sagefy

Hey, founder of Sagefy here. Thanks for the reply :)

Currently Sagefy is a side project, so there's no income to speak of. There's some ideas I've had around potential revenue streams, but I want to avoid needless tracking, third party advertising, and pay walls. It's a ways down the road regardless.

I'm not a lawyer so I can't speak to GDPR, but there's a list of everything its currently using: https://docs.sagefy.org/technology-stack

Sagefy does not sell or rent data. https://sagefy.org/terms

Hattie's effect size list is a good place to start if you're interested in what teaching practices leads to better learning results: https://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effec...

I few others I'd recommend:

- How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles by Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman

- How People Learn by Bransford, Brown, Cocking, & Pellegrino

- Learning How to Learn by Barbara Oakley

- Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Ericsson and Pool

Discloser: I wrote https://sgef.cc/tldrideas and am building Sagefy, a learning platform

Happy to answer any questions.

Thanks for picking up on it :) I wrote the long version first actually. I had a few people review before publishing. There were some concerns about the length (25 minutes). So I made the linked summary version as well. I posted both to Hacker News today. But the summary seems to be getting much more interest :)

Thanks for reading and the question :)

I'm inclined to agree that being able to recognize and recall information is a different (and often prerequisite) skill from applying the same information. Bloom's taxonomy https://bit.ly/1KRj4ZH is the way I think about it: recall/recognition, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of the same piece of knowledge are all distinct skills. You have to teach or seek to learn each separately... its not automatic that learning one gives you the other skills. (There's been some criticism of the taxonomy. But I'm not sure I've seen a better model.)

The latter part of your question, about academic v practical education in CS programs... I'm not familiar with the research about what improves retention in academic programs. That said, the more you can align and connect to someone's values and beliefs -- what gives them purpose -- they more motivated they are to learn.

Ericsson (author of Peak) is one of the best. His stories of his own research are so good!

Thanks for reading :) I remember Ruth Clark in "Building Expertise". Here's some of the sources she cites:

- Moreno, R., & Mayer R.E. (2000a). A coherence effect in multimedia learning: The case for minimizing irrelevant sounds in the design of multimedia instructional messages. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92(1), 117–125.

- Gibbons, C. (2007, December 29). Professionals take work out of their workplaces. The Arizona Republic, D1.

- Kenz, I., & Hugge, S. (2002). Irrelevant speech and indoor lighting: Effects of cognitive performance and self-reported affect. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 15, 709–718.

- Ransdell, S.E., & Gilroy, L. (2001). The effects of background music on word processed writing. Computers in Human Behavior, 17, 141–148.

The studies here seem to suggest most people learn better in quiet most of the time.

That said, I listen to music without lyrics myself while learning :)

Thanks for reading and for the question :)

You definitely can, and probably already are, learning multiple things in parallel in the scope of weeks or months. You want to make sure you have time to commit to each of those things. You probably only have about 3-5 hours a day of full effort to expend. So I wouldn't go beyond three or so different subjects in the same overall interval.

In the moment, you want focus. If you tried to learn to play piano using scores written in Chinese as an attempt to learn both at the same time, you'd probably overwhelm yourself. In the moment, the more specific and focused you can get the better. So maybe its a specific piano technique, like arpeggios in major scales. Or the Chinese characters for colors. The more you can remove distractions and break down what you're learning into smaller parts, the faster you're going to learn both in the short term and long term.

Thanks for checking it out and for the question :) I originally started in Flask. I started out using quite a number of libraries, but got a little frustrated back then when I didn't totally grok how the pieces all worked together. And Python 3 then didn't quite have the same support it does today. WSGI was simple enough to understand, so I started from there https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0333/

I've started looking into migrating the services from Python to Golang to make deployments easier. We'll see how it goes :)

I'm glad you enjoyed the article :) Thanks for reading!

Finding that why for me is (1) go really deep with your goals, (2) find ways to remind yourself daily of the big picture goal, and (3) connect the task at hand to the big goal. For example, maybe you're doing your program to get a job... but what does that job in turn get you? Maybe its more autonomy in your life, or what have you. For my own reminders, I use Stickies on macOs and just always have it there :) I don't always, but sometimes before I start reading a chapter or watching a video, I try to think for a second how what I'm about to do gets me to that bigger picture.

So true. Most of these ideas are all about setting goals for yourself and finding ways to keep yourself on those goals (Do one thing at a time, Make it Real, etc). I'm glad you're finding way to keep up with your learning goals! If you're into pop-psychology, Daniel Pink's "Drive" https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594484805 is so good!

Barbara Oakley's course is so amazing! I think it's still to this day the most popular MOOC. Her books and articles are great too, like "A Mind for Numbers" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00R5081JU

Thanks for the response :) You can try out my electronic music course to see how the site works currently: https://sgef.cc/emus I'd love some feedback too if you have the time to try it out. https://sgef.cc/feedback or here on Hacker News is good too.

It's been a long, iterative development process. I started back in April 2013, had the first go live in January 2016. Since then its been iterating and improving the software, getting feedback and making updates as I go. I'm a bit limited in how much time I get to spend on it due to having a full-time job. Getting more content is at the top of my list ( https://sgef.cc/wanthelp ). I really want to show what Sagefy -- and these learning ideas -- can do :)

Thanks again, cheers!

Author here, happy to answer any questions :)

I like a great deal that one of the considerations the authors make is adapting to prior knowledge. (3.1) describes what they looked for in detail. In their summary, "None provide personalization based on prior coding experience or learner goals, other than rudimentary age-based differentiation." Its hard to overstate the importance of prior knowledge. Prior knowledge has some of the highest effect sizes in educational research. In other words, what you already know going into it is going to determine how much you learn. It's rare for other factors to have the same impact on the results as prior knowledge. And yet, even given decades of learning science research, its pretty rare to see much of any attempt in Western learning to account for prior knowledge. It would be a refreshing change of pace to see some of these coding tutorials work in preemptive assessment to figure out where to focus the learner before getting into the "how" of it.

Disclaimer: I'm working on sagefy.org

In "Peak" by Anders Ericsson, he alludes to a few principles that makes learning into deliberate practice: setting small goals, getting expert feedback, focusing and removing distractions, and being somewhat discomforted. This article is familiar to that last point. To get the most out of learning, according to Ericsson, you should be in the 'yellow zone': not where you feel comfortable and easy, but also not reaching fight-flight-freeze mode either.

Getting in depth with a subject is painful. And its easy to waste time and effort. But it can be less painful if you're smart about it.

If you're tracking your progress, and you're aware what that next 5% looks like, that's much easier than trying to go for 100% each time. Getting feedback is critical too, and having that person help you set short, challenging but achievable goals makes a big difference so you aren't moving too quickly or slowly. Having peers who you can relate with and socialize your challenges with makes motivation easier. And you really need to set a time and place on a recurring basis, where the physical environment sets you up to be successful.

Disclaimer: I'm working on sagefy.org

The author suggests there's a choice between scaffolding and project-based learning. There isn't. Scaffolding -- or breaking things down, and 'putting on training wheels' so the learner doesn't get overwhelmed -- is an established successful teaching strategy with plenty of research to defend the technique. Project-based learning lends to the idea that making things real, instead of just drills, leads to better learner motivation and retention. Project-based learning also has evidence-based support. The idea that these two learning strategies in are opposition is false. You can absolutely break down activities in components, teach those first, and then do integration practice -- all while doing project-based learning. Think 'mini-projects'.

Disclaimer: I'm working on https://sagefy.org/

The institution-teacher-student model, or the top-down approach, is based on two things: 1) a specific, predetermined set of knowledge each learner must know at each level and 2) tying those requirements with specific ages. This results in one of two problems for the individual learner. Either they are mastering the content faster than their peers, or they need more time than the specifications allow. And, at least here in the US, there isn't much room for the learner to choose their own path. I know I often was frustrated in the classroom as a kid, either repeating information I already had down or jumping ahead without mastering the fundamentals first.

Much of this stems from economic concerns with education. We simply can't afford to have one teacher per student all day long at a systematic level. We know from years of research that 1-on-1 tutoring is almost always going to be the most effective model (combined with some social and problem-based learning).

We live in an exciting time. Technology can help remove some of the economic barriers to individualizing learning. I've been thinking about this problem for several years. If anyone's interested to see what I've come up with... I don't have all the answers, but (shameless plug) https://sagefy.org

The article in the parent looks pretty great! I've scanned it but I've got it down in my TODO list to read through. Always interested in hearing about different thoughts about the problem.

Interesting timing... literally just just finished moving from RethinkDB to Posgres myself https://github.com/heiskr/sagefy .

When I was first building the project, I didn't totally know what schema I would need. I started on Postgres. But having to constantly do database migrations while I was developing was a pain. RethinkDB was great for development while I was figuring out what schema I needed. But now that the website is live https://sagefy.org , the schema started getting stable.

I'm not using perfect third-normal form, but in many cases I have no query needs there so JSONB makes sense. JSONB columns can actually remove much of the need for NoSQL. The biggest gains from moving were: not having to do foreign key validations myself (yay!) and about 2/3 filesize reduction to the database. My database isn't large enough for performance to matter, but I'm sure it would eventually.

If I were to do this again, I would probably start again with a NoSQL database (maybe Redis or ES, or just files even) until I figured out the schema and then move to Postgres before launching. I'm sure there's smarter people out there who can start with SQL and predict easily what the feature set is going to be be before they start, but I don't usually have that foresight. `ALTER TABLE ...` gets old really quickly.

I'm keeping an eye on CockroachDB too... if they can really make something similar to Postgres but easily scales horizontally... that would be amazing.

Suggest Subjects – by Sagefy

Can't find a free online learning experience for what you want to learn? Request and upvote here! No sign-up or log-in required.

https://sagefy.org/suggest

You can also post here if you're thinking about building a new online learning experience... see if there's interest.

Syntorial is pretty good. If you're looking for something free (and much more basic), I have a quick video series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSwjp7Zt1GY&list=PLKzX4WhkkV... I built it as part of my course I'm working on for Sagefy, so that would include some multiple choice practice questions too: https://sagefy.org/subjects/CgDRJPfzJuTR916HdmosA3A8/landing But there's nothing quite like just using the tools and getting experience directly, for sure.

Hi hitokx,

Thanks so much for taking the time to check it out! I really appreciate the feedback.

When you click "find a set" from the my sets page (the page you get to when you first log in), it will take you to the search page. On there is a green box link to the (currently) only set, Introduction to Electronic Music -- Foundation http://imgur.com/a/nXk2I Let me know if that helps. Also, if you can think of a better way to handle it, I'd appreciate that as well.

Thanks again!

Hello Hacker News!

I'm looking for feedback for my side project, Sagefy. I've been working on Sagefy for a little over 3 years and finally have something to show! I describe Sagefy as an open-content adaptive learning system. You can think of Sagefy like a synthesis of "anyone can edit" from Wikipedia and adaptive learning systems like Aleks or Knewton.

Here's a short 3-minute explainer video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVwfwTOdnOE

All of the basic things are built, but Sagefy is still a little rough around the edges. You can try out a little course I've built in it, "Introduction to Electronic Music -- Foundation", at: https://sagefy.org/

Sagefy is completely free and open source https://github.com/heiskr/sagefy . I have no interest it turning this into any sort of commercial endeavour. If you're interested in getting more background, check out the Wiki at https://github.com/heiskr/sagefy/wiki . Or just ask :)

Let me know what you think! And thank you!