Elon Musk’s secretive LA private school doesn’t just teach spelling and math — it also asks students ethics and critical thinking puzzles you usually don’t see elsewhere

RETURERS/Stephen Lam and ClassDojo & Ad Astra Conundrums

• Elon Musk‘s Ad Astra school and educational software developer ClassDojo are introducing a set of “Conundrums” for elementary and middle school students.
• The Conundrums involve open-ended critical thinking and ethics challenges.
• They address questions that children may not normally encounter in a standard curriculum.
• ClassDojo shared a couple examples of the new Conundrums with Business Insider.

Elon Musk’s secretive LA private school, Ad Astra, has developed a new tool for teachers and students.

Educational software developer ClassDojo is partnering up with Ad Astra to develop a set of critical thinking puzzles called “Conundrums” that they’ll release to teachers and students this fall. The tools are meant to offer the type of critical thinking espoused by Ad Astra, although Ad Astra is not using this specific tool.

The Conundrums pose open-ended critical thinking or ethical problems for the students, who are then encouraged to discuss the issues among themselves and reason out a solution. They tend to pose somewhat more nuanced and complicated questions than most elementary or middle school curricula address.

Here are a couple examples of the Conundrums, provided to Business Insider by ClassDojo: 

One of the conundrum exercises addresses issues of property rights. A group of cartoon characters discovers a dinosaur skeleton on a neighbor’s land.

ClassDojo & Ad Astra Conundrums

Students are reminded to stay open-minded and respectful to each other while discussing the conundrum.

ClassDojo & Ad Astra Conundrums

The teacher’s version of the app shows advice for helping students evaluate the task.

ClassDojo & Ad Astra Conundrums

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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