🎓 Mastery Learning and Creative Tasks

Khan Academy’s Andy Matuschak on tasks that require “depth of knowledge” versus those that have higher “transfer demand.” Both can be considered “difficult” in a sense, but teaching techniques to build knowledge need different approaches:

One big implication of mastery learning is that students should have as much opportunity to practice a skill as they’d like. Unlike a class that moves at a fixed pace, a struggling student should always be able to revisit prerequisites, read an alternative explanation, and try some new challenges. These systems...

Here are the slides from my talk at the first ever Ignite Tampa Bay. It was a blast to watch all the great talks from such a varied set of interests and passions. Great turnout, too — we drew a sellout crowd out to watch.

As difficult as it is to prepare for Ignite (20 slides, 15 seconds each, autoadvancing), I would do it again in a heartbeat. I’ve essentially done zero public speaking, so it’s nerve-wracking for me to stand up in front of 100+ people and talk at all —...

The front lines.