Comment by anonymous5133 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonymous5133 | Hacker News Reader

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I'm also working on an education related project. With projects like this....the truth is, it is mostly a labor of love or passion for the subject that drives you. There isn't much money to be made (even to just support yourself) in creating free courseware. If you want to make money you are better off just working for a traditional university.

You can even see it for yourself. This guy started this project 3 years ago. Fast forward to today we can see that his youtube channel has 500 subscribers and most of his videos have around 1k views...this is after 2-3 years of each video being uploaded. Basically, no one is using this site. It is no surprise that we see so many of these education type projects being half built. The developers eventually toss in the towel.

Personally I think we need a combination of both to really change education though - open educational resources and the associated tools to learn the subject better. Preferably free but also low cost might work or supported by donations.

Right now the big publishers pretty much control the entire market. They own the content and they create the tools. Then they spoon feed it to university faculty (by making tools to basically "drag and drop" the content for teachers) and the student/taxpayers ends up footing the bill for it.

This resonates with "There are no projects like side projects" https://crastina.se/theres-no-projects-like-side-projects/ I wrote a few years ago (and it is still my credo).

Since I create educational projects (luckily, Quantum Game with Photons http://quantumgame.io/ was partially supported by an outreach grant; all other writings and stuff - not so much), I would love to see some way to support such endeavors.

Yup, that write up definitely hit the nail on the head. I could work on more lucrative side projects but there are just some side projects that you have to do because it just has the potential to be great and do real good in the world. Mostly what I see these days is a void in the educational market - you have a traditional educational system practically resistant to changing and then you have all of these emerging technologies. The emerging technologies go on to change other industries....but education, nothing changes, or very slowly. That's where my side project ideas some into play. I'm working on making a course right now in a traditional college level subject then adding a bunch tools (student data analysis, simulation games, interactive lectures etc.) to help students learn the subject better. Simply put, I want to take traditional college courses and then apply the latest technology to teach that subject. Let's create the world's best online course, create a bunch of really useful tools to learn the subject then scale it up and give it away to everyone for free.

Also I looked at your game and I really love it. It is so much fun (even though I don't know much about quantum physics). Now just imagine if we have a traditional college-level subject, such as quantum physics, and then use tools like your game to help people learn better. You still learn all the usual topics but the overall learning experience is made SIGNIFICANTLY better by having these extra tools to use to learn. Your game is an educational game but using the same technology used to create that game could also be used to create all sorts of things - experiment simulation, interactive graphics etc.

Sadly, innovation in teaching is neither a priority in academia (since it is not research) nor in the industry (since it is this kind of activity that ).

I wouldn't say there is no innovation though. There are science-based games (https://github.com/stared/science-based-games-list; it was here some time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14661813). I started collecting interactive machine learning, stats and maths: http://p.migdal.pl/interactive-machine-learning-list/ (a lot of things; of course, Immersive Linear Algebra is there). Most of these projects are side projects, though.

Also - I had a plan to extend the quantum game (it is nice to hear you enjoyed it!) to more particles... and then, a full course, with experimental widgets (e.g. showing interference, then explaining it, then giving space to play with it). With some framework (maybe $, but I care even more for collaborators and deadlines), I would love to continue that.

What are your projects?

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