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Austin Scholar #174: New ways to use AI in education (without ChatGPT)

Austin Scholar #174: New ways to use AI in education (without ChatGPT)

& speaking at Alpha School info sessions

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Austin Scholar
Jul 20, 2025
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Austin Scholar #174: New ways to use AI in education (without ChatGPT)
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Hey, y'all!

This week from Austin Scholar...

  1. New ways to use AI in education (without ChatGPT)

  2. Scholar’s Sources: What I’ve been thinking about…

I’ve had the absolute joy of spending the last week traveling with MacKenzie Price doing info sessions to help launch new Alpha Schools across the country. I spoke in D.C, Raleigh, and Charlotte and had a fantastic time getting to know the parents and students in the area. The info sessions themselves were so much fun – I got to talk about why I originally came to Alpha, the life skills I’ve learned while there, and how learning with AI-powered apps has impacted my college career. MacKenzie herself talks about the story behind Alpha and tells story after story of kids believing that they are limitless and are capable of doing things you couldn’t dream of.

MacKenzie and I speaking in Charlotte, NC

Next week, Alpha is hosting info sessions in San Francisco, Plano, and Palm Beach. If you’re a parent of a kid K-3 and interested in becoming a founding family of an Alpha School in any of these three cities, I highly recommend signing up. (To hopefully make the deal sweeter, anyone who attends an info session will get one month free of Austin Scholar, so spread the word.)


New ways to use AI in education (without ChatGPT)

Today’s article is going to be more technical than usual. I got a lot of questions this week during the info sessions about using AI in education. Most people seem to think that AI in education means ChatGPT. But heads up for parents: 90% of kids already use ChatGPT in their education… for cheating. So we definitely need something different.

Alpha is developing new ways to use AI in education. Last week demonstrated how Alpha uses AI-powered apps to crush the standard school curriculum.

But what about non-Common Core knowledge? What about all of the knowledge that’s not traditionally in a textbook?

AlphaX Projects are students’ high school passion projects (like this newsletter) and one of the requirements is that students become experts in their passion.

Today we’re gonna talk about three super experimental AI tools that Alpha has developed for Alpha High Students to use to develop that expertise: Brainmaxxing (ask your teen), BrainLifts and EPHOR. The three tools are anchored in the learning science concept “depth of knowledge.”

While this article is detailed and technical, it gives a glimpse into how AI is going to radically change education going forward. I truly believe some derivative of this is going to be required of every student in the future.

Now, for those unfamiliar, a BrainLift is Alpha's framework for building expertise using DOK levels: Facts (DOK 1), Summaries (DOK 2), Insights (DOK 3), and Spiky POVs (DOK 4). But a BrainLift shouldn’t be a static document – it should be continuously updated as you learn.

The daily “Brainmaxxing” feed is how you keep your BrainLift at the cutting edge. Instead of building your DOK levels once and moving on, you spend one focused hour each day consuming expert content that challenges and upgrades every level of your BrainLift. By using EPHOR, you can upload your BrainLift to the platform and EPHOR will curate a personalized Brainmaxxing feed to help you continue to update your BrainLift and expand your knowledge.

The magic happens when this daily input continuously refines and expands each level of your BrainLift. Let me show you exactly how this works using my academic performance BrainLift:

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