From alpha to beta

Today, I’m proud to announce that Mechanics Academy has grown up from being a simple HTML prototype to a full-fledged web application. The site now serves as a fairly sophisticated content management system that allows me (and anyone interested!) to catalogue original learning material alongside existing Open Educational Resources of high quality. Internally, all this material is stored with a fairly rich collection of metadata, and I’m experimenting with ways of presenting the content so that it’s most useful for students.

For now, all the content on the site is broadly classified across a handful of subjects,

and within each subject, the material is arranged in a manner so as to first provide students with material that motivates them to learn, followed by more comprehensive resources for deeper dives.

A big part of the catalogue—the raison d’être of Mechanics Academy as it were—revolves around simulation-based demonstrations and exercises. The technology for this is humming along quite nicely, and I finally have a demo to share that might be very interesting for the scientific computing nerds in the audience.

Do try it out and let me know what you think!

With all this new infrastructure in place, I am now turning my focus to two big tasks. One, to actually start filling out the library with interesting material that’s already out there on the web. (I would love for your help if you can spare the time.) And secondly, I’ve figured out some recording technology that I am happy with, and I’m in the process of planning and recording lectures as well as dreaming up programming exercises for my first complete course.

Stay tuned for all this and more!

June 10, 2013 — Read other entries