101: Empowering Educators: Amanda Bratten's Journey and the Future of EdTech with Propello

Holly Owens (00:02):

Hello everyone, and welcome to another amazing episode of Edup Ed Tech. My name is Holly Owens and I'm your host. And today we are very excited because we have Amanda Bratten, who is the Vice President of Content and Curriculum at Propello on the show. Welcome, Amanda.

Amanda Bratten (00:24):

Thanks so much for having me. I'm super excited to be here.

Holly Owens (00:27):

Well, we're excited to have you. And before we get into all things Propello, we want you to tell us about your journey. So tell us about your journey into this EdTech space. How did you get here?

Amanda Bratten (00:39):

So I started as well. I mean, we can go into the way, way back machine. When I got out of school, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I came from a family of educators and I was like, Nope, I am not going to do what everybody else has done. I'm going to go do something different. I went into pr, I worked in the Hollywood film space for a year and a half promoting movies in Detroit, and I realized I had been ignoring my passion all along. I needed to do what everyone else in my family had done. I went back to school and became a teacher. So I taught for about nine years in high school in the city of Chicago. I taught composition, reading, language arts, and I just realized this work is so hard. It's so hard. I am working so hard and I feel like I should be working smarter, right?

(01:42):

But I did not have the resources to be able to do that. It was just, we all know how difficult being an educator in the classroom can be, and when you don't have resources that can help you do your best work, you sometimes feel like you're just spinning your wheels. And I felt like I needed to go out and help teachers like me by providing them with the resources that would help them get to where they needed to be with their students to really do the work that I was trying to do just for my own little self, but to do it at scale. And so I moved out of the classroom, I went into educational publishing. I spent, I don't know, I think about eight years in assessment creation and content development. And then just about a year and a half ago moved to my role at Propello where we are creating content for teachers that can really solve, I feel like so many needs of new teachers, teachers who have moved into a subject that maybe they're not comfortable with, teachers who are teaching five different preps and just need a little bit of extra support.

Holly Owens (03:06):

Those preps,

Amanda Bratten (03:08):

They

Holly Owens (03:08):

Just keep adding up.

Amanda Bratten (03:10):

So we've really developed a program or a product in general that not only supports teachers with really robust lesson planning, but also gathers data and helps teachers to see that formative picture of where their students are and then make that next choice. So yeah, I mean, it's been a journey and I'm just glad to continue to be serving our educators.

Holly Owens (03:45):

Yeah, I'm a former teacher too, so is Nadia. You never really take yourself away from it. I also teach still in higher education, so it's like you always want to be in touch with what's happening. And the good thing and the bad thing about education is it hardly changes. And when it does change, it's not very fast. So you can still kind of keep up with what's happening. So that's a great story and I love it that you come from a family of educators and that has inspired you. And speaking of inspiration, is there anybody that you want to shout out who's inspired you along the way in your journey?

Amanda Bratten (04:24):

Well, my mother, she was the first teacher. And obviously our parents are often our first teachers, but she was also a school teacher. She was always just so passionate about the work that she did, and she brought an element of joy to the classroom. She taught me to be a teacher in so many different ways. And yeah, my mom, Kay Lubert, she has really influenced me, not only as an educator but as a mother myself.

Holly Owens (05:06):

Oh, that's wonderful. I love it. I love it. That's a great story. And moms definitely, they teach us the way when we're younger and then when we're older, they become like our friends and our confidants and our strongest advocators.

Amanda Bratten (05:22):

Absolutely.

Holly Owens (05:24):

Yep. Alright, let's get into some things. Prop pelo definitely want to hear about all the products and services, but I jumped ahead a little bit. I want to know first before we jump into that, you working in this space and being a former teacher, do you have a personal definition of educational technology? What is it? I love asking this question. I get so many different responses. So what's your own personal definition of EdTech?

Amanda Bratten (05:55):

I think that, oh gosh, that's a difficult question to ask. I know it everybody, it's so many different things, right?

(06:03):

And we know living in this world post covid where everybody was scrambling to, okay, how are we going to enter the ed tech space? We got to figure out something. Everything is online. But I think that as we transition out of that space of feeling that we need to be able to pivot to online at any moment, and that we've got kids back in classrooms working together, that EdTech really, it's a part of the classroom. I don't think it's going away and it's going to continue to evolve and meet the needs of teachers and students and administrators. And I think that for me, my mission in EdTech is to ensure that we don't lose the humanity of education while still providing opportunities for teaching and learning that can change and grow and be improved upon by feedback, by new science, by just the world around us. So we don't have to rely on that five-year-old or 10 year old or 20 year old textbook because we've got a resource that we know, or we sure hope some cases. It's updated, it's right, it's vetted, and it's doing something to help us improve our outcomes in the classroom.

Holly Owens (07:41):

I love the part about keeping humanizing it and keeping that apart. And I think a lot of that has come out of, especially with AI and the sphere, that it's going to take certain jobs and things like that. But that's not going to happen. That's not going to happen.

Amanda Bratten (07:58):

You're always going to need somebody checking to make sure that the machines are doing work the way that we want it to be done. Right?

Holly Owens (08:07):

Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Now I'm just so excited to talk about the product and the service. So now, tell us all about pelo. Tell us the products, the services, what you do to help organizations and institutions and education.

Amanda Bratten (08:24):

So we are, Propello is an online teaching and learning platform. We have a full year of sixth through eighth grade science content ready to roll. So the program is up, it's running. It's absolutely fantastic. It's aligned to standards we have within that curriculum. We have topics that we really hope teachers will access through that inquiry-based framework. So we hope that teachers will bring these topics to their classrooms, talk about them with their students, allow students to bring their funds of knowledge to the science that they're exploring, and then work through activities that help them to really figure out how the science is working and integrate that information into their own personal schemas. So we want students to be doing science, not just reading about science, not just testing about science, but doing science and the way that love it, that it's science. Oh, science is so

Holly Owens (09:37):

Much fun. That's what we're starting. I'm going to talk more about little bit. Yeah, I love, the first one is science. Yes.

Amanda Bratten (09:42):

So I think I am really passionate about knowledge building, and I think that a lot of times there are lots of reasons why we focus on math and reading and don't spend quite as much time in some of these content areas. But I wholeheartedly believe that in order for us to do math better, in order for us to read better, we need to understand science and the world around us. And so science is, I think, like you said, I think it's a great place to start. Propelloled then allows teachers to take wherever that starting point is, wherever they think their students are going to enter the science best and organize their planning into specific learning paths. So you could take a unit and say, we're going to start with cells, we're going to start with life science, and we want to learn about cells. We can cater the direction of that unit on the needs of our students and what they want to learn and what they want to know and what they've already learned and what they already know. And we can push that information out to students and the activities and the whole process in the order that we think is going to best address the needs of our classroom. It's

Holly Owens (11:10):

Personalized experience.

Amanda Bratten (11:12):

It is 100% personalized. It's 100% standards aligned. And we allow for that inquiry to really be ingrained into the program because students can say, listen, I want to know about how a cell works. And so you start with that activity. You start with the activity that is going to answer that question for them, and then they work through the formative questions. They work through the exercises, and then you move to the next inquiry to try to get a little bit deeper into the understanding. So we are really trying make sure that we're attending to that difficult task of differentiating in a classroom while making it feel not so difficult.

Holly Owens (12:04):

Oh, it's like I remember it. I think maybe I'm traumatized by it, but just so many different types of people, so many different types of learners in the way that they learn are at different stages of life. And catering to that is exhausting. As an educator, your mind is pushed to the limits. I remember being an educator and you're mentally, you're more mentally tired than physically tired at the end of the day, just thinking. And it sounds like you have a lot of solutions that are going to help educators and students to mitigate those things.

Amanda Bratten (12:41):

Absolutely. Yeah. And one of the things I didn't mention is our ability to translate. So all of our reading is translated into 100 plus languages. Just at the click of a button. If you have five different languages in your classroom or 10 different languages in your classroom, each student can read in their own language. They can listen in their own language. They can. That is So awesome. That is so cool. Great. Pictionary, there's accessibility.

Holly Owens (13:14):

Oh, it makes

Amanda Bratten (13:17):

The work of a teacher. You don't have to figure out, how am I going to sit down and read this to my student? Maybe they can understand if I read aloud, but they're not going to ever be able to read the English at this point tomorrow. So we solve that for you. Right? Yeah. You don't need to send it home to a parent that hopefully maybe can help. It's there. They can translate it just with the click of a button. So that's something that I think is super exciting, not, oh my gosh. If I had had that in my classroom in Chicago, I would've been a lifesaver. I would still be in the classroom. I might still be teaching. And what's maybe the most exciting thing is that any teacher, any school, any district can access our standards aligned instructional materials, which include readings and activities and labs for free. Right now, they're 100% free available online, just head to Propello.com. It's Free. We're

Holly Owens (14:24):

Definitely putting all that in the show notes because our listeners, we love free stuff here at a TED Tech, but we also love supporting vendors too. So we appreciate that it's free right now so that you can test things out and see what's there. So that's wonderful news. Alright, so you're already doing a lot it sounds like at Propelloler, and I'm assuming you're going to have some other types of subjects and things coming down the line. So is there on your roadmap that you can share for the upcoming year, not violating any N D A agreements, things like that? What are some of your goals? Tell the audience entices, tell us all the things that are going to be happening.

Amanda Bratten (15:02):

So obviously getting that science program out to more teachers and students, we want to get people in there using it, continuing to give us feedback positive and negative. We want to know what you want to see because we're able to be flexible. Unlike a textbook where you get what you get, we can attend to things. If you feel like, wow, this unit would really be a better unit if we just had this particular activity attending to this thing, we can absolutely consider creating a new activity that allows students to get into the science in a way that you want to see. So we love getting feedback, so absolutely looking for more people to peek into our science program and see what it's all about. We're about to tap into a lot of people. We're probably Going to jump in and give you feedback. We love it.

(15:59):

We are continuing to grow our user base there. But what I'm also super excited about is our anticipated launch of our middle grades e l A program. So as an English language arts educator myself, I am just so thrilled to be able to leap into this space. We have rich multicultural anchor texts that focus students on answering the essential questions of a unit while also then being that vehicle to engage them in the standards of reading, writing, speaking, and listening language. So the common Core standards are what we're focusing on, but just because you're, maybe if you're not teaching in a common core state, we all know that there is so much crossover. And that e l A program is going to be able to provide you with not only the focus texts that help you to start getting students engaged in the concepts of English language arts, but we're also providing mini lessons that attend to every single standard through sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. And those mini lessons can be used in coordination with the texts, and then they also can be used to spiral either back or forward over the course of a year because we have multiple different angles and activities in which to address those concepts. I think that while I love our anchor text and I think that teachers are going to be really thrilled with some of the opportunities they have to teach these essential questions, I think that these mini lessons are going to be absolutely life-changing.

(17:41):

Yes, I love the microlearning aspect. Yes, they solve the needs of how do I teach this language standard that I just have not been able to get through to my kids. It allows you to attack that question in multiple different ways over the course of a year. And I just think they're gems. So really looking forward to launching our E L A program and obviously again, getting that feedback, hearing what teachers have to say, listening to what their needs are, and being able to pivot as an ed tech product to attend to the needs of our users.

Holly Owens (18:24):

Yeah, love that. So great things to look forward to. Audience. So you're going to go check out Propello, everything will be in the show notes. So we are coming up on the final two questions of the episode. It always flies by when we're talking and having fun. So final things. Want to know if there's anything else that we missed that you want to talk about with Propello, your journey, your share, and then I want you to put on your fortune teller hat or get out of your crystal ball and tell us what the future of EdTech looks like. So anything we missed and tell us about the future.

Amanda Bratten (19:00):

There's lots of things we missed because there's so much about Propello that's new and different that I think that it's hard for me to even cover it in the time that we have to talk. I just think it's a fantastic program. I think that we've got a platform where we're starting with science moving into E L A, but there's going to be new programs coming over the course of the next several years. So just we're a space to watch for sure.

Holly Owens (19:30):

Yeah, we definitely want to entice them to go out to the site for Sure.

Amanda Bratten (19:34):

Yes. And then I think that in terms of what the future of EdTech holds, there's just a new report that was released by Bayview Analytics just last week, or maybe it was actually earlier this week, that now more than ever, teachers are turning away from print materials and seeking engaging digital materials to supplement their textbooks. So the data showed that the use of textbooks, printed textbooks in K 12 classrooms has declined in the past year by nine percentage points.

Holly Owens (20:09):

Wow.

Amanda Bratten (20:10):

Actually, wow, that's big. Yeah. And you would kind of think, well, so many teachers have said, no, no, no. I'm so overusing digital after the covid years, the Crazy covid days. Yes. And I think that what we're seeing is now this trend to recognize that maybe printed text is not always really what is going to help me differentiate best in my classroom. So this study said that 78% of teachers found supplemental resources online. Love it. And it shows that teachers are becoming more and more familiar with the O E R, the Open Educational resources, recognizing that there's stuff out there that I can use that might fit the needs of my classroom better.

Holly Owens (21:02):

Fantastic. And it just says one

Amanda Bratten (21:04):

Size fits all is not what's working anymore. And so EdTech products can be the answer to what modern educators need that demand for flexible, customizable curriculum solutions that meet them and their students where they are at the time. So I think that Ed Tech is just going to be that bridge between connecting that live in-person instruction, which I said is so, so valuable, the real to humanity of education, to resources that help teachers do their best work, tailor their lessons in a way that allows students to be engaged and find relevancy in the content that they're teaching.

Holly Owens (21:57):

Yes. Love it. I can't wait for the future. Every time I do an episode, all these good things are going to come down the pipe. I'm so excited. I always used to say, I'm looking forward to being the dinosaur in the room because I want to see what the future generations Do. Yes,

Amanda Bratten (22:12):

Yes.

Holly Owens (22:13):

It's

Amanda Bratten (22:14):

So true. It's so true.

Holly Owens (22:17):

Well, Amanda, I can't thank you enough and the audience as well. We're so grateful for you coming on the show and sharing your expertise, talking to us about Propelloler. We definitely want to have you back for where are they now episodes so we can hear more about the E L A program and how things went and what more great things you're doing. So thank you so much for Thank you,

Amanda Bratten (22:35):

Holly. Coming

Holly Owens (22:35):

On the Of course. Yeah, it was a fun time. Yeah, it is fun. It goes by so fast every time, and I'm like, I think 30 minutes is a really long time, but it's really in a blink of an eye and it's done. But thanks again. Thank

Amanda Bratten (22:49):

Thank you