My first alpha tester is 11.
Trump posted his ranking of American presidents last week: himself alone in the top tier, with Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Wilson graded merely “Great.” It seemed only fair to give the runners-up a chance to respond. So I spun up four of them as live video avatars in a new Alma feature we’re testing, multi-avatar conversations, and handed it to my son.
For a few minutes, the presidents argued among themselves about self-proclaimed greatness. Then my son took over. He asked Washington which of his mistakes he would fix if he had a second chance, and Washington named slavery as the failure that weighed on him heaviest. He followed up with Jackson, who called it a grievous wrong, “plain as a rifle’s report.” Afterward he wanted to talk the whole thing through with me.
This generation isn’t just digital-native. It’s AI-native. My kids can smell AI slop faster than most adults I know, and despite all the screen-time hysteria, they know exactly when they’re consuming mindlessly and when something is making them think.
That distinction is central in edtech. Video and games in a classroom are often a gimmick: engagement bolted onto content, pedagogy an afterthought, when pedagogy has to come first. What I truly care about is whether a kid asks his own questions and wants to keep talking after the screen goes off. This time, yes to both.
The video layer comes from our friends at LemonSlice (much appreciation to Lina Colucci and her team!), who made that part simple — it still takes seven or eight tools working together to keep one live avatar talking. But video is one modality among many. Some learning objectives don’t need it at all; some absolutely require it. What multi-avatar opens up is the bystander seat: a learner watches a conversation they’re not part of, notices things, wonders about them, and decides for themselves when to jump in. Finding where that belongs in a course, and keeping it coherent across an entire degree program, is what Alma does.
If you’d like to talk about how something like this could fit your learning objectives, I’d love to chat.