This probably isn't what comes to mind when you think of an average school day. Kids breathing fire, climbing a rock wall, and even learning the art of grilling. But for students at the Alpha School in Austin, Texas, this is no field day. Here, K-12 graders are proudly cutting classes, spending just two hours a day learning math, science, reading and writing, all with the help of an AI tutor and without a single teacher. Morning launch time.
Mackenzie Price is the co-founder of Alpha School and its two-hour learning program. This is a school without teachers. We have no teachers at our schools.
Can you believe that? The educators are a suite of AI-powered apps that gamify lessons, monitor progress, and with the help of eye tracking, keep tabs on students'attention span. Who's teaching them? I think the app is teaching me, but I'm also teaching myself. All as adult guides, many of which have never been teachers, look on without interfering with their robot counterparts.
Are you comfortable having guides in the classroom that don't necessarily know the core curriculum? It's okay that our guides aren't experts in physics or math or whatever they're doing. They are experts in their students.
It almost sounds like the guides here are told, you're here to lead the class. kids to AI. Our guides are not allowed to teach.
They are coaching students to become self-driven learners. Price says the AI tutor personalizes lessons for each student, allowing them to learn class material in half the time, and according to data from Alpha, score in the 90th percentile on standardized tests in most grade levels. This one's a little unusual.
It all comes as students nationwide grapple with AI's role. While some critics say it's too soon to know if the tech's having a positive effect in classrooms, one study found generative AI tutors can sometimes inhibit learning if students become too reliant on the tool. How do you make sure that the AI that is teaching kids is doing what it's supposed to be doing?
We have a lot of guardrails in place to make sure that kids are not dealing with some of the issues that come with what we hear about with AI. Still, at Alpha, where tuition costs $40,000 a year... academics are just the beginning.
This is called our check chart. Each student must complete a long list of tasks before they can level up, including things like run a mile without stopping, solve a Rubik's cube, and even independently put together a piece of Ikea furniture, all in an effort to teach life skills and promote passion projects. Welcome to the Alpha School Airbnb. Like this group of sixth graders who are running a real Airbnb.
How old are you? I'm 11. You're 11. And how much money did you guys make with this Airbnb? So we have $10,000 of confirmed bookings. Over at Alpha High School.
You made an app. I developed an app. 16-year-olds Elle and Sloan are getting ready to pitch an AI-enabled app that gives dating advice.
I want to ask my crush out to prom in front of all of her friends. Is that a good idea? It really depends on her personality. So you've been learning from AI and now you're building your own AI?
Yes. A full circle experiment, putting these academics in a class of their own. Yeah, a lot to take in there. And as a parent, I was a little sketched out seeing those little kids locked into their laptops with their headphones on. We used to have sustained silent reading back in the day.
This is way beyond that because these are are gamified interactive apps. So the kids are given full attention. And Price says they only do that for two hours a day.
They break those up into these 20 minute intervals. The rest of the day is spent in those workshops, collaborating with others, learning life skills. Actually, on the day we visited, some of the high school students were going through this rejection workshop where they would pitch strangers on the street their passion projects. AI, not so great at teaching how to get rejected, but something we humans are still pretty good at, I guess. Yeah, we are.
All right, Gotti. Thank you, Gotti. We don't know how to strike a balance. I was just about to say. You've got to strike a balance.
And we need to figure it out, guys. Like, I feel like I'm talking about every doubt about technology, but, man, we don't have to give ourselves over to it either. Yeah, good.
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