Meet the team behind EditAI, a multidisciplinary learning facilitator
Interview with Kristina Jonkuvienė and Kęstutis Jovaišas, co-founders of EditAI. This article series introduces the teams and their solutions from the Digital Education Accelerator 2023 edition.
Kęstutis Jovaišas has over 15 years of experience working as a management consultant. In 2020 Kęstutis founded a management consulting firm Gooliver. During his professional career he engaged on various projects in the education sector in collaboration with ministries, municipalities, and schools in the Baltics, Republic of Moldova and other countries. His in-depth knowledge of the current challenges of the education field and specific needs of teachers and students brought the idea behind EditAI.
Kristina Jonkuvienė has over 10 years of professional experience. Her fascination with the applications of artificial intelligence began in 2015, prompting her to pursue studies in machine learning in Switzerland. In 2019, her start-up in the AI field was recognized as a finalist in the MassChallenge. Over the past three years, she worked at Gooliver as a management consultant mainly in the education area. Kristina is a committed member of Women in AI, a non-profit do-tank (an organisation that emphasises action and practical implementation of ideas and solutions) that advocates for inclusive AI for the betterment of global society.
Who is your team?
Kęstutis Jovaišas – Co-founder and CEO, Education expert
Kristina Jonkuvienė – Co-founder, AI expert
Akvilė Kriaučiūnaitė – Head of Product
Domas Nutautas - Chief Technology Officer
Audrius Galinskis – Chief Data Engineer
Prof. dr. Valentina Dagienė – R&D lead
Beata Baršukaitytė – Marketing curator
Paulina Lisauskaitė – Content curator
We also have a group of teachers as experts who help us create the educational materials.
What are the biggest challenges in digital education?
Kristina: Firstly, the tech tools are very much oriented to national markets which is why going global sometimes poses great challenges. Secondly, it is very often the case that start-ups create solutions they think are beneficial for schools, but teachers do not find them useful nor adding any value to their work. The solutions should be validated with teachers to make them valuable and useful in schools globally.
Our aim is to understand how EditAI and generative AI technology could benefit teachers, spark creativity and save their valuable time which could alternatively be used to work directly with kids.
How does your solution aim at fixing the challenges?
Kęstutis: Digital education must be seamlessly integrated into education and it shouldn’t feel like anything extra: it shouldn’t disturb teaching but rather be a natural part of teaching. EditAI does exactly this. EditAI is designed to make the lives of educators easier by harnessing the power of AI to generate project descriptions. With our tool, teachers can seamlessly combine different disciplines and everyday topics into one project, which leaves them more time to focus on what they do best – teaching!
How can the accelerator programme support you?
Kęstutis: We want to test our product in as many countries and with as many teachers as possible. Our aim is to understand how EditAI and generative AI technology could benefit teachers, spark creativity and save their valuable time which could alternatively be used to work directly with kids.
Kristina: We believe the programme will also connect us with the right people to help us build our strategy to enter different markets and raise funds to expand faster.
What are the next steps for your team?
Kęstutis: In November we plan to start testing the minimum viable product (MVP) version of EditAI with teachers in schools. From January 2024, we have already agreed to run pilot projects in schools in several countries. This is very exciting as it would give us a better understanding of the teachers’ needs and how we can improve our solution.