Software, education, tools for thinking and collaborating. Currently building https://xitter.cf/t.co/FbWqmLWQoL, https://xitter.cf/t.co/XseC3CjSD7
Queenstown
Joined November 2008
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A new project: stillgotit.school/ - spaced retrieval scheduler and presentation for classroom teachers that runs itself. Without regular review, kids *will* forget. Spaced retrieval secures the concepts in long term memory.
Basic idea inspired by Lee Wheeler's "learning engine", with presentation pedagogy drawn from @mrbartonmaths. Makes good pedagogy the easy option.
Direct Instruction is the most effective way we know how to teach… today.
Is it the most effective possible? Probably not. It would be a bit sad to think that we can’t discover even better ways. We haven’t been trying very hard for very long. 1/3
How will we discover these better ways? By experiment, just like DI. Engelmann and co figured out what worked empirically, through experiment and analysis. Principles emerged early, but were rooted in observation. 2/3
Alex North retweeted
I got to spend 30, 40 years writing code, mostly video games, and I'm just really grateful for that experience. What a dream.
I loved every little piece of it.
The bugs you'd fight with for days. Going to bed thinking about code and waking up with the answer (sometimes).
That feeling when something you crafted and agonized over finally just works. And doing it next to artists, testers, audio/musicians, animators, producers, designers and programmers, shaping these experiences together.
Now, in less than a couple of years, it's mostly AI writing the code, and it's bittersweet.
Looking back, that was a golden era, kind of a golden opportunity in the whole history of humankind, to program these things by hand. I don't think it comes back.
But I also think the next 30 or 40 years are going to be incredible for how these things get created and shaped.
So, grateful for the opportunity. A little sad. Very excited.
Alex North retweeted
"People in all areas of education, from critics to participants, are victims of not understanding what could be achieved with well-designed instruction."
- Engelmann and Carnine, 2011
Their livelihood depends on effective instruction. If the kids don't learn and enjoy, they're out of business.
Fascinating to watch semi-professional teachers like martial arts instructors through The eyes of instructional design. They get so many things right intuitively: small steps, examples/non-examples, frequent opportunities to practise, and teaching self-conception at the same time
Pleased to have some hot takes on record in @LookaheadSearch's State of AI & Engineering whitepaper.
The most interesting finding to me is the industry split on importance of code review. Keen to see how that one resolves. lookahead.com.au/ai-engineer…
Looking for signals on where a marginal contribution to open source might be most valuable, I ranked GitHub projects by the ratio of watch ("star") events to unique contributors over 2024-25. I'm not sure the results are much good as answers to the question, but interesting. 🧵
