R&D we’d like to fund at 4.0 Schools
TL;DR: There are bold ideas in education that are almost within our reach. We want to incentivize YOU to bring them to life. If you’re in, apply to Tiny.
Here’s a quick download of a few updates on the Tiny Fellowship. Inside you’ll hear from two Tiny Fellows who share their takeaways from Wave 1 of the fellowship, our updated vision for unbundling school and three ideas we want to invest in through Wave 2 of the Tiny Fellowship (more context on these experiments in the blog post below).
@ Tiny Wave 1: let’s unbundle school
Six months ago, we shared our blueprint for unbundling school. It came with a call to our community: tell us if it resonates with you.
Wave 1 of the Tiny Fellowship answered that call. Here’s how Konteint Redmon, founder of Smart Start Transition (formerly OMG Planner), pushed our thinking on how students with disabilities and their parents could be served more effectively in an unbundled ecosystem.
Based on what Wave 1 taught us, we’ve updated our blueprint to clarify the characteristics of the three technologies that will power the future of school. To accelerate our path toward this unbundled vision, we have committed to investing in 100 pilots of inclusive micro schools, modular learning spaces, and technologies for choice annually starting in 2017.
@ Tiny Wave 2: let’s explore the adjacent possible
“The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself.” — Steven Johnson
For Wave 2, we want to try something new. We will reserve three seats in the fellowship for founders who are willing to explore three ideas we’ve been waiting to see. Each seat comes with coaching, community, and $10K equity-free capital.
Experiment #1: Micro schools that make quality child care and preschool affordable for low-income families
Experiment #2: Learning spaces that empower students to design their own community college
Experiment #3: Technologies that connect families across divides to build empathy and share knowledge
We’re intentionally describing these ideas in general terms. Our hope is that you will take these hunches in new directions we didn’t anticipate.
We also know that these ideas are just ahead of the market. But, they’re right within our reach. We’d like to get there faster. We’re ready to invest in you to test them, right now.
If you’re up for the challenge, we’d love to hear from you.
Important note to applicants: you don’t have to be working on one of these ideas to apply to the Tiny Fellowship. We plan to invest in 20+ teams and expect most of them to be tackling other ideas.
