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Comment by citizen_friend | Hacker News Reader

My gut reaction to this sort of thing is that textbooks work great and have a timeless quality. But with a little more thought, they certainly aren't optimal. Being able to see a video, hear a sound, or play with a figure can be powerful learning. I think my hesitation comes from the fact that this stuff just doesn't seem to have longevity (think educational java applets) and tends to be proprietary (shitty Pearson learning hw). How can we get newer media as robust as text and pngs?

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It does not have to do with the book or any other medium. It comes from the learner. You are right about the problems mentioned.

1. Stuff does not have longevity. This is because most of the new tools are outside curriculum. This does not encourage students to learn something extra.

2. Proprietary. Books providing add ons have a different goal. They want to sell their books. So the addons or just that. Add ons. They are not complete.

These were some of the thoughts which encouraged us to build [1]. Keep it curriculum focused so kids don't learn anything extra. No books to sell :)

[1] https://books.innings2.com/

If only there was some kind of magic device that has basic input facilities coupled with some kind of simple graphics output.

I jest, but I think a very basic computational platform - think 6502-style - with simple graphics could be standardized upon and anointed as universal educational computation base.

If you don’t touch the instruction set this can go a long way. The outputs of course need to be universal, but we have some experience with outputting stuff on machines. I think we are able to come to some sort of useable situation.

Think PDF or whatever with built-in NES emulator.

Is that what you have in mind?

Yes. And the latest iteration of JavaScript/canvas has had longevity, but it doesn’t have the robustness of a JPEG. What you describe would be interesting.

WASM is a totally different path that’s also viable (I think). You can build whatever you want, as long as it compiles down to WASM you should be fine.

I’d like the standardization to be slightly lower in the abstraction tower. If people want JS or whatever, they can build it on top of WASM. Using JS as a stable basis is.. insane (but practical).

Wasm + canvas might be the worst longevity and robustness.

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