“How can we strike the nerve of curiosity in kids and students?”: Assaf Eshet on bringing Clixo into classrooms

Assaf, we last spoke just before the launch of your Clixo Classroom pack. How did that go?
It went very well – above and beyond what we expected. We did a lot of testing and research before we recently launched Clixo at ISTE – one of the biggest educational technology conferences in North America. We exhibited there in June and it became very clear to us that we were doing things in the right way. The response from the educators we’ve met was that Clixo is needed as a learning tool.

Although we were a little bit green in terms of how to present it at an education show, our booth was constantly busy. We soon learned that communicating with teachers is very different from communicating with toy buyers. They were much more curious to learn how they could use Clixo with their students, so we did what we do best – demoing the product in our usual hands-on energetic spirit – and it was something very different for this type of show. Because of that, we attracted a lot of attention. It was a great experience.

How early on in Clixo’s journey did this educational application become apparent?
I come from a background in design education, so I always had an appetite for Clixo to be used in classrooms. I’m interested in an inclusive, universal approach to design and that was baked into the DNA of Clixo. It was key to growing the brand and key to Clixo reaching different communities, but these things take time. And our customers kept saying: “Why are you not in schools? This would be great in the classroom.” We started hearing from teachers who were using Clixo with their students, and connected with them to learn from their insights.

And to answer that, you’ve now launched the Clixo Classroom online portal. For anyone new to this, how would you pitch it?
Content is key to our effort towards including Clixo in education – the product can’t live in a vacuum. We provide tools for educators on how to teach with Clixo – and how to use the different aspects of Clixo. The portal helps teachers engage with Clixo for storytelling, engineering, language, math, etc. Of course, teachers can come up with their own activities and we’re very supportive of that. But we wanted to provide some ideas about how to start and what to look at. It has activity guides that teachers can download and use to engage their students. We built the portal in collaboration with the best teachers in the field and brand ambassadors. A lot of the content came from them.

As curriculums change, do you plan to update and adapt the portal to reflect current focuses in education?
100%, but always geared more towards what we believe is the right way to teach. Since COVID, there are a lot of questions about education. How much can we learn by ourselves versus what we learn by spending money to go to an institute like a university? What’s better, a private school or a public school? We’re very careful to do what we believe in and recognize that each student has their own needs. That’s where the open-endedness of Clixo comes into its own.

Kids should have a real appetite for curiosity. In the school system, they can lose that, just by following one track. Parents and teachers – and us as a company – have a responsibility to ask “how can we strike the nerve of curiosity in these kids and students?” That really motivates me.

There are some subjects, like engineering, where Clixo absolutely makes sense. Are there any subjects that you feel Clixo can help with, that might surprise people?
Clixo helps conceptualize 2D to 3D space and changing forms. That’s the base of Clixo. It’s also a great tool to help with fine motor skills, gross motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and sensory development. But you can also use it to teach math and language. You can build letters in 2D or 3D. You can build structures. You can create things to wear. You can use it to engage with shadow play. I saw some students use it for tracing recently. They put it underneath and above the paper so it wouldn’t move and traced with it. It’s open to many different subjects.

Do you still get surprised by what people are making with Clixo?
All the time. Sometimes it’s from something created by our team in the studio, or it comes from what we see on social media. Sometimes kids come to our play lab and surprise us… One recently showed me how to weave Clixo together – it was a way to connect Clixo that we hadn’t anticipated. That was cool – and those things sometimes feed into the development of new sets.

What does the rest of 2024 have in store for Clixo?
We’ll keep expanding into education and striking partnerships in that space. We also work with Clixo ambassadors, so if anyone reading wants to become a Clixo ambassador, they can head to: https://clixo.com/pages/ambassador-program. We are launching two new packs very soon – Tropical Birds and Jewellery. I’m proud of both of these. We’re launching a Family pack later in the year. It’s a bigger pack and we’re excited about that. We also just launched in Target with five exclusive packs. That’s been super exciting.

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