As an autodidact interested in far more than I can learn in my lifetime I'm always on the lookout for the easiest path to learning. After struggling to find an acceptably easy path with Khan I dug up some alternate videos that gave me more direction. Am I really an autodidact? It just seemed the most concise word for my self-driven learning. If I don't fit the definition then I should go find a new word. :)

> Clippy

Ha ha! Yes. But I don't think we need defer this until we have strong, general AI. There are steps that can be taken now, with more coming in the near future. None of these will be "the" solution, but they'll be way ahead of where we are now.

Example: currently schools have "remedial" programs in various subjects. A student having trouble with math is assigned to the remedial math program, but not other remedial programs. Ok, now extend that idea by making it more fine-grained, both by topic and proficiency. Algebra would have several areas, each with separate proficiency levels. Design curricula for each area/proficiency, and a reasonable assessment method for placement. Collect feedback on time taken and right/wrong to improve curricula and assessment. No AI, but way better than what we have. It's not at all practical in classrooms, but it's very practical on computers if it's done on a large enough scale to warrant the cost of producing such a system.

And thanks to you and others, I will probably revisit Khan Academy soon.

There's a lot to be said about directed learning, totally. I wish I had a mentor growing up. But I've given up on easy learning.. that is, I've picked a lot of low hanging fruit and now I want to learn about quantum mechanics beyond an intuition level (I'd like to do the complicated math), so I have Feynman, Dirac, et al. What I like about Khan material is the brevity, but that doesn't work for all subjects. In the book department Schaum's Outlines for Stuff tend to fit my style well; I like having worked examples so I can pick up the patterns. If only I could just implant knowledge into myself with a chip-to-brain interface as in the Matrix!

If we did away with state-controlled curricula I think that'd help in itself. Even the schools where you supposedly "learn what you want" have workbooks you have to follow very orderly to "pass the material". The nature of state-curricula leaves it up to the arbitrary decisions of boards and a handful of teachers instead of experimenting and doing radical changes and letting individual teachers do their own thing to see how it works out. But this is all for a classroom setting.

There are lots of places we can use HI (human) more effectively... The whole Stack Overflow / Yahoo Answers model is great too, adding an interface to auto-connect people via webcam/mic/screensharing would be nifty instead of a series of text messages.

Very good thoughts! One promising thing about the Internet is the ability to form communities where local interest is too small or sparse. Currently these communities tend to be fairly stable and hoping to grow. But what if there were a way to facilitate ad hoc communities of people at a similar learning level, all going through a particular subject at the same time? You've given me some things to ponder. Thanks.