Taylor Shead on the Metaverse of Learning

Hello, you’re listening to the Getting Smart podcast. I am Nate McLennan and today I am super excited to be joined by Taylor Shed. Taylor is the CEO of Stemuli, which is a Dallas-based company and is national in scale. They are doing amazing work to build technology skills for the future workforce, build a diverse talent pipeline, and super intriguing they are launching or have launched the first educational

metaverse that’s integrated into public schools in the US. They were just awarded the Transformation Award for EdTech by Forbes. So very excited to welcome Taylor to our show today. So Taylor, thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Super excited to have this conversation with you today. Great. So I want to start with just thinking about where you came from. So what’s a powerful learning experience from your own life that maybe has informed your path forward? Yeah, great question. Well, I am the youngest of seven kids to all earn a Division I scholarship to play basketball or

football in college. All the girls play basketball. The guys play football. And that’s so sequence of events for me working about 10 years to earn a scholarship, earning a scholarship to Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and playing basketball was pivotal in

me getting into education because I went to school and all of a sudden I realized like, oh, I’m not doing as well in class as I thought I would be. And I was like really passionate about becoming a reconstructive plastic surgeon at the time. And I’m sitting in this chemistry class and I’m like looking at the teacher and I’m like, I have no idea what the teacher’s talking about.

And you know, what’s the first thing that happens when you ask teachers for help? They say, well, what do you need help with? And I was in a place where I didn’t know whether to start with, hey, start at the beginning of class, start at the beginning of the semester or just like go back to high school chemistry and start teaching me.

And so I bring up that entire experience because ultimately I ended up losing my scholarship at the time. And for me, what it came down to is when I would travel on the road, I did not have access to my coursework. So it’s like trying to get a pre-med major and then travel across the United States and play

basketball. I wasn’t able to keep up. And when I looked historically back at my older brothers and sisters, it might have been a different reason that their educational experience didn’t turn into what they wanted it to. But I had a brother played football at Nebraska University and got to his sixth year of college

and somehow had 55 credits. So that’s a problem, right? There’s a problem over generations. That older brother is in his 60s now and I’m in my 30s. So a very long way of saying that because I had dedicated myself to something so long and then

to experience some failure in a way I had never experienced before, I kind of decided at that moment, I don’t want anybody else to be in this position. I want to make sure that students coming behind me don’t feel like they’re not equipped to ultimately succeed once they’ve reached their goals. Right. And ultimately, you should be able to do both of those things, right?

Be a high-level athlete and keep up with your work. But the system doesn’t sound like it was set up for that. Yeah, exactly. And just for some additional background, we are not talking about like I went to private schools for more than half of my K through 12 experience and I graduated from one of the best

public schools in Texas and Plano ISD. So, you know, the bigger point there is I really had all the resources that I should have needed to be successful and I still wasn’t. And so, you know, the challenge for me in life became, well, what about the folks that did not have the blessings that I had of the great K through 12 education I have?

What are they doing in college? And you can look at the statistics. We’re not doing too well. Right. OK. So then so you had that experience, you wanted to address the need that you experienced, so

it’s super personal, but also recognize that you had some early benefits that others don’t have. And so what challenges did you identify in the education space? So what were what are the origin stories of stimuli? Yeah. So there’s really two challenges that I talk about in the education space. One is if you look at consumer technology and then you look at the technology and the

learning materials in our classroom, they’re almost from two different planets. They don’t even belong in the cell phase. So education has not done a great job of keeping up with consumer technology to transform the classroom. That’s one. And then the second challenge that I’ve really seen is it is not the educator’s fault.

So when I say this, I don’t mean that. But education hasn’t done a great job in preparing students for the future of work. And you have to ask yourselves, how are you supposed to do that when you have not worked in jobs of the future? And so, you know, origin story behind stimuli and short with those two things.

Stimulize making something more engaging in our case is making science, technology, engineering and math. And then two, what we’re looking at doing is how can you bring together corporations in K through 12 schools? So the corporations are actually educating their future workforce versus the schools

trying to figure it out and hoping that they’re giving kids the skills that they need to be successful. Really interesting. So I just to paraphrase to make sure I have it. So you see an engagement issue, which I like how you relate that to consumer technology.

We think about all the investment money that goes into consumer technology to get people to use it to make more people jump on and join, etc. How do we make that happen in the education space? And then the second is this connection to the workforce where I’ve always felt I’ve been in K 12 education for years and always felt that we are waiting, waiting, waiting.

And it’s not till after they graduate high school or graduate college or whatever that we say, oh, now we’re going to set you up well for the workplace. When I think what you’re saying is we got to do that way earlier. And make that happen. So all right.

So we have those two issues that you were or challenges that you saw. So I think it was 2017 or so. You started thinking about this new idea and you had been in previous business, Ed, some ed tech stuff publishing it look like leading up to this. But what?

When did you start to think about founding Ed stimuli? Yes. So again, I went to college in Los Angeles. It was an amazing environment. Really encouraged me to be entrepreneur.

And then I got a call from my parents that was like, you’re spending way too much money in California. You should consider moving home for these reasons. One, you have one of the largest school districts in the United States and Dallas, I see in Texas that you can start trying to work with.

And then two, my dad gave me some great story about when he moved his business from LA to Texas, how it just transformed things. So with that said, I moved back to Dallas and it just so happens through LinkedIn. I get a call from somebody from Dallas, I see. And if you can believe this, what they tell me on the phone is Taylor, we’re starting

this new program. And the goal of it is to accelerate the time it takes students to get from high school into the workforce. That program is called P tech pathways to technology early college high school. To me, what made this an even bigger opportunity or even more exciting was they said, look,

we’re trying to recruit 100 businesses throughout Dallas to partner across 25 high schools. Will you be one of the businesses? And so I had kind of already told you that it was clear to me that corporations need to be more involved in education. And so you have these moments as an entrepreneur that whether you say their chance or look or

God that happened and you see this big wave and you have a question of like, do you duck down and let the wave go over you or do you start peddling as fast as you can in order to do something in that space? So basically what I did is the first year of that program, I only volunteered. I was going into the classroom almost every Friday, working with about 200 students for

about eight hours during the day. I had never taught before in K through 12. I had no idea what to teach the kids, but I was ultimately teaching these ninth graders everything that I wish that somebody had taught me before I went to college. And what I found out going into their next year is like, why do these kids know my name

in stimuli, but you have partners like Microsoft, Accenture, IBM, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Thompson Reuters, like you name it, really the who’s who. And they don’t know anybody’s name from these companies and they barely know that the companies are partnered with them. So that told me well before 2020 that we needed to develop a platform that could connect

these corporations to these students virtually or else the corporations were never going to have the opportunity to influence economically disadvantaged students. And vice versa, the economically disadvantaged students were not going to ever have exposure to some of these major corporations. Got it.

And did you recognize at that point that P-TECH was a national network? Because that seems has seemed helpful as you all have grown. Or did you go in saying, I’m not sure what this is, but I’m going to jump in because it seems interesting. Yeah, you know, at the time, Dallas Ice Dean did do a good job of educating us as far as

the origin of P-TECH. There are a few differences between Dallas’s model and the IBM model. Dallas pushes kids through the program in four years to get their associate’s degree workplace learning experience and their high school diploma, whereas IBM just does it in six years.

And anyway, at the time, I don’t think I knew the scale that IBM had taken this opportunity to, but you’re absolutely right. I mean, we serve a very niche market. I can go to any P-TECH school and tell them about the success I’ve had at 50 other P-TECH schools, and they’re excited to work with us.

Right. OK, so then you recognize you needed a technology solution to connect. Nothing existed yet. So then you just go and build this. And then what does it look like now?

Is this the, I think on the website, it’s called Workplace. I assume that’s the thing that was built to address this issue. Yeah, absolutely. So what we did at that time, so this is now like in 2017. I approached Dallas ISD and I said, hey, this this this program you built is amazing,

but in order for it to sustain itself and scale, I don’t see how you do that without technology. And, you know, I have to give credit to a woman by the name of Dr. Usama Rogers, because she didn’t know all of what I was talking about. She’ll tell you that sometimes she talks to me.

She doesn’t get all the technology stuff I’m saying. But what she did recognize is that we were on to something. You know, how else are we going to get hundreds of employees to interact with hundreds of kids unless we have technology? So in short, she said, OK, you can build that platform, but I need to make sure I

can read the data on engagement. I want to make sure to be able to see what partners are engaging, what students and schools are engaging. And so our work together developed that stimuli workplace platform. And ultimately we grew it to sell it to P-TECH schools really across the United

States, as well as globally. Got it. And so it’s is there real time synchronous? Is it all asynchronous? Tell me a little bit about the platform, like what’s worked? What do you want to keep doing on it, etc?

Yeah, you know, it’s really funny because when we invented this platform, no one knew what asynchronous learning was. And now we’re in a whole different world. But our platform originally started out asynchronous. And the reason was because again, you can’t expect an employee to be able to just

get on a Zoom call with kids in the middle of the day or leave their workplace. So we waited a lot more like social media where they could post videos and content. The students can come in and respond as they please. The mentor gets an alert and can go back in and respond. So now on that workplace platform, you have asynchronous mentorship.

You have live mentorship that can take place. And then we’ve invented something called industry partner academies. And in those industry partner academies, you have 4,500 companies who have come into our platform and said, I want to teach high school students all about us from like who our CEO is, why we were founded, our mission and our values,

our views on diversity and inclusion, and ultimately career pathways that are available to these students at our workplace. So that’s been very successful. But of course, you know, we don’t stop in trying to make our product better. So I’ll tell you about that.

I think probably after your next couple of questions. Right, right. OK. So this thing exists. You have it running. It’s serving a lot of P tech schools. Now you start thinking about the it’s not quite the metaverse yet. So so let’s start talking about the metaverse.

So how to first of all, can you define it for our listeners? Because a lot of our listeners are new to that concept. And then second, what was the jump to this game based learning immersive experience that we call the metaverse? Yeah, so I’m going to give everyone my definition of the metaverse.

And I’ll come out in from two ways. So the literal definition of what a metaverse is, is think of it is like the world’s 3D twin. It’s just a digital twin of what already exists in the world. Now, what makes it a metaverse versus just like a video game

reflection of the world is the ability for developers, schools and other people to come into this world and build their own worlds. So whereas we have the universe as in one, right, the metaverse is the idea that you can continuously build and build and build on top of this world in a way that provides value to people.

The way we do it is we say we’re the metaverse of learning, but there’s a lot of different concepts from metaverse that provides value for different reasons in different places. OK, and so can metaverses connect to one another? So let’s see, you’re the first in the space,

but say someone else builds a set of assets, could they build on top or join with so that students can move between different metaverses? If I’m asking that the right way. Yeah, you’re asking in the right way. So that’s our goal, at least with our metaverse,

is to open it up where, let’s say, game developers who’ve built some of the coolest titles like Fortnite, Minecraft, you know, you name it, could come into our world and decide to build experiences that are built for education. And then two, I think there is going to be a world that exists where you can cross over from like our metaverse of learning

to, let’s say, the metaverse of music. I totally see that. Are we looking at five years in the future that this can be an experience? Or is this 20 years or is this 50 years out in terms of the accelerating of the metaverse, knowing that I mean, I know the metaverses exist for gamers

for for some time in this in this small little space, but it appears to be real popular in literature right now. So or at least in the media. So what are your predictions around the educational metaverse, given you’re on the front end?

Yeah, I would say it can happen in the next five years. And what we look at stimuli to gauge, if that’s possible, is you look at games like Pokemon Go. So I participated in Accelerator hosted by Global Silicon Valley. And if you all haven’t heard Michael Motok or read any of his articles,

this guy is amazing. I had the opportunity to like meet him in person and learn from him for five days. But anyway, he did a presentation where he talked about the history of technology and what he started with was like the Model T car. And he said, how long did it take the Model T to reach 50 million people?

And he went through time and talked about like all the different technologies that all of us know that make up the world and how long it took them to reach 50 million. And even Uber was an example of that. The most recent technology he had on that list was actually Pokemon Go. And it took about 16 days.

In order to reach 50 million people. So it’s totally possible. So that makes me think in five years it’s possible. But, you know, I’m going to flip your question in. You’re asking me, is it possible for me?

It’s a necessity. And I think for our world, it’s a necessity. There’s articles that have come out recently to say, I’m going to give me two comparisons. One is globally, learners are losing 17 trillion dollars in earning potential

because of losses suffered through the pandemic. And then in Texas alone, Mike Maraph says something like two trillion dollars are going to be lost in earning potential for students. So five years, it’s a possibility. But what I’m saying is it’s critical that we come together as innovators

and educators and really figure out how to make this happen. Or we’re going to be looking at a world 10 years, 20 years, 50 years from now that is unlike what we’ve seen and not necessarily for the positive. It seems like also it’s going to be critical for corporate big tech and others to partner and be more mutualistic about how they integrate

rather than proprietary so that so that the different assets can be layered and play with one another. I think you were alluding to that before, but it seems like that’s going to be an important piece to building the metaverse concept. You know, since the start of the pandemic, I have seen collaboration

among big tech and everything in between at a rate that I’ve never seen it before. So I think you’re absolutely right that that has to happen. It’s fundamental. The other thing that has to happen is we have to invest in diverse founders. There’s a lot of folks that I talk to in the industry, and we might be doing

close to the same thing. But when you start talking to them about like integrating VR headsets in the K through 12 education, it’s almost like they don’t understand the money that some of these school districts don’t have to spend on technologies like that. So I would just say, you know, also making sure that we uplift

diverse voices who are close to the problem and, you know, therefore closest to the solution is going to be vitally important as well. Yeah, I think that’s a place for design thinking to evolve. Is that design thinking in especially in K 12 has emerged as an important piece, but making sure that who we’re designing for are leading the initiatives.

And they’re the ones that are amplified is super important. So I couldn’t agree with you more. OK, so now you have this dream big initiative support from Dallas ISD. You’ve launched a school or you’re powering a school Dallas hybrid prep. This that started this fall.

What is the experience of a Dallas hybrid prep student look like in relationship to this the metaverse that you’ve built? Yeah, I realized I didn’t answer one of the questions that I had. I realized I didn’t answer one of your questions that you had asked me earlier. So I’ll quickly answer that and then answer your question about the Dallas hybrid prep student.

So I think you had asked me, how did I go from connecting students to corporate mentors to the whole metaverse product? It’s a story worth hearing. That’s the reason I’m telling it. So if you keep in mind, the P-Tech program opened in 2016.

And then in twenty twenty four years later was the first round of graduates that was across the finish line. So the students I’ve been working with since they were freshmen in high school were now seniors and me and my co-founder were like, oh, my gosh, what if they can’t connect to their teachers to graduate?

And so within about three months, we built a virtual classroom platform and launched in June of twenty twenty. And is that the Ed? Oh, the Ed OS platform? It was well before we knew it become an operating system. But yes, that is the platform.

So this platform basically did single sign on for students. Two, they saw a list of all of their classes. Three, they clicked on the class and ended up in a video conference with their teachers and all the other students. So not necessarily revolutionary, but one thing we found out from that experience

is that it is not engaging enough to like help students log in easy and they connect on a video conference like that wasn’t going to do it. And then the other thing we found out, which was the first time this had ever happened in education is we could see the curriculum that these kids were being taught.

And I don’t know. At the last time you’ve seen what curriculum looks like. But for me, it was eye opening to see again where educational technology is versus consumer technology. So I got a call one night from a guy by the name of Sean Brinkman.

He’s the chief technology officer of Austin ISD, by the way. And he says, Taylor, if you want to figure out how to do something that’s unlike anything in education, like no platform in the world has, see if you can build education into a video game, like literally, there’s see if you can do it. I have no idea if it’s possible.

I don’t even know if I should be making this phone call to you, but see if you can do that. And so we did about four months of research. And that’s where we really started studying the different models of what had worked from a video gaming perspective.

So you look at like Minecraft, the Sims and Fortnite and what you can tell is Minecraft has had staying power over like the last 20 years, whereas like Fortnite, you know, didn’t exist, did a spike and then, you know, kind of teeters up and down. Sims kind of the same thing.

And long story short, what we realized is the low poly images that are available in Minecraft make it easy for students on Chromebooks to play a video game. So that was number one. Yeah, two, before Roblox went public, my COO was like, have you heard of this thing called Roblox?

It’s insane. You have kids that are like not having to code. They’re creating their own video games. They’re selling it to other kids. And so the Roblox game maker tool that we are building at Stimuli

is that’s the way we’re playing to scale and sustain the platform because it’s really hard. The idea of like, are you literally going to build K through 12 curriculum that’s all game based? That’s going to take hundreds of millions of dollars. So what we’re saying is we’re going to put a game maker tool

in the hands of teachers and students where students can then make their own games of learning and share with other students. So I know I went on the tangent. And do you want to know about the hybrid program? Yeah, but let’s let’s pause here for a second, because that’s I love that idea of

you’re right, it’s good. It would take so much time to build out all the curriculum. And the second thing is, is that curriculum would be very adult centered, which is sometimes what I think the challenge is. And so you’ve built by building out a platform that students and their teachers

and mentors, etc, can build on and build things that are relevant to them, but connect to, say, standards or competencies or or or certifications or whatever they have to to meet. I love that idea, because then you’d be building on the power of a network to accumulate an infinite number of learning experiences.

OK, so and then you’re also addressing the bandwidth issue, which I think as you want to scale, we know that especially it’s both nationally and internationally, that can be a challenge. So if we’re dealing with really high end graphics,

that can be a problem in terms of processing speed. So I like that you’re solving for both those issues. So OK, so now talk to me about the Dallas hybrid prep. What’s happening there? What does it look like?

What are you seeing? What are the students saying? What are the parents saying? Yeah, so Dallas hybrid prep was the first permanently hybrid school in Texas, unbelievable.

It was opened by Dr. Olga Ramirez, the principal. Angie Gaylord is a visionary in the district who’s been thinking about a hybrid school well before the pandemic. And ultimately, what Dallas I.C.D. said is we know that we need to offer a different flexible learning environment.

And so the premise of the school is three days a week, the students are learning from home. Two days are in person, which again, super cool. You get a little bit of the community building in person, and then you get some space to learn at home.

So you enroll in the school basically, you’re it’s not like a magnet school process, meaning there’s no minimum GPA requirements, even if you do not live in the district or if you live in a different part of the district where this isn’t a part of like your home feeder pattern.

The district will bus students to this particular school. So that’s a little bit of public school choice that Dallas I.C.D. has. So now getting down to the actual day in the life of a hybrid school student. So at the beginning of the year, they all selected customized avatars in the stimuli platform.

And then ultimately, when they’re dropped into this world, it is the funniest thing to see, but imagine a bunch of fifth graders literally on a video game together and you see how their avatars dress and you see their name above their head. So the students are able to do like, let’s see, like a digital recess

where they’re driving around this world. They’re too young to drive cars, but in our world, they can drive cars. They can collect coins. They can play soccer and basketball with one another, hide and seek. So that’s a little bit about the fun part that they get to do.

And let’s say as a student, I’m running around this cool world and it’s time for class to start. All that has to happen is my teacher presses a button on their their website side because we have at a West robust robust teacher side. And it literally scoops me up from anywhere I am in the world as a student

and drops me in the right class, the right teacher with no choice, no waiting the hall. No, yeah, there’s no. You’re going to go outside. So as a student sitting in our 3D classroom, the funniest thing happens is like

you look around this 3D classroom and you see everybody’s avatars like you see the back of the avatars head and then on a movie screen like screen, the teacher comes up within the video game. So now it’s like really funky because you have the video game and then you have your teacher talking to you on screen.

We built something called a teacher controller. And what that means is a teacher repairs are less in plans. They have a series of activities they want the students complete that day. And in real time, the teacher can say, I want to launch this near pod activity or I want to launch a stimuli game based learning activity

and they press a button on their computer and it’s launched in real time to that students 3D classroom. And as the student engages in that material, what happens is the teacher can see in real time how the student is progressing through that material and then just kind of rounding this all out.

As students attend class on time, turn homework in, they’re actually learning points that are going to upgrade their digital avatar. And over time, these students will be earning cryptocurrency through our platform for attending school. So I know it’s super far out, but it is coming.

So yeah, that’s where we are. I could dive into more detail on any aspect. You might want to hear. OK, so so I think I have I watched a short video online, too. So I have a and any of our listeners can go on to the

we’ll put in the show notes, the links to the website. But you can see a quick image of this to make sure that you understand what’s happening. But I see how it’s happening. Thinking about game based learning and and reward systems and your earning points and maybe building crypto.

Can that eventually I think I heard that that might turn into scholarship or how how does that pay off in the end for them? Or is it just a digital bank account and they get their Ethereum or Bitcoin or whatever it is? Like what is that going to or you’re going to have your own crypto in the future

that that is related to your world? Yeah, we can talk about that. So basically where it is today is the students are earning points that are upgrading their digital avatar. So that’s just simply how far we are in the development process.

But what’s on the product roadmap is imagine this is an economy. And so as a student, I earn these coins and now all of a sudden I’m presented with offers and that offer can be to buy land. And then the question is, well, do you want to build a house on this land or do you want to build a business on the land?

And imagine students literally learning about the craters economy and about the economy by using the points that they’re earning in class. So what I mean by that, let’s say I decided to buy land. There’s a negotiation for me to purchase the land to I decided I want to build a business on the land now presented with educational

information as far as how my coins grow if I invest in a restaurant versus in a technology company. And then, you know, you get to the point where now you can have a student with a storefront where they’re selling like their favorite digital sneakers to other students.

And now that student is learning about the cost of goods sold and profits and then how are they going to reinvest those profits? So that’s kind of an interim aspect of gameplay that will be introduced into our metaverse, but going to the full bright where we want to be in the future is as a student, we want you to be able to earn stem tokens created by stimuli.

And then with those stem tokens, we want to govern how you can use them a little bit. So can a student or family use it to pay a water bill? Absolutely. Can they pay any bills with it? Absolutely, because we don’t want learners to have to choose working over their education. But then, you know, this token can convert into things like scholarships.

And I don’t just mean a scholarship at a four year university or a community college. We’re talking about trade schools. We’re talking about the ability. Yeah, exactly. For students to be able to purchase classes on like Udemy or Linda. So now you’re getting to a place where, again, learners are not having to choose

whether to work or continue their education. And then you’re in a place where their access to college and higher education postsecondary is more affordable. And then you’re in a place where it’s kind of a democratized classroom because we’re not saying the one way to go from here to there is a four year degree

or, you know, spending 12 more years in education. What we’re saying is you own your educational process. Where do you want to go next? Spend your money there and keep going. Right. So there’s this lifelong learning of skill up, skill up, skill up.

You might have to pivot and you skill up again. And it’s not only just the single choice that we sort of presented students sometimes in terms of postsecondary. Super inspirational. Just one quick data question.

So using you mentioned fifth grade. So currently Dallas Hybrid Prep, what grade levels is it serving? Yeah, thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about them. So this coming school year, they will serve third through eighth grade. And I just wanted to be known and on record that this school is outperforming

all schools across the Dallas Independent School District. So you have students who are excelling in science, reading and math. And just one example is by a science teacher named Ms. Driscoll, who somehow has her students at 65 percent mastery in science. It’s like completely, completely unheard of in education to be at

65 percent of mastery in anything. And so we know the model is working. We’d love for anybody listening to this podcast in the Dallas Fort Worth area that wants a new model for their students. The applications are open now for the next school year.

So reach out to Dallas Hybrid Prep. They’d love to have you. Yeah, because any student within the district could enroll in the school. Correct. Absolutely. And even out of district, we’ve had folks move from Allen and Plano to attend the Dallas Hybrid Prep.

Out of state yet or not? Not yet. I’m working on that. I’d love to make. Let’s see if I can make Dallas Hybrid Prep the best school in the world. But I would love it if any kid from any

where in the world kid enroll and go to school, these great teachers. Right. So you’d have Dallas Hybrid Prep, powered by Stamuli is kind of the combination we’re looking at. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. OK. So we’re wrapping.

I’m going to ask you a big philosophical question, then I’ll close with what we call one, two, one. So just some advice for you, for our listeners. So my big philosophical question is around you have the universe, the known universe that we live in, which we know a small amount about. And then these metaverses that are starting to emerge.

Do you foresee a future where it’s 100 percent metaverse or sometimes I have this worry of kids only sitting in the metaverse because it’s so intriguing and so stimulating and they’re learning a ton. How do you see it connecting with the real universe? What does that look like philosophically for you?

Well, that’s an amazing question. I think there will forever be a crossover between the metaverse and the physical universe. I the way I would look at it philosophically is to say, can we use a metaverse to number one, create opportunities?

Can we almost recreate what we know is imperfect about our physical world in the metaverse and then see the impacts it has back down on the universe? So I’ll say that like a different way. There’s a lot of barriers to education that have existed for hundreds of years. We have an opportunity to build in the metaverse equal access to opportunity,

equal access to education. We have the opportunity to get rid of like out of school suspensions, the opportunity to get rid of like unconscious bias, because you’re not necessarily looking at somebody’s skin color, all of these things. And so the question is, can you rebuild in the metaverse what’s

imperfect about our world? And then what happens to all of these people that in the metaverse have opportunities that they’ve never had before in our real world? I think you’re going to start to see positive impacts happen to our real world because of what you’re able to do in this digital world.

That’s such a beautiful answer. I mean, this is such an equity play. The whole this whole time we’ve been taught, you’ve been talking as I’m thinking about access and how suddenly you are eliminating these barriers that have come up over and over and hampered this ability to get,

allow every student to have an extraordinary learning experience and reach a future into a future that they have a family sustaining wage, that they can contribute back to their communities, make change happen. And so you’re seeing that metaverse universe, physical universe combination as a play there.

And I just really appreciate your work in that space. Let’s close with some thoughts for our audience. So one, two, one. So one person or idea who has shaped your thinking, two take a ways for educators and then and one more just big insight for us, if you have any.

OK. So on the one idea or person who has shaped my thinking, I’m going to give you a two for one. So Steve Jobs and a really close friend, I had an L.A. by the name of Moses Estagoy. And they both said the same thing, different ways.

Steve Jobs said, once you realize that everything around you in the world was built by people no smarter than you, then you really got something. You’re on to something. You can bend the world. You can change it. You can influence it. So what my friend at the time told me, who was a sophomore engineer,

I kept coming to him like, can you build this in technology? Can you build that? Can you build this? Can you build that? And he said, Taylor, stop asking me that question. You’re asking me literally the same question over and over again. You can literally build anything you can dream of in technology.

Your only limitation is creativity. You know, so both of those two thoughts just left me with like dream really big. And then two, you know, get rid of the insecurity. There’s nothing to say that just because somebody has a Harvard education or anything else that they are more capable of building something great than you are.

Yeah, so Bill Big, everyone can do it. Those are two thoughts for educators or do you have more for us for the educators? For educators, I would just say I love those for educators, by the way. So those are those are beautiful. I just want to give you space for more if you had them.

OK, well, let’s leave that for educators. And I would just say one more thing to educators. Thank you. Thank you for your your contributions to the world, because none of us would be where we are without your impact. I know it’s really rough right now, but I’m here to support you anyway.

I can any school district administrator educator that needs help with anything. You can reach out to stimuli and someone from our team is willing to kind of walk alongside you and support you anyway we can. Taylor Shed, this has been amazing. I think I could probably speak to you or listen to you for the next three hours,

because I think there’s a lot of unexplored pathways. But Taylor, CEO of Stemuli, super grateful for you to be on the Getting Smart podcast today. We’ll put a bunch of show notes in here so that our listeners can hear and read all about you. Folks who are listening from the Dallas area, definitely reach out and see what kind of partnerships can emerge because we really think that Taylor’s on to something.

So thank you for all your hard work, your team’s hard work. And what you’re doing for young people in the world. So we look forward to seeing what happens in the future. Thanks. Looking forward to it.

In any educator school district across the world, honestly, reach out to us. We want to get you in our metaverse. Great. All right. Well, thank you so much.

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Thanks so much.