News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Ask HN: How Do You Learn? by ai_ia on Friday September 10, 2021 @12:56PM (#28484254)
> But the experience of #2 is a massive dopamine rush. The main thing you need is patience; don't get frustrated and give up, you know that if you just keep poking around, eventually that dopamine rush will come.

I completely agree with you. I remember feeling the dopamine rush when I saw the 3b1b's video lectures on linear algebra and Andrew Ng's Machine Learning Lecture.

Although I strongly feel that simply reading books and watching video lectures are not the best way to learn on your own. You have to re-read them, use them, do the exercises and talk with peers to really get the underlying ideas. Maybe some better explainations exist, but hoping that you randomly stumble upon them as you browse through online articles is not a good idea, IMHO.

I like this quote from Prof. Michael Jordan:

"the first time you barely understand, the second time you start to get it, and the third time it all seems obvious."

You have to work with the material and come back to it again and again to really understand.

I have created a conversational learning medium, Primer, that is designed for self-learners. Our goal, right now, is to create conversational undergraduate-level computer science courses for anyone to learn on their.

It's primary focus is to bring resumability in play which books and video lectures lack. What I mean by that is that when you learn something from a book and video lectures, you start forgetting about it the minute you stop. After a month or so, your memory of the topics are maybe less than 30%. And if you haven't created flashcards or notes, then you have to skim over the book or watch the lectures to recollect.

On Primer, flashcards are automatically generated and your responses stored in the platform along with inline completions help to retrace & recover what you have learned. You can do the course for a while and resume again after quitting for a couple of months or years. Your responses act as memory breadcrumbs to help you retrace what you have learned.

You can test our two free courses over at https://primerlabs.io. ( No signup required ).

I have also created two comics-post about conversational learning that some of you may find useful.

1. Introducing Primer: https://primerlabs.io/comics/introducing-primer-comics/

2. Memory Breadcrumbs & Memory Trails: https://primerlabs.io/comics/memory-breadcrumbs-comics/

In the end, you have to treat everything as something you will eventually come back and update. That's why I like networked-thoughts tool like Roam and obsidian, a little too much maybe.

Re:Ask HN: How Do You Learn? by rahimnathwani on Friday September 10, 2021 @01:38PM (#28484809)
This looks cool. Your product overlaps somewhat with Oppia (an open source tool for creating interactive 'explorations'). If you haven't seen it, I recommend you check it out.
Re:Ask HN: How Do You Learn? by sitkack on Saturday September 11, 2021 @07:32PM (#28497100)
This is really cool, https://github.com/oppia/oppia

Reminds me a bit of HyperCard. What is your interest in Oppia? I dabble in these things, but was thinking of working on some shared "decks" with my kid.

Re:Ask HN: How Do You Learn? by rahimnathwani on Saturday September 11, 2021 @09:46PM (#28497875)
I'm interested in anything that has the potential to improve education, especially if it can do it at scale.

I'm not involved with the Oppia foundation, but I know Sean from my time at Google.

I started creating an exploration about accounting at https://www.oppia.org/explore/pepGU0qbyoUm but it's not complete and I haven't improved it since I created it.

Re:Ask HN: How Do You Learn? by sitkack on Monday September 13, 2021 @04:04PM (#28516098)
Following through your oppia quiz, it reminds me of interactive fiction. I could see one being used for the other here.

http://inform7.com/

https://blogs.bl.uk/english-and-drama/2020/04/writing-tools-...

Re:Ask HN: How Do You Learn? by rahimnathwani on Monday September 13, 2021 @04:56PM (#28516768)
In the exploration I linked, the only types of interaction offered to the learner were either ok/proceed, or 'answer this textual multiple choice question'. This may make it seem like Oppia doesn't do much more than software for interactive fiction.

BUT Oppia has lots of other interaction types: https://github.com/oppia/oppia/tree/develop/extensions/inter...

For example, you can input music notes: https://github.com/oppia/oppia/issues/4842

Or ask the learner to enter a fraction, or to sort some objects.

Re:Ask HN: How Do You Learn? by sitkack on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @09:42PM (#28534155)
There are more similarity between things like Oppia and interactive fiction, I don't see them at odds. It is is wonderful that Oppia has a musical notation interface.

If you zoom out far enough, everything could be considered a quiz.

This will all be on the test.