SchoolAI helps schools embrace AI tech to make life better for students, teachers, and school leaders.
And I'm Caleb Hicks, founder and CEO here. I've spent more than a decade working in education. I've been a middle and high school teacher, a curriculum director at a small private school, an instructional designer at one of the biggest companies in the world, and built an online school of 5000+ students. I know what it's like to be a teacher and a school leader.
In late 2021 I started a non-profit called Factor to help teenagers test-drive careers with hands-on projects working with industry experts from companies like Microsoft, SpaceX, and the San Antonio Spurs. We worked with around 250 teenagers in 2022, and were preparing a broader community launch in early 2023.
In anticipation of many thousands of teens participating in the free online program, I started building a tool that would take transcripts of videos and tag and timestamp them with the moments teens reflected about specific learning outcomes, demonstrated specific skills, or expressed some kind of magic moment. About two weeks later – Chat-GPT launched.
We were using some of the same technology, and I was incredibly impressed with how easy Chat-GPT made it for everyday people to experience the magic of this new technology. I built lesson plans, I chatted with Aristotle, I speed-ran college admissions essays – and I was just scratching the surface.
Just like the first time I used Google or the iPhone, there was a before and an after where everything had changed. I couldn't stop thinking about ways to use Chat-GPT and other tools in every aspect of life.
But instead of adopting and starting to empower students with the technology, I watched huge districts like New York City Schools, and many, many others ban it.
I watched social media melt down about what it would mean for the five paragraph essay, or the book report, or pretty much any other assessment.
But I've also seen magic. My 11 year old daughter's face lighting up learning math from Yoda. A high schooler getting in-depth, live, personal feedback about their college essay. A first-year teacher letting a load off from lesson planning for a new teacher. A 20-year veteran generating new ideas to shift his classroom to inquiry-based project-based learning. A father of a student with down syndrome tearing up after receiving a proactive note home.
I'm here for every opportunity. I'm an education futurist, and an AI optimist. If we embrace this new technology, and integrate it into our lives and other tools we're already using it, we can unleash a new wave of learning, personalization, automation, and get more out of our schools than we'd ever dreamed.
The world is changing dramatically. This technology is just getting started, and in 5 years, 10 years, 20+ years everything we think about how education works will have adapted. Schools were at the forefront of adopting the personal computer and early searchable web. Since then they've lagged 5-10 years behind the rest of the world in getting access to new technology. We're helping them claw back to the bleeding edge. Education will be the first major use-case for AI, and we're here to help make it happen.
I started SchoolAI because there's nowhere I'd rather be, and nothing I'd rather work on, than helping students, teachers, and school leaders navigate the tide shift and get the most out of AI as a tool, as a learning outcome for students, and as an opportunity to rethink and rebuild how education works in our most important social institution.
We're going to need to work with the very best and brightest educators, technologists, and leaders to shape that future and empower every student, teacher, and school leader with the best AI-powered tech has to offer.
I invite you to come and join us. Onward and upward.
We are education futurists and AI optimists. But we know both are complicated for valid reasons. In everything we do, we're seeking the best for those we work with, those who use our products, and humanity at large. Our values will adapt to match as we continuously learn what that means.
We build technology that magnifies humanity and relationships. Everyone who interacts with SchoolAI – whether personally, or with one of our products – should feel empowered.
Most software loses sight of the actual humans that use the software. We focus on empowering and building incredible tools and delightful experiences for the people in the building.
We follow the research and data. We learn fast, and ship fast. We're intentional about what success looks like, continuously test new ideas, and let the best ones win empirically.
We're here for the long haul. We are thoughtful, sweat the details, and build strong foundations. We work deliberately, design in systems, and consider second and third order effects.
We make things awesome, and we make them for everyone. It's not enough to solve a problem deeply, we get it into the hands of everyone – especially those that need it most.
Not much – yet. We just launched in private beta. But that's all about to change. In the meantime, here's what teachers and school leaders we've worked with are saying.
If you're writing or talking about AI in education, teacher performance, student performance in a post-Covid world, or otherwise want to feature SchoolAI – or even better, the people using our products to improve their schools – get in touch.
I loved hearing from others about ways to use AI-powered tools so I can share them with my fellow teachers. I enjoyed seeing more ways to use that. I had no idea that you could do that.
- Kristina Pico, High School English Teacher in Oregon
I used the information you gave me and had a great email created in five minutes with AI. I'd been putting off writing the email because it was going to take me about 40 minutes with the research, etc. that it needed. Woohoo!
- Belinda Ross, Library Systems and Discovery at King's College in London
