Storytelling
Common wisdom says that teaching is one of the best ways to develop mastery of a topic. Why is this? It's the grapple - struggling to meet eye to eye with a student and molding your own understanding of the topic to their learning style. But still: why is this
Storytelling
In this series I explore learning -- specifically, why it’s difficult and how to get better at it. Sometimes I'll use science, other times I'll call on my decade of experience and observations on teaching a range of subjects -- both formally and informally. There's no single simple trick
Storytelling
Last week, I mentored a hackathon for beginners and intermediates at The Cooper Union and found myself repeating the same two pieces of advice over and over again. Since programmers shouldn’t ever repeat themselves, I decided to write it down and share with the world. This advice applies if
Storytelling
I'm fascinated by Morse code. It teaches us about encoding, language, technology, and our ability to learn to communicate in a revolutionary manner. Nearly every piece of information around us has been encoded. Even language--human communication--is encoded information. Language started as an abstract concept; we needed to communicate thoughts, ideas,
Storytelling
There are lots of people talking about big data these days. There's a lot of discussion about how to build apps for "web scale", and there's an emphasis on real time apps that collect comprehensive data. This article is me playing devil's advocate. I think the big data
