Freedom | Homeschooling | Early Literacy | Innovation
Austin, TX
Joined January 2007
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Sally Cole retweeted
🔥 BREAKING: The Tesla Roadster just DROVE UPSIDE DOWN and LEVITATED on its way down off a vertical ramp
EPIC!!!
Elon, SpaceX and Tesla OUTDID THEMSELVES!
That is SURREAL.
@ElonMusk: "Well — it worked!"
Sally Cole retweeted
Episode 1 of Sold a Story, Season 2: apmreports.org/episode/2026/…
It's Not Just Reading
The education unlock:
pretest -> micro lessons and practice -> mastery test
This should work with phonics instruction. I published the tests you'll need here: storyhouracademy.org/tests
Here's a big unlock in education. A student takes a pretest, a parent feeds the wrong answers into AI, AI builds micro lessons and practice questions for what was missed, the student uses the new study materials, and then the student retakes the test. Repeat to mastery.
Here's the prompt to use:
"I'm attaching questions my [grade]-grader missed (or a list of skills they're struggling with).
For each one:
1. Figure out the skill being tested and why my child likely got it wrong.
2. Make a printable 2-page worksheet:
- Top half of page 1: a short, kid-friendly lesson with one example that fixes that mistake.
- The rest: new practice problems (don't copy the test), easy to harder.
- Bottom right of page 2: a small dot-to-dot as a fun reward.
3. Make a separate answer key.
Use big print, lots of writing space, soft colors, and a blank Name line."
Hey @WithOdyssey_ and @txcomptroller. Did you know the TEFA marketplace search feature barely works? Full write up below.
Please fix this for Texan homeschooling families.
Sally Cole retweeted
I'm not breaking the embargo on the episodes I've been invited to review to say it's not what I expected, and will challenge education orthodoxy far beyond the first series.
Brace yourselves.
A new season of Sold a Story is coming one week from today. Thanks for the opportunity to talk about it @alexanderrusso
With a student in the Alpha Anywhere program, I can let Grok Bot log into the parent portal, see what my youngest is struggling with, make her print outs with micro lessons and practice problems, and incentivize the work.
I could let Alpha Anywhere circle back to these things, because it will, but I like being involved and accelerating things a bit.
It's not enough to touch grass while staying connected to our agents. We need to be able to swim with them, too.
A lot of things can get between a homeschool student and their study plans. Most planners make homeschoolers feel behind when that happens. I built Lesson Hollow to get rid of that feeling.
With Lesson Hollow, students plan their homeschool day in the morning by selecting which activities in each of their curriculum sequences can get done before bedtime. The promoted activities become the day's checklist instead of some outdated idea for the day that was planned weeks or months ago.
It's 10x better than traditional planning. If you know a homeschooler, please tell them about this.
Imagine being a 12-year old girl, bored at your family's weekly chess club activity. You create a story world of characters that live in your head for the next four years. You write about them, draw them, model avatars after them, and creatively repurpose them every which way for the fun of it.
Then, generative video comes along. It's just another toy in the creative process. Your school, @Alphaschool, gives you generous access to tokens. You're still writing stories and drawing characters. But with generative video, you get to watch your story come alive on the big screen.
The girl is @lolstella.
Watch her AI short past the first minute, or don't watch at all.
youtu.be/UGLBOHTNbHU?si=sT1Z…
Coming October 15th...
Sold a Story Season 2 is coming October 15th.
youtube.com/watch?v=4YDq-AB_…
Sally Cole retweeted
Here's a sequence to try for subtraction facts that makes sense to me. Calling the minuend the "big number" is something Siegfried Engelmann used in his Direct Instruction (DI) method. So, this borrows from that.
Simple steps kid can take to learn single-digit addition facts:
1) Learn +0 and +1 facts.
2) Memorize the doubles such as 1+1=2, 2+2=4, 3+3=6, and so on.
3) Learn that changing the order does not change the answer, so if the child knows 3+8=11, she also knows 8+3=11.
4) Memorize the +2 facts.
5) Memorize the remaining facts below. Use short, repeated retrieval practice until the answers become automatic.
3s: 3+4=7, 3+5=8, 3+6=9, 3+7=10, 3+8=11, 3+9=12
4s: 4+5=9, 4+6=10, 4+7=11, 4+8=12, 4+9=13
5s: 5+6=11, 5+7=12, 5+8=13, 5+9=14
6s: 6+7=13, 6+8=14, 6+9=15
7s: 7+8=15, 7+9=16
8s: 8+9=17
I hope that AI teaching demos are teaching things that are easy, like 2 + 3, as a stepping stone to teaching things that are hard.
The demo that would impress me, for example, would be one that teaches the vocabulary that dentists and orthodontists use.
This is still relevant to kids, because they spend time as patients of dentists and orthodontists.
Yet, it’s something that AI can teach better than a teacher or parent because it is more knowledgeable than the average adult in this domain and more able to apply learning science like spaced repetition.
Here's how Sage Teacher handles wrong responses. He doesn't just wait for you to randomly fire and get it right. He doesn't just show you the answer and move on.
Instead he takes a pedagogically sound approach, offering both strategies and demonstrations, with ample opportunity for the child to finish the problem.
In this simple addition problem, Sage responds to incorrect responses in multiple different ways.
1) Sage provides the child with a strategy and lets them execute it
2) If that fails, Sage prepares a visual representation of the equation and asks the student to count them to produce the sum
3) If that fails, Sage assists the student in counting
4) Then Sage returns to the original problem and asks the student to select the correct numeral that matches the sum
5) If that fails, Sage executes the previously mentioned strategy to provide the answer in the context of the strategy
Any successful attempt that was achieved through agent-assitance is recorded as such and provides opportunities for Sage to return to the concept or specific problem to see if the student can get the correct answer independently.
Nothing is hard coded. The agent has access to tools and is choosing the appropriate support given the student's history.
This is what the future of education looks like.
Grade levels? Where we’re going, we don’t need grade levels.
Each day, each student simply needs to be "smarter than yesterday."
Must read from @gtmom
Grok Bot and Tesla FSD has brought motherhood into the future.
This fan video is a must watch (with sound on).
Good morning! Wake up to a new Grok Bot fan song using a process similar to that described by @anabology and @donaldjewkes.
"Mom's Bot" uses Suno for music, Claude Opus 5.5 for motion graphics, and Grok Bot for orchestration.
I’m still pondering this Jensen Huang quote. “Basic math is being forgotten. Does it matter? I don't think it does.”
It may be a hint that industry doesn’t rely on the educational system anymore. Demand for the Prussian model is gone forever.
The rational next step is to end compulsory schooling.
