131: Reimagining Education: Unveiling ReBeL - A Dive into AI-Powered Personalized Learning with Kevin Farmer

Holly Owens (00:02):

Hello everyone and welcome to another fantastic episode of Edup Ed Tech. My name is Holly Owens and

DaNadia Johnson (00:10):

My name is Nadia Johnson. And we're your hosts,

Holly Owens (00:14):

And we are really excited for the guests that we have with us today. We have Kevin Farmer, who is the founder of ReBeL on the Show. Kevin, welcome. We're glad to have you. Hi, welcome.

DaNadia Johnson (00:27):

Thank you. Thank you. It's great to be here.

Holly Owens (00:29):

We are so excited to jump into everything ReBeL. But before we do that, we want to know more about you, Kevin. We want to know about your journey. Give us some background. How'd you get into this EdTech field? You became a founder, so tell us about your journey. Right

Kevin (00:45):

On. Yeah, my journey in EdTech specifically has been pretty short starting this ReBeL. Our main address is remote based learning, which is where the ReBeL comes from. We're trying to ReBeL against the current education system and the draconian nature that exists around the country for that. And so it's been a short journey. I spent most of my life as either a mentor, I was a tutor in college for finite mathematics and accounting. I've been a leader on every team or whether that's sports teams that could also be your corporate teams. And I've always had a desire to help others become their best self and grow within organizations and teams. And so that kind of parlays into this. And then I also had kind of a non-traditional background in education as a kid. I was in public school for a little while and then homeschooled for a few years.

(01:50):

I went to a private academy for a couple years and then back into public education before going to a liberal arts college here in Southern California. And I've just got a tremendous amount of empathy for students kind of across the spectrum. And as we see, there's great resources if you have actively engaged parents as well as a little bit of cash behind your education to get some individualized focus for all the different ways that students learn. And so what we're kind of trying to do is help with some of that. And I have a big desire to leave the world a better place and definitely give more than I took. And so that's what's brought me into the EdTech industry. And some of that is I was looking at the re-skilling of the labor force around artificial intelligence and what was coming and where I live here in Delmar, California, currently we're surrounded by schools. And so I see students all over the place. And so it kind of piggybacked from that re-skilling the labor force into how I can actually transition that into helping students and parents and teachers through this AI universe that's coming like a freight train towards everyone. And so that's probably a good little synopsis of that.

Holly Owens (03:21):

Yeah, definitely. And I love how you've just had these different roles and you say mentoring, coaching, being leaders on different teams. That definitely gives you the experience and insider perspective into having an EdTech company and getting an idea of what the end user needs and what they want.

DaNadia Johnson (03:41):

And I also think you kind made me think of this point of everybody has had some experience with education, whether you were a teacher or not, you were a student. So you kind of know what you needed as a student and what other students may need. So that gives some insight into how to solve problems using tech. So I love that. So we know that, I know you mentioned a little bit about AI and what you do at ReBeL, but we know that the ed tech landscape is always evolving. So what other trends, what other innovations within EdTech do you think is going to be promising for shaping the future of education?

Kevin (04:26):

Yeah, and I mean, I'm going to probably talk about AI a lot

Holly Owens (04:31):

Cause That's the main driver that brought me into the EdTech landscape.

Kevin (04:38):

And really the ability for it to empower the individual and just the way that everyone learns is a little different. And so when we look at how AI is going to kind of shape that future, there's going to be so many new tools and so many new experiences. And really what we're trying to do is not necessarily be the teacher. We want to be the platform where everyone comes together to actually collaborate and where the cream can rise to the top. And so if we think about when I was in college, Facebook just came onto the scene and you had to have a.edu address in order to get on there. And it was really about the university campus and collectively engaging everyone with the different groups and events that were happening. And so what we're trying to do is we're trying to kind of blend that social media experience and the stickiness of what happens on the different platforms, whether it's Instagram or Facebook or TikTok or the business communities on LinkedIn.

(05:40):

And it's really trying to create a centralized hub for where all of these things can exist. And so then as we look at all of the new platforms that are coming out and tools that are going to be released by all of these different organizations across the country and the globe, where do students find them? Where do parents go to get the tool that'll work best for their student? Well, part of what we're doing with remote based learning and our ReBeL AI guide is the ReBeL AI Guide is intended not to be a teacher or a tutor itself, but to learn who the student is, what they like to interact with, almost like the algorithmic approaches and machine learning approaches that the different social media platforms use so that we can actually steer them in the direction where these tools exist. In addition to that, allowing parents to be on the platform, teachers to be on the platform, educational thought leaders, if you will, to be on the platform, influencers in the space to be on the platform to where there's a place that everyone can actually connect.

(06:48):

And so as I was doing research, getting ready to start this business and the platform is, it's hard to navigate what's out there, what's available, what's good, what's not so great. And so our approach is kind of taking that data-driven machine learning process and tailoring it to the individual student for not only their interests, but what are the competency goals, what grade levels are they at? And the beautiful thing is with AI is there's not a pace that the student has to keep up with or get slowed down with. And so as we kind of move forward, the goal is to create that immersive, individualized experience through our AI learning guide that almost acts like a teacher or a mentor or a coach that's fully interactive and immersive with the student as soon as they turn on their phone and talk to their phone or sit down at their laptop or on their tablet. And as we move forward, we've seen things like me, quest three, the headsets, the Apple just released theirs. And I think as we look at the augmented reality in the future and tailoring that into the student experience and overlaying the educational components on top of it, it becomes seamless where curiosity is not squashed, it's cultivated. You'll probably find me saying that a few times throughout The discussion. I like that though. Yeah, absolutely. Cultivation of curiosity, And

Holly Owens (08:20):

I think that's important in this space, and you're getting into it a bit. So tell us a little bit more about ReBeL and what you're doing to help educational institutions and being a part of that community. How is your tool helping and with the AI and everything, because just looking at your site, it's very engaging and there's a lot of different things you can get into here, but give the audience an overview of what ReBeL is and then we can definitely talk some more about ai.

Kevin (08:48):

Absolutely. So ReBeL is really your individualized guide for each student. And so as the student spends time on the platform, it will learn more and more about what they've engaged with. It provides them options on, we can use eighth grade algebra as an example. And let's say the student is really interested in basketball and it then creates an immersive experience for them to actually understand algebra through basketball. And so if we look at some knowns and a common X variable that exists, well, how many three point shots and how many two point shots and free throws does it take when X is the same to come up with the answer of 64 as the total score for the team at the end of the game? That's as simple as I can bring it back down to. And

Holly Owens (09:45):

It can make it so that it's specific for the individual student to where we've got really the ability to utilize the methods that social media uses and the interaction where it's not necessarily even just that student working on their own. They

Kevin (10:02):

Can join with other students to engage collectively and learn socially. In a lot of ways, that is not necessarily the route that we've taken in the past. While it's collective, everybody's in the same classroom, there's not a lot of interaction between students in a traditional classroom. And so what we're trying to do is really bring forward some of the new technology that's coming out with the, and I keep saying AI and just because it's going to change the world as we know it. And that's really what we're believers in. And we're not here to be the individual tool. We're really here to be that collective place where everybody comes to. And so when we look at, I don't know if anybody's started playing around with the chat GPTs and large language models using every day.

(11:03):

So I'm not a software coder or database person myself, but what I've been able to learn and teach myself through just interacting with chat PT and Claude has been to me, has been eyeopening to the standpoint of it blows me away every day when I ask it a question or I'm looking at a database design on how to build out the infrastructure of our platform, what it's able to actually walk me through and answer questions real time is phenomenal. And we're just at the tip of the iceberg. And so if we're looking at what tomorrow looks like, I don't think any of us, the three of us have any idea what that's actually going to be. And so my ultimate goal with ReBeL and the remote based learning platform is just to have that central hub where everybody comes to. And so that there's not a place when you Google or you search online for anything that's tutoring services. It's a central place where we can find those things. And so it's not so much the specific tool of ReBeL other than there will be an onscreen avatar, if you will. If go to our website, we've got a few different ones. The ability to actually have the student customize their own avatar that then interacts on the platform, that then becomes ReBeL and their guide as they're going through different learning and immersive experiences. We want to just be that central source to where they can go to.

Holly Owens (12:46):

Yeah, I love that. And also too, what it sounds like to me in what you're creating here is you're customizing the experience obviously for students in their journey and what they have to learn and where they have to go to be successful. And you're kind of making it what we call like a one-stop shop instead of having to go different places to find various resources.

Kevin (13:10):

And our goal is to really be able to bring those resources together where there's, from a business standpoint, a revenue sharing component where the student doesn't necessarily have to sign up for six different platforms for different subjects. They can really come to one place where we can utilize public funding. We can also, if you look at how much parents spend on a private individualized tutor for an hourly rate, I mean, we're far cheaper than that, and we've kind of operate on a freemium model so that there's the ability for students to sign up without any cost. And so as we look at being able to provide individualized structured learning across the board, it's exciting to be able to capitalize on the technology that's out there and provide this social platform that becomes not a place where it's a wasted time. It's doom scrolling is that everything has to do with the educational experiences.

(14:17):

And so as we look at actually launching the platform, which we're, and so this is all in a sandbox, if you will, at the current moment where we actually bring the continuous feed online where everything that's on that feed has to be tied to an experience or something that has been learned on the platform versus just taking a picture or a selfie behind something, is that there has to be some tie in to an actual experience on the platform and something that the student learned that the tags aren't just hashtag San Diego, it's hashtag math, hashtag algebra, hashtag basketball. It's the things that actually make sense for the student to be engaged with from a, I don't want to call it altruistic, but actually a value add versus just a scrolling. And you have to either be a student, a parent, a teacher, or an educational thought leader to be on the platform. So Joe Schmoe that lives down the road, that's 45, and just scrolling through doesn't exist in our world. And so it's actually a safe place for students to be. And that's a big part of what we're trying to do is take out the, as we've all watched the, whether it's Zuckerberg or the

(15:47):

Head of TikTok or Twitter slash x, and there's real concern around how students are spending their time and what they're exposed to. And our ultimate goal is to create that safe place to where everything is online and available, but it's curated from a place that's for a betterment of the student and in turn a betterment of society. Parents know that they've got an overlay into their student's platform, what they have access to see what they don't have access to see who their friends are. And so when we look at the ability to connect in really great positive ways, that's the ultimate goal of our platform.

DaNadia Johnson (16:31):

Nice. So I feel like it is giving somewhat of a sense of community or collaboration that way of students navigating through learning, but parents also having some type of community to support in that. So collaboration as we know, collaboration is community, I would also say is big amongst educators within ed tech. What are some examples of successful collaborations that have helped to impact education? And it could be also within your experience with ReBeL, and how has these partnerships or these areas of collaboration and community impacted the learning or students?

Kevin (17:18):

Absolutely. So if you look on our website or follow any of the social platforms that we post on, and it's still very new for what we're doing, all of the media that's been created has been created through services like midjourney, which is a completely collaborative community through the Discord app and the ability to generate images and to learn from each other on how to properly prompt the different AI tools that the collaboration component. When we look at the data that we will be able to garner over time, just like a lot of value for Facebook and Instagram and TikTok is the data that they are able to pull from the interactions of the users on the website or the applications. And so as we look at being able to turn around and provide that data back to these different educational technology developers that are really actually focused on the students' learning, as we talked about in my intro, is that I've been a mentor, I've been a tutor, but my experience is not in the process of teaching and building competencies on top of, we really are trying to identify those different software programs, different features that exist across the universe of education and bring them into that central source.

(18:52):

And so the ability for teachers to collaborate on our platform is as simple as a friend request on Facebook. The ability for a parenting influencer or a coach that has 50 clients and they can't take any more because of just time restraints is our AI agent builder will allow them to really train an AI agent, or our platform will train an AI agent on their behalf of all of the available resources that they've either published or communications that they've had. And so when we get into the ability for collaboration for teachers to get the best of the best that's out there, and our focus is we pull in the teachers and we pull in the parents, but it's really on the student. I'm under a full belief that the classroom of tomorrow is going to be student driven versus teacher driven. I think that as we look at the ability for the technology to focus solely on the individual and provide them the resources that come into play across the spectrum of every other student's engagement and how they've learned and what platforms that they've learned the best through, is that a simple API into our network with these software developers and these teaching platforms that in a lot of cases already exist and there's already great ones that are out there and they're only going to get better as we go, is our ability to tag that student with that is for us the ultimate collaboration and the ability for teachers to collaborate in a place that's not just LinkedIn or not just Facebook to actually, it's the source of education and where they'll go to every time.

(20:45):

That's really the ultimate, is the full collaboration of the entire educational community. And so I'm hoping that my background and database management from a finance side really ties into where we're able to provide that same data out for teachers, for parents. And really at the end of the day, the ultimate is for the student themselves to be able to honestly just talk with their system and the system knows the goals and the competencies based on their grade level, based on what the teacher is either uploaded, based on what the parent has either provided on what they want those goals to be and let the student go from there. So we're really not looking to do any more than to be that connector for those that are collaborating.

Holly Owens (21:39):

That's great. And so you've told us a lot about the different things that you're doing and how you're supporting community collaboration in this space. We have two really wrap up questions for the episode for you. So I want to know if there's anything we missed, anything else you want to say about rubble before we sign off, and then looking ahead into the future, we want to know from you what you think the next big milestone is in ed tech because you're an industry leader here, you're a founder of a company. How is this going to impact the way that we teach and learn in the coming years? So anything we miss and then give us a little bit about the future?

Kevin (22:19):

Yeah, I mean, we've talked so much in the future, and I don't know that we've missed anything substantial, really. If we can just envision a world where the interactions that happen on Facebook, which we're all very familiar with, come from a place of real value add to the user versus just the ability to connect with friends and share pictures. Our goal is to be able to provide those unique learning experiences through the collaboration of the different EdTech platforms and the producers of that experience. And I keep saying experience because as we kind of kick this off with the augmented reality, the ability to have a custom experience for the student on the platform, it can be through writing, it can be through visual learning, it can be through, we provide a, I'm sorry, I'm just blanked on That's

Holly Owens (23:25):

Okay. An immersive experience at a local museum. You go to a park

Kevin (23:29):

To where you're going to learn about the natural world and the ecosystem that exists, the ability for the data that now is out there to pull in a scavenger hunt, if you will, for that student or group of students to go to the park and learn about their local flora and fauna without the need for a teacher to spend time creating that curriculum. It's really astounding. And so as we look at the future, I don't think we're going to be seeing an educational world that looks anything like it does today. I think there's different little pieces of classroom experiences that are starting to get this, and we're starting to see some of it, especially with the Covid pandemic and everybody being pulled out of classrooms and focused in different directions. I think if we take that and multiply it by a thousand plus, that's really where we're going to be at. There's not a world that exists in my vision of the future that looks anything like it does today for students. And that's what we really try to do with some of the visuals that we present on our website, is really, it's not a draconian future. It's really, it can be a utopian future for education.

Holly Owens (24:48):

Oh, I love that. And that's a great way to end the utopian piece there with education. So Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the show and talking to us about ReBeL and all the things that you're doing in this space. We really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing this with our audience.

DaNadia Johnson (25:07):

Yes, Thanks for having me. Of

Holly Owens (25:09):

Of Course.