I really appreciate this post Gary Chou and Christina Xu. As I’ve been supporting teacher development and building a primary school in a wholly different context (urban; international; low income, skill & tech), I’ve been exploring new learning models and trying to determine how to adapt and implement them in our context (beyond things like teaching coding, which-while it is important in our context especially for exposure-to your point, is just about skill acquisition).

I 100% agree that that the hard part is crafting the right challenge with clear success or failure that encourages a student to willingly jump in, and the necessary safeguards for guiding participants to the endpoint with minimal risk. I often think of this as powerful, inquiry-based learning, which is about striking the right balance between creativity and rigor. A school and team I really respect who have developed a methodology that works similarly is NuVu ( https://cambridge.nuvustudio.com/), which I got to visit a couple months ago.

I also think about the fundamental skills and mindset shifts needed by teachers to teach in a new networked world, and how to get them there over time. In the formal education system, you have the added constraint of that as well as assessment, e.g., critical moments that determine what opportunities they are able to access in terms of continuing/higher education and/or career.