This, it's cool to have that kind of energy and connectivity.

Yeah, no, I think I hear the makings of a horn venture capital fund coming very, very soon.

Only if you're there somehow connected to it.

Listen, I would love to be talk about, I mean so much I'd love to visit with you but I know you're, we're running tight on time. So first just, you know our friend Ryan Craig, you referenced him in something you wrote recently about kind of domain expertise is how I'd frame it. Talk about like and how AI in the kind of evolution of work and how technology works with the professional as we evolve.

Yeah. So I think, and the question came up because a lot of people have said this is the end of knowledge. Knowledge is, you know, commodity, it no longer matters. And on the one hand that's true. Like, right, knowledge is not enough. It's what you do with the knowledge that's so important in today's day and age. But that doesn't mean you don't have to learn the fundamental knowledge. And we know this from studies of reading that after you learn to decode and so forth, that background knowledge is really what reading tests are looking after. And so I was just trying to puzzle through this question with AI and Ryan made the observation that like yeah, AI can answer any sorts of questions. Who knows if it's good answer or not. But like how do you know what questions to ask unless you're a domain expert? And so if you're trying to do something in marketing in a particular field and you want the AI to help you, you really need, you still need content knowledge to be able to converse with it in some meaningful way. And like yes, can it help you get up the curve much quicker? Sure. But it's not a replacement for that domain knowledge, it's instead a supercharger, right. For the, for that domain knowledge. And so I think that's how I largely see a lot of AI. Like yeah, I'm sure it can get you to a baseline performance. We know that it can ace a bunch of tests but like to do real meaningful creative work, it's much better alongside of you. And that requires you to know something first. And domain specific knowledge I think still matters, at least to this point in that context is I think what the evidence is showing so far.

So maybe just some rapid fire questions as we wrap this up. Just because you have such a, interesting window to what's going on out there and interesting people. So, and we've kind of referenced a few of them. But if you kind of think about in terms of like what is impressive to you or notable about this person, you know, just in a one or two sentence description. So start with Michael Crowe at asu.

Oh gosh. Michael is the person that thinks that has shown that you can do both the research knowledge building of a university and the disruptive activity of educating anyone who comes, regardless of their background. That's mind blowing.

Sal Khan.

Sal, he brings a lot but I think his emphasis on mastery and the ability to use Khan Academy to get rapid feedback, build knowledge, but then create with it is so cool. And it's the thing most misunderstood about him, right. Like you go to Kahn lab school, these kids are all doing projects because they, they use Khan Academy to build the knowledge and then they're like what can I do with it? And, and I think he, he has been so good on that. Diane Tavener a class disrupted Co host Diane has taught me more about how all these, well, two things, all these different parts of education come together. So knowledge building with skills with habits of success or character or social emotional learning and like how as opposed to thinking of them as being pitted against each other, they're really the whole child. And she's been really helpful at that. And two, she is so good. And taking these asinine debates that we have on education where it's either one or the other and being like there's truth on both sides. And here's the third way in between.

Scott Pulsifer.

Scott, I love his unrelenting faith in serving the student first and foremost, his ability to drive and just be an unapologetic advocate for mastery based learning and fundamental affordability. And I don't mean subsidizing an expensive education, but actual affordability. And I love the innovation he's doing now. Like, I think it's going to be really cool to see what comes out of WGU in terms of revolutionizing assessments, how we allow other universities to do competency based, et cetera, et cetera. His, his imagination on that stuff is going to be really powerful.

Your other co host, Jeff Seleno.

Yeah, I have learned so much sitting alongside Jeff for seven seasons, I guess now of the future you podcast in just terms of how ideas spread, how innovations ripple through the higher ed sector and his ability to go deep on an issue. I mean he's a real reporter, right? Like his ability to go deep on the college admissions and dig out things that people don't want to hear. Like, actually, standardized assessments don't hurt poor kids. They actually help them. I think is really cool. And he's sort of the hopefully he won't mind me saying this. Sometimes he's sort of like the conventional. Right. System of sitting opposite of me being the disruptor on those podcasts. But it's a really good dynamic because he brings some really important truths to that conversation.

Last person, Rachel Romer Carlson.

Ah, Rachel. Love Rachel Romer. She is, again, someone who's unapologetic about serving the frontline employees of America and realizing that they have talent and dreams that need to be developed and that it's good for employers, it's good for schools, it's good for America, and it's good for those individuals. And that really all these arcane things that we have in place, that we do tuition reimbursement instead of upfront tuition, that we don't think about their time and that we don't think about them as the individuals with promise that they are just hold us back in so many ways. And her just uncompromising view on that, I think has been powerful.

Michael Horn, as always, it's just absolutely delight to be with you. Thank you for sharing your insights, and we hope to have you back on here soon and see you even sooner. So thank you so much for everything.

Thank you, Michael. I appreciate it.

All right.