Shaun Conway is the Vice President of Customer Success at Screencastify. Prior to joining Screencastify, Shaun Conway was a classroom teacher and building administrator for more than 10 years. During his time in education, Shaun worked to expand blended learning strategies and 1:1 initiatives, while always focusing on meeting teachers and students where they are. Shaun is a Golden Apple Scholar and Distinguished Alumni from Illinois State University’s Department of History.
1. Tell us about your company and the problem it solves, or its benefit to learners or educators.
The last three to four years, and perhaps the last eight to ten years as well, has seen a big shift in learning – possibly due to the pandemic or other societal changes. Students are now approaching their learning differently and teachers have been pushed to approach their instruction differently. Ten years ago, personal digital devices like computers and tablets were not nearly as ubiquitous as they are today in classrooms. Many more students were still reading from books directly, pulling sources from the library, etc. Whereas now, a lot of K-12 students are learning primarily from the internet and other digital means. Those changes are coupled with more stressors and time obligations being placed on both students and educators than ever before. But teachers who are thinking about new methods to problem solve and incorporate those solutions into their classrooms are seeing success.
With all of those considerations in mind, at Screencastify, we’ve built an easy to use, all-encompassing interactive video platform that allows teachers and students to create, enhance, share and assess various forms of video based content. We solve several core problems facing educators today, including processes for differentiating, leveling and personalizing instruction to meet the needs of students, equitable access to content via our world language translation capabilities, advanced assessment tools and analytics, engaging assignment creation and many others, with the ultimate goal of supporting the needs of students and teachers to allow for better educational outcomes.
2. What is the challenge educators face today that is fixable?
First of all, I firmly believe that there are many macro factors that make educators’ jobs extremely difficult right now. However, I’m not sure I would categorize this challenge as necessarily “fixable” but the biggest challenge, I believe, that educators face today is ultimately a lack of time. With all of the demands that are put on educators both in the classroom and outside of it, it has become increasingly difficult for educators to prep, teach, grade and provide the often unseen and unheard support that K-12 students need. However, I think that’s where educational technology, and perhaps AI, have some of the biggest opportunities – helping to save teachers time. And I want to stress the word “helping.” There isn’t one tool or combination of products that will give teachers all of the time they need, but they can certainly help. It’s why at Screencastify we always keep an eye towards how we help educators save time and better engage students.
3. What is the challenge educators face today that will persist?
There are varied and diverse challenges that could persist, some of which are unique to specific types of school districts, as well as certain challenges that have geographic implications like enrollment and population trends that are impacting some urban, rural, and suburban areas, but ultimately, I believe school funding issues are likely to persist and perhaps it’s the ultimate issue facing education today. The trends in education spending from most levels of government don’t seem to generally be heading in the right direction and the implications of that are massive. We’re also currently seeing the impacts of ESSER dollars ending and budget shortfalls that are coming with it like the interesting position of both layoffs occurring and personnel shortages in some districts. Without the necessary investments, the already troubling personnel shortage is likely to grow, enrollment will decline, facilities will degrade and our children will fall behind. I know that all sounds very doom and gloom, and perhaps it’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the broader point holds. We need to invest more in educators and students.
4. What are the areas of education or training and workforce development that are being overlooked?
Cultural responsiveness; student populations are changing quickly and dramatically. School districts need to respond at a macro level to ensure the entire student population is supported in culturally responsive ways, so that their performance and growth inside and outside the classroom are supported.
Ongoing Curriculum and Technology Training; Districts and individual schools spend quite a bit of time, money and resources adopting new curriculums and new technologies, hosting initial training and creating new materials, but there tends to be a lack of internal follow-through with training and professional development from the district to the teacher after the roll-out. Teachers and students want and need consistent follow through and support when implementing or learning new things; districts know and understand this, and they often want to provide it, but the bandwidth and lack of available personnel make this challenging. These types of dedicated staff for training and professional development roles are also often the first to be eliminated when cuts are made. More coaching and external resources for how to teach new information and how to use new technology is needed.
5. What do you foresee will be a challenge in education in three to five years?
There are likely to be challenges stemming from two things – the process and structural change of what we have viewed as traditional classrooms coupled with the style and type of curriculum offerings. What I mean by this is the conversation is going to heat up around the value and strengths of “traditional” classroom structure and schedules where students are physically in school and generally have the same schedule most days of the week to the potential value and strengths of a more blended learning style combining online education and opportunities for interaction online with traditional classroom methods. This is something that has been happening already, but I expect the conversations around it to grow. And on the curriculum offerings, many students are being served by traditional curriculum very similar to what was being taught 15-20 years ago. While that has shifted in some ways with the introduction of things like STEM classes, I believe that we’ll see an acceleration in changes towards new types of learning and new curriculum topics that bring new challenges with it.
