From Instinct to Action: How Pulse Is Closing the Gap in Student Support

Joe Reed 00:00:23

So we're, we're basically saying to the teacher, we don't want you behind your desk anymore. We want you to go home and rest. We know you have to do this, but put your head on a pillow while you talk at your phone for a minute, and we can knock your reporting requirements out. It's not just because everybody needs to do this math homework, right? They. There are specific things in that student's plan that they might be stuck on, and there's a blocker for them. And, and we're going to learn that from all of the reflections that are coming in, not only from the teacher, but the parent, the therapist, everybody that's talking about that individual student. And our LMS system is now able to push very targeted supports. They, you know, teachers did not come here to go fill out paperwork. They came to make a difference in the lives of students. So let's get them back into that space.

Mark Taylor 00:01:13

Hello, my name is Mark Taylor, and welcome to the Education on Far podcast, The place for creative and inspiring learning from around the world. Listen to teachers, parents, and mentors share how they are supporting children to live their best, authentic life and are proving to be a guiding light to us all. Hello and welcome back to Education on Fire. Today, I'm delighted to be chatting to Joe Reed, and he's the founder of Pulse, a student support platform built to help school leaders see who is struggling before it becomes a crisis. Now, Pulse works alongside the tools schools already use to help turn that sort of scattered data into clearer, faster decisions for the students who need the most support. Now, Jo believes that the gap between the teacher's instinct and the information to act on it is often where students get lost. So he built this platform to help close that gap between reports and reality, between seeing a problem and then being able to respond. Now, every role in education has a different goal. Impulse is here to sort of help connect, see, and act together. Pulse was created by educators and technologists who believe that schools should not have to choose between compliance and compassion. They saw teams drowning in disconnected systems that collected data, but never helped anyone act on it. So I hope you really enjoy this solution by Joe Reed, the founder of Pols. Hi, Joe. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Education on Far podcast. Edtech is something which is I'm sort of really into. And as much as I go to the BET show in London every year, there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of companies all sort of having new products and new ways of doing it. We kind of know that it's at the. In the heart really, of what many schools and educational organizations need to track things as well. But I think what I really loved about what you're producing here with Pulse is the sense that it's always going to be about the student first. And the rest of it is wrapped around to kind of help leaders and actually understand what's important in that sort of preventative, in terms of at least knowing where they're heading and how they can help pupils. So, yeah, great to have you here today.

Joe Reed 00:03:11

Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation. Mark.

Mark Taylor 00:03:14

So let's frame exactly where you are with Pulse. It's early days, isn't it? But tell us sort of why it was important in sort of that sort of early development to where you've got to so far.

Joe Reed 00:03:26

Yeah. So we are about 80% of the way done with the beta version, and we're getting ready to start some pilot groups. We're still taking schools on that would like to be a part of that pilot project. Really the problem that we have consistently been seeing in our communities where we're working. So our team is spread out across the United States from I'm. I'm in Boston, our CTO is in Seattle, and we've got another teammate in Pittsburgh. So we've just. We were spread out all over the place. And one of the problems we keep hearing about and seeing, and some of our wives on our team are actually in schools themselves. Most of the reporting that's being done is about attendance, grades, things of that matter, which are all very, very important, but those are very. They're late in the conversation in terms of how are we really trying to help a student improve in all areas of their life? Because we believe that all components of our lives impact the results of what we're able to produce. So if you're having a rough time at home, it's going to have an impact on your scores at school because you have these other things going on in the back of your mind. And schools are actually constructed with that in mind. When they have tutors for school and they have obviously, teachers, they also have counselors and mental health professionals. And too often inappropriately so, they're not all talking to one another in ways that actually can help drive improvement. And so what we're. Our contention with polls has been we need to do more than just counting metrics of attendance and grades and things of that matter. We know that there are certain core objectives that every student needs, and then there are some specific goals that a student Might, might have. And so with polls, everyone gets their own individualized plan. And we have. We actually help build that out pretty automatically. As you're bringing students into a class, teachers are typically setting that with the support team around them and parents included. And then from there, like the reporting that's being done by teachers, too often they're stuck behind their computer screen. Right. And so they're having to, you know, they've just done a really hard day of seven hours of teaching. They've been with students and all of this kind of thing. The life of the teacher is not taken into account in that. So we're trying to figure out how do we solve the problem at the most granular level while making life easier for the teachers, the therapist, and everyone else that's around the student. So that's sort of the basis of the why underneath it.

Mark Taylor 00:06:02

And so in that sort of practical way, in terms of keeping the. The time element sort of front and center. Because I guess the more things you're having to put into something and how you sort of in. In interact with dashboards and all those sorts of things, then the more time it's taking you either outside of the classroom or time away from the, the contact time that you have. So how does that. Obviously not too granular, but sort of, sort of from a nuts and points, nuts and bolts sort of point of view, how does that work from what you've created and sort of have you made that sort of frictionless as possible?

Joe Reed 00:06:35

I guess, yeah. So great question. There's several things. There are mandatory reports that have to happen on a regular basis. Teachers know about it, they understand whatever, but the problem is they don't want to sit behind their computer. They have. They have the rest of their life. How do we actually put this all on their phone, but not in a way where they have to sit there and type it out with their thumbs. What if we were able to actually ask them very specific questions and let them talk at the machine? And let the machine actually not only grab a hold of what it needs to, to get, we're actually getting better information. Because what we're finding is that when anyone, like we're doing right here, you get way more context about the why behind something. So it's not just they showed up to class, tick the box, it's what else was going on around this student. This is what happened at school today. This is what I noticed about them. And in 30 seconds they can tell a story. What before took them over 30 seconds to just go through an Entire form or, like, type it all out. They can just talk at their phone while they're driving home or driving to their own children's pickup line or wherever they're going. So we're. We're basically saying to the teacher, we don't want you behind your desk anymore. We want you to go home and rest. We know you have to do this, but put your head on a pillow while you talk at your phone for a minute, and we can knock your reporting requirements out in, like, 20% of the time. You know that it took you before and. And Pulse can now get better information and better insights that better support your classroom. All of that is how we're wrapping around. Like, we don't want to just solve the friction list, make it easier to fill out a report. I want better data. I want better information and better insights that actually help me help the teacher advocate for their students. So that's really a lot of the how.

Mark Taylor 00:08:24

And I think if you had that conversation with someone at an event, they'd be like, that's amazing. And it kind of. It sort of takes the tech out of it, doesn't it? Because that's very much a kind of. It's saving me time. I can actually share the important thing in a way that is useful for me, because I'm talking about it. I'm talking about this particular thing in my voice, in my way. And you allow the tech to take care of itself. And I think that's where the beauty of edtech is starting to really take shape. And the fact that the tools and the skills and these things you're putting in place is really sort of changing the way that education needs to change anyway. But maybe isn't happening necessarily from a system point of view, but this sort of technical, technological kind of advancement means that it can happen in the background with people who've got the skills, like yourself, to be able to put it in place.

Joe Reed 00:09:13

Absolutely. And we're also really concerned. Not just that we're doing reporting, we believe that tech should actually help us advance and be proactive, not reactive. And so that's a big part of why we even built in our. We're calling it like a smart LMS right now. Like everybody. All schools have LMSs and all that is there. The question, though, Mark, is why are we presenting certain information to a student? It's not just because everybody needs to do this math homework, right? They. There are specific things in that student's plan that they might be stuck on. And there's a. There's a blocker for them. And we're going to learn that from all of the reflections that are coming in, not only from the teacher, but the parent, the therapist, the everybody that's talking about that individual student. And our LMS system is now able to push very targeted supports directly to that student's report. And that's not just content. It could also be a tutor, a very specialized tutor that we're putting in our marketplace that says, hey, this is a trusted person by the school, and we want to make sure that this student has exactly the most accurate supports that they need to overcome the challenges against their plan. So it has to be an integrated approach in our mind to be proactive.

Mark Taylor 00:10:30

And I think as well, what I really loved about that is the fact that if we have the child at the center of what's going on, which of course it should be, and then you talk about the community around it. I mean, you've touched on so many of those. You've got the teachers, you've got the senior leadership, of course, you've got the parents, you've got any other support network, whether, like, say it's a tutor or an outside person. It's really helping and support them in their life generally. And then you obviously get a much better picture. And I think this is a way that people can just sort of come together, which is easy for them because they're just reporting on the bit that they know about. But then you sort of get that 360 view, don't you? And I guess depending on who's then looking at that information and actually where they want to take those. Those actions, I guess. Does it flag something if they think there's something to be flagged, or is it just a sort of a way of recognizing patterns or take us into that sort of reporting idea?

Joe Reed 00:11:21

Yeah, that's a great question. So one of the biggest concerns we had early on was we don't want a teacher to feel like they have to email everyone and know when to do it. And, you know, it's slow, it's archaic. It's not where we are in the world right now. So when something hits a certain threshold, you can build custom alerts, and those custom alerts can then tag specific people via text messaging. So one of the other things, Mark, that we're trying to solve for is no one wants another app, no one wants another login to remember, but the school can have this as the backbone brain. And everyone that's part of this community can be invited to push content into the machine. Feedback reports and all of that. And not only are we trying to target resources directly to the student, we also need to target people who are able to intervene with specific context at the right time, faster. So we don't want to wait on an email. Who's checking their email all the time? Everyone gets a text message that blows their phone up. We need to know about it when. When we need to know about it. So we've built all the custom alerts into that as well for that very reason.

Mark Taylor 00:12:26

And I guess that's a real sort of gradient with it, isn't there? There's that kind of, we think this student is struggling in this area. Maybe a bit of extra support could be help as opposed to, we think this student's in real trouble for some other reason because someone, two or three people have mentioned something where they're really concerned or whatever. So you do sort of have to sort of have that gradient approach, don't you, to make sure, like you say, the right inter can happen in the right way with the right tone and with the immediacy that you need.

Joe Reed 00:12:53

And then that person has the context already at their fingertips. So they're not having to, like, you tell me your version and you tell me your version. They already got it. Then they can act faster and with more intelligence.

Mark Taylor 00:13:04

And so what's your, what's your sort of overall plan for this? Is it a question of sort of. This is the best version of these things and it be in every school, is it that kind of. It can be in multiple sort of local schools. So it can grow as children go between one school to another or one district to another. Is there sort of an overall plan of how that might work and how it might sort of grow organically?

Joe Reed 00:13:28

Yeah, that's a great question too. I mean, it really depends on the situation in the school. One of the things we were really cognizant of is switching costs. So schools have put in and districts have put in millions of dollars into their existing structures. And what we're not saying is you need to just drop all of that and switch over to us. What we are saying is that we know that some of the pain that you're still feeling, we can actually help alleviate some of that. We can tap into your existing systems, we can work with the data you already have, and we can actually supercharge that, if you will, into a way that actually helps you become more proactive with the data you've already collected. We might push you to ask different kinds of questions, but the reason we're doing it is for the care of that student and the care of that teacher. Because we're really concerned how do we get our teachers off a computer and back into a classroom with the support that they need to support their students. So we're trying to be that advocate with the teacher more than anyone else because they're spending the most time with these students during the day. And so if we can get them the support that they need around that student, we'll partner with any tool that they're already using for that purpose.

Mark Taylor 00:14:38

And in terms of, of the sort of the customization of what you're able to do and the sort of the different elements of it as a whole. We sort of talked about sort of the LMS side of things in terms of and reporting and that what other sort of factors have you, have you got in there if it's messaging or connections with different people concerned and that sort of thing?

Joe Reed 00:14:59

Sure, I'll probably miss a few of the things off the cuff here. But like our plan section is really robust. So if you think about any strategic planning tool that's been on the market in the business sector, if you will, those same capabilities are being baked into here. So what a school can do with that is they can have an organization wide plan, they can have a teacher improvement plan, they can have a student development plan. You know, all of those can all live in this plan section. And then our survey system actually feeds feeds into how do you know if you're progressing against that plan? How are we going to flag if we're off track, on track, you know, how do we know? And so all of its feed everything talks to everything else in our system. And so that is a really robust capability there. And then our reporting, we already mentioned the surveying. Let me actually speak to that real quick. On the surveying we recognize that, you know, a standard static form doesn't always give you the, the context. And so we are building in the capabilities to ask follow up question and let the, let our machine underneath it continue to build out an intelligence layer for your entire school from the feedback back and forth. So that's on the survey side in terms of the communication. We don't. One of our objectives when we first started designing this was we needed people not to have to log into an app. The idea is if an admin can see what they need to see, we can add people to an app. That's not, not hard. But the information lives on the field level like at the, at the grassroots level, we need to actually give them the tools and it needs to, they need to pull it in from tools they're already using. Like they're on their phone all the time. Like so we can get not just text message response, like they're talking at their phone, let them talk at the phone and let the whole machine pull all that and extract it out. So there's that component. Our reporting is really interesting. I'm really proud of that section right now. A lot of schools use canva right now. Right. That's a very simple design tool. It's a very simple, it's very intuitive, all of that. What our reporting is going to be, allowing them to do is multi multiple things. Number one, you can build a template that looks like your school, looks like your classroom, however you want it to look. And then our system will actually allow you to put a filter on the data. So I want you to talk about this data within this time period and, and I want you to build out a comprehensive analysis of what's going on and just, but put it in the terms that these parents can understand. Right. Like so we can target our audience with that message. So think about a teacher who needs to do a report to their, to their parents once a month. This can all be built in the automation in the background. They set that template once the machine understands the tone that they want to speak it at and they can actually filter that out from there. Mark, what's fun is once they've completed that base template, it's automatically being updated in the background every to every day. And so now once a month on a trigger, we are setting a schedule that this is going to email that report to this list of people on this timeline. So that's amazing. Think about boards being able to see this on a regular basis, you know, the senior leadership, all of that. But what's even more fun, we were talking about this with private schools. We're also going to build a live widget for your website. So where appropriate, if you wanted to see a base overview, keeping privacy and all of that thing in consideration here. Absolutely. But there are some things that you can put on your website live that shows live impact report on how this school is doing in real time. That actually motivates. Right. It can and it actually helps with the private school school guys as they're trying to raise more funds. So that's another component that we're looking at. The LMS is not just your standard lms. It's actually we're building in the capability of a self learning lms. It will populate Suggestions to a team of folks that you determine on, hey, there's a major gaps in your current lms. Either you need to go find it in our marketplace or you need to build it. And so it's really guiding you to the why do you need to build this based on all of the data that's coming in and then our marketplace. I'm really excited about the marketplace element because one of the things we consistently heard was we've got people that need access and knowledge of who are the best therapists for this particular student mental health care. You know, in my city, one of the things I heard directly was there's not a great place central database where we can find mental health professionals for students. And at least in our community right now that is very front and center the mental health crisis and it's global. But we're really just seeing an uptick in the need for more support there also tutors and other things like that. So our marketplace is only vetted individuals that the school is putting on there. Someone will have to have final approval on all of that. Right. And once they're in there, it's all live in the app. Everything is private. It's all dialed in there. Students and parents and teachers can actually access individuals that way, book sessions with them. All of that is handled inside of this closed environment. And so there's a lot more there. And then the last thing I'll say, and I alluded to it earlier, is our custom alerts section. This allows anyone that has access to build basic workflows. So if this happens, notify these people in this way with this information. So it's not like we want to blow people's phones up. Right. Or blow up their inboxes in their email. It's very targeted, specific, context based information. And our goal is to be as fast with that alert as possible so the intervention can actually be more proactive and not just reactive. So that's a lot of things, but we're trying to think about this in a holistic way.

Mark Taylor 00:21:00

Yeah. And, but I think that really shows the breadth of what you're able to offer. But I think more importantly, it shows why you're doing it. And like you said at the very beginning, you know, having spoken to educators, understanding exactly what's going on, it's all done with purpose, which is that. Which is the most important thing. So just a couple of things that really strike me so you sort of mentioned there in terms of security and data and that kind of thing as well. Just sort of briefly sort of take us into that because that'll be obviously a really important thing that people want reassurance on.

Joe Reed 00:21:30

Yeah. So a couple things on that. One, because of the API connections to existing student information systems, we are actively working to be in full compliance with their standards and requirements because we have to be matched one to one on that. We are ourself because if a school comes to us and says we want you to be our preferred software provider, we're going to be able to be. We'll be FERPA compliance and we're working towards our HIPAA compliance and our audits on that as well. We're looking into SOC2 as well because we also recognize we're not targeting this, but we have also been called already by other industries outside of education. So we're recognizing that all of the security and the safety protocols have to be firmly embedded in this tool before we would even go public with it at all. So even within our pilot groups, we have to actually clear our FERPA compliance before we'll actually even launch with our, with our pilots. So all of that's coming and for we'll have our audits and all of that kind of thing in place.

Mark Taylor 00:22:31

Amazing. And the other thing I was thinking was in terms of who can access this, obviously I'm in the uk, you're, you're on the East Coast. Is it going to be something which is going to be country centered? Does it not matter? Because you can work across different platforms, as you sort of mentioned. What's that, what's the possibilities of that as you start to roll it out?

Joe Reed 00:22:51

Yeah, possibilities are endless really. I mean, I'll back up a little bit. The impetus of this actually had nothing to do with education. I'm a nonprofit. I do international development work. And that we built this for that purpose originally and realized that nonprofit budgets aren't the same as education budgets. And to be able to support a tool like this, we need to get into a space that still drives community impact, but can actually support the ongoing development and refinement of a tool. Right. So that's where this all came from. So we're, while we're targeting US Schools because of all of the compliance and regulations we need to really be mindful to this tool has versatility globally because we'll be using it in our nonprofits that we're supporting that are doing international development work. So we'll be able to do impact reporting and all of those kinds of things as well with the tool.

Mark Taylor 00:23:42

And in terms of, like you said, some of the other work that you've done in sort of your background, give us a slightly broader version of that because I think it's really interesting for people to sort of hear, you know, we're here talking about education on an education podcast, but I love the way these things sort of just come together so beautifully that one industry is helping another industry. And in the middle of that you've just got brilliant people able to create things in so many different ways to support different parts of, of our community.

Joe Reed 00:24:10

Yeah. So the I'm. My whole career has been focused on really one theme. How do we help restore these communities? What is broken in these communities? And how do we collectively build a team and pull the stakeholders together and drive real social change at the systems level, not just at the individual level. If we look at it at a system level, we actually are addressing it at the ground level. But you can't do the system level if you don't understand the ground level. They always have to be talking to each other. So I, my work has been done. I've been working internationally in, in community development work for over 20 years. And really where Pulse came from was there's too many people, I don't even know where to start at how to deliver resources and supports to all of these different needs all over the place. And spreadsheets aren't cutting it anymore. Right. They just, they break and it's all that stuff. So we've been working on this product for over 50, 15 years, mark. And we started this when I was still based in South Africa. I was working in Pretoria and for about five years we were there. And just the needs that we had across the gamut just dictated how to design this. And it just took a long time for me to really refine my thinking around that. We had a foundation come around and say, we want that in our sector of our community. We'll back some of that with funding. And so they back to the initial build and now our, we have a team in place that is actively, you know, finishing out this version that will be more market ready across multiple sectors. So that's really the why. And then obviously in our volunteer base, we have a lot of educators, administrators because they're front line in our community. You know, if we, if we can support families, where do they all come? Well, they all have to go to school, you know. And so I really became passionate about how I help my friends in their daily activity because they're frontline workers in our community resilience work. And so like, let's support Them with tools that would actually help drive this in a way that would be meaningful. And so that's sort of the short version. So we've built tools and resources and organizations, all with that end in mind. How do we help restore these communities?

Mark Taylor 00:26:23

Yeah, and I just think that bigger picture and that in that history is just really important in terms of context, isn't it? Because you sort of hear this is a new product and, and we're in a beta version and it's. And you sort of think, oh, it's all very new. And I think to understand the knowledge and the background in the history just shows you, I think your, your perception of what that might look like is suddenly very different when you have all that experience and, and those skill sets going forward. So in terms of people listening, what are you looking for? You're looking for more schools to be pilots or as it starts to sort of become ready to market, so to speak, people to jump on. What's your sort of main objective for that?

Joe Reed 00:27:02

Yeah, right now we're really interested in getting some pilot schools on board. And so the purpose of that pilot section of this would be to really hammer out, have we answered all of the core essential questions? Have we answered those secondary and tertiary questions? And if not, we want to make sure that we're smoothing this whole thing out again to keep not only the student in mind, but the teacher in the classroom locked and loaded, able to support that student and the whole classroom of those students. Right. Those are our two main wins. Right. So the pilot is there. And then obviously, yeah, like, as schools start to hear more about what this can do for them, to take that first step in just talking with us about connecting in with their executive existing systems, or if they don't have a system right now and they'd like to try this on, we're really excited to bring them on next fall. We should be ready to go live in the fall of, of our next year when school starts for us here in the States.

Mark Taylor 00:27:58

And I think the biggest takeaway for me in terms of being really supportive with this is the fact that it can connect, like, say, with systems that are already there. Because as soon as people think, I need a whole new start again, I've been involved, involved in schools where they're like, we're changing from this to this. Everyone has a big sigh, okay, how's this gonna work? How much time I need to learn a whole new thing again? And I think what we've been able to explain today is sort of one, how easy that could be like, say, with the talking element and actually using it, but just for it to be embedded as part of something else. And those have certainly been the most successful areas, I think, from my experience as well, you're like, this thing does what I need it to do in this way, and it fits as it. Like you say, there's sort of a gradual move maybe to using more of this and less of this, but that sort of wholesale kind of it needs to change in one fell swoop is always a hard thing for people to realize. I think. Hopefully we've painted a really good picture of that in terms of how it will work sort of moving forward, which is absolutely brilliant.

Joe Reed 00:28:54

Awesome.

Mark Taylor 00:28:55

So in terms of what we do here at Education on Fire, we'll see this acronym here of feedback, inspiration, resilience and empowerment. I'm just always curious, is there one of those things that strikes you? A couple of those things. And maybe how does that sort of relate to the work that you've been doing?

Joe Reed 00:29:12

That's a great acronym, and I didn't know that before this show. This is really fun. They all do. But if I was going to choose one right now, I would say empowerment. I'm really. And it really drives the why behind we, why I brought a team together to build this in the first place. How do we support that student? How does that student's life change so that their family's lives change? And how do we actually support that teacher and the support staff around those students so that everyone is not stressed out all the time and they are feeling empowered to step in? They, they, you know, teachers did not come here to go fill out paperwork. They came to make a difference in the lives of students. So let's get them back into that space. So I love the what that actually means for this thesis that you have going on for the show.

Mark Taylor 00:29:59

Amazing. Joe, thank you so much. I think it's so important that we have these conversations and it's so important that people hear these different things that are out there in the world and in the marketplace to be able to bring in. And it sounds like an incredibly well thought out idea, and I'm sure many people will be really interested in. To get involved and have that conversation with you. So where would you like people to. To go to find out more, to get in touch, that kind of thing.

Joe Reed 00:30:22

Yeah. So if you want to come to our website, it's PulseConnect us, and you can come there, learn more about it, see some of the early demos that are already there, and if you'd like to book a session with us and get a discovery call. You can find our links in there as well.

Mark Taylor 00:30:37

Amazing. Keep up the great work. I just love the fact that it's all about helping people and the tech is that is the driver for that. So yeah, really app. Appreciate your time today and sharing all these amazing stories.

Joe Reed 00:30:48

Thanks for having me. Mark, it was great to meet you today.

Mark Taylor 00:30:51

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.