How Rosetta Stone is bridging the elementary education tech gap for in-school and remote learners
Nick Gaehde, President of Lexia Learning, Rosetta Stone's literacy education division, joins Yahoo Finance's On the Move.
Video Transcript
ADAM SHAPIRO: Welcome back to "Yahoo Finance On the Move." As families nationwide struggle with the status of education, with schools slowly reopening, I believe here in New York City, online education has resumed as of today after being delayed. What is the state of reopening schools? Nick Gaehde is Lexia Learning president. This is a Rosetta Stone company. He's joining us from Boston.
And in the past, you've made a great emphasis through the technology that Rosetta Stone places on helping people progress with English comprehension and reading. But now more than ever, what you offer might be something that people doing online learning, parents and kids, would be using. Can you tell us more about this?
NICK GAEHDE: Sure, I'd be glad to, and thank you for having me on this morning. So for the past 36 years, we as a company, have been focused on ensuring that students have the ability to master their foundational literacy skills. We have been building technology to ensure that students have the ability to remotely go through a personalized learning process to acquire those skills, and at the same time, delivering data to educators, so they know how to support those students. And that's not, that could not be more important today in that remote learning environment you alluded to.
JULIE HYMAN: Hi, Nick, it's Julie. As we see people, the kids being in school online all day long, I wonder for sort of supplemental programs like yours, if there's any reluctance to keep the kids on screens for longer, even if it is vital learning that they're getting by doing so. So how does your program sort of work in cooperation with some of the online learning programs?
NICK GAEHDE: Sure. So we have two programs really focused on building those literacy skills. Core five, which is focused on building literacy skills for students of all abilities in elementary school, and then Power Up, which is focused on non-proficient readers in secondary school. I think the misconception often is that technology increases screen time. And that's not always the case.
What we do, is make sure that we use technology to actually leverage the time that educators need in order to understand the needs of students and minimizing the amount of time that they are doing rote work with their teacher, and maximizing the amount of time that they actually have meaningful interactions with teachers.
- Just taking a look at the remote learning environment, right now, it's looking like this is here to stay. What would you say are the biggest gaps that need to be filled right now between that in-person learning environment and what students are actually experiencing now remote-wise, in terms of what's actually practical in order to start plugging that deficit in the learning experience?
NICK GAEHDE: Yeah, I think what we're seeing is an acceleration of distance learning and educational technology in terms of the role that it plays in curriculum. I think the biggest challenge that we saw this spring as schools closed, was making sure that, first of all, we were able to deploy our products on the widest array of devices necessary for students to continue the learning experience at home. And at the same time, making sure that teachers understood both how to use the technology, but more fundamentally, knew how to teach literacy in this kind of a remote environment.
ADAM SHAPIRO: Nick, some of us are old enough to remember the old Sally Dick and Jane primers, but I will share with you in second grade, I used to get pulled out when the whole class would go to reading. Her name was Mrs. Betts. And that's how I learned to read. Does your software enable that kind of one-on-one with a teacher? And this was a public school system that I went to. But today, does your software allow for that? Because it wouldn't be in person, obviously, at least while we're doing remote learning.
NICK GAEHDE: Yes, I think you and I were also in the same classroom perhaps, because I was pulled out as well at that time. What our software really allows teachers to do, is very accurately understand where an individual student is struggling, and therefore, maximize the learning time they have with that student. And it couldn't be more important today when the amount of time a student has with a teacher for individual instruction or a small group instruction is constrained.
ADAM SHAPIRO: Lastly, I want to ask you about English as a second language. I grew up in South Florida. That is a big issue there. How does Rosetta Stone deal with that issue?
NICK GAEHDE: Yeah, so we're very excited that we just launched a new program to meet the needs of English language learners, which is the fastest growing segment of the student population. That new product is called Rosetta Stone English, and it is focused on building oral language skills for those emerging bilinguals, as we like to call them, students who have proficiency in another language but are acquiring those foundational oral language skills in English. And that's what that program is very, very focused on building.
ADAM SHAPIRO: Nick Gaehde is Lexia Learning president. We appreciate your being here "On the Move."
