3 ms·

Besides the coverage from fox news/new york times that the article mentions, there's also a much more extensive review from a parent who had his kids in alpha s

by gruez 9mo ago

Besides the coverage from fox news/new york times that the article mentions, there's also a much more extensive review from a parent who had his kids in alpha school: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-alpha-school https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-alpha-school

trinsic2 9mo ago
Holy crap that is a long article. In my view, the only important point is time freed up which should be a part of normal education. If students had more free time to think and contemplate one wonders what kind of world we would live in. Too bad it takes a dubious idea for an AI school to surface that wisdom.
- johnnyanmac 9mo ago
  >the only important point is time freed up which should be a part of normal education. College felt like the last time I truly had "time freed up". 16 units of classes per quarter came down to ~8-10 hours of class time per week and the recommendation was 2 hour of study per class unit a week (e.g. a 4 unit class recommends 8 hours of study a week). So, typical full time work. But mostly on campus (aka a walkable community), close to peers, with no worries of future responsibilities. now of course, the CS curriculum easily required double or triple that recommendation, but that speaks more towards the subject than the concept of college.
- ambicapter 9mo ago
  Well people who are evangelically praising AI for writing code seem to be converging on established, well-known software practices for "making the AI work better" so seems like AI is great at making people rediscover the practices they didn't feel like putting effort into before AI.
recursive 9mo ago
The scrollbar is completely absent in Firefox. I think this is the first time I've seen long-form content with zero visual indication where I currently am in the document. Crazy. Edit: Actually the scroll-bar is there, but it's nearly impossible to see because of the low contrast with the background. I guess I can blame my user agent for this one.
- jcranmer 9mo ago
  I really, really hate the modern trend of scrollbar design. I guess it makes some amount of sense if you're aiming for a mobile phone factor, where real estate is somewhat limited, but changing the scrollbar from a widget that lives functionally outside of the content it is scrolling to a translucent show-only-on-hover widget that overlays the content (and can thus become functionally invisible if the content is just the wrong color) is a real step backwards in UI design.
  - Dusseldorf 9mo ago
    I finally got frustrated enough to go in and manually increase the default scrollbar size in Firefox. Slim scrollbars are awful both to look at and to use. I'm working with an ultrawide monitor here, please give me more than 0-3 pixels of scrollbar!
    - recursive 9mo ago
      I didn't know this was possible. This is amazing! I found it under the inconspicuous config item called "widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style". I changed it from 0 to 4. There seems to be no UI for this. Source: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1443060 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1443060
- siddbudd 9mo ago
  dark reader (add-on) fixes both the scrollbar and the general color scheme
vondur 9mo ago
So not really AI, but a well run private school with high achieving students. Looks like they do optimize the learning strategies.
Aurornis 9mo ago
This section reveals a lot about the difference between the hype and the practice: > It isn’t genuine two‑hour learning: most kids start school at 8:30am, start working on the “two-hour platform” sometime between 9am-930am and are occupied with academics until noon-1230pm. They also blend in “surges” from time to time to squeeze in more hours on the platform. > It isn’t AI in the way we have been thinking about it since the “Attention is all you need” paper. There is no “generative AI” powered by OpenAI, Gemini or Claude in the platform the kids use – it is closer to “turbocharged spreadsheet checklist with a spaced‑repetition algorithm” > It definitely isn’t teacher‑free: Teachers have been rebranded “guides”, and while their workload is different than a traditional school, they are very important – and both the quantity and quality are much higher than traditional schools. > The bundle matters: it’s not just the learning platform on its own. A big part of the product’s success is how the school has set up student incentives and the culture they have built to make everything work together So in other words, they're trying to set up a generally high quality education system, but they have a marketer on board who knows how to capture headlines with controversial claims?
- toomuchtodo 9mo ago
  They're copying one of Khan Academy's implementation models [1] and rebranding it as AI. It's certainly not new besides the "help yourself to AI" part (which, full disclosure, Khan Academy is working on as well with their "Khanmigo" assistant [2]). Sal Khan, the founder and CEO of Khan Academy, did a TED talk [3] on this. [1] https://en.khanacademy.org/khan-for-educators/ https://en.khanacademy.org/khan-for-educators/ [2] https://www.khanmigo.ai/ https://www.khanmigo.ai/ [3] How AI Could Save (Not Destroy) Education | Sal Khan | TED - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJP5GqnTrNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJP5GqnTrNo - May 1st, 2023
- Onavo 9mo ago
  It sounds like they are trying to replicate Asian style rote learning and cram school in a way that's more palatable to western audiences. Rebranding rote learning and force feeding as spaced repetition and surges. Typical SV bull.
  - 9mo ago
johnnyanmac 9mo ago
keep in mind this piece was 8 months ago (and probably starting to be written much earlier). I can see Alpha school being this genuine effort to offer an alternative education plan as well as slowly falling into the AI hype later on and pushing more generative content as it tries to phase out teachers. Or, if it's being praised by this administration, it's doing so to gain political points.
rbhtjk 9mo ago
So this Astral Codex external submission is what? Did Scott Alexander verify that these parents are real? Usual rambling from a site that disables scrolling and nearly crashes Firefox.
rahimnathwani 9mo ago
Here's another Alpha parent responding to that review: https://naimoli.com/peter/posts/2xlearning/ https://naimoli.com/peter/posts/2xlearning/ Summary: the '2× learning' claims are overblown.

by gruez 9mo ago

trinsic2 9mo ago

Holy crap that is a long article. In my view, the only important point is time freed up which should be a part of normal education. If students had more free time to think and contemplate one wonders what kind of world we would live in. Too bad it takes a dubious idea for an AI school to surface that wisdom.

johnnyanmac 9mo ago
>the only important point is time freed up which should be a part of normal education. College felt like the last time I truly had "time freed up". 16 units of classes per quarter came down to ~8-10 hours of class time per week and the recommendation was 2 hour of study per class unit a week (e.g. a 4 unit class recommends 8 hours of study a week). So, typical full time work. But mostly on campus (aka a walkable community), close to peers, with no worries of future responsibilities. now of course, the CS curriculum easily required double or triple that recommendation, but that speaks more towards the subject than the concept of college.
ambicapter 9mo ago
Well people who are evangelically praising AI for writing code seem to be converging on established, well-known software practices for "making the AI work better" so seems like AI is great at making people rediscover the practices they didn't feel like putting effort into before AI.

recursive 9mo ago

The scrollbar is completely absent in Firefox. I think this is the first time I've seen long-form content with zero visual indication where I currently am in the document. Crazy. Edit: Actually the scroll-bar is there, but it's nearly impossible to see because of the low contrast with the background. I guess I can blame my user agent for this one.

jcranmer 9mo ago
I really, really hate the modern trend of scrollbar design. I guess it makes some amount of sense if you're aiming for a mobile phone factor, where real estate is somewhat limited, but changing the scrollbar from a widget that lives functionally outside of the content it is scrolling to a translucent show-only-on-hover widget that overlays the content (and can thus become functionally invisible if the content is just the wrong color) is a real step backwards in UI design.
- Dusseldorf 9mo ago
  I finally got frustrated enough to go in and manually increase the default scrollbar size in Firefox. Slim scrollbars are awful both to look at and to use. I'm working with an ultrawide monitor here, please give me more than 0-3 pixels of scrollbar!
  - recursive 9mo ago
    I didn't know this was possible. This is amazing! I found it under the inconspicuous config item called "widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style". I changed it from 0 to 4. There seems to be no UI for this. Source: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1443060 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1443060
siddbudd 9mo ago
dark reader (add-on) fixes both the scrollbar and the general color scheme

vondur 9mo ago

So not really AI, but a well run private school with high achieving students. Looks like they do optimize the learning strategies.

Aurornis 9mo ago

This section reveals a lot about the difference between the hype and the practice: > It isn’t genuine two‑hour learning: most kids start school at 8:30am, start working on the “two-hour platform” sometime between 9am-930am and are occupied with academics until noon-1230pm. They also blend in “surges” from time to time to squeeze in more hours on the platform. > It isn’t AI in the way we have been thinking about it since the “Attention is all you need” paper. There is no “generative AI” powered by OpenAI, Gemini or Claude in the platform the kids use – it is closer to “turbocharged spreadsheet checklist with a spaced‑repetition algorithm” > It definitely isn’t teacher‑free: Teachers have been rebranded “guides”, and while their workload is different than a traditional school, they are very important – and both the quantity and quality are much higher than traditional schools. > The bundle matters: it’s not just the learning platform on its own. A big part of the product’s success is how the school has set up student incentives and the culture they have built to make everything work together So in other words, they're trying to set up a generally high quality education system, but they have a marketer on board who knows how to capture headlines with controversial claims?

toomuchtodo 9mo ago
They're copying one of Khan Academy's implementation models [1] and rebranding it as AI. It's certainly not new besides the "help yourself to AI" part (which, full disclosure, Khan Academy is working on as well with their "Khanmigo" assistant [2]). Sal Khan, the founder and CEO of Khan Academy, did a TED talk [3] on this. [1] https://en.khanacademy.org/khan-for-educators/ https://en.khanacademy.org/khan-for-educators/ [2] https://www.khanmigo.ai/ https://www.khanmigo.ai/ [3] How AI Could Save (Not Destroy) Education | Sal Khan | TED - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJP5GqnTrNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJP5GqnTrNo - May 1st, 2023
Onavo 9mo ago
It sounds like they are trying to replicate Asian style rote learning and cram school in a way that's more palatable to western audiences. Rebranding rote learning and force feeding as spaced repetition and surges. Typical SV bull.
- 9mo ago

johnnyanmac 9mo ago

keep in mind this piece was 8 months ago (and probably starting to be written much earlier). I can see Alpha school being this genuine effort to offer an alternative education plan as well as slowly falling into the AI hype later on and pushing more generative content as it tries to phase out teachers. Or, if it's being praised by this administration, it's doing so to gain political points.

rbhtjk 9mo ago

So this Astral Codex external submission is what? Did Scott Alexander verify that these parents are real? Usual rambling from a site that disables scrolling and nearly crashes Firefox.

rahimnathwani 9mo ago

Here's another Alpha parent responding to that review: https://naimoli.com/peter/posts/2xlearning/ https://naimoli.com/peter/posts/2xlearning/ Summary: the '2× learning' claims are overblown.