• The OpenEd Daily
  • Posts
  • 🐴 Bigfoot, Wizard Cooking, and a Minecraft Modding Class

🐴 Bigfoot, Wizard Cooking, and a Minecraft Modding Class

How Outschool.com is upending the world of alternative education (and our perception of "screen time"). PLUS: Welcome to the era of Networked Schooling.

Author

Charlie Deist
May 01, 2025

Join us Tuesday, May 13 at 12:30pm MT for a 45-minute live Q&A launch event for our new book – Open Education: How to Reimagine Learning, Ignite Curiosity, and Prepare Your Kids for Success.

IN THIS EDITION:

🍎 Why we need to stop blaming screens and start asking better questions.
🍎 Networked schooling is here — and families are quietly reshaping the system.
🍎 9 weird Outschool classes for kids with niche interests

If you enjoy this edition, forward this email to a friend! First time reading? Subscribe and learn more at OpenEd.co.

💡 THOUGHT

NOT ALL SCREEN TIME IS CREATED EQUAL

“We blame our kids for our issues. That’s what’s happening.”

That’s what Outschool CEO Amir Nathoo said in a recent conversation with OpenEd’s Isaac Morehouse about our conflicted attitudes towards screen time.

Yesterday, we shared a Wall Street Journal article showing students now spend over 2 hours per day on school-issued devices (with the predictable fatigue among the students).

But Nathoo offers a more nuanced view:

“Not all screen time is created equal. Just watching stuff on YouTube is completely different from building a virtual world or learning a tool.”

An hour of passive screen consumption leaves kids dull and drained. But an hour designing mods in Minecraft or taking a live class lights them up.

We might also distinguish between imposed screen time in school, versus a topic freely-chosen from Outschool’s robust marketplace.

Rather than asking how much time kids spend on screens, we should be asking: What are they doing there?

🎓 Use code OPENED25 for 20% off (up to $30) your next Outschool class.

📊 TREND

THE ERA OF NETWORKED SCHOOLING

Education is being unbundled — and reassembled in smarter, more personalized ways.

“Alternative education has blossomed into far more than homeschooling,” says Nathoo. “You’ve got part-time enrollment, dual enrollment, microschools… It’s harder now to define what someone is even doing.”

He calls it networked schooling — families connecting learning experiences across multiple people, platforms, and places, instead of relying on a single institution.

We call it open education. Isaac put it this way:

“The box is closed if you’re all in one school all day, every day. Anyone who’s doing two or more education approaches at the same time has basically opened the box…”

If you’re layering online classes onto public school, joining a co-op while using curriculum at home, or taking a hybrid approach — you’re already part of this new learning network. One that often works better than any single system ever could.

🛠️ TOOL

THE WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLD OF OUTSCHOOL

When Isaac’s son wanted to learn Minecraft modding, neither parent knew how to help.

“I don’t know how to code,” Isaac recalls. “But I found a class on Outschool — six weeks, once a week.”

His son took the class, and by the end, he was showing Isaac how he built custom blocks.

This is what happens when curiosity meets access.

Outschool isn’t just a supplement to traditional curriculum — it’s a gateway to topics schools don’t touch. Bigfoot investigations. Wizard cooking. Math-based escape rooms. And the instructors? Not generalists. They’re passionate nerds teaching what they love.

To highlight what’s possible when you stop forcing one-size-fits-all learning, we pulled together a list of the 9 most surprising, delightful Outschool classes you’ll never find in a traditional classroom.

That’s all for this week!

– Charlie (the OpenEd newsletter guy)

P.S. If you’d prefer to just receive the weekly edition, you can change your subscription settings here.