Over the last couple of months, I’ve been running an experimental “PodSchool” with my kids and their cousins. It’s basically using Zoom to turn Khan Academy into a social, student-driven experience.
Here’s a few things I’ve learned over the last couple of weeks.
Teacher effort can be really low. I’m pretty flat-affect and mostly just tell the kids when their turn is over and it’s time for the next kid to share their screen. In fact half the time I’m “teaching” them I’m also doing email or wasting time on twitter. Another dad who is helping with the effort was trying to be more of a typical teacher and one of the kids said “Dad, stop trying to be an excited school teacher. This is just home school.”. You don’t want to center the teacher, you want to center the kid who is screensharing.
Mixed groups work really well. Kids learn a lot by teaching, and appreciate chance to be helpful and build up their status with other kids. Kids listen to other kids. Kids helping each other frames education as something WE are doing rather than something being done to them. And kids are surprisingly good at explaining things in a way that other kids can get. It’s hard to put yourself in the mindset of not knowing how to calculate 17–9, or not knowing how to read a clock. But the kids who DO know how to do those things just learned it a few months ago, so they are much better explainers than grownups are.
We have a kid dialing in from India so we are getting exposed to the Indian Khan Academy curriculum, and she is getting exposed to the American one. It’s definitely makes for a more rounded understanding of math.
Regular cadence is key. It should be as regular as school. If you’re going to run a pod school, pick a couple of days of the week and a time, and be religious about meeting at that time. Our pod school almost fell apart about a month ago because I kept tweaking the schedule. Messaging platforms (we use WhatsApp) are a great way of coordinating with all the families in the podschool.
PodSchools are great social practice for introverted kids. I’ve seen one kid in our group coming out of his shell and starting to joke with the other kids in a way that seems like a big positive step for him. The fact that everyone gets a turn in the spotlight means it is no big deal to be the center of attention. It’s weirdly like Toastmasters for second graders!
Podschools probably aren’t a viable business. I have to admit I was initially curious about whether this podschool approach could be turned into a business. If you provided the “bored adult” you could definitely charge for it, and it would solve problems for a lot of parents. But it would be basically like every online summer camp offering at that point, and I don’t think the economics of those businesses are especially great. If you provided the software for parents to do this themselves, what would it be? Messaging + Content + Video Conferencing with ScreenSharing are all ubiquitous and well-solved already. The scheduling / coordination, or possibly letting parents network with other parents to find a pod, could be useful. But would anyone pay enough for it to make it a viable business? Doubtful.
I’ll keep on taking notes as I experiment with our little pod, and post another write-up soon.
how to school during a pandemic 