SayKid 🤖

Thanks! It's called a ToyBot. It's a screen-free, educational toy for curious kids!

@marcportermagee Pro tip: anyone who uses the word "disrupt" probably isn't disrupting anything. In the final class with Clay Christensen (author of innovators dilemma), he cautions students against using the word b/c it's overused, misunderstood, and generally misapplied.

There were signs newyorker.com/magazine/2016/…

This New Yorker profile of AltSchool is 10 years old. (AltSchool started to collapse a year later and all its schools were closed by 2019)

This 👇

Minneapolis You're So Many Things To Me

@BrianRoemmele How do we strengthen real human connections?

“The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents” All they needed to do is ask the right folks the right questions. This was all well known and well documented.

Peter Thiel confirms that tech execs generally place severe restrictions on tech use by their own children. His limit for his kids: 1.5 hours per week. (kids were 3.5 and 5 at the time) As we say in The Amazing Generation, the "tech wizards" want YOUR kids to spend all day.

@mcuban Agents are best when they are "good enough" substitutes - which allows them to create new categories focused on non-consumers. Otherwise, there is real risk they will over-serve (price out) demand.

The one thing I will add on the plus side of the ledger for humans. Humans have a far greater capacity to know the outcomes of their actions. Agents and LLMs as well, never do. Even an 18 month old will learn what happens when they push the sippy cup off their high chair. Mom gets upset. Comes and has to clean up. They figure it out quickly Agents can tell you the sippy cup will fall. But they have no idea of the context and what will happen next The other issue is that agents “Space Out”. (I’m sure there’s already a term for this ). There are no assurances, for many different reasons, that the agent will execute the same way every time. To make matters worse, they can’t tell you they have “spaced out” , why and when. Agents are still like college interns that come in hungover , make mistakes and don’t take responsibility for them :) As always , Curious what everyone thinks.

@JoshuaBarzon There aren't iPad kids. Only iPad adults.

What’s an opinion about parenting that will get you into this situation with other parents?

@brittilina @HippyMomPhD Great idea!

@HippyMomPhD @SayKidPlay Audiobooks are great on it, too.

Amazon force updated our Alexa to have AI. My kids have been "talking" with it. 11yo: I don't like it. Me: Why? 11yo: It's unsettling. It's pretending to be human, but it's not. This reaction is fascinating. My kids have had limited interaction with AI - never with a voice. They have an innate distrust. Possibly, we've prepared them have that opinion - but possibly it's primal. They mistrust this new entity "helping" them. The voice is fake, its praise fake, its advice questionable. Time will tell how things evolve, but sometimes children have better instincts than adults.

@HippyMomPhD Most exclusively use it to play music / timers. We use it to help kids learn in the most-actively engaging way to encourage kids to think, move, and play together.

@SayKidPlay We exclusively used it to play music until now. It was a gift so we never really utilized it well. It's super old.

@chrisman The most-powerful measures of early learning are non-verbal. 👏

6yo learning fractions with Synthesis. Teaching style is Socratic. Answer correctly, get increasingly challenging follow-up questions. Lover her proud face at 1:10. That justified pride in what you've learned is the best motivator. Far better than points or leaderboards.

Are Chromebooks as bad as cell phones in the classroom? Neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath argues that they are in a provocative, evidence-rich new book. #edtech #education #teachersoftiktok #anxiousgeneration

@Molson_Hart This sucks. Sorry bro.

“Although it once seemed like a good idea to give every child his or her own device, it’s clear that those policies have been a failure.” 💯 School-issued laptops distract students at school and home, expose them to things they shouldn’t see, and hurt learning. 🧵

@NielsHoven Great thought experiment. If we were serious about learning, we'd prob align outcomes to rev model (eg. schools are only paid when outcomes are achieved). This would likely lead to other investments (early education, parenting, teacher training, etc.).

Here’s a “no billionaires” thought experiment: The US spends about $1 trillion each year on K-12 schools (across state, local, and federal government). That’s roughly $75 billion per grade level. Only about 1 in 3 fourth graders are proficient in reading, and about 40% are below the “basic” level. That’s after 4+ years of school, over $300 billion spent. Hypothetically, let’s say a piece of software was created that taught reading so effectively that all of those students reached the “proficient” level. (Set aside the question of whether that’s possible. Let’s just assume it is, for the purpose of this thought experiment) Would it make sense for schools to set aside, say, $5 billion of that $300 billion, to buy that software and have all their kids actually learn to read? I would say obviously yes. If you’re already wasting $300 billion and getting terrible results, of course you should grab the opportunity to redirect a measly 2% of that waste and start setting kids up for success. $5 billion, which previously would have been wasted, is now being spent effectively to teach tens of millions of kids to read. Essentially, $5 billion of value has been created. Tens of millions of kids every year will be better off as a result. And if the software was written by only four people, then they have done a tremendous service for the world. They’ve each created over $1 billion worth of value. So of course, it’s possible for people to create billions of dollars of value for the world. We don’t need fewer billionaires, we need more of them.

@bryan_johnson Get out and play... literally anything.

give your best advice to someone struggling in a rough patch of life

@lennysan Any kids in your world? The ToyBot will get them off screens and thinking, moving, and building real human connections. a.co/d/aZKdDxt

What’s something you bought (or were gifted) that’s under ~$200 that makes you very happy?

@thogge Early education / parenting

The most broken things in America: 1. The national debt. 2. The healthcare system. 3. The tax code. 4. K-12 education. 5. Obesity rates. What am i missing?

@griswold Yes and yes. And one correct multiple choice answer should be available (looking at prism on the right... hoping correct answer is off to the side)

@SayKidPlay They digitized worksheets. This accelerates the feedback loop, but the problem and input should be so much better.

I watched my 8yo work on math for 15 minutes and most of his errors were UX issues. Education software is often terrible because the users aren't the buyers; but (1) "kids deserve quality" and (2) education should be held to the same quality bar as LEGO and Nintendo.

@griswold it feels like most math apps are the same... show math problem (stimulus), type answer (w/ 25% UX issues), get feedback (reward). repeat.

@SayKidPlay Most? This time, Zearn.