Leaning into Design as an education superpower
Last week Jason Kottke shared this awesome <10 minute video on how tattoos work (hint: it’s all thanks to your immune system 🫡 )
While I do have a passing interest in tattoo art (here's a fun piece from The Atlantic that explores The Words People Write on their Skin), the reason this video made such an impression on me is the stunning animation and storytelling in service of learning.
I did a little digging and the creator, Kurzsgasadt, has other great looking videos covering Why We Need to Rethink Exercise, Optimistic Nihilism, What is Life? Is Death Real? and of course, the timely AI - Humanity’s Final Invention.
At the end of the tattoo video the narrator calls out that they regularly collaborate with the team at Brilliant.org (think: Duolingo for STEM subject matter) on their learning experiences.
This prompted me to download the Brilliant app (iOS | Android) and I'm super into it.
In just a few days I've gone through a course on How LLMs work (it just hits the basics and left me wanting more chapters), Statistics Fundamentals, Computer Science Fundamentals and am currently working through Programming with Python to knock some cobwebs off. I'm really enjoying the visual + interactive approach to learning and I'm also having the kids try it out to see whether its helpful for them as Brilliant has a bunch of materials on the concepts they're each learning in math.