How EdTech is Transforming Teaching
Kate Bodrova, co-founder and CEO of Amazy, explores how technology is positively impacting teaching. Kate shares insights on how Amazy helps educators create and share interactive, media-rich resources while streamlining workflows. In this episode, Laura and Kate also discuss current trends, including AI’s role in education, the rise of the teacherpreneur, and how educators can leverage technology to enhance—rather than replace—human connection in the classroom.
Key talking points
Introduction to Amazy: A platform that enables teachers to create and share interactive lesson materials, track student progress, and engage learners with various multimedia tools.
Current Trends in EdTech: The growing influence of AI, the shift towards a creator economy for educators, and the importance of collecting data to optimize AI tools.
Using AI to Empower Educators: How AI can streamline content creation, save time, and support personalized learning experiences without replacing teachers.
Maintaining Human Connection in a Digital Age: Why technology should be a tool for enhancing education rather than diluting teacher-student relationships.
Thanks to Kate's kind offer, you can can get 30% off Amazy's annual subscription plan by using the code TESOLPOP30 at checkout.
About Kate
Kate Bodrova is the co-founder and CEO of Amazy.uk, a London-based edtech and creator economy startup transforming the way educators create and share interactive learning materials. With a background in ESL teaching and over a decade of experience in education and technology, Kate is the driving force behind Amazy.uk, on a mission to make a revolution in how we create and share educational content. Amazy.uk, recognized as the Best Startup in Europe by EdTechX in 2024, also participated in the UCL EdTech Labs accelerator program. Kate is passionate about helping teachers become creators, enabling them to design and share their own materials.
Watch the video with closed captions or refer to the transcript below.
Transcript
00:00:00:09 - 00:00:26:08
Laura
TESOL Pop season 11, episode three. Hello and welcome to TESOL Pop, the mini podcast for busy Teachers. I'm your host, Laura Wilkes, and I'm joined today by the founder of Amazy, Kate Bodrova to talk about how technology is positively impacting our teaching lives. Now, I'm really excited for you to hear about what Amazy does and all the wonderful things that Kate and her team are building that save as time, engage our learners and create media rich resources.
00:00:26:10 - 00:00:42:11
Laura
I'm also excited to hear about the trends that she sees happening in EdTech right now, and how technology is supporting greater human connection rather than diluting it. So let's jump to the conversation where Kate introduces Amazy and all the fantastic things her platform does.
00:00:42:12 - 00:01:03:18
Kate
Amazy.uk is basically the platform that helps teachers create and share educational content with their audience. All the teachers, all students, well, my students, what they do, they create, one lesson plan, a course or several lesson plans, and they share it with their students. They track progress. They keep all materials in one place because Amazy
00:01:03:20 - 00:01:28:11
Kate
has lots of tools to create interactive exercises. It's becoming quite popular among the audience. So you can create various exercises with Amazy like capsules and exercises, class leading activities. You can create charts, tables so you could add different media files, upload videos, or add links from YouTube that transform into videos. And that's really convenient to keep everything in one place.
00:01:28:13 - 00:01:40:22
Kate
Also, you can create audio exercises, you can record your voice, you can give your students the same task, like please record your voice to complete some speaking activities, etcetera, etcetera. And that's how you use it.
00:01:40:24 - 00:02:02:01
Laura
It's amazing that you're using like the full range of the palette. Like I like to think of media as like a artist palette. And you mentioned there it's not just gap fill text and pictures and things like that, but it's also audio and embedded videos like you said as well. So it's a really enriched experience when it comes to creating the materials that you have on Amazy.
00:02:02:03 - 00:02:19:19
Kate
That's right. And you can also share not only, like you can send the link to your lessons not only with your students privately, but you can also share it publicly on Amazy public community, which we moderate because we don't want any content there that breaks copyright or is sensitive, you know, but still you can showcase your talent.
00:02:19:19 - 00:02:40:11
Kate
And this is what helps you like go there, be there and get feedback. Show what you can do in terms of professional skills and then what people usually do, the teachers who use Amazy, the schools who use Amazy, they also share these links, to public content on their social media. And this is how they engage with their audience.
00:02:40:13 - 00:02:58:01
Laura
Like showcasing like what it's like to study with them, their style of teaching, the topics they cover. I can imagine that's really beneficial for those teachers who are running their own businesses or like, are freelancers and have kind of a portfolio that they can share and like you say, inspire others to support the teaching community.
00:02:58:06 - 00:03:18:19
Kate
Yeah. And you can browse if you're out of ideas, you can get there some inspiration as well. And you can connect, with professionals from your sector. Is it, like, English as a foreign language or business teachers or, even those who train other teachers, you trainers and, yeah, soft skills coaches.
00:03:18:21 - 00:03:46:21
Laura
It's fantastic. It ticks so many things that I know our listeners for TESOL Pop ask about and talk about and that's like the limited time. So having access resources that you can share with others and get inspired by others, and also that engagement aspect of like really having enriched materials that your students can engage in, that involves a range of media that you can use at your, at your fingertips, and also just the fact that it's also stored in a place where you can access it easily and it's all in one place.
00:03:46:21 - 00:04:07:10
Laura
And again, that kind of builds sustainable workflows for the busy teachers, like the ones listening we really, really need. So I know you're at the forefront of EdTech. You're very much, engaged in this EdTech space of creating things, and you see the trends that are happening in this space. And I wonder what sort of things are you seeing in EdTech now?
00:04:07:12 - 00:04:13:07
Laura
And the transformations and positive impact it's having on educators particularly.
00:04:13:09 - 00:04:43:00
Kate
So of course, AI is here, and we cannot say it's not, right. The technology is here, it's in the classroom. And we should now, understand how we should live with that. How we should embrace it and how we should use it for the good, for our own benefits. Right? So, I know some of the educators that have the idea that AI may replace teachers in the futures we do not see at
00:04:43:00 - 00:05:12:09
Kate
Amazy. We do not believe this trend is real. And it's really happening because, in our opinion and in my personal opinion, what is happening is that, yes, teachers are using more and more of AI and different technologies. We’re becoming more tech proficient and we are realising more and more about the technology in the classroom. So, the good thing is that it's really how it helps us to transform to make this transition from educators to creators.
00:05:12:11 - 00:05:39:11
Kate
And the difference here is not only in like, creative industries or the fact that everyone is now a blogger or an influencer. But the difference between a teacherpreneur and a creator in education is that freelancers and teacherpreneurs; they need to work actively to make money. But creators are people who are continuing generating income even if they are not actively working right now.
00:05:39:13 - 00:06:13:09
Kate
So the platforms like Amazy and AI features, AI technologies, different technologies. They help us to put teachers on this new level on this renaissance age of technologies and education where every teacher is now a free person. We can create without permission. We can transform into many from one, because when you work alone, you are limited in many things like time, experience, expertise, etc., etc..
00:06:13:09 - 00:06:36:10
Kate
Mental health, right? But with the help of technologies, you can become many, many different people from different backgrounds, right? Using ChatGPT for example, you can become an expert in any field. I'm not saying that this can replace your five years of education or six years of education, of course, but still, like you can know, you can learn so many things from that and you can use it in the classroom, obviously.
00:06:36:12 - 00:07:04:21
Kate
So what teachers do at Amazy, they also they use this we have 16 tools to create interactive tasks. And we have AI that can generate texts for you obviously. And then just in one click you can transform your text-based task into interactive exercise. It saves you a huge amount of time, huge amount of money. So you just in in one hour you can generate more content that you used to be able to write.
00:07:04:24 - 00:07:10:23
Kate
Like remember one year ago or two years ago what was happening. Right. So that's that's the transaction.
00:07:11:03 - 00:07:32:01
Laura
That’s a huge thing isn't it? That's a huge benefit for educators to kind of be able to streamline things, be able to save a lot of time on that creative process and really create tailored content as well with the support of AI and not have to try and do everything themselves unsupported. Are there any other trends in that tech that you see that are really having a big impact?
00:07:32:01 - 00:08:11:02
Kate
So this creator economy shift, the AI happening there and also, what I see now, I think now it's the time for educators to start collecting the data that they are generating when they are working in terms of like the whole process, pre-production, when you create content for your, courses for your short lessons, for anything that you are involved in, to the whole teaching process where you actively teach, you work with your audience, your emotional support that you provide your students with and the feedback that you give your students at the end of the lesson, the way you analyse everything.
00:08:11:02 - 00:08:42:18
Kate
So, the trend is now people are starting to collect this data, and because then the more data you have, the better you can utilise this AI tools, because the idea behind AI is to give the very detailed instructions. Right? And your instruction for this. So that machine can be better if you provide the machine with like the huge amount of data, because this is how it works.
00:08:42:18 - 00:08:49:15
Laura
So what you're saying is like having good prompts with the data, enables you to get better results?
00:08:49:17 - 00:09:10:17
Kate
I would say your prompt is your authentic self. I think the prompt should be, you should give it like more context about what is happening in your professional area. What exactly you teach, what kind of like, materials you use. What is your unique teaching style, what approaches you use in the classroom, etc.. So this is your prompt.
00:09:10:17 - 00:09:18:03
Kate
You are your prompt. So you should digitalise yourself, collect this data about yourself, about your authenticity.
00:09:18:08 - 00:09:29:04
Laura
And that way, I guess AI was able to work with you better because you're able to train it on what's unique about you, your students, and therefore get better results rather than just being general.
00:09:29:06 - 00:09:51:13
Kate
Exactly. And this is what we're also doing with Amazy. So it collects your data about the whole workflow that is happening at your lessons, before your lessons, and after your lessons. So this is how it helps you in the future to to train your own AI clone to become the new version of yourself, where you have your digital copy that works for you and that helps you a lot.
00:09:51:13 - 00:10:01:23
Kate
It's not just the regular teacher assistant that is now becoming a buzzword. You know this AI assistant? I don't want any AI assistant. I want my second like version of me. I want me.
00:10:02:04 - 00:10:30:23
Laura
This is really exciting. What you mentioned, you've covered things like teacherpreneurship in platforms like Amazy, creating opportunities for teachers to explore other aspects of what they're already doing actually, but do it in a way that they can share. You've also talked about AI in a way that enables us to work more kind of efficiently and more streamlined, rather than having to repeat the same sort of tasks, and enable us to scale and also to be able to train it in a way that really enables it to work for our context specifically.
00:10:31:00 - 00:10:50:12
Laura
I know even though we're talking about all these positive things, listeners still may feel a bit of trepidation around the pace of technology and just how quickly things are moving. And I know I do read things online about folk feeling like it may dilute the human to human connection, but that is so crucial when it comes to teaching and learning.
00:10:50:12 - 00:10:59:17
Laura
I wonder what your take is on that, because I imagine you're also having similar conversations with clients who you're bringing on board and teachers who you're welcoming on to Amazy.
00:10:59:19 - 00:11:25:21
Kate
The huge power behind every human is connection, right? There is this phrase that I really adore, which is the technology is here, right? So we can now create like gods. That was never possible before, but we should be connecting like humans still. So create like a god, connect like a human. And that's that's really important. Especially in in such sector as education.
00:11:25:23 - 00:11:50:03
Kate
Education is all about connection. You probably remember your first experience, the positive experience in the classroom as a learner, when you really felt that connection, that level of connection between you and your teacher who would say like, maybe not directly, but with their behaviour, who would say, look, I know you're talented. You can do it. I believe in you.
00:11:50:05 - 00:12:09:19
Kate
And that's the power of connection that you're building with your audience, with your customers, with your students, with your colleagues, with your community. It will nobody is going to take it from you. Technology is never going to take it from you because this is the technology. It has nothing human right. All human features that it has are there only because you bring it there.
00:12:09:19 - 00:12:35:08
Kate
So it depends on you and you connect, and then you just make the process smarter with the help of technologies. But your core idea is connection. I remember there was this article, five years ago. It was six years ago, Financial Times, I guess it was, about the power of technologies in the modern developing world. So, the idea was that soon.
00:12:35:08 - 00:13:04:08
Kate
Well, in ten years, maybe earlier, maybe later, the real time of a real human would cost will cost millions of dollars in comparison to technologies. Because even that, even it was 2018, I guess that time, if you were rich, you could afford having a personal coach, having this one on one sessions with you and having fitness with them, they would go to your house, they would come to your house, you would have this conversation.
00:13:04:08 - 00:13:28:02
Kate
The real human in your apartment helping you make the new progress in your sports. Right. But then if, you couldn't afford that, you would just buy enough to train at home. That's it. The same in education. Like, the real connection is very expensive. The real human is becoming very expensive because technologies can do lots of things now.
00:13:28:02 - 00:13:37:08
Kate
So our core idea, our core skill is connecting to others. This is why we were like not why. But this is the skill we were born with.
00:13:37:13 - 00:14:04:00
Laura
I think we're so lucky that in the time we live in right now is if there are certain repetitive tasks that we're doing. I'm thinking marking, as an example, it used to take a huge amount of time when I was a teacher. But I'm sure now there's technology, like the marking systems and tracking systems you mentioned on Amazy that can just enable us to be a lot more efficient so we can create more space for the actual student
00:14:04:02 - 00:14:21:21
Laura
on teacher and teacher with students time, which is so, so valuable. So rather than all our time being gobbled up by repetitive tasks, that tool could help us streamline and potentially create more space for creativity and human connection.
00:14:21:23 - 00:14:37:03
Kate
Exactly. And some some teachers just say, oh my God, technology is learning so fast. So we are also learning so fast, so quickly. Now, even even even quicker, because we have all the technologies, we learn faster, we becoming smarter every day.
00:14:37:05 - 00:14:47:11
Laura
I love the fact that we have the just such a wonderful, positive conversation today. Thank you Kate, so much for sharing about EdTech and sharing about Amazy as well. It's been really lovely talking to you.
00:14:47:13 - 00:14:48:11
Kate
Thank you Laura.
00:14:48:13 - 00:15:13:14
Laura
To find out more about Amazy and follow Kate's journey, click on the links below in the show notes so you can check out amazing and also connect with Kate on LinkedIn. As always, if you have an idea or a question that you'd like to pitch, you can contact us on social media or the website TESOLpop.com. Finally, you can support us by sharing today's episode to continue the conversation with your teaching community, by leaving a rating review wherever you listen to the podcast, or by even buying us a coffee.
00:15:13:14 - 00:15:17:16
Laura
Now wouldn't that be nice? By going to ko-fi.com/tesolpop
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Kate Bodrova, co-founder and CEO of Amazy, explores how technology is positively impacting teaching. Kate shares insights on how Amazy helps educators create and share interactive, media-rich resources while streamlining workflows. In this episode, Laura and Kate also discuss current trends, including AI’s role in education, the rise of the teacherpreneur, and how educators can leverage technology to enhance—rather than replace—human connection in the classroom.