EdTech Innovators: Adam Boxer
Welcome to the EdTech Innovators series, brought to you by the EdTech Innovation Hub. This series is dedicated to showcasing the brightest minds and the most groundbreaking innovations in the world of educational technology.
Each month, we delve deep into the stories of those transforming teaching and learning through digital solutions, offering educators insights, inspiration, and practical advice.
This month, we are thrilled to feature an interview with Adam Boxer, a name well-recognised within the #EduTwitter community for his significant contributions to education and EdTech innovation.
Adam is not just a dedicated science teacher and Lead Practitioner; he is also the co-founder of Carousel Learning. Carousel is designed with the ambitious goal of helping students transfer knowledge into their long-term memory effectively.
Can you share the story behind the transition from Retrieval Roulette to Carousel Learning and how the idea originally came about?
Retrieval Roulette was a great classroom tool but it didn't help students with their own self-directed revision. During Covid, it became apparent that students needed more resources to help with working remotely, and Josh, Jose and I started thinking about ways an intelligent and adaptable platform could support teachers to strategise for long term learning and retrieval.
What was the most significant challenge you faced while developing Carousel, and how did you overcome it?
Time! I was working as a full time head of department during a pandemic, looking after my elder child three days a week and then had a newborn just a few weeks in. Things got very tight, but we distributed the work between ourselves and knew that we could be flexible with people's capacity and still build a great product.
With the introduction of primary-friendly features and Question Banks, how do you ensure the content is both appropriate for younger students and educationally valuable?
The content in the Question Banks is either written by teachers themselves, by content partners like the Primary Knowledge Curriculum or our own team (including primary legends Jon Hutchinson and Ella Martin). We now have the entire KS2 National Curriculum for science, history and geography covered, and loads of useful stuff for other subjects too. That makes us confident in the quality and comprehensiveness of the content we have provided, both in a curricular sense and in an age-appropriate one. So "quality content" plus features like multiple choice, image support, text to speech and Whiteboard quizzing means we have a winning formula at primary.
In your view, what are the most promising trends in educational technology today, and how does Carousel align with these trends?
I think more and more people are understanding that however smart technology gets, students don't work for computers, they work for teachers. Teachers have to be at the heart of the process or it just doesn't work. Carousel is explicitly built with this in mind, and every feature we develop is done with its pedagogy in mind - how will this help teachers? How will we make sure we can support teachers by doing the things that they can't? C-Scores are a great example of this: we give teachers information about which questions they should ask their students - like the students' past scores or how many times they've seen it - but ultimately it is the teacher who then chooses the questions based on that information. We don't want to remove them from the process!
How do you see the role of AI and machine learning evolving in the context of educational tools and platforms?
That's a big question, and nobody really knows the answer. For us, it will always be about supporting the teacher to make better decisions and to reduce their workload. It isn't a panacea though, and I think a more cautious approach is warranted than what others seem to be saying.
How does Carousel Learning specifically leverage retrieval practice to enhance student learning and retention?
Carousel is an engine for achieving retrieval practice. Teachers who use the Whiteboard Quizzing, Flashcards, Normal Quizzing, Student Self Assessment and Whole Class Feedback functions expose their students to lots of questions, lots of times. Adding C-Scores into the mix means that teachers can select the most useful and impactful questions, so we can amend the previous to add that we provide students with lots of the right questions, lots of times.
Could you share any success stories or case studies where Carousel's retrieval practice tools have had a significant impact on student outcomes?
Whenever we've done informal research we've found that increased amounts of quizzing correlates with increased student outcomes. We know that we are based on extensive evidence from cognitive science, educational research and teacher feedback so we are confident that Carousel does everything we've said it does!
How do you define traditional and progressive education, and where do you see Carousel fitting within this spectrum?
That's another big one. Without wanting to get bogged down in semantic debates, I'd say this: if you are a teacher who is interested in your students possessing knowledge and in strategising for building that knowledge over time - Carousel is for you. If you're interested in delving into student knowledge as it grows and delivering feedback and iterating your curriculum in response - Carousel is for you. We don't do games, we don't do gimmicks, we do quality retrieval practice and robust learning.
Given the recent changes to platforms like Twitter, what social media channels do you find most beneficial for teachers today, and why?
Twitter is still the go-to for debate and cutting-edge ideas. Sadly, it's also become much more unpleasant, with the volumes of antagonism, trolling, racism and misinformation being astonishing. I don't recommend it to people anymore because of that (despite still using it myself!), but would happily recommend Threads which is much calmer and more pleasant at the moment.
How can teachers effectively use social media to enhance their professional learning and networking?
Find lots of teachers to follow and read their stuff - especially blogs!
Looking ahead, what are the next big steps for Carousel Learning in terms of features, content, or expansion?
Great question. We are looking at building something called auto-quizzing, which will be a type of quiz that adapts more readily to individual student performance. We're also constantly improving out MAT level features so leaders across a MAT can see how well students are doing and support where needed.
Finally, what message would you like to share with educators who are considering integrating Carousel Learning into their teaching practices?
If you're serious about learning, there is no better tool out there. I use Carousel every day that I'm in school, and there's no doubt that it's built my students' knowledge and improved my own practice.
