Wrandomness Written

Codecademy is a great concept: teaching basic programming concepts through successive action, each step building on the last. I signed up today by simply typing in a few lines of code, moving through a few lessons, & eventually being prompted to create an account. Great way to reduce barriers to entry. The potential for this type of learn-by-doing concept is incredible, but as you move into successfully more complex material the issue still comes back to lack of intelligence in online learning systems. The value a skills instructor is more than just a standardized progressive workbook, but an intelligent partner in your learning. The system needs to learn about you in the process of you learning about the material. Where are you having trouble? What steps are not making sense? How can I rephrase this (in word or metaphor) to make it more apparent what you are trying to learn here? 

We have a lot of increasingly intelligent systems, but few are used to truly provide greater opportunity and value to the world just yet. Facebook/Google learn about your online actions to better advertise to you. Standardized SAT/entrance exams learn about your answers to better increase the difficulty of your test-taking. What about intelligent systems that actually adapted to you for the purpose of expanding your personal potential? What about systems that knew your limits and pushed you just a bit beyond them? Intelligence is more than memorization and foundational knowledge, but adaptation of knowledge to person, place, or a society at large. We need more of this kind of intelligence in the world. 

At last November’s CT Forum on The Great Education Challenge, Joel Klein former Chancellor of NYC Schools mentioned how the future of learning will increasingly be less about standardized learning classrooms, but individualized learning systems made possible through technology that adapts to the student. Mass personalization vs mass production of education. As someone who often fits in his education between a hundred other daily obligations, the possibilities of adaptive, nonlinear, anywhere education is indeed intoxicating.

Hopefully sites like Codecademy are intelligent enough themselves to know how much further they have to go to be truly modern, effective learning systems.