The following transcript has been edited for readability. Timestamps have been removed and minor transcription errors corrected. Speaker comments and context have been preserved.

Opening Remarks

Rich Portelance

Well, today we're here with Gina Faulk, the general manager from EdGate. And our topic in a series of videos that we're producing here at EdGate is about making the cut and how edtech companies can check all the right boxes to win contracts in K-12. And so, we want to talk to Gina a little bit about her experience and how EdGate can provide some impetus for these companies to be better prepared. So, Gina, can you give us a little bit of background on yourself so the audience knows who's speaking with them? 

Gina Faulk

Definitely, thank you. So, I'm Gina Faulk, and I'm the general manager here at EdGate. I've been here for over 10 years now. My days usually consist of doing a lot of talking with our clients, business development, kind of the touchpoint for all the different groups within our company, so that's taxonomists and subject matter experts (SMEs), our development team, our correlators–you name it. 

And prior to EdGate, I work– I've always worked in publishing; I've been in publishing now for 25 years. I started on the textbook side, so going back to the world of typesetting actually–so actually physically working on books, and that was copy editing, the art, the design, the layout, and the printing. So, I was very involved in that, and then I moved to edtech. 

And at the last company I was with, we actually used… which was an edtech company–we used EdGate as our correlation alignment company, so I became very familiar with EdGate and the alignment need out there, I learned that every piece of content, whether it's a video, or a game, or a lesson, or a book, needs to be aligned to standards, otherwise it's not going to be adopted or used in the classroom. So, it was a natural segue to come over to EdGate and really understand standards from the customer’s point of view too. So, it all kind of went full circle for me. 

Discussion

Rich Portelance

It sure did. It sounds like, you know, getting into publishing and kind of learning about the typesetting, and then getting into edtech, it is a full circle, and EdGate is certainly one of the… an interesting company in terms of its niche focus, right? It has a really specific focus as opposed to some companies which tend to be a little bit more broader in their approach. Why do you think that EdGate stands out in that regard? What is it that they do that kind of makes it special? 

Gina Faulk

Well, I was going to say, we are very niche, but also we work with all kinds of different companies too, so that might be why we stand out as well, because, you know, it's not just like we're working with edtech companies or traditional publishers–we're working with all types of companies. And it could be a company that has video games, and they want to align those video games to standards, or a manipulative, or… definitely– lots of videos and games, so it's really a bit of everything. So it doesn't really matter what we're reviewing–does it teach a student a specific skill or a learning outcome? Then that's our– what we excel at. 

And we're one of the only companies out there that really does this on a day-to-day basis too. There are certainly companies that provide standards, or you can go out and get access to standards, but we are a company that provides you with everything related to standards. We have the standards to provide you with, and we can align your content to standards–we have a team in place to do that. So, a lot of that hard work that is difficult to tackle with in-house teams, we're all set up to do that for you across all subjects and all grades. And going into PD (professional development), and career and technical education (CTE), as well. 

Rich Portelance

And is it true that EdGate also works with states and districts on the other side of the fence, so to speak? 

Gina Faulk

We do! So we have some agreements with a few states where we do their third-party reviews. So if they have submissions from publishing companies or edtech companies, we actually are on their list of preferred or recommended vendors to actually do another review before and give our recommendations showing how that company aligns to standards, or where there might be gaps in their alignments. So, we do work directly with states in that way. 

We also work with some states doing some diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) reviews, too, so that's been new for us in the past couple of years. We basically– we're looking at the rubrics provided by the states and doing a review showing how that content aligns to their DEI expectations. 

Rich Portelance

So, Gina, from your experience, what are some of the key practices often overlooked by software creators that inhibit their chance of adoption? 

Gina Faulk

Well, naturally, as you probably expect, I'm going to say alignment. So, that's one thing that, you know, at the last minute, sometimes companies–edtech companies and publishers–will come to us and say, “Oh, I need my alignments done because I'm going after an RFP (request for proposal) or an adoption, so it's something I need help getting together very quickly,” because that's always the case. These adoptions and RFPs, you get a month to tackle it, and so we're helping those publishers get everything ready and aligned. So, alignment is number one. 

Some others would be to keep practicing accessibility–be prepared to make sure that your content is accessible. So that could include text-to-speech software, or making sure that your content is digitally ready to go; it has an audio component to it, adding Braille might be a good idea as well. Beyond that, I also think one of the number one things is cybersecurity–making sure that your content is ready to be released to the district and set up with cybersecurity measures. In fact, I read a SETDA report, which is the State Educational Technology Directors Association, that in 2023, the superintendents said that cybersecurity was their– the issue that was of the highest level of concern for them. So, all of those things, getting all your ducks in a row so that you're prepared to answer those RFPs completely and able to check every box. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah. That sounds good. You know, I know that from personal experience in cybersecurity; I've done some work in that field in the past, and I think everybody's obviously aware of the cyber threats that are occurring. And within education, I think there was a bit of naïveté that it wouldn't happen to them. But of course, over the past few years, there's been more and more cyber breaches–there's a lot of personal data that has gone missing–and so edtech providers really need to look at that and check that box if they're going in for an RFP, and make sure that they have certification, and they've validated or verified that their software can meet the criteria for the state or the district that they're going into, so I appreciate you bringing that up as a main point; I think it's really important.

If we look at standards a little bit further, you talked about alignments, and so, when we break down alignments, we're talking about aligning a certain set of content to the standards that exist at that state or in that district. And you talked a little bit about how within the lower grades and as you progress, the standards will change. What are some of the challenges in adoption that you're seeing that edtech companies are having to adopt and to align to the content that's out there? 

Gina Faulk

I think, you know, when you talk about common mistakes that we see, and companies come to us, again, like, right before they need to submit for adoption, or well in advance–they're aware of the issues they're having around alignment, and one of the main ones I'd say is that the company may have just aligned to Common Core if they have ELA (English language arts) and math, or just NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards) if they have science, which is obviously– it's not going to fly when you go to Texas, because Texas will say, “Well, I need your alignment to be to the TEKS standards–and TEKS stands for the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. So, that's going to be their main priority, because they're in Texas, and they're doing their own thing, and you must align to their standards. So, that's one of the main ones I come across–they won't care about your Common Core alignment. 

And then similarly, the NGSS standards. So, a lot of science companies and curriculum companies have aligned to the NGSS, but that only encompasses 20 States, so there are 30 other states that are doing their own thing–they have their own science standards. And although those 30 other states– their science standards might look very similar to NGSS, and in some cases they are, but there are also these outlier states that they've really gone away from NGSS. So, for instance, Texas, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Georgia are the ones that are very different from NGSS– they're far and away from NGSS.

We've also noticed that, for instance, Pennsylvania was very different than NGSS, but now they're moving closer to the NGSS club. But yeah, and it changes every year, so you can't just kind of think, “I'm just going to align to this–what I think might be a national set,” because there really is no national set. I think that's what everyone thought when Common Core was created, but it has not turned out that way. 

Rich Portelance

So, that's a real challenge. So, what would be some best practices for companies to kind of stay up to date and be prepared as these standards continually change? 

Gina Faulk

Well, that is– it's really challenging, and of course, we experience that every day because we're monitoring the state standards, and so we have all kinds of web watchers out there notifying us when something changes, which is quite often. And it could be as simple as a wording changes, or even punctuation changes, but sometimes it's numbering changes, and so that does reformat everything, or it's significant. You can imagine with social studies too; there's always current events happening, and so we now have to align to something that might have happened a year ago because things are constantly changing, as we all know politically. So, we need to be up on all of those standards that change– and sometimes it's in summer–there's a heavy load of standards that change in summer–but sometimes it will be at just sporadic times over the years. 

So, that's an important factor to remember too, that you need to make sure that even though you've aligned to something last year, it might very well change this year. And then there's– you get into future standards too, where a state might have adopted a new set of standards, and so now you need to write your content to those standards, even though those standards will not be implemented for one to two years. But if you're going to submit your content for an adoption, you still need to make sure that your content is written to those future standards. 

Rich Portelance

So that's super challenging. You know, when I think about EdGate, it really is a definition of a niche-focused company. You know, making sure that you’re understanding the standards that are out there, and how to align content–it's kind of what EdGate does. Can we just step backwards a little bit? Give me a little perspective on the history, because the company started–what, 26, 27 years ago? And what was the focus when it started? 

Gina Faulk

Actually, the focus was on open educational resources (OERs). So that's how it started; our founder, Sandra Schugren, saw the need for free open resources for educators, so she came out of our local school district and brought many educators with her from our local district, and they started by making a collection–a library–of open educational resources. But soon, it became apparent that we also needed to align those resources to standards, so we started to create a library of state standards and create a methodology of aligning content–those OER resources–to standards. So, pretty soon, she had developed a very thorough taxonomy, which we'll get into, and the publishers found out about it, and they came to EdGate to use our taxonomy and use our methodology of aligning content to standards. So, it quickly went from OER, which is still important today, but to the focus being more on alignment of content–any content–to the standards. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. And that's fantastic, and I would imagine there's a lot of handwork in that process. You know, you– there's subject matter experts (SMEs), people that understand how to, you know, that– a particular topic and how to make that alignment. Is that still the practice today, or has that changed over time? 

Gina Faulk

No, it's still the practice today. We have a team of subject matter experts across all subjects, so the four core, of course, but also world languages, health and PE, art, social-emotional learning (SEL), religion, a little bit of everything, and CTE. And so what we do is we have our subject matter experts work very closely with our clients to get a good understanding of their content, because we work with so many different types of content. It could be videos, games, lessons, manipulatives; we've worked with robots, we're always surprised, you know, at what we're working on because, you know, our kids today are working with– it's not just textbooks; it could be a little bit of everything that they're using in the classroom. So, we're working closely with the publishers to understand what their product is, and then how it aligns to the standards. And then we're also pointing out gaps too. So, where it might not meet the standards. So, that's another– back to your question about what sometimes gets overlooked–it's the gaps too that get overlooked. 

So we're looking for that too, but yes, it still is very hands-on, although we have also… we have some solutions that revolve around some auto-alignment too, so that's where we're doing less of a human approach and more of a machine approach, where we are looking at their metadata and making the connection from their metadata directly to the standard. So, we're– we also have some solutions and more that we're working on that involve AI, where we would take less of a human approach and more machine approach. 

But I have to say that, you know, we've always used part-human and part-machine, because what we've done is we have a human approach, because that's always kind of needed as an end QA (quality assurance), especially if you're going after an adoption. There's no room for error– the publishers want to make sure that their content does meet the alignments. And there's going to be humans on the other end in Texas, or in New York, or whatever state you're going after, that are actually reviewing the alignment. So we are also doing a QA to make sure that we have made sure that the content meets the standards as closely as possible. But our taxonomy does a lot of the work for us too, because you do the human approach–you're reviewing it–but you're also tagging it with our concepts–our taxonomy. And from there, it's mapping out to all the standards. So it's human plus taxonomy, and then a global approach to aligning to all the standards. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. And if we– one of the things that we see frequently is people are looking for having access to standards, and recently, there's been an update to the system that you use. Can you tell us about the system and what the update is so people have a better understanding of how they can search for and have access to their standards and those alignments? 

Gina Faulk

Sure, yeah. Before, you know, always in the past, we had the ability to provide standards. These companies come to us, and they don't just want alignment. Maybe they just want to license standards from us–they don't want to have to go out state by state and extract the text out of a PDF, or call the DOE (Department of Education) and say, “Can you please send me your standards?” because sometimes they're actually not on the DOE websites. So, we have provided standards for years via API (application programming interface) or via a bulk download CSV file that's updated weekly, because again, those standards are always changing, but now our clients are able to… Those that are using our ExACT Alignment Tool, they are able to log into our system, and for all the standards that are in their profile–so, say they have the four core for all 50 states–they would be able to download those standards into a CSV file directly from our ExACT Alignment System. 

So that is new, and we're just trying to make it easier for those who might not be able to– maybe they don't have a technical team that can handle an API, or set up an API, or they don't want to bother with downloading the standards every week. So, if they want to go on an ad hoc basis and download them via the ExACT tool, they're able to do that. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. So, ExACT sounds like it's a very useful tool for people to see those standards and see those alignments. Can you tell us a little bit about the reporting that's available within ExACT, as well?

Gina Faulk

Yeah, sure. So, as I mentioned, EdGate can do the alignments for our clients, but our clients can also go in and use the same functionality that we use to do the alignments. So, some of our clients say, “You know, we really know our content best, and we have a team already in place, so we can handle the alignments. We've been doing it for years,” and we love that. So, they're able to log in and load up all of their metadata, and then start making those alignments–start making those matches from their content to our taxonomy, and therefore to the standards. And then one of the key features is the ExACT Reporting Tool, and whether we're doing the alignment for our clients or whether they're doing their own alignment, the reporting is really important, because every state will require that you submit reports showing how your content aligns to their standards. And the gaps too; they might want to see the gaps, or you might want to see the gaps for your own internal purposes, so that you can start creating content to fill the gaps. 

So, you're able to go in and generate those reports to see exactly how you hit each of the standards in each state, in each grade, per subject, you can sort it by your different product lines, you can add metadata about pricing, and add ISBNs (International Standard Book Number), or whatever metadata fields you want to see in your report, you're able to do that. So, it's a key feature, and it’s heavily used–almost all of our clients use those reports. 

Rich Portelance

I would imagine, especially as you talk about the rate of change within the industry, and all these standards like, being updated on a continual basis. To be able to go back and see those gaps, I mean, that would help you adjust your content kind of almost on the fly, wouldn't it? 

Gina Faulk

It would definitely, yeah. So, you're able to, right then and there, say, “Okay, well, I don't meet this.” I had an example I ran across the other day where a gap was– it was early childhood, math, and a content unit only talked about– the lesson was about teaching your children about  “earlier” or “later”, so you need to understand the concept of morning, afternoon, and evening. But the lesson only talked about morning, so obviously, if the state adoption committee is looking at that, they say, “What about the afternoon and the evening?” So, it just clearly shows you– it's a very simplified example, but… You know, I've got to adjust my lesson–I need to change it, rewrite it, rewrite or redo the video so that it talks about all of the times of the day. 

Rich Portelance

Wow, that's super powerful, even on a simple example like that. If you overlooked it, to go back and try to figure out where that gap was by hand would probably be quite an arduous process, I would imagine. 

Gina Faulk

It would, yes. And the other thing we do too, in order to help publishers, we often do what we call the “third-party reviews”. So, if a company is going after an adoption in Ohio or Virginia, some of those states–and Indiana is one–they require a third-party review. So, we do that work as well where the company's gone as far as they can, and now they turn it over to us as an unbiased set of eyes. You know, we haven't seen the content before, and now we're going through and reviewing it and pointing out where their gaps are, and then providing our rationale too, like, you know, “We don't see this anywhere in the video. It's probably an oversight, but you might want to go back and look at that before you submit the final submission to the state.”

Rich Portelance

Okay. So, the next thing I want to just ask you about, because, to me, when I came into EdGate, some of it was confusing, was the nomenclature that's used for alignments, and there's correlations, there's taxonomies, there’s standards, there's lots of words out there, and I think sometimes people get confused as to what they mean, exactly. Can you shed some light on that nomenclature for the audience? 

Gina Faulk

I can. I think we're part of the problem ourselves, because we use “alignment” and “correlation” interchangeably, but I'm kind of veering more towards “alignment”, because I'm seeing that's what the states more often refer to it as rather than correlation. So, again, interchangeably we use that term, but let's stick with alignment. And then as far as the– I've mentioned taxonomies, and that can also be used– that term can be used interchangeably with the term “control vocabulary” or “Concept Index”. On our staff, we have some librarians, and so they're very familiar with the term “taxonomy”, but others might not be, so I'll quickly explain it. 

So, basically, and again, librarians will be very familiar with this concept; a controlled vocabulary is an organized arrangement of words or phrases, and that's what makes up our Concept Index. It's things like adding fractions, or adding fractions with like denominators–that's part of the taxonomy. Or photosynthesis, life cycles, and I could go on and on through every subject. And so it's a breakdown of all of the concepts that are taught in every subject, going all the way from the beginning to the end, K-12, or beyond into career and technical education, or adult education, or professional development. So, it's a long list of terms–concepts–and we– what we do is we have that list of terms, and when state standards come out, we go in and we tag the state standards with those concepts–let's call them “concepts”–that make up the taxonomy. 

So, here's the Georgia state standards, and so, we're making sure to tag those–every time we get updated, too, we're tagging them to that taxonomy. And then later, we're looking at our clients’ content, so say it's a science lesson about photosynthesis; we're tagging it with the term “photosynthesis”, and then it's making a match between their content and the state standard. So, I think of the taxonomy as the glue that marries the content to the standards in every state. And the beauty of our system is that we've already done the hard work of tagging all the state standards, so if we're tagging a piece of content with photosynthesis, it's going to map out and match to all the state standards that talk about photosynthesis. But then you can also narrow it down by what grade you're in, to is it eighth grade? Is it seventh grade? So that it gets even more granular in approach. 

Rich Portelance

So, when a new standard is released, if I understand what you just said correctly, EdGate’s taking that and adding additional information, enhancing that standard, and then, you know, and then having that within the repository or library for access to correlate. That's correct? 

Gina Faulk

Right. So, we're ingesting all those new standards–every time they're released, we're bringing those into our system–and either they're going to be the same, and so they'll– we know those, and they've already been tagged, and so we'll just– that's easy. But if it's a new standard, then we're making sure to tag that to the taxonomy, so that– new concepts might be introduced, again, especially in social studies, social-emotional learning; there might be new concepts every year that are added. 

Rich Portelance

That's really interesting. So, just having the standard alone is part of it, but the fact that EdGate is enhancing those and then putting them into play really adds an extra layer of opportunity–it makes it much easier to align. And so, for the clients of EdGate, the advantage is a much quicker and much more exact alignment to their content. Is that– does that statement resonate? 

Gina Faulk

No, it– Definitely. Yep. You got it. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. Because it's complex stuff, it's not– you know… I know it took me a while when I first came on board with EdGate to kind of really understand that flow, and what the difference maker was, but EdGate really, I think truly is, you know, a group of subject matter experts at alignments and standards, right? And there's not many people out there that do this kind of work, is that true? 

Gina Faulk

Yes. It definitely– It is a niche for sure, and we've got the greatest team in place, many of whom have been here for a couple of decades, so they've been here since the beginning, and they really have strong relationships with their clients, they really understand the content, and they are deeply entrenched in the state standards too. So they will recognize, again, if something is, you know, “This looks oddly like Common Core,” or, “Oh, wow. This is very different. They're really straying away from what other states are doing,” so… I can't think of another group that would be so familiar with standards as EdGate is, because they've been doing it for so long. 

Rich Portelance

It's pretty impressive. If you were going to look at this coming cycle–budget cycle–give me a reason why alignments should take precedence. Why should edtech providers who are trying to break into those markets make alignments one of the number one things they do? 

Gina Faulk

Well, if anyone has kids in school, they might have noticed that when kids come home, at the bottom of their worksheets or on their online resource that they're working on, you're going to see the standard listed. So, I mean, it's something I noticed maybe five years ago or so, that, wow, you know, what I'm doing is being directly– like, I'm directly affected by this; I'm seeing this every day now, now that it was pointed out to me… Or, you know, since working at EdGate. So, every piece of content that's been adopted is aligned to the standards. You have to show proof that your content does meet those standards, and it's very clear when you do have kids in school that their stuff is aligned to standards, and there's a reason why that material is adopted and they're using it every day. 

So, it's number one–it's part of any adoption or RFP process–you'll have to go through that process of, again, checking the box that your content meets standards, and show reporting on how it does, because at the end of the day, the state committee is going to be a human looking for those alignments. And again, if it's– if you're going after a state that doesn't use Common Core, or NGSS, or a set of national standards, they want it to be aligned to their state standards. 

It also sets your product apart, too, so if you've done the due diligence to actually go out and make sure that your content aligns to… you know, say you're selling to British Columbia, and you've done the work to align your content to the B.C. Canada standards, it just shows that you care, and that you specifically want to target their market. You know, and if you pair that with other things, like you're going to provide professional development resources, or other resources to really commit to that territory, it just– it's going to set you apart from the rest. 

Rich Portelance

Well, that's a big difference maker right there. You know, showing– not only showing you care, but showing the educators on the other side–the districts and the state leaders–that, you know, that you're ready for that curriculum, and your product is as prepared as it possibly can be. Do you feel that EdGate is known amongst the educators on the other side of the sales cycle? The people at the state and district level–do they have any familiarity with what EdGate does? 

Gina Faulk

Well, they must, yes, and it's– more and more over the years, I think one of the ways that educators, and even the– Whether you're a teacher, you're a superintendent, or you're the DOE, they find us because, well, one, the third-party reviews that we do where we are approved in a few states, where they refer the publisher or the edtech company to EdGate to do that third-party review. And the other way is we have these Correlation User Interfaces (CUIs). So, it's an interface that sits on some of our clients’ websites, so that if you're a teacher, and say you're looking for a resource that aligns to your state standards, and maybe you're looking to see if you can find a piece of content that teaches a specific standard on the interface, that will say, “This is powered by EdGate”. So, that's another way that we've found, “Oh, okay, people are finding us through these Correlation User Interfaces that we've created for our clients.” 

So it's kind of built our cache over the years that we are the engine that powers those alignments for many of the publishers and tech companies out there for K-12. 

Closing Thoughts

Rich Portelance

Well, it sounds like EdGate is doing some fascinating and amazing work. Are there any last thoughts or things that you think people would want to know about why EdGate and why the services that are provided should be considered as they go into this cycle? Because we talked about how it's going to be tighter than ever–we know that the budgets are starting to get cut back; the federal funding isn't going to be there, so state educators are really going to be scrupulous about what they're going to buy, who's going to be, you know, in the classroom, and… and we know that process is going to call out a bunch of providers who were hoping to get contracts, but may not. So, you know, if you look at it– you know, last thoughts, anything that you see that's going to really be a difference-maker for them? 

Gina Faulk

No, I think a lot of what I've mentioned before: just making sure that you've done your alignments, you're prepared, you know your gaps, and you've filled your gaps. The other thing I think can help them from the get-go–the clients–is having good metadata. We didn't really get into that, but… So metadata is data about your data, but that really– if you are able to be organized from the get-go and have all your data ready, like the lesson name, and the title, and the summary of your data–so, say you have a lot of videos. You want to have all of that ready to go so that it's easy to provide your content to a company like EdGate so we can help you align your content. And in some cases, we actually help build that metadata if the company doesn't have that metadata built, but it's going to help you all the way through the whole process, because you will need that metadata when you're submitting your content as well–you'll need to have an organized, efficient way to submit your resources for review. We've talked to companies before who actually had to go outside their own system and Google what they have in their system because they just didn't have a good inventory of what they have, so I guess know what you have going into it, be organized about your metadata so that– because it's going to be needed along the way for the whole process. 

Rich Portelance

That's really good advice. And it sounds like metadata is… That enhancement of the standards and the content is really important, and having it organized– and it's a bit of a ripple effect, right? If you don't have it at that top level, it's going to affect you more and more as you get further and further downstream, and, you know, you're going to wish that you had that metadata because there's going to be disconnects. 

Gina Faulk

Right. Exactly. And so, second to that, I think another– the final piece of advice too would be just make sure that your alignments are up to date, because it's like we talked about, it’s always changing. So, I mean, we just learned in the past few months, okay, well, New Jersey has new standards. Well, where are they? You know, they weren't even on the website. So sometimes it takes us or the client having to call and find out where they are, because they can sometimes be buried in committee meetings notes, or a PDF on someone's computer at the DOE, so that's part of what we're helping our clients with, is, you know, avoid that problem, you know, we can do that for you, but it is– it's difficult, it's a challenge sometimes to keep up with. Sometimes I think as… We have 50 states, and sometimes we say 51 because of DC, so, say 51 states or– and plus Puerto Rico. So you're trying– Each one's sort of like their own different country with what they're doing. Although some of the standards look very similar, they each have their own brand on them too, so it's tracking all of those: the politics, and the personalities, and the pedagogies of every state. A little alliteration there for you. So, tracking all of that, and it can be very challenging. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah, it sounds like it. And you had mentioned the web watchers earlier in the interview and people who are out there looking for standard changes. I can't imagine if I'm an edtech provider, actually having a team of people to do that work. I mean that's– it just seems, you know, ludicrous to have to, you know, kind of continually update, look at different states, see when did they change, and as you gave the example of New Jersey, you know, not knowing when those standards were going to come out, I imagine it would really be helpful to have some partner that could oversee that effort. Even if it's just to get the latest standards, you know, not even do the correlations, you know, just that piece of it alone seems like it would be worthwhile. 

Gina Faulk

Definitely. It eases the pain. For sure. Yeah. Then the [Inaudible] is on us, and that's what we're great at. We're– that's what our team is in place to do: to watch those standards and advocate for our clients, and make sure that we are keeping them up to date, because it can be very challenging for them to do, and we get that. So, that's definitely where we shine. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah. It's a challenging environment when you have the 52 different “countries”, so to speak, to match up to and to deal with, yeah. Well, Gina, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. Is there anything else you wanted to add before we close it up? 

Gina Faulk

I don't think so. I’m looking forward to the upcoming conference season, and ASU+GSV (Arizona State University + Global Silicon Valley), and meeting more people who need help with their alignments–especially lots of up-and-coming edtech companies who this is new to. And we love working with those companies, and helping them get up to speed, and teaching them about how to do these alignments and why it's important. So, just looking forward to– always something new, always new products coming out, and it's always exciting to work with new companies to learn more about their products, whether it's a robot or a, you know, new set of videos. We always learn something new every day too, so it's an interesting field to be in. 

Rich Portelance

It sure is. And just to remind everybody, we'll be having a webinar coming up on April 4th. We'll be covering some of these topics around alignments and standards, but also we have other panelists coming in–experts within the education field–who are going to bring some interesting perspectives on strategies, research, and data to the mix so that, again, we help edtech providers check all the boxes so that they can be as prepared as possible for the coming changes. So, Gina, thank you for your time today, and we look forward to talking to you again soon! 

Gina Faulk

Okay. Thank you, Rich!