The reason is that understanding–like civilization, happiness, music, science and a host of other great endeavors–is not a state of being, but a manner of traveling.
Tag: learning
I realized if I made good, informed decisions I could solve problems in both normal and edge cases. Instead of a one-time answer, I could build a framework to answer any question. A mentality. The outcome of finding the answer, solving the problem, sharing the solution—rewards this mindset. A loop. Doing it over and over.
There’s an old rule of thumb that if you have something really important you need done, ask for help from the busiest person you know. Here’s an analogous rule: if you want to identify the most senior, knowledgeable people in an audience, look for the people who are taking notes and asking questions.
Good for what? Considering context in building learning objects.
I think we often view methods of tutorial creation as good or bad. Really, we would also be evaluating technologies and methods for tutorial creation based on the individual context.
Are you too old to learn to code?
But unlike walking, where there really is a developmentally appropriate age to learn to do it, the idea that there is a “right” time to learn to code (or most anything else) is a construct — a creation of our own determination to hold ourselves back.
I grabbed the “Learning Python” book and walked straight home.
This time, I wasn’t excited; I was terrified.
If I didn’t learn to code, we were done. I would have to crawl back into the world of finance. I’d have to tell all my friends and family that I had given up, that I had completely failed.
Library DIY
I think libraries need to look at how to make the wisdom of the library available to patrons in an unmediated format.
College was my biggest mistake:
$44,000 might as well have been a million dollars, because in my mind they were equally unfathomable- with only $300 in my checking account, I had to make a decision whether or not to borrow $176,000. Makes sense.
I remember facing a similar decision at 18. I withdrew the $6,000 from my savings account and wrote a $5,000 check to Whitman.
The other grand bought me a MacBook. On that MacBook I taught myself basic HTML, CSS, PHP, and eventually discovered WordPress.
I wouldn’t say my time at college was a mistake. Too much good came out of it to say that. But, I do know what the more productive use of my time and money was.
a well-designed system is not simply a bag of features. A good system is designed to encourage particular ways of thinking, with all features carefully and cohesively designed around that purpose.
This essay will present many features! The trick is to see through them — to see the underlying design principles that they represent, and understand how these principles enable the programmer to think.
Professors without borders. Interesting overview of mass, distributed, web-based teaching tools. Things like Coursera and Udacity are neat but they’re really just an alpha. They take the same model of education as traditional colleges and shift it online. The revolution will come when someone sets the goal of building a web-native tool for learning. Then it will get interesting.