CURMUDGUCATION: Silicon Valley Wunderskool

CURMUDGUCATION: Silicon Valley Wunderskool:
Silicon Valley Wunderskool

When we last met Altschool, it was May of 2015 and the new Silicon Valley educational disruptor startup was getting all kinds of press courtesy of some combination of good connections and the contribution of a buttload of Zuckerberg money. Now Rebecca Mead at the New Yorker is letting us know how Altschool has been faring since then.

The short pitch for Altschool is tech-based boutique micro-schooling for rich kids.

When I read about it last May, Altschool immediately reminded me of the free or open schools of the sixties. My aunt, a wonderful woman who had been traditionally trained as a teacher, opened one in Connecticut. The basic idea is that if you place students in resource rich environments and let them follow their interests, education will happen. Altschool is able to really, really up the ante on the whole rich resource portion of the idea, but putting technology in the hands of every child.

The other half of the Altschool idea is to put tech in the hands of the teachers. From Mead's observation of a pre-K class:

Several children were playing “restaurant,” and one girl sat in a chair, her arms outstretched as if holding a steering wheel: she was delivering food orders. “I’m taking a shortcut,” she announced. A teacher sitting on the floor told her, “That’s a good word—you used it correctly.” Then she took out her phone and recorded a video of the moment.

Altschool was founded-started-conceived by Max Ventilla, a former Google project manager who CURMUDGUCATION: Silicon Valley Wunderskool: