Chrisman Frank - Gamification at Synthesis School

Chrisman Frank is the co-founder and CEO of Synthesis, an enrichment club that teaches complex problem-solving and decision-making for kids 7 to 14 through online team games. His co-founder Josh Dahn developed the Synthesis concept while running Ad Astra, a small lab school he built for Elon Musk on the SpaceX campus.

Before Synthesis, Chrisman was engineer #1 at ClassDojo, a K-12 network that reaches ~30 million teachers, students, and families every month.

Key Takeaways:

00:18 Why Children are the BEST

03:21 Elevator Pitch for Synthesis School

15:29 The Impact of Covid in Online Learning

20:13 Learning Through a Game Design

33:25 Synthesis and Jiu Jitsu

Quotes:

“Kids crave complexity.”

“Complex problems don't have right or wrong answers.”

“Continue innovating. Give kids these unbounded complex problems, let them practice solving that and you learn the kind of meta skill of solving problems.”

“The motto at Synthesis is Embrace the Chaos.”

“I don't think the world is going to change less for our kids, when they grow up. I think it's going to change faster. The future will belong to people who are most rapidly able to adapt to change.”

Social Links:

Website - https://chrismanfrank.com/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/chrismanfrank

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-frank-41b0743a/

Synthesis School:

Website - https://www.synthesis.is/