93: TranscribED: Breaking Down Barriers to Accessible Education with Speechcloud, Insights from Co-Founder Cameron Stoker

Holly Owens (00:02):

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

Nadia Johnson (00:10):

And my name is Nadia Johnson and we're your hosts

Holly Owens (00:14):

And we're super pumped. Today we have a very special guest. We have Cameron Stoker, who is the co-founder of Speech Cloud on the show. So Cam, welcome to the show.

Cameron Stoker (00:25):

Thank you. I appreciate you guys inviting me and I'm glad to be here.

Holly Owens (00:30):

Well, we're excited to talk to you and get into everything about Speech Cloud, but before we do that, we want to know a little bit more about you. We want to know about your journey. Tell us how you got into this EdTech space, the co-founder space. Give us all the details.

Cameron Stoker (00:45):

It's a wonderful question. It was by accident, like anything, it always seems to be the case. My background, so I was actually, long story short, I was working at Google. I was doing data science, some data analytics there, and I had never finished my undergrad. I went back to finish my undergraduate degree and when I did in one of my stats classes, I met a girl who became a great friend of mine who was deaf. And so this is kind of how the journey started, was met this friend, and I'll leave her nameless for the sake of her own privacy, but met this friend and again, we kind of became friends during that time, became friends, really just talked about it and she started talking about the experience of not being able to hear in class and the struggles of in the situation with that.

(01:35):

And so there was a hackathon being promoted and from my background and one of my buddies, we thought it'd be fun to build a simple transcription tool to help this run. And so we built this tool at this hackathon and didn't think much of it, right? Help the friend. Basically the way it worked was just an app, simple app that she could take a microphone that's connected to her phone, hand it to the teacher, and then she could have a little bit more anonymity in the back of the class and follow along. And that's how it started. She ended up telling a bunch of her other friends about it and they started using it and we realized there's this big problem in the world of higher ed specifically with accessibility. And so that's kind of how Speech Cloud started. It's not the same as what I just described and I can explain that journey if you want, but I want to pause. That was the genesis, the beginning of how he started Speech Cloud.

Holly Owens (02:36):

Yeah, we definitely want to get into the product and all the different things that you do, but that's a good story. What were you saying, Nadia?

Nadia Johnson (02:44):

I said I just love stories like that though, where you have that personal experience, somebody and you're building something to initially help them and then it becomes something so much greater. I just love stories of businesses or companies that start off like that. I think that's awesome.

Cameron Stoker (03:03):

Appreciate

Holly Owens (03:04):

It. Yeah, that's one of the reasons we started this show too, is to tell stories because a lot of misconceptions surround ed tech in the communities that you're just trying to make money off of people, you're just trying to do this or that, and really everybody has a story and an experience to share. So I'm really glad you're here and talking about accessibility, which both Nadia and I have a true passion about. I do a lot of stuff on my Amazon team with accessibility. I just did a presentation last week about it and how to incorporate different things into our workflows. So definitely going to be asking you more questions than what's on the sheet.

Nadia Johnson (03:39):

Yeah, Molly's obsessed with accessibility, I learned. So if I ever have an accessibility question, she's the first person I'm thinking of.

Cameron Stoker (03:48):

That's awesome. I would say what's been the weird journey, what I've been in, and I think that plays into the story, which is understanding why so many accessibility products fail. I think there's a huge factor into understanding behavior, understanding the business side. So I think there's a conversation for sure that I'm happy to have that I think could help people that are trying to solve accessibility, do it the right way and actually be successful.

Holly Owens (04:15):

Yeah, I mean it's also hard too. I think that one of the things when it comes to accessibility, and here we go, Naty going down the path, I'm going down it is that people have a very reactive approach to the situation, especially in higher education. As a higher education professor, you'll get an email that says your student needs accommodations three weeks into the semester. I mean obviously I'm very well prepared and I'm proactive about it, but other situations, instructors are not. So that's something too that exists in the corporate space as well. They're very reactive. If somebody comes in, a worker needs accommodations, very reactive situation, how do we deal with that? I don't know how to get people to buy in to be proactive about accessibilities besides maybe threatening them with the laws and being sued. That's one way, but I'd really a more positive reinforcement type of situation than just like, you're going to get sued and you're going to have to pay money.

Cameron Stoker (05:19):

Yeah, it's a great thought and a great question and is actually Speech Cloud 1.0 as I like to call it, which was this transcription software to help students with disabilities that failed. And the reason why so of these accessibility products aren't adopted and failed is even though they're solving a really big social need, aren't solving an economic need. And this is always the problem that I think as humans, human nature is we want to help people. We love it, and this is part of it, but from a business standpoint, I think there's this negative thing where it's like, yeah, we want to help people, but it doesn't help our bottom line. And so the way I've come to find and the evolution of speech cloud is, you said this at the beginning when you started talking about accessibility, a lot of times it's a bandaid.

(06:13):

A lot of times the products that we introduce is a bandaid on top of an already preexisting problem, which is the classroom in its own is not accessible. And so then we slap on our software. When it first started, it was a bandaid. It was like these students, this classroom's inaccessible. So we slap on this bandaid of this transcription software for these specific students, and that's how we're going to solve the problem. But really the way we should think about it and where you're going for is it should be universally accessible or at least as close as humanly possible to it. And so that's actually, I think the answer is you need to create a company with a social driven value, which is kind of how we started Speech Cloud is to solve this idea of accessibility in the classroom, but you need to do it in a way that also solves an economic need so that the institution is driven towards not only wanting to adopt it, but continue utilizing it because it either makes some money, saves them money, or saves them time. That's kind of the few things with that.

Nadia Johnson (07:18):

Yeah, and I think it's that that's the biggest thing is creating that buy-in for people to see the value in it because it is super valuable. So can you tell us a little bit more about the product? Can you tell us a little bit more about Speech Cloud? What is Speech Cloud like now today? How is it helping students across the country today?

Cameron Stoker (07:49):

Yeah, it's a great question. Anything. I love telling stories in the way that we also explain what things are. So Speech Cloud, when it kind of failed, as I explained as that transcription software, we realized that there's this huge need for teachers to have a one-stop shop suite of tools just to show up, teach their class, have everything they need to teach that class, while also providing their students the tools to best learn in and outside of class. So it's like through some time and realizing this, we wanted to create a great tool that again, makes education accessible for all, but also something that teachers really love using. And so what Speech Cloud evolved into over the past few years has been a multifaceted suite of tools that does basically as I like to say, four things. Number one, it's lecture capture and we are going to kind of put it into the categories that people like to categorize them. Extra capture video, audio.

Holly Owens (08:45):

I need that. I need the categorization. I'm making a list. I was going to go on the show notes.

Cameron Stoker (08:53):

Perfect. Yeah, categories are the best. And so this is how we view it. So lecture capture and all the things associated, you're prerecording your class. If you're doing asynchronous, prerecorded, we can do that. If you're doing a live class, you show up, click a button, and we do all the work of capturing that class experience for you. That goes from video to audio to live transcription. So this feeds into that second piece. This is what we call assistive tools. And assistive tools are meant to be tools that are just tools to help your students. So that live transcription, it's all annotative, so you can make notes on it, you can start save it. It's all searchable. So as a student during class, you can just focus on your lecture, focus on the teacher, focus on the discussion, teacher says this is going to be on the test, save that little bubble.

(09:44):

And then after class you can go and re-watch all the moments you found important, you saved it, you can go re-watch that clip teacher said this is going to be on the test. And the same thing goes with, you can search in the search bar across all of your lectures, type in the word test, see every time teacher says it. So you kind of have this secondary part, which is these assistive tools, these tools that help students better search and learn from this lecture capture that's been provided. As well as we have some additional tools like a place to take your own notes. We're actually putting in places for note cards so you can kind of quiz yourself. So we're adding a bunch of these free tools for students just help themselves. And we have a third category classroom response or student response. And this is pretty self-explanatory, but it's quizzes, polls, discussions. It's meant to be tools for the teacher to be able to use while they're teaching. So you're capturing that class and then in tandem, right? You're like, whoa, I want to send a quiz, or I want to send quick poll. I didn't think about this question that I had. Let's say as a teacher, you want to quickly say, Hey, you guys like A or B, and you can send a quick poll to all of your students' devices for them to respond. So we have this third category, which is again, all these business

Nadia Johnson (11:04):

Engaging within the classroom, that engagement piece, that's awesome.

Cameron Stoker (11:09):

And we're always trying to add more and we're always trying to improve. So always working with teachers on how we can have more tools within that. And then the fourth piece and that fourth category is what we call classroom analytics. So we help you keep track of attendance, but we also do a variety of other things. We keep track of if they're disengaged, if they're going on social media, if they are leaving the page. So we do some things like that. We also track comprehension. We just do that through quick automated polls that every 5, 10, 15 minutes, you can send a quick poll that's automatic to all your students and it just asks them, how are you doing?

Nadia Johnson (11:51):

Okay, cool. Like the

Holly Owens (11:52):

Attention span.

Nadia Johnson (11:54):

Yeah,

Cameron Stoker (11:55):

That's exactly right. And so the idea is these analytics, and we do a variety of other types of analytics. Do they watch the recording? How long? It's meant to just give you an idea of not only are your students aware, are they paying attention, but it gives you an idea of how your lesson's being received. Maybe halfway through the class, all of a sudden 50% of your students aren't paying attention. Maybe it's not always the student's fault. Sometimes as teachers and I teach myself, become an adjunct professor, which is right, pretty fun. But if you're not doing a good job, it may not be their fault. It's probably our fault that we're not doing, giving a good engaging lesson. So that's Speech Cloud in a nutshell. And that sounds, I just described a lot of things, but it's meant to be everything. You need to just show up, teach your class, capture it, make it accessible for your students, keep an eye and a pulse on your students' learning while engaging them. So like I said, it's meant to be your one-stop shop platform to show up and teach your class.

Holly Owens (12:57):

I like it. And I know that all the other tools that you have built, dione are accessible. So that just to me is a huge win. Every time I go to a technology or software, that's one of the things I look for first. Is it 5 0 8 compliant? Is it wic, cg? What level? Those kinds of things are what you look for, because a lot of companies, like I said before, they'll be reactive to the situation and they'll say, oh, here's a list of how to make blank accessible. No, it should already be accessible. There should be some kind of checker. There should be something already built within that. But it sounds like you have a great suite of tools, and I'm just curious, it looks like you're in higher education mostly, but has this started to bleed over into K through 12 and maybe the corporate workspace? Some

Cameron Stoker (13:56):

Good question. That's a good question. Yeah. What were we going to say please?

Nadia Johnson (14:00):

No, I was going to say good question. I was kind of thinking that, but I was like, yeah, I'm interested because come from more of a K12 background, so I'm to know how that works there because I could see how this could still be useful in that setting.

Cameron Stoker (14:16):

Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I would say this, we've had people show interest and the nature of business is we haven't been aiming at it just because you kind of choose a vertical and you get to, I didn't come from education. This was something that I was learning. I would talk to teachers and I would start talking about features and they don't care, right? Because I wasn't in the space. So I think a big negative when I started this company is I didn't come from this world. I think some of the negative has been just trying to understand higher ed. So the idea of going in after K through 12, I'm like, I've been learning this, right? And so if there's people that understand it, wonderful. So we have teachers that use it. I know through K in K through 12 because we actually launched a free plan this last summer that's completely free for teachers, completely free for students that include many of the features I listed. And so in that scenario, there are people that do use it, but that is not who we target, I guess is a good way to say it. That doesn't mean we can't in the future. But yes, we've just been focused on higher ed because that's what we know

Holly Owens (15:29):

And that's where your experience, your initial experience came from. So that makes perfect sense. But I know these things bleed over into other sectors just by happenstance because of what they can do. And that's great that you have already free stuff for teachers. I mean, that's really nice and generous. That already exists.

Cameron Stoker (15:48):

I appreciate it. I think the big thing in education from my experience is it's about trust. We were talking to teachers, they love the idea of what we were building, but it'd be like they're not willing to just jump in and take this on and be, because it's a big leap to use our product. You're using it to do everything in your class. That's a leap. And so part of that is you have to gain the teacher's trust and bring value to them for them to be willing to make that jump. And so I think there's just from my own learning, so a lot of it is just we wanted to help teachers want to help students, but also just from a business standpoint, there's value in which getting free tools out there gains the trust of your audience. It gains the trust of people around you. So I think there's a lot of value in just doing that free side, and then you provide much greater value. So provide great free value that they want to come and use and them, and then continue to provide greater value in the other tiers of your product.

Nadia Johnson (16:48):

That's

Holly Owens (16:48):

Awesome. Great way to think.

Nadia Johnson (16:51):

So without giving away too much of your secrets and what you're planning for kind of the upcoming year, what is your roadmap for Speech Cloud look like? What are some maybe cool things or interesting things that you want to share that are on the map for Speech Cloud?

Cameron Stoker (17:11):

That's a great question. I think in the next semester we're actually launching a bunch more free tools. Awesome. That are free just specifically for students. So you don't need to have the teacher sign up to use it. It's going to be more advanced features. It's going to be like where you can house all of your notes. You can create personalized note cards and all that from your notes. And then a place kind of to, I think we're doing a bunch of free tools, so I guess I don't have to, but a bunch of free tools for students that are just going to be where they can use it without having to have the teacher sign up. So the idea is just students, a lot of the tools out there are kind of weird and mismatched and all over the place, so we're just trying to create a bunch of free tools that benefit students across the board so that we are launching in the next few months. But I mean, I guess we can share that around. I think we're already started sharing that, so

Holly Owens (18:02):

Well let us know. We'll hold the episode.

Cameron Stoker (18:05):

No, you're welcome to share that. Okay, that's totally fine. Some of the other things I wouldn't say or be as public, but we are doing a bunch of stuff with ai. And so I think the real value about AI and what people misunderstand about ai, and this comes from, I spent years in technology, it's understanding the greater the input, the greater the output, I guess is a good way to think about it. Yes. And so the problem with so many of these AI tools in education, it still requires so much human input that just is low quality. They don't know how to use the tools. And so what we hope is with our ai, because we capture every word said by the teacher, so let's say you have 20 hours worth of lectures, we can actually create very personalized material based off of what you're teaching because we already have all that input, and it requires very little work from the teacher to then get quality, output, quality, self created quizzes, content, homework, all these things that are just self-generated because it comes directly from the lesson plans. So I think there's some cool things that we'll get to see that comes from AI and from a little bit more of a custom personalized experience based off of that.

Nadia Johnson (19:18):

That's exciting.

Holly Owens (19:19):

Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, I was just doing some AI generation of headshots and stuff, and I'm like, who needs Botox and lip fillers? I just have AI now,

Nadia Johnson (19:30):

Right? Some of these photos, I'm like, wow, who needs a real photographer? Now we can, oh yeah, just upload 40 of our regular selfies and boom, we have all of these great photography quality photos

Holly Owens (19:49):

And think about how that's going to relate to things for assistive technologies or accessibility for all the things like the different types of multimodal offering things in different formats. And AI is just going to do it. It's fascinating. That's going to be really good. I

Cameron Stoker (20:06):

Think the measure, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. No,

Holly Owens (20:08):

No, go ahead. No, go ahead. I'll talk after this. I have so much to say. You go ahead.

Cameron Stoker (20:13):

I was going to say, the best way to measure, and people always will say, well, how do you know which tool is going to be successful? And it's talking about AI. Again, it's always you measure that input. You say, this does such a great job with this or that. It's like you have to do a lot of work yourself. Most likely it's not going to be very quality. It's going to be what's the input, what's the data, what's the information? Where's that all coming from? And I think that's what I would advise anybody. How do you know if it's going to be a good AI tool or not? Just look at that.

Holly Owens (20:43):

Yeah, I'm going to let the dog bark in the background authentic here, and we Oh,

Cameron Stoker (20:47):

That's great. I love dogs.

Holly Owens (20:49):

Yeah, she just wants to know everybody to know that she's available and around. She's excited about speech Cloud too. She is excited about Speech Cloud because she is blind. That's great. She needs to use Speech Cloud for when I lecture her. And doggy. Thanks.

Cameron Stoker (21:06):

There you go. It's perfect.

Holly Owens (21:07):

Absolutely. I'm really excited you're on the show. I was just checking out your LinkedIn page and it's about to grow substantially after this episode comes out. I'm just going to let you know appreciate once we release the episode. It's so good. So last couple questions we have that we want to ask. Is there anything that we missed that you want to talk about? We talked about a lot through the episode. We definitely want to have you back when all that AI comes out and other features. And then we want to know from you what the future of EdTech looks like. You're prefacing us with AI and things like that, but as an EdTech, we definitely want to get your expert take. So anything we missed and what does the future look like?

Cameron Stoker (21:49):

All great, great questions. I think anything we missed, anything in education. What's funny is being an outsider that's become a part of it. I sometimes what I think we miss, and I'm going to talk more in a general sense, not only in this conversation, but in general, is just I think we get too attached to what we're already using as a big problem. And I think if we talk about what we've missed, this is a problem that we have is just I think in the education system, we hold onto these products, these services that we've been using for so long. I am not going to bash any, but it's like think about some of these tools that we use at our institutions that are sometimes 15, 20 years old. And that's not a bad thing, but I think the reason why the education system in its future struggle so much, and it was so much in chaos when Covid hit and this pandemic hit, is because we want to hold on to what we've had.

(22:48):

And so when it comes to the future, I think the real future is meant to be, it's not meant to be without teachers. And I think there's this misconception, we talk about ai, it should be so much of an emphasis on teachers in amplifying the information and message, because I can look up anything. I don't need a teacher to regurgitate information. What I need a teacher is that their mastery and their isolated information that they know. And so I think this has got to be the future and why we got to move away. And it's not even just Speech Club. Look at products that help the professors tell their specific message and their specific lesson and amplify that that should be the tools that we look for and not just be these tools that are just like we do a quiz and we engage. Right?

(23:39):

I think that's even the problem with Speech Cloud is I was looking at the market as how do we just, what other people are doing, but do a little bit better? It's like, no, we need to look at the market and look at the education system and look at the future as if I can get information from anywhere super quickly. Especially with ai. I just asked a question, it gives it to me. It now needs to be, what can these experts give to me that AI can't that the internet? And so I think the future needs to be tools that focus on that, provide legitimate value that amplify the teacher's message. Yeah, that's what I would say.

Nadia Johnson (24:14):

I love that. Coming from a teaching background, I think that's so super important is amplifying teachers. And I think this whole big thing with AI and all of these things is kind of the idea of replacing a teacher or, I don't know. I think it's so important to be amplifying and making it easier. That's my job now, even outside of being a teacher, is to make it easier for teachers to teach. And I think that's just, I love mission-driven companies that are doing that and have that at the forefront of their mission.

Cameron Stoker (24:56):

That's great. Appreciate it.

Holly Owens (24:56):

Yeah. I really think too that, I'm sorry, I'm taking notes and doing different things that if you take time, that teachers get some of that time back that allows for more creativity. Oh, yeah. So with ai, that's how I see that is you're able to be more creative in your approach. Because Nadia and I are instructional designers, so how we design or develop things, teachers can be more creative in the lessons that they plan and even consider accessibility as a top priority if AI is doing that for them. So I totally agree. And some of these shining personalities that you haven't higher ed, you can't, AI can't replace those.

Nadia Johnson (25:39):

They'll never be instructor.

Holly Owens (25:41):

And in teaching too is there's something about where AI can't create the safe space that instructors and educators create, so it is not going to replace them. It's going to Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be in collaboration.

Cameron Stoker (25:56):

Yeah. I would say to that, it's with the introduction of technology, we need more and more humans. There's this weird, again, misconceptions and this is the nature of businesses we try to automate, but this is something, especially in education, it's like you need to not think that way. The automation should purely be on maybe information delivery in some sense, but the teacher's vital, right? There's so much to the education and helping people surpass and everyone knows different. So yeah, I think more humans, more in person, this is going to be critical towards the future. I think people, there's online education and that's great, but I think we need to have a focus on it and what we hope with Speech Cloud is a lot more in person. We have brick and mortar campuses. We need to be using 'em and doing something different than just what we've been doing.

Holly Owens (26:49):

Absolutely. Well, we can't thank you enough for coming on. I have tons of more questions, but I'm going to hit pause until you come back, or I'm going to just mid you up on LinkedIn world. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing about Speech Cloud and talking about accessibility with us. Love your product and love what you're doing in this space, and can't wait to see how it grows. Yes, that's what I was going to say. Yeah, it's going to be great. So we're going to get it out there to the world. Now you're forever enshrined in an episode of a podcast, so thanks for coming on, cam.

Cameron Stoker (27:24):

Of course. Thank you for having me.