Why Distance Learning?

Seth Fleischauer (00:00.766)
Hello everyone. And welcome to why distance learning the podcast, the challenges, misconceptions about live virtual education hosted by three seasoned distance learning professionals, myself, Tammy and Alison. Hello ladies. We bring you real stories, expert insights and research back strategies that uncover the true impact of distance learning in today's world. And today's episode is about the power of play, not just as a break from learning, but as a very, sorry, not just as a break from learning.

Allyson (00:12.207)
Hi!

Tami Moehring (00:12.462)
Hello.

Seth Fleischauer (00:29.84)
but as the very method for unlocking it. What happens when you treat games not as a reward, but as the curriculum itself? What if you could build strategic thinking, collaboration, and emotional intelligence all within the structure of a live online game? That's the bold idea behind Collaboration Laboratory, the brainchild of today's guest, Alan Tang.

After scaling companies in the corporate world, Alan pivoted to education first through synthesis, also known as the Elon Musk online school. Although maybe we'll bleep that out depending on our audience at this point. and now through his own award winning program that helps kids develop social and strategic skills through play. Alam, Alam, can I back up and ask, was it Tang or Tong? Damn it. Okay. I'm going do that part again.

Alan (CoLab) (01:15.195)
Time.

Seth Fleischauer (01:19.42)
I'm struggling today, guys. I'm sorry. Apologies. This, this is why, this is why we, this is why we have a, that's why we have an editor. Okay. That's the bold idea behind collaboration laboratory, the brainchild of today's guest, Alan Tong after scaling companies in the corporate world, Alan pivoted into education first through synthesis. You may have heard of that as the Elon Musk online school and now through his own award winning program that helps kids develop social and strategic skills through play. Alan.

Allyson (01:21.231)
It's okay, just take a breath. We're all here.

Allyson (01:27.023)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (01:49.425)
Welcome to the program.

Alan (CoLab) (01:51.211)
Thank you for having me. Seth, I feel like I need to hire you to be my personal hype man, my marketing team.

Seth Fleischauer (01:56.404)
Yeah, let's talk. Let's talk after the recording. Fantastic. Tammy, can you tell us a little bit more about Alan?

Allyson (01:58.275)
you

Tami Moehring (01:58.336)
You

Tami Moehring (02:07.626)
I'd be happy to. Alan is the founder of Collaboration Laboratory. As you mentioned, an award-winning live virtual program that supercharges social, emotional, and strategic thinking through the medium of play. He started his career as an accountant and business leader, but Educatum called him in first through synthesis, as you mentioned, and then through roles like judging student entrepreneurship at TKS and serving as a school governor at Salisbury Primary School.

Today he's known for designing unforgettable learning experience that center joy, challenge, and deep human connection. We're thrilled to have him here. So Alan, like Seth already did, and we all did before, welcome again. You've made a huge pivot from scaling business to building live online experiences for kids. What pulled you into education and why virtual?

Allyson (02:49.787)
I'm

Alan (CoLab) (03:01.673)
it's a great question. So I kind of fell into education. I was, it was COVID. I was looking for more purpose in my career. And at that point I was chief of staff to different startups, having them grow on scale. And there just wasn't anything out there that clicked, right? They either had great missions, but were not achievable or, you 20 year horizon, or they talked a good talk, but there wasn't any substance behind it. And when synthesis came knocking this idea of

you know, using games to teach kids these life skills, the fun, engaging way with kids from around the world was just sounded so novel. So, so special really. And the interview process was talk about your favorite board game, play one of our games. And it was, it just ticked so many boxes. And then when you join and you feel the energy, you see the culture and you see how everyone truly believes in what we're trying to do. It was a no brainer. And I did it for a couple of years.

Allyson (03:45.211)
.

Alan (CoLab) (04:01.121)
And I loved it. And then Pivot Simpsons pivoted to this AI tutor. And look, there is a space for an AI tutor. think that, you know, for something like maths, it absolutely makes sense. But for me, the magic in education is the people, right? That human element to share stories, to inspire, to model behavior. That was lost when Simpsons pivoted. And we thought, why not take this idea of games to teach kids social emotional skills?

capture, add on the coaching, personalized coaching from these live coaches, and then make it look and feel like Pokemon or Zelda, 2D Zelda. And you've got a winner. And that's kind of what we built. My co-founder, who's an engineer for, who used to be an engineer for Meta, he built a website after we were all hanging out. He built a website the next day where like, I guess this is a thing. And we haven't stopped since it came about by accident.

Allyson (04:55.249)
Yay!

Tami Moehring (04:55.95)
You

Alan (CoLab) (04:59.541)
But was a happy accident and now we have 200 odd kids, we're working in nine different schools, we have kids from 25 different countries. It feels really special.

Seth Fleischauer (05:11.846)
It sounds amazing. I would love for you to like kind of, paint a picture for us for anybody who's not familiar with your stuff. Like you talk about, you talked about some of the basics, right? Like, make it look like Zelda teach these skills, make it game based, but like, what does it look like? Maybe you can take us through an example. Like, how are you teaching something that a lot of people might think are skills that are learned only with other live humans? How are you doing that through an online game?

Alan (CoLab) (05:40.169)
I think I'm just going to take a step back quickly and say that, you know, these skills don't just apply to young individuals. think a lot of adults also lack these skills and it's really interesting when we run one of our challenges I'll talk about later with a group of adults, they take three, four times as long as the kids. you know, I think that actually this is something that we're actually thinking about this, maybe rolling out to adults as well.

Seth Fleischauer (05:48.646)
No, Adults are fine.

Allyson (05:50.491)
Hehehehehe

Seth Fleischauer (05:53.684)
You

Alan (CoLab) (06:10.273)
But to answer your question, Seth, so this idea is we bring together 12 kids from around the world so that they can share languages, they can share culture, they can share, you know, different cultural norms. They come together online on this sort of platform that we've built and they get shown two or three challenges. One's a game, one's a discussion, one's an escape room. All of these challenges are built with a bespoke learning objective in mind. So one could be focused on communication, one could

focused on teamwork, could be focused on emotional intelligence. And the idea is to give the kids the agency to choose. We're not there to be their teacher, we're there to be their coach. So they have a menu to pick from and they can read the descriptions, they have to come up with their own voting mechanisms. And the idea is that we help to build their voice and agency through that process. After that, once they've picked a challenge, we throw them in, we don't tell them how it works, we let them figure it out. And the idea is we're creating the same environment for the kids to experiment, to try new things.

but in a safe place where they can see failure is just the first step in learning. Because I think in a lot of places, there's such a pressure to be perfect and not make mistakes that you're actually too scared to try something new. Whereas by giving them that space to and framing it as like a game, they're experimenting, they're testing hypotheses, and the rate at which they're learning is 10x, like genuinely 10x.

So I'll give you an example. One of our challenges is called Elemental Escape. It's a dungeon escape room and they have to escape this dungeon, but they have to escape together. There are clues that are around that they can read and decipher. They have to use the critical thinking to get through. There are also hidden doors, but there are also guards that are around. And if a guard catches you, you get sent back to the beginning of the challenge. So it's quite brutal sometimes when you're like 90 % of the way through and then you get sent back. Now as a...

Allyson (08:00.309)
You're almost there!

Alan (CoLab) (08:04.117)
group of facilitators, the rule that we apply is that if one of you gets caught, all of you go back to the beginning. So as you can imagine, getting caught three, four, five times, absolutely fine. You you live with it, you crack on. If you get caught 20 odd times and it's always Alan's in the U-pack, how are you going to feel? How are you going to react and how do you navigate that conversation? And the

The role of the coach there is to jump in at the right moment and sort of ask the right questions, right? Maybe something like, what's the purpose of this challenge? What's the purpose? Is it to think about who to blame or is it figure out how to beat the challenge? And we're starting to get them to think about how do I, what should I say? What happens if I say X? What tools do I have to navigate this? And by experiencing that firsthand, you know what was going to happen because we'd absolutely rather they made those mistakes here in a place that doesn't really matter.

rather than doing it in the real world where there are real world consequences. And that's really the purpose of everything that we do. You know, this idea of learning by trying, learning by doing, testing out your hypothesis, having full freedom to experiment, all within a sort of team focused environment. And then at the end of the challenge, they don't have to finish it. You know, they could get 70 % of the way through and the next week come back and try something different. We always have a reflection at the end because I think that's really powerful for learning.

And then after that, they are 15 minutes to just be kids, right? To go and play. In the social space, we have something called draw battle. We have go-karts, have virtual pets. The idea is that it's very hard for an adult to focus fully for an hour, let alone a kid. Why don't we give them some downtime to just, you know, de-stress and just play. And a lot of our kids actually said to start at the start, they said, we just want a space where we can be ourselves. We're not monitored. We're not judged.

So that was kind of an addition and by listening to the kids, then come back to us with more stuff. We don't talk about all of their ideas on board, but I think that step of showing them we're listening is really powerful.

Seth Fleischauer (10:13.726)
Wow. It sounds incredible. And I want to dive more into like why this works and how it works. But as a distance learning professional, I just have some logistical questions first, which are like you talk about having 12 kids in a room, all from different cultures, all at the same time. Like how does that work? Like, is there a schedule that they're signing up for? is this like part of their school day? How are you building the

cohorts so that there are different cultures represented? Do you give them any sort of primer about like navigating cross cultural differences? Like how does that all work?

Alan (CoLab) (10:51.297)
Great question. So we have a schedule on our website and there are seven, eight different options at different time zones. So sometimes zones sometimes work really well for West Coast US and I don't know, the UK. Some work really well for East Coast US and Australia. And really by having those different time zones, times, it really works for different time zones. It's a nightmare for us, I'll be honest, when the clocks go forward and backwards.

Allyson (11:16.795)
The logistics.

Alan (CoLab) (11:20.123)
absolute nightmare, but I see the upside is way bigger, right? So we've had kids talk about what happens at Diwali and how they celebrate it. We've had kids, you know, share different norms that they have, like in India, as an example, where you're sort of doing this, that means yes, but in most cultures, that's a no. And just helping the kids understand this and asking them in quite a carefree way where

in not trying to be politically correct is actually really powerful because they can ask honest questions and it helps remove that unconscious bias. It helps to remove a lot of things that can lead to things like racism in the future. So that's the reason we do it. And it's also really cool that if you could say make friends with someone in Japan and then when you're 18 go visit them. I would love that. I never had the opportunity, but in this day and age I think it's possible.

Seth Fleischauer (12:17.628)
And, and is there a coach this entire time? Like kind of, you mentioned that they jump in at the right time. Are they there throughout the experience and kind of monitoring what's happening and then jumping in if need be, maybe preventing some of these like cross-cultural conflicts, which I imagine some something's going to happen. It's, mean, you talked about, you know, the one kid who forces the restart 20 times in a row. Like there's definitely going to be some conflict when you're, when you're working as a group, trying to solve an uns, like a free form challenge.

Alan (CoLab) (12:35.925)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (12:47.374)
so as the coach always they're ready to jump in when they need to.

Alan (CoLab) (12:51.189)
Yeah, so we have a 12 to two ratio, so 12 kids to adults at all times. And the idea is that we really want this to be a very personalised experience. So we capture a lot of detail about each student, how they learn, what their learning objectives should be, how we can help them. And I'll be honest, it's our biggest challenge finding the right people to be our coaches. You know, don't just need to have a pedagogical experience, knowledge, you don't just need to have a teaching experience.

But you also have to really connect with the kids. You have to be playful. You have to this energy. And the best test of that is the kids, right? When you go in and shadow for a session, they can see how you're at. And yeah, we've, we've interviewed maybe 200 people. We've hired nine. It's, it's a challenge, but at the same time, it means that the quality is really high. We can really help these kids. And at the moment I have a cohort that runs every Monday at 10 AM PT.

They started off as quite lone wolves, a bit shy, a bit reluctant to try new things. They didn't want to make mistakes. After four sessions of these different games and escape rooms and challenges, they're a cohesive unit. They think about short and long-term consequences based on their decisions. They show a lot of leadership. They manage conflict really well, better than most adults actually. And they also have fun. I've never had a cohort where...

Tami Moehring (13:58.708)
you

Allyson (14:13.627)
Thank

Alan (CoLab) (14:18.931)
I write an email out to the parents every week to say this is what we did and I'll get four like the same number of responses back. So we have eight kids in that Monday cohort, eight responses every week. It shows that actually that they really appreciate it.

Allyson (14:30.715)
That's, yeah, especially with 100 % return. That's amazing, like with the responses, that's so amazing. And it's also really exciting to hear more about what you and your team are doing because there is this idea that there is an opportunity to have real connection in online environments. And it sounds like you take a lot of time to put the design, you

make the design give autonomy to the student, but also make sure that they don't hit the rocks along the way, as they're going down the river, if you will. So I wonder, could you tell us a little bit more about like that, those design, like how do you set up your sessions to ensure that ability to be independent, but also collaborative? And you mentioned your coaches, do they often put their own spin on how something is designed or are they part of the design making?

Alan (CoLab) (15:21.631)
And that's really part of it. So I see CrayLab as this community where, you know, we have a structure, we have an idea of what the design should look like, but there's a process where we test it with students who can give us feedback from a user experience perspective. We test it with our facilitators and they play it students so that they can sort of understand how best to adapt it. Because it should also be genuine, right? If you're, if you don't deliver it the way that you authentically would, I think it won't land very well.

And all of our facilities have different personalities, different backgrounds. know, Jeff's really sarcastic, but he delivers it in really nice way. We then have Mia, who, you know, is great storytelling and just like you want to take your own strengths, but there is still a core theme running through it. Our challenges historically were built centrally by the co-founders. We've actually expanded that out to facilitators because A, it's a really good way for the facilitators to upscale and level up. But also it's a really good way to

Bring diversity into what we do. I think diversity breeds innovation and having our facilitators. mean, our latest challenges around avocados and risk. Like I could never have come out of that, but the Jeff came out of that and we're going to be running it next week. one of our other facilitators built a game called Pocheteco who are, it's based around the idea of these elite traders back in the Aztec empire. And I would say it's basically Super Mario Land too, but sort of Mexican themed and.

By having these different ideas, we can give the kids different learning opportunities and kind of build this interdisciplinary mindset. I think that's really, really important. I guess to answer your earlier question, Alison, like in terms of how do we build it, it's very intentional, right? We start off by thinking about what's the learning objective. So is it communication skills? it we want to talk about equity? I'd love to do one about financial literacy, but I can't find a fun way to do it. And then it's kind of like, how do we

use the game, the escape room as a vehicle to deliver that. And I'll be honest, we've thrown away 30, 40 to another challenges just because they weren't good enough. And it hurts, right? Because you've spent so long trying to come up with this idea. But at the same time, I think it's so important that the quality is there. I'd rather have fewer challenges, but they're all excellent than loads of mediocre ones because there's enough mediocre content out there.

Allyson (17:47.611)
So amazing, especially thinking about the game experience and how you make that intrinsic learning occur. Also, just as a side note, I definitely have someone I want to connect you with that literally talks about financial literacy in a fun way. So I definitely want to make sure that I connect you with them after. But the idea of gaming or the gaming culture, if you don't live in that world, can sometimes feel a little bit overwhelming or scary to some that don't participate in those

Alan (CoLab) (18:11.777)
Mm-hmm.

Allyson (18:17.029)
gaming experiences, or as you mentioned, if they're adults, are a little bit afraid to play. I personally, in my museum, Studiesberg, had to go to a Please Touch Museum here in Philadelphia, and we literally just got to play with toys all day, and that was how we all had to understand playing as part of the process. I don't know if everyone gets that type of experience as an adult in their professional life, but I do wonder, how do you have that conversation with people that may be

a little bit more apprehensive to bring gaming into the curriculum on a school level or a parent that wants to see the value of the experience their student is going to get but aren't familiar in that gaming capacity.

Alan (CoLab) (18:59.723)
think gaming has a bad rep, right? There's this element of like addiction. And I think sometimes you think, yeah, you're playing this thing. Are you actually learning? A couple of things. So for us, it's only once a week. And we're very intentional about this. Parents have asked us, can you run this seven days a week and we'll pay you for it. And we're always saying no, because this should be part of a balanced diet, right? I think doing the same thing over and over, there's a diminishing return there. We also...

Allyson (19:02.203)
Yeah, it does.

Seth Fleischauer (19:22.942)
Hmm.

Alan (CoLab) (19:28.779)
just see it as a vehicle. It doesn't have to be that, right? It doesn't have to be a game. Some of our challenges are escape rooms. Some of them are discussions. We had one about languages, right? Iponecho, Spanish and Latin, which was the most important language. It's very much a debate. It felt a bit more like school. It's very debate sort of focused. But by having that variety, you can sort of say it's not just gaming. I see more of it as playful education as opposed to, you know, just playing games.

The other side of this is also the opportunity, because you only have so many hours in the day. What do you spend your time on? I would rather my learn and my child did something that was engaging and educational rather than either or. And I think that's the conversation that we have with parents. And by, by framing it this way, I guess part of the self-selection process is there where parents who reach out to us are, they understand the process, they understand why we do what we do.

But like you said, there are kids who join and they are apprehensive, know, they're reluctant to new things. But what you'll find is most learners naturally get it. They are happy to just have fun and play. And when you create this environment that's welcoming, where your peers are forgiving and you're not really judged on how you do, a lot of those fears go away.

Allyson (20:37.679)
Okay.

Seth Fleischauer (20:51.892)
I still want to go back to that building of the cohort idea though because you described this place that does feel, I think you used the word magical at some point, but it does feel kind of magical, right? Like you're talking about a judgment-free zone full of 12-year-olds, right? Or a place where people do feel safe or where they are going to follow certain norms that create that safety.

Alan (CoLab) (21:06.891)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (21:21.78)
Are those norms ones that you work to develop or are you like kind of is the nature of the experience something that kind of self selects a certain type of person who's going to come into that and be a supportive peer? how does how do you how do you navigate that part of it?

Alan (CoLab) (21:44.147)
It's kind of like a company, right? You almost want to keep hiring people who are going to pump up your culture and reinforce that culture. Every time someone joins, they add to it. time someone leaves, they take something away. We have spent a lot of time building up our cohorts from day one to say, this is the expectation. This is why we're here at CoLab. These are not necessarily ground rules, but these are sort of the values that we hold ourselves to. And by emphasizing that and reinforcing that through our challenges through

the coaching, kind of then just becomes a thing that's already there at CoLab. And then it becomes way easier to bring someone in and have, you know, 10 other friends welcome you because they already understand what it's like there. I'll be honest, it's been really difficult to build this. Like we have had kids who struggle, right? Who struggled to work in teams who can't sit there for 45 minutes and

Our goal really as a coach is to show them that we care, we're there to help you. And you know, you can have these outbursts, you can be frustrated. That's fine. This is a learning opportunity for you. We're here for you. Let's talk about it. Let's find ways to navigate this. Let's give you options, right? We're not like a traditional school where you have to sit at a desk for one hour in one hour blocks. It's an open world, right? We have these classrooms and spaces where you can just go off and explore and come back when you're ready. We have to give kids that

Allyson (23:04.091)
Thank

Alan (CoLab) (23:11.157)
that feeling of being in control of our own destiny. And I think that's really empowering and really powerful.

Seth Fleischauer (23:17.876)
And I guessed at 12, but who is this for? this for people at home, people at school? What age group? Like, is it for anybody?

Alan (CoLab) (23:27.457)
We work with kids who are between 7 to 15 and we group them by stage, not age, depending on what the parent wants to focus on. So we have some younger kids in our oldest cohort, but they're very immature. very good at what they do. We also have some older kids in our younger cohorts because actually they may need to work on emotional intelligence rather than the critical thinking side. Yeah, so there is an element of that where we can create it. But in general,

We are actually looking to work more with adults and teenagers. We're about to run one in a school in Perth and the 13, 14 year old kids. We typically found it quite hard to run it in schools because of the logistics, right? You have 12 or 24 kids in the classroom, in same classroom. Some of them aren't wearing headsets. You your best friend might be across the room. It can be quite distracting. But with the right setup, it can be super powerful because

Seth Fleischauer (24:20.83)
Been there, yeah.

Alan (CoLab) (24:26.817)
We've worked in a couple of schools already and we typically have the teacher come in and be our TA. They take away a lot of the coaching skills. They take away a lot of the sort of techniques that we use and they report back to us after a couple of weeks that their school's attendance is up, their grades are up, kids are more curious. These are three of the biggest problems in schools right now and we're kind of quite a cost effective way of learning to do this. I also think it's a really great way to level up teachers, like to not just be a teacher, but also be a coach.

Allyson (24:46.608)
Mm-hmm.

Alan (CoLab) (24:57.287)
facilitator can really change the classroom dynamic.

Seth Fleischauer (25:00.894)
Yeah. Yeah, man. If you can get adults to get in there, like you're starting to solve the world's problems right there. I'm not in America. We're, fine in America. We're, doing great when it comes to adults and conflict. But, yeah, I mean, I mean, as you say, like these are all a bunch of skills that were not on anyone's radar when we were kids. I don't know how old you are, but I imagine not when you were a kid either, like, you know, this is all pretty, these are all some pretty recent ideas.

Allyson (25:06.811)
Have people be playful.

Alan (CoLab) (25:07.881)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (25:28.724)
the idea that we teach this stuff intentionally and explicitly, even within the something more unstructured like what you have. So yeah, adults could definitely use it.

Alan (CoLab) (25:28.747)
Mm-hmm.

Allyson (25:40.793)
And I do, I do like the idea of thinking as teachers, as coaches. There's that idea of teaching in partnership with the student, but even the idea of coaching, you know, when you come into your colleagues, your colleagues, can look to certain people that might need to support you in certain ways. So reframing the way that individuals say, see leaders, whether it's the leader that they need that's on their team, the leader that's leading the classroom. It's about

Alan (CoLab) (26:04.469)
Mm-hmm.

Allyson (26:07.639)
what's working for them. So it's really, it's a really interesting model to think about how you prepare your coaches to then support the family and the learners in the same kind of way that support elements really important.

Alan (CoLab) (26:18.699)
Yeah, and it's really interesting because we are in the hour week, so there is a limit to what we can do. by sending emails home and giving them, I guess, questions or tasks, sort of extended learning opportunities, can then, then becomes part of their routine. you know, kids can start using it on the way to school or on way to a club at the dinner table.

It just helps not just the parent, the kids, also the parents and maybe the teachers. Like as an employer, right? I don't care about your grades anymore. Everyone's got perfect grades and you can game the system. What I care about now is can you work in a team? Can you manage your emotions? Are you good at learning? Do you want to learn? And I find that a lot of young people these days don't have those skills, which is scary, right? They're the future.

and if they're not quite ready for this world then how do we help them?

Allyson (27:19.853)
Yeah, mean, so true, especially in thinking that some of the examples you gave are cross-discipline in relationship to subject, but also if you're not going to be able to get through a discussion and truly hear the other person to respond without emotion attached to it, that's something that's a skill that is definitely needed in all aspects of life, even outside of the school experience.

Alan (CoLab) (27:35.286)
Mm-hmm.

Allyson (27:46.829)
or if you can't get through a game without saying, I'm not doing this anymore. Those are things to know about yourself so that you're able to say, can I continue in these moments to improve and to do it in the ways where a community is involved, especially, you know, the coaches, but then also peers that you have across the world in places where you can feel really, really disconnected or remote, no matter if that's location or what's going on in the world around you or the life that's around you. can also see

yourself in a bigger world. But I think even if it's an hour a week, that's such an impact that you look forward to that hour. So really cool.

Seth Fleischauer (28:26.412)
one thing that we love to do on this podcast is bring in quotes from previous episodes and get you to respond to that quote. Tammy, could you, could you bring in a previous episode?

Tami Moehring (28:37.47)
I'd be happy to, and this quote is actually from someone who's present. It's Allison. in episode 56, Allison said, the best distance learning isn't about replacing what happens in a classroom. It's about doing what classrooms can't do. So with that in mind, how does that idea resonate with your work? What does virtual learning allow you to do that wouldn't be possible in a traditional setting?

Allyson (28:43.131)
Ha ha!

Alan (CoLab) (29:08.021)
Alison, I loved that quote. I mean...

Allyson (29:11.355)
I wish I remembered saying it. Sometimes I get so excited.

Seth Fleischauer (29:13.108)
Hehehehehe

Alan (CoLab) (29:16.045)
Well, it's I mean, I've worked and seen so many schools who pay a lot of money to build something virtual that is a replica of the bricks and mortar school. And I just think to myself, why? Like what what's the objective here? And it's really sad because that money could have been, let's be honest, better spent. think really by being online, there's multiple benefits, right? You can bring together these kids from other parts of the world. You make it much more accessible because actually

you know, it's a lot cheaper, right? I can host a conference for two hours and it might be like 50 bucks for you to attend something in person. It probably 10, 20 extra, including the travel, the accommodation. But also it means that we're not limited by physics, right? The laws of physics. So that example I gave you about this sort of getting sent back to the beginning, that would never work in real life.

It just can't, whereas we can be super creative. I'm building a challenge right now, which is basically the idea of it is that you have a map and you have to, one person has to walk through this maze, but the other person is guiding them. And there's loads of like sort of portals that send you back to the original place. And it's just the communication challenge, right? How well can you listen to the instructions you're being given? And it's like two steps forward, one step to the left.

steps back and if you can't listen to that you're going to get super frustrated. It's a very simple challenge but in real life that would never work on CoLab or on you know doing it virtually you can do that. It also means that we're not limited by the coaches that we can have right. I've got coaches who are in Bali, Australia, I've got a couple in China, Germany, the UK, the US, Mexico. We can bring together these different world-class leaders.

and coach these sessions and like in person, it just wouldn't be possible. Yeah, I just think it's really cool. And then this idea of being able to form this friendship globally and go and meet these people in the future is just something that I wish I had when I was a kid.

Seth Fleischauer (31:33.1)
Allison, you want to tape the golden moment?

Allyson (31:34.913)
yes, sorry. I'm, that was a golden moment for me. my goodness. So many wonderful things. I want to meet all of your coaching staff and see, and do all of your challenges. The one, the one question that we always like to ask is a little bit about your golden moments. Having spent your time developing all of the wonderful work that you just talked to us about, is there any one moment that really stands out as an impact about what you're doing or just really took you back and said, is the purpose?

Alan (CoLab) (32:05.621)
When we first started, you always have this imposter syndrome feeling of, this something that people need? Is this something that people want? And we'd been running sessions for about six weeks. And one of the parents dropped an email out of the blue and she said, my son finds it really hard to make friends. He's always found it really hard to make friends. The only thing that we've done since is CoLab, but at the airport just now in Chicago,

He made six friends. And I was like, this is so awesome. Cause it's, it's not just like you can learn all these skills, right? But if you don't apply it in other aspects of your life, there's no point. The fact that this kid was able to make these friends in a different environment and apply these skills. I was like, this is, this is why we do what we do. and we've had loads of those moments since right from kids who are lone wolves to becoming excellent team leaders, kids who struggle to

have empathy to them being, you know, super emphatic. Like that dungeon escape room, there was a kid who used to just zoom in, now he goes back and helps the strugglers. We've had parents say to us, you know, you're teaching my kids stuff that I learned in business school. There's a lot of like tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. But the biggest moment was, I think that it was like a turning point for us. And yeah, it just felt really special.

Seth Fleischauer (33:31.124)
And you've touched on what I think some of your answer to this next question might be, but it is our the titular question, the title of this podcast, Alan Tong from CoLab, why distance learning?

Alan (CoLab) (33:44.765)
I, it's a really good question, right? I, I think there's so, so many reasons to do it, but really this idea of creating diversity, this idea of bringing together different people, you can build communities. you can defy the laws of physics. You can make something super fun and it also becomes accessible. Like we, we set up co-labs so that actually kids from around the world could access it and use it.

I think a lot of education programs out there are too expensive and people can't use those opportunities. We're trying to change that. So for us, distance learning then just enables a lot of these moments.

Seth Fleischauer (34:28.564)
Hmm. Well said. And where can our listeners find your work on the internet? I guess, is it for parents and schools? It sounds like you have both, right? So either if they're interested, could reach out to you and set something up here. Where can they find you?

Alan (CoLab) (34:44.405)
Yeah, great question. So you can find us on collaborationlaboratory.com. I'm sorry, it's such a long URL. It's very hard to spell. You get used to it. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find us on Facebook or Instagram. If you're interested, you know, we run trials for individuals or pilots for schools. They're all free. Just come along, see if it's right for you. know, we, we want to be for everyone, but

realistically, there are some people who it's just not right for right and we don't want to charge you for it. So come along, have a free trial, experience it and if it's right for you, we can talk. One of the things that I am really proud of at CoLab actually is that we have set up a scholarship fund. So a lot of the money that we make from some of the classes from people who pay us, we set aside to give to scholarships for kids. So at Svitlo school that he was a guest, Yulia was a guest a couple of weeks ago.

Alan (CoLab) (35:45.012)
We gave like 25 spaces to our kids last year and we want to do more of that because I think that know money shouldn't be a barrier to good education.

Seth Fleischauer (35:56.948)
Absolutely. Tammy, Allison, any last thoughts or questions?

Allyson (36:01.885)
my goodness, thank you so much. This was such a wonderful conversation and thank you also for letting us know about the scholarship fund and how that model works. We'll make sure to link everything in the podcast notes. So everyone has easy, quick links to get to being able to sign up for the free trial and obviously so much more. And I can't wait to continue to learn from you as the months roll on. So thank you so much for just being here and starting the conversation.

Alan (CoLab) (36:28.427)
Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Tami Moehring (36:29.634)
Yes, thank you so much. great. You got me thinking of what it would be like to be a fly on the wall compared to a group of students working together and a group of adults working together. So, lots playing in my head. So, it's great.

Alan (CoLab) (36:44.031)
If you guys want, can come and experience the session. I'll run one for you and you can see how far you get through that dungeon escape room.

Allyson (36:52.731)
Oh my gosh, Tammy professional development opportunity for you and I a little colleague building time. Yeah. Oh, and I was going to say, then yes, I was going to say CLC. was just thinking about how we were going to have to tell Glenn, ask Glenn like Glenn, have this thing. Let's do some PD, Seth. Let's do it podcast style.

Seth Fleischauer (36:53.085)
You

Tami Moehring (36:54.488)
Mm.

Seth Fleischauer (36:59.572)
This, and if I come along, it might bring the podcast really to the next level. think.

Seth Fleischauer (37:09.556)
I also, you know, I'm sitting here, this is like day three of summer vacation for me and my kids at home in this new experiment of not doing camp. And I'm like, here's an idea. sounds great for my kids. I like honestly, I'm going to send them to check it out. So I'll circle back with you and let them know how they do. but Alan, thank you so much for, for being here. This sounds really exciting. you know, the, there's a lot in here.

Allyson (37:22.939)
Mm-hmm.

Alan (CoLab) (37:24.129)
you

Seth Fleischauer (37:38.824)
that is very dear to our hearts, not just the live virtual element of it, but the types of things that you're doing with it being student centered, being unstructured, gamified, teaching these types of skills that are important and critical and not addressed enough. I mean, you've got a lot of check boxes that you're checking here. And I really hope that people who listen to this and otherwise check you out because it's

It sounds like it's doing some great stuff for kids and some great stuff for the world. So thank you.

Alan (CoLab) (38:13.707)
very much.

Seth Fleischauer (38:15.16)
And so for our listeners, you know, as Allison said, please check the show notes. Thank you as always to our editor, Lucas Salazar. If you want to support the podcast, to our editor, Lucas Salazar. If you want to support the podcast, tell a friend, follow us, leave a rating or a review. It helps other educators find these conversations. And if you're curious about the realities behind the perceptions of distance learning, stay tuned to the voices we highlight on this podcast.

Allyson (38:26.351)
Thank you.

Seth Fleischauer (38:42.418)
These are the innovators and educators proving what's possible in live virtual learning, challenging misconceptions and transforming education along the way. Why distance learning? Because it's evolving, impactful, and here to stay. See you next time.

Allyson (38:55.973)
Bye.