John’s Blog:
Our apologies for not updating this home school support site for some time. We have been overwhelmed with many adventures and responsibilities. Most notably, our programs are now fully certified by the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) for use in public high schools. It was quite the task to get there. In the end, we were one of only six publishers who made it through the arduous and comprehensive state board review process. This included the multi-billion dollar publishers McGraw-Hill, Savvas, Stemscopes, HMH, Cengage, and little ‘ol us, Conceptual Academy! Wow!! Our great thanks to the many homeschoolers who over the years have 1) supported us, and 2) provided the valuable feedback to help bring our programs to a world-class level. Truly.
Suffice to say, over the past year we have been on the road (literally) throughout the great state of Texas visiting with just about every school district, science teacher, and administrator. It has been quite the honor. Of course, the big pubs are very well entrenched and with deep-pockets making it quite the challenge for us “new kids on the block”. That said, we did much better than we expected. . . which means we’re back on the road in Texas providing training sessions for all the districts who adopted us. Watch what you wish for. 🙂
On the road in Texas!
To say we learned a lot is quite the understatement. The folks we met in our many travels were stellar wonderful. How very encouraging it was to meet the many dedicated and talented admin and teachers. But while the people were by-and-large great, the system they work under is crazy. Absolutely crazy. (Perhaps homeschoolers know a thing or two about this). I’ve MUCH to report on our real-world experiences in all things K12 in an upcoming blog entry.
On another front, I’m proud to announce “Ask the Author” (ATA), which we anticipate being released in beta form this coming October. At that time, this stunning new feature will automatically appear within each Conceptual Academy program, beginning with Physics. Much more than your typical ChatBot, ATA is trained only on our conceptual content, which means it is not pulling from the tainted and at times inaccurate and biased internet. Rather, it pulls information only from us, so you can be sure of its accuracy and style. But that’s not the amazing part. The amazing part is that ATA is also trained in our pedagogy, which includes the Socratic method. If you ask for information, there’s a good chance it will ask you why and then provide that information in only little bits. Typically it’s the human that prompts the AI for information. We have flipped this model. We are training ATA to prompt the human for understanding. The ATA model is one whereby the author is by each student’s side and is constantly available for not just information but also for conversation. Soon it will literally be our actual author voices. How trippy is that?? Imagine your student working on a problem and getting lost. Imagine the author always available as a virtual study-buddy. We know that the best way to learn is to try to teach (get your mouth moving!). Similarly, the best way to teach is to listen (a good teacher knows when to shut up and just listen). Thus, we are training ATA to be a listener. . . so that your student can practice explaining that which they think they understand. That’s good chemistry AND pedagogy. We are most excited.
Again, our apologies for the radio silence. I don’t think I’ve updated this site in over a year! But the good news is that we’ve been working hard behind the scenes to make our programs the best they can be, which we know to be a life-long endeavor.
If you’re new to Conceptual Academy, thank you for taking the time to look through this website, which you should know is just a support site (yes, ATA will soon also be available for you here for conversing). But you should know that our actual programs are hosted on our learning platform at ConceptualAcademy.com.
While I have your attention: Some FAQs. Our programs run continuously, which means you can start and end whenever works best for your situation. Need to take two years for a one year program. Go for it! Want to start in January? Go for it. We only ask for a one-time enrollment fee for each student. Running a coop of 4 or more students taking the same program? Ask about our setting up an “instructor-led” program for you and your coop. Let me also underscore, as always, we provide a full refund if a program is not a good fit for your student as determine by you. To trial a program in action, consider our free sample chemistry course. We trust you’ll find our programs to be rich, exciting, and meaningful. And today we have the approval of the super critical Texas SBOE to our credentials. Yes! our programs will qualify you for high school credit, and actually then some.
Good chemistry,
John Suchocki
Founder, CEO
16 July 2024