Samuel Holston

Building: a personal brain coach for every student @BrainTools

Sharing: Cog-sci, Edu, AI

prev: Tutero

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

@ben_m_somers Seem to remember the gemini team a whilst back investing in better training data, as part of their LearnLM project which got folded into future models.

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

@signulll Already happening. See all the tech creators now plugging grok bot, making bank.

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

Overwhelming amount of new evidence showing the way we can teach kids to use AI well is:

1. Teach them learning how to learn
2. Explicit instruction/practice for using AI to do {x}

And yet the AI literacy frameworks keep on being churned out.

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

It's 9:01pm and I've been more awake.

Spent the last 2 years figuring out how to support parents and students to build resilient, durable skills an AI era (especially learning, thinking, self-regulating).

Now it's clicking.

Big things launching soon.

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

@C_Hendrick Considering how large visual processing is relative to other sensory input, it's crazy to discount the most efficient way to translate concepts visually (screens) under the guise of "they're bad".

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

@MrZachG @montessorium Big fan of teaching children explicit norms, procedures and approaches. Also extends to strategies for things like learning, reading, taking notes - research on explicit strategy instruction shows how impactful it is.

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

@C_Hendrick Do you see a world in which this changes as the models capabilities get better? Hard not to imagine multi-modal AI with negligible hallucination rates not be a strong form-factor for learning.

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

@jliemandt Love this - students know best what engages other students.

Does Alpha guide them on embedding Learning Science into their apps?

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

@ben_m_somers Agreed.

But this requires huge systemic change, which could take some time. Especially with the perverse incentives within education institutions to stall change.

[Matt Bateman @mbateman]

“Cognitive wild west” is a much much better, more positive, and more actionable frame than is typical!

That is close to how I think about it, which is “information frontier”. If you live on a frontier that implies the heightened importance of certain skills and virtues.

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

@ben_m_somers Agreed, been following their journey and love what the team has built. Feels made for what's coming

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

@ben_m_somers Big bet, I like it.

How are you guys running this? Through Recess app or an external app.

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

@signulll Absolutely overrated. Can't wear during lifting defeats the purpose for me.

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

@ben_m_somers Congrats mate, and you're just getting started

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

@alexcooldev What stage do you move from Rork -> Cursor?

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

@ConorNeu What about Australia?

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

Built this Feynman AI feedback app in Gemini 3 that gives you feedback on teaching.

It lets you record videos to explain what you learnt, then gives you feedback, helps you improve and rerecord. Based on the Feynman method.

Made in @GoogleAIStudio

Link below to try it

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

This is what academia x industry should look like in ed.

But instead we get an endless stream of dust gathering papers and researchers working on microcosmic theories totally removed from reality.

This is how you bring the science of learning into education.

[Carl Hendrick @C_Hendrick]

At @AlphaSchoolATX this week discussing the science of learning, AI, assessment, DI and @TimebackLearn

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

@C_Hendrick @AlphaSchoolATX @TimebackLearn Are you working with @AlphaSchoolATX @C_Hendrick? Very cool to see, something special brewing

[Samuel Holston @samuelholston]

@ben_m_somers Very Papert.

tried building something similiar in my last role, getting the geometry ui right is so hard. They've done a great job.