4 ms·

Here's a question for you guys: If there was an easy platform to teach others, do you think there would be enough collective interest in putting together lesson

by glen 17y ago

Here's a question for you guys: If there was an easy platform to teach others, do you think there would be enough collective interest in putting together lessons/courses on programming? We at www.nixty.com are building out this platform and there are obvious areas where there will be pick up (homeschooling, skill development [ie., photoshop] etc.), but for a while now I've been wondering if hackers would actually collaborate and create a sort of Hackers U. There is a guy who frequently posts/links on HN to different lessons on learning python and other languages. I think that is great, so it is nice to see some initial movement in this area.

Chocobean 17y ago
I think that's the idea behind answers.com ask.com and instructables.com and wikipedia. People have a lot of free time, hackers included. I think a central hub where senior hackers can teach younger hackers is a noble and profitable idea. So receiving content for free will be the easy part. The hard part will be sorting through the 50 entries for how to start programming in Python and the 5000 entries for best text editors to use.
- glen 17y ago
  Yes, there definitely has to be an integral community moderated system, so that the best content rises.
  - Chocobean 17y ago
    incidentally, isn't that Joel Spolsky's Stack Overflow?? Although the emphasis on SO is answering questions, as opposed to instruction material on how to learn a certain technology.
endtime 17y ago
What would this offer that isn't already freely available on e.g. iTunes U?
- glen 17y ago
  It'd be a lot more structured like a course that you could work through. Lessons that would walk you through each part of a learning module. One lesson might consist of a video (from iTunes, Standford, or MIT lecture), test with feedback, discussion area (like HN) where questions are asked and answered etc. There would be a series of lessons like this that would contextualize some of the free stuff out there and also provide peer to peer learning.
  - endtime 17y ago
    Oh, so you're talking about actually having teachers/mentors? That would be great, but (as a CS TA) it's very time consuming and...well, I wish you the best of luck in finding enough people with time to teach.
messel 17y ago
I love the idea of interactive learning (between students), after getting a lecture+project broadcast. Syntax is a killer for new programs, things just don't work and weird errors sprout up (newer languages have fantastic IDEs to minimize this impact). Ideally it'd be groovy if teachers could get paid to build some functional (simple?) tools with their classes. Students could learn and produce at the same time, but in a limited/structured way. Professors do this type of research with grad students all the time. Companies do this type of thing with new employees all the time (mentor + noobs). Brings back memories of my first college coding project. Getting true basic to identify harmonics within a metal rod, and displaying info about the structure (thanks to Bjorn Einerson for doing the heavy lifting that weekend). About the same time I was cursing (syntax) at my green and back CRT in the main library while coding up a simple 6 node neural net in C (backpropagation).

by glen 17y ago

Chocobean 17y ago

I think that's the idea behind answers.com ask.com and instructables.com and wikipedia. People have a lot of free time, hackers included. I think a central hub where senior hackers can teach younger hackers is a noble and profitable idea. So receiving content for free will be the easy part. The hard part will be sorting through the 50 entries for how to start programming in Python and the 5000 entries for best text editors to use.

glen 17y ago
Yes, there definitely has to be an integral community moderated system, so that the best content rises.
- Chocobean 17y ago
  incidentally, isn't that Joel Spolsky's Stack Overflow?? Although the emphasis on SO is answering questions, as opposed to instruction material on how to learn a certain technology.

endtime 17y ago

What would this offer that isn't already freely available on e.g. iTunes U?

glen 17y ago
It'd be a lot more structured like a course that you could work through. Lessons that would walk you through each part of a learning module. One lesson might consist of a video (from iTunes, Standford, or MIT lecture), test with feedback, discussion area (like HN) where questions are asked and answered etc. There would be a series of lessons like this that would contextualize some of the free stuff out there and also provide peer to peer learning.
- endtime 17y ago
  Oh, so you're talking about actually having teachers/mentors? That would be great, but (as a CS TA) it's very time consuming and...well, I wish you the best of luck in finding enough people with time to teach.

messel 17y ago

I love the idea of interactive learning (between students), after getting a lecture+project broadcast. Syntax is a killer for new programs, things just don't work and weird errors sprout up (newer languages have fantastic IDEs to minimize this impact). Ideally it'd be groovy if teachers could get paid to build some functional (simple?) tools with their classes. Students could learn and produce at the same time, but in a limited/structured way. Professors do this type of research with grad students all the time. Companies do this type of thing with new employees all the time (mentor + noobs). Brings back memories of my first college coding project. Getting true basic to identify harmonics within a metal rod, and displaying info about the structure (thanks to Bjorn Einerson for doing the heavy lifting that weekend). About the same time I was cursing (syntax) at my green and back CRT in the main library while coding up a simple 6 node neural net in C (backpropagation).