112: From Teachers to Tech Innovators: The Success of ScreenPal with Ben Wellington and Sarah Eiler

Holly Owens (00:02):

Hello everyone and welcome to another amazing 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're super pumped. Today we have two awesome guests with us. We have Ben Wellington, who is the director of sales, customer service and support. And then we have Sarah Eiler, who is the community engagement Coordinator. Both of them work at pal. Welcome to the show.

Sarah Eiler (00:33):

Thank you. Excited to be here.

Ben Wellington (00:37):

Thanks for having me.

Holly Owens (00:38):

Absolutely. And you can't see it? This is an audio only one, but I love in the background that Ben has the Halloween banner in the background. That's awesome. Halloween's my favorite is my favorite holiday. Anyways, let's jump into it. Before we get into all things Screen Pal and all people a K a. People know it as Screencast Somatic, and we can talk a little bit about that. I want to know about both of you. So tell us about your journey into this ed tech space, into this own, and we can start with you, Sarah. Okay,

Sarah Eiler (01:13):

So I first, I'm a classroom teacher, still even have an active license and everything, but I was a classroom world history teacher. I live in North Carolina, so in Raleigh, which I absolutely adored, but I needed a more flexible work situation. My spouse is active duty military, so I took a position as a professional development specialist with an ed tech company. And I traveled twenty four seven a hundred eighty days a year, not 365 whenever school was in session. And so then I ended up actually going back to the classroom to be a tech coach for my school district near us here in North Carolina, which I absolutely adored. But then we had our first child and I decided that I needed the flexibility of working in the ed tech bro again. So I actually started as an ed tech trainer for another company, and Ben actually worked with me at that other company and we were chatting and he was like, Hey, I'm working for GreenPal now. I need you to do exactly what you're doing for this company for Screen Pal and build up our community. Is that something you would be interested in? And I just fell in love with everyone that works at pal. I loved the work culture of Screen Pal and decided to make a leap and come over to the Screen Pal team. And they had just rebranded, as you guys know, from Screencast Matic to Screen Pal. So it was kind of a really cool opportunity for me to build something from the ground up with the team there.

Holly Owens (03:04):

Love it. You're like a package deal.

Sarah Eiler (03:07):

You're a

Holly Owens (03:08):

Package deal. It's like I'm not in N F L teams and things like that. We're a package deal. We're guaranteed 50 million. We're coming together. What's happening? I love it. I love it.

Sarah Eiler (03:18):

That's what I'm going to do with Nadia. One day they're going to say something opens up at Amazon or wherever we're at, and

Holly Owens (03:24):

Nadia and me are a package deal. That's all that matters.

Sarah Eiler (03:28):

Yep.

Ben Wellington (03:30):

Well, I love your story.

Holly Owens (03:32):

I love your story, and Nadia and myself are both former classroom teachers. If you've listened to the show, I was a high school government teacher, so

Sarah Eiler (03:40):

My

Holly Owens (03:41):

Best friend was world history. So Ben, tell us about you. How'd you get here?

Ben Wellington (03:48):

Well, I mean, Sarah did such a good job. This is going to be bad, so apologies in advance.

Holly Owens (03:55):

I

Ben Wellington (03:56):

Was also a classroom teacher. I'm based in California and I worked at a fantastic high school in the Bay Area for 10 years. Some of the best people I've ever met in my life work there. It's an incredible school, mental Atherton High School, shout out and loved it. But as everyone on this knows, it's high stress. And similar story to Sarah, my wife and I had two kids and I found myself really kind of grinding between commute times and I was Holly also a high school government and US history. Wow. Small world. I know, right? AP classes. So a lot of grading, a lot of late nights and early mornings. And I felt like I was sort of at home just sort of like a zombie and not really in the moment when you should be with your kids. And I needed a change. So my wife and I, we actually moved out of the Bay Area and I'm kind of in the Sacramento area now, and I thought, well, maybe that'll be different. That's the change that I need. It's not the job, it's the place. But no,

Holly Owens (05:20):

It's still

Ben Wellington (05:21):

Tough shock, right? You move from one school to another, but the job itself, it's still similar hours, similar grind, and my mental health, my physical health were suffering. So again, I just made, it was one of those things that it was sort of there, should I leave? Can I do this? It's a huge risk. I know. And I just was at the point where I had to. So I took a leap of faith, stressed out for a while because I was unemployed. And that's a scary feeling. Anyone that's ever felt that they know how scary that is. And was lucky enough to jump into EdTech and worked for a great company for a couple of years before moving over to Screen Pal. And when I started in Screen Pal, I knew within an hour that we needed Sarah. I was like, okay, so this is great.

(06:22):

You know what we need? We need a Sarah. And so yeah, that was my first call was, Hey, what's up? And so yeah, that's that. My dad was a high school science teacher for 35 years. So I think all of us in Screen Pal, we've got a lot of people who are either former teachers or have family members that we're teachers. We love K 12, we love educators. We want to make their lives easier in whatever way that we can. So PAL is a place that we feel like Sarah and I at least feel like we can do that. So

Holly Owens (07:04):

I think the best people to do that are former educators because we know

DaNadia Johnson (07:08):

What we need. And so we're the best people to be out in the field building the ed tech. That's awesome. Now I want to know, this is for both of you. So we can start either with Ben or Sarah. I don't know who wants to go first this time. I know there's so many people that inspire you along the journey along the way. So you don't have to list everybody, but who, if you could pick one or two people along your journey who inspired you into this kind of transition into EdTech? Because I know being a former educator, it is a journey. It's a lot of stuff that comes with it. So who along this journey kind of inspired you and whoever who wants to go first? I know Sarah went first last time, so I don't know.

Ben Wellington (07:57):

I can go. As I mentioned previously, my dad was a high school science teacher for 35 years. I'm sure there's a lot of your listeners that can relate. I think he missed three days in 35 years. I don't know how they do it that long. I don't know either.

Holly Owens (08:16):

He's incredible.

Ben Wellington (08:20):

His work ethic is just insane. If he's not doing something he needs to because he gets bored and fidgety kind of a personality and seeing him grind for so long, it's just kind of a huge inspiration for me. And then once I started teaching, I actually worked with some pretty incredible people, but one of them, John Floria, who he was a government teacher at the school I worked at for 20 years. He actually recently passed from cancer, but he was absolutely incredible just from a professionalism standpoint and the kind of person that when you're a new teacher, you want to sort of mimic, right? You're like, I want to be like them in a couple of years. So yeah, I've been very fortunate to have great teachers and role models just growing up in my life, but then also professionally as well.

Sarah Eiler (09:19):

So for me, I mean obviously my parents have built me to have a good work ethic, just like Ben was saying. But probably looking back, I could see three teachers that have made a huge impact in my life. And as a teacher, everyone's like, what's the teacher that made you want to be a teacher? Everybody has that story of that person who was life-changing for them. So probably my high school German teacher, which is really random, but it's the one subject where you had kind of the same teacher all four years because there was only one teacher who taught that at our high school and she just believed in me. She actually came to our wedding, I invited her to my wedding and she came. So just have continued to have that relationship with her. And then there were two teachers in my department when I was a classroom teacher, and this kind of goes into the ed tech piece as well, who really built me up.

(10:20):

So I entered the ed tech world kind of as a coach and a professional learning specialist, so kind of helping teachers use new technology. That was what I specialized in. So I used to always help our department chair At the time, Meredith Carl, who was five years from retirement, but still really went out of her way to use new technology, was always asking me, what can I use next? Sarah, how do you write a tweet? How do you do this? Just all of these ways that she could get her students engaged. I called her my work mom, and then my work dad, Chris story, who was across the hall from me when I was a classroom teacher. And they just kind of built me up and put trust in me to help promote new technology within our department, within our P L C. They came to me when they wanted new ideas, so they kind of gave me the confidence to enter the ed tech realm.

(11:16):

Like, Hey, I really can teach people how to use technology. Maybe this is a career thing. Maybe I could leave the classroom and actually do this. So just kind of seeing other people willing to take those risks made me more willing, I think, to take a risk too. And then of course, once I entered the ed tech realm, just seeing, especially other women who are higher up in these ed tech companies, I look up so much to Kelly Drew, who's on our team, who's one of our VPs. She is just a boss. I jokingly told her the other day, your picture looks fierce because it does, her new headshot looks fierce. And I was like, yes, girl, you still fierce in that picture. So just women like that that I can really look up to and aspire to be like them. Not that I didn't have that in the classroom, but it just kind of felt like as a teacher you're like, okay, I can be a teacher and then maybe I can be a department chair. I had zero interest in administration. I did not. A lot of the administrators, I should say that I had were micromanagers. I didn't want to micromanage people. So Ed Tech just felt like a good place for me to go with all of that backing and all of that positive influence that I had.

Holly Owens (12:40):

Sounds like you both had a lot of great support systems and influences over the years that have led you in this journey to where you're at today, and we love to hear that. We love telling stories here and surrounded by a bunch of educators. You speak the same language, you understand without speaking what you all are going through. It's just something that's really, really nice. All right. We want to get into it. We want to talk about, so everybody in the audience, unless they were living under a rock somewhere, knows about screen castomatic and what that did and the technology that you offered there. I myself was a very beginning user of screen, but now it's transitioned into Screen pal. So tell us about the product. Tell us about the services that you offer. How did it evolve to you from Screencast Mac to Screen Pal? What are the differences? Tell us all the things.

Ben Wellington (13:36):

Yeah, so part of the story that we've had with PAL and the name change was the platform and the tools have evolved to being more than just screencasting. And so that was part of the impetus. We talked with a lot of customers for several years, and of course that's a core part of what we do as we let people record their screen, but there's so much more in the product now. So we have a mobile app, for example, that allows you to record, edit, and share. We have a really, maybe it doesn't jump out at educators, but we have a really nice hosting solution. So oftentimes you make a wonderful video, you need to put it somewhere, and YouTube is sort of that thorn for a lot of K 12 districts, do they, don't they? And we have this really nice hosting option with Screen Power. They can record their video and send it to Screen Pal and basically make their own channel their own custom video channel with their branding and school colors and password protection. And it just makes it so easy for teachers kind of create and manage what they're doing. And It's not

Holly Owens (14:54):

Locked down by the district, obviously,

Ben Wellington (14:57):

Right?

(14:59):

It's got all of the student data privacy compliance stuff. So you don't worry about a kid starting on the right video and ending up 10 minutes later on something completely unrelated, like video game replays instead of your video on government, you're trying to get them to watch and digest. So yeah, it's a really nice platform. Anyone who's used Screencast Thematic knows our very friendly editing setup where you can create a video pretty quickly. But our editing tools and the way that it's color coded and drag and create is really, really nice. And we sort of merged that all together with our mobile apps, our platform, our Chrome browser extension where we have video messages now. So if you want to send a video message in an email, you can do that all in the same place. So part of our challenge is getting people to know all of those different things. Holly, there's so much of it in there that it's sort of like, Hey, can I condense this in a 32nd conversation for you?

Holly Owens (16:09):

Absolutely. But that's good. Then people can go on and explore it for themselves. And obviously we're going to put everything in the show notes so they can go out and explore the tools, the new tools, the new features and everything, what have you both. And Sarah or Ben, you can answer this question. What have you found to be the most exciting piece that has been rebranding to screen pal for you both? What's been like, I know when a company Rebrands, it takes a lot of resources, it takes a lot of money, human capital, and then it's just a lot. It's like transitioning LMSs. That's what its analysis is to for me. So what's been the most exciting part?

Sarah Eiler (16:54):

I think for me, I was really excited to see all of the positive feedback that we got on the rebrand at isti. That was the first show that I got to go to with the Screen Pal team. And we did get a lot of people coming up to the booth and being like, oh, y'all are Screencast Matic. And we were like, yes, but we're Screen Pal now because we're more than screencasting. And somebody jokingly I think said to me like, oh, screen Pal, you're friendly. And I was like, sure, we are friendly. Our goal is to be friendly and helpful, so I'll take it. But I think that just getting the word out has been really exciting and it kind of has added this excitement for people using pal. It's different quizzing. I think we added before the rebrand, I wasn't part of the team, but we've really shown people that we have these quizzing now too.

(17:50):

I think that rebranding was a really good opportunity, like Ben was saying to say, we're more than screencasting. You can take a screenshot. We have scrolling screenshots, and there are so many times when as an educator or as a tech coach, I had a separate extension for every single one of these things. I had my scrolling screenshot extension, I had my audio recording extension. I had my short snip video recording extension. So I think one of the beauties of Screen Pal is that it's really working towards offering people to be an all-inclusive solution for video in the classroom and images and screenshots. So lots of still images and editing that you can do too. So just the excitement that people have around that. And I think when you have a new brand, people are more willing to listen and learn the new things because it feels all around new to me.

Ben Wellington (18:50):

I Like that. I like the

Holly Owens (18:52):

Newness of it. Go ahead, Ben.

Ben Wellington (18:54):

Oh, sorry, Holly. I was just going to say to par it a little bit what Sarah was saying, a lot of teachers, myself included, we're kind of creators or we like to at least think we are. And it's fun, Right? We

DaNadia Johnson (19:08):

Have time. Yeah, right? Yes,

Ben Wellington (19:11):

Exactly, Nadia. But from this side, at least from the company side, the rebrand was sort of an opportunity to reevaluate and create something new, which is always a little exciting. So there was definitely, Sarah was saying a ton of excitement from us and from a lot of our longtime users, and then the ability to go out and get new customers and make people aware, yeah, we've been around for years, but we just have a new name and a new look and a couple of new features. We think that that was a lot of fun. So it's a great new challenge. That's

DaNadia Johnson (19:51):

Awesome. So I want to know, well, we don't want to make your marketing team too mad or anything, so we don't want to give out all your secrets and what's coming for pal, but without giving out too much information, what is on the roadmap for the upcoming year? So I know you talked a little bit about the features, but are there any new things on the roadmap for pal?

Sarah Eiler (20:23):

So we actually just released the L T I 1.3 integration. I hope I can say that, Ben. I mean, this isn't going to be till November anyway, and it is.

DaNadia Johnson (20:36):

We just

Sarah Eiler (20:36):

Released the LT 1.3, which is really exciting because one of the things that was funny when I joined Screen Pal with Ben was we keep seeing things in Screen Pal, and we're like, but it needs to be this way for teachers. We are both prior service teachers. So we're like, but we want it to look this way because we're seeing it from a K 12 lens. So one of the things that we insisted was updating the L T I 1.1 to 1.3, and then that should enable us to have grade sync in the near future as well. So that's the biggest thing that I'm the most excited about on the roadmap because we all know it's a pain to download a C S V file and then have to type in the grades. So the fact that we'll have that grade sync option, I think will really be a game changer for a lot of people. I worked at a school district that had Google Classroom and Canvas, and the biggest way that I got my teachers to transition from Google Classroom to Canvas, when we made that L M S switch that Holly joked about earlier, I went through that during covid. That Was oh

Holly Owens (21:44):

My,

DaNadia Johnson (21:45):

Oh wow.

Holly Owens (21:46):

No, thank you. Hard pass.

Sarah Eiler (21:49):

So having 7:00 AM tutorials on how to post your lesson to Canvas was really cool. But I made that transition and one of the biggest selling points was all of the great sync that you could do within Canvas. So I'm really excited for us to be able to help teachers and streamline their life and make it easier by having that grade sync as part of our services as well. Didn't mean to cut you off, Ben, but I had to say the one that I liked.

Ben Wellington (22:25):

That's the big one. At this time. We're also looking at, just like Sarah was saying, we're really thinking about our teacher audience with this and making it more accessible for them. So we're thinking a lot internally about accessibility features and also making it easier and quicker to make and share content. So I don't know, it's not a singular product roadmap fix. It's more fine tuning what we think is already a really good and powerful tool, but maybe we can shorten the steps to things little by little, just so that it's that much quicker and easier. And part of that is Sarah and myself running webinars and trainings and bringing awareness. There's a lot in Screen Pal that people just don't know about. You can share a screen pal video link with a QR code so a kid can walk in and scan with because how many teenagers are attached to their phones? They can scan the QR code, open up your video and take the video, and you can add that video, can have a few quiz questions in there so you get some usable data. How easy is that as a warmup or exit ticket as the kids leave?

(23:41):

That's nice.

Holly Owens (23:42):

There's

DaNadia Johnson (23:42):

No sign in, no signup, anything. Come in, scan, sit down, get right to it.

Ben Wellington (23:49):

So those little pieces are another part of that, even though it's not a product roadmap that is more of an educational roadmap, if you will, where we can sort of bring awareness to everyone out there. This is an incredible product. It's existed for a while, and we want to make sure that people have access to it and know how to use it. Oh

Holly Owens (24:12):

My goodness. I love what I'm hearing. I love what I'm hearing. I can even use this in higher ed. I already know that this is a cross. I know I'm sitting here, man, I wish I had this. I taught elementary, but it still would've been, I mean, even just

DaNadia Johnson (24:26):

Talking about the videos and not having to worry about ads and stuff on YouTube and afraid that your kids are going to see something that they shouldn't, just having those type of features would've been awesome in the classroom. Yeah.

Ben Wellington (24:38):

Yeah. Sorry Sarah.

Sarah Eiler (24:41):

I was going to say one of my favorite things too is a lot of times we work with teachers who are like, oh, well, I already have this video recorded. They've got some MP four files saved somewhere on there, probably millions of folders on their desktop situation. So it's really nice that you can even import those videos that you already have. Obviously you can record using pal, but it's nice to be able to import those and not feel like you've lost all the work that you've done in the past. So that's been really great. And like Ben was saying, I love the QR code feature. You can embed it as well. So if you're a tech coach, I was, and maybe you have some type of Google site or something like that, you can even embed your channel or your video on that site to share out a resource with teachers, other staff, things like that. So it's really cool. It's amazing to see. Also, we do all these virtual meetings when I do a webinar and I see a literal aha moment on somebody's face, and I'm like, okay, my day is complete. I have had an adult with an aha moment. We are done. We done here. Mic drop.

Holly Owens (25:54):

Absolutely. Well, we have gone through a lot of different things in this episode, and I'm so glad we were able to have you both on to talk about PAL and all the wonderful things that you're doing and looking towards the future. So speaking of the future, we definitely want to know from both of you being former classroom teachers and now in the ed tech space, what does the future of ed tech look like? Tell us all the things. It's a fun question and it's a hard one to answer.

Ben Wellington (26:28):

That's the million dollar question, isn't it, Holly?

Holly Owens (26:31):

Yeah,

Ben Wellington (26:33):

I'm actually, I'm going to go optimistic on this. I think the future of ed tech gives teachers more human moments with students. I mean, at least that's what I'm hoping for. I think anybody who's ever taught in a classroom, even if it was just for two weeks, then you had to run away because it wasn't for you that it's a job that you get into because you want to interact with students, you care about their livelihood, you care about their wellbeing. You want to make them better people. And technology, I think it's sort of been made into this pania of it's just going to solve all the problems, just give kids EdTech tools and all of the problems that people deal with somehow go Well, we learned obviously with Covid that that's not the case. But I think what EdTech can do is with the right training for our teachers, of course, is give them more time with students, more human moments to rebuild relationships that have been strained because of students being stuck at home and all the other things that kids deal with.

(27:43):

So I am very optimistic. I think Ed Tech's going in the right space. I think we can hold students and make them accountable. I think part of holding them accountable that way. People worry about discipline, people worry about accountability. Test scores unfortunately get thrown in there, mental welfare for our teachers and students. I think a lot of that comes down to teachers just need a little bit more time to work with the students, time to work for themselves and have a moment to enjoy a cup of coffee and not have to elbow someone out of the way in the coffee room. And I think that's what good ed tech can do is let's cut back on some of the unnecessary stuff, get you to that moment and hopefully make you more effective. So yeah, I

Holly Owens (28:39):

Like that. The more of the human moments for sure. I

Sarah Eiler (28:45):

Think that Especially with all the AI stuff, I mean

Ben Wellington (28:49):

Now, and I feel like a lot of that is, I mean, there's some really good things in that, but I think what we all really want is just connection. So I think that's the right companies will focus on that. I think,

Sarah Eiler (29:06):

And I was going to say something similar because I think that AI has of course been like the hot topic this year at all of the conferences. And I think if nothing else, AI has really shown us the value that we still have as not AI that humans still have. Because even though, for example, I even recently used an AI generator to start a blog post, but it basically just looked everything up on social emotional learning. But I still had to completely rewrite the blog post when you first looked at it. Of course, it was a complete blog post, but it was not written either in my tone of voice, it anything else. And I know that there are ways to ask the generator to do it that way, but I think that if anything, that EdTech will continue growing, but it will also show us the value of humans, of people.

(30:14):

And then also, one of the things that I've even realized working remotely, I sit at home in front of a computer. I even got a standing desk because I was sitting so much in front of my computer in my home office. One of the things that has shown me is also the value of human connection. Ben and I were talking the other day and I was like, look, I had to join an actual gym because I'm never around other adults. I'm around my two year old. I'm around my husband who's obviously an other adult, but I mean people that aren't part of my immediate family, I'm never around. So you kind of don't realize what you lose when you lose human connection until you don't have it anymore, which I know is a lesson that all of us learned during covid because we were all on quarantine sitting at home

Holly Owens (31:06):

Having fever for sure.

Sarah Eiler (31:08):

Yeah, but it's very similar. You don't realize the value of human connection until it's not there. So I think that ed tech, like Ben was kind of saying forces us to connect more in person. And it also makes it possible to connect more in person, like a flipped classroom model. They're learning at home a little bit more, and then you can do the more impactful activities in class. And if nothing else, I mean like VR headsets. I can't tell you how excited sixth grade science classes got when I brought in a VR headset. I think EdTech can really bring the joy back to learning too. I remember being so excited when I was a tech coach. I was like, the fun one, right? It's like being the fun Something. I would come to the door and they'd be like, oh, Ms i's here today. We're going to do something really fun. They're just excited to see you because you're bringing the fun and Ed tech can do that. So I think that it'll bring the joy back to learning a little bit too. I

Holly Owens (32:17):

Love that. I

DaNadia Johnson (32:18):

Love that too. Joy and human connection.

Holly Owens (32:20):

Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Well, we can't thank you both enough for coming on and talking about all things your journeys screen pal. Definitely we'd love doing, where are they now? Episodes. So six to 12 months from now, we're going to pinging you and be like, what's going on? Now? Tell us all the things so that we can keep the audience updated with your updates and your travels and everything. So thank you both so much for coming on the show.

Ben Wellington (32:47):

Thank you. You're

Sarah Eiler (32:48):

Welcome. Thank you.