As a fellow ed tech traveller and big fan of Khan Academy, very excited to see this initiative!
If the goal is to get young learners excited, compelling stories and/or thought experiments can be a good entry point for the format you’re thinking of.
None of this is mutually exclusive:
- The drowning child definitely. Showing you don’t need to literally save a drowning child to save lives.
- Related—maybe an overall framing about heroism, how much easier it is to be a hero than it seems. This can be a good narrative thread to get the core points of EA thinking across.
- Something from the point of you of an idealistic young student who is undecided about her career choices, giving her different frames to think through her problem. The 80000 hours concept, how much of your life it represents, how a good career can meaningfully contribute those 80000 towards positive outcomes, possibly the earning to give concept as well (but presented as a complement rather than a substitute).
- On longtermism, I find the thought experiment about living every sentient life at the beginning of What We Owe the Future quite moving and motivating to think about the significance of living a moral life. Also the hypothesis that we could stand at the beginning of history is easiest to get across with a visual format such as video.
-Existential risk I’m less sure of how best to approach it. I have some experience doing online trainings (the target audience was adult professionals) on climate change. Even though they were based on solid data stakeholders found them catastrophist… and yet at the end of it learners loved them and from their verbatim feedback it seemed like they were really fired up and motivated to do something. I’m somewhat confused by this finding, my guess would be you shouldn’t wait too long in the video to introduce some kind of hope+actionable plan, it doesn’t have to be too specific, but something that doesn’t just leave the learner depressed and anxious at the end of it.
I love these recommendations, I think a strong storytelling approach like you mentioned will be very powerful! Bookmarking your ideas to keep in mind for for future content :)
As a fellow ed tech traveller and big fan of Khan Academy, very excited to see this initiative!
If the goal is to get young learners excited, compelling stories and/or thought experiments can be a good entry point for the format you’re thinking of.
None of this is mutually exclusive:
- The drowning child definitely. Showing you don’t need to literally save a drowning child to save lives.
- Related—maybe an overall framing about heroism, how much easier it is to be a hero than it seems. This can be a good narrative thread to get the core points of EA thinking across.
- Something from the point of you of an idealistic young student who is undecided about her career choices, giving her different frames to think through her problem. The 80000 hours concept, how much of your life it represents, how a good career can meaningfully contribute those 80000 towards positive outcomes, possibly the earning to give concept as well (but presented as a complement rather than a substitute).
- On longtermism, I find the thought experiment about living every sentient life at the beginning of What We Owe the Future quite moving and motivating to think about the significance of living a moral life. Also the hypothesis that we could stand at the beginning of history is easiest to get across with a visual format such as video.
-Existential risk I’m less sure of how best to approach it. I have some experience doing online trainings (the target audience was adult professionals) on climate change. Even though they were based on solid data stakeholders found them catastrophist… and yet at the end of it learners loved them and from their verbatim feedback it seemed like they were really fired up and motivated to do something. I’m somewhat confused by this finding, my guess would be you shouldn’t wait too long in the video to introduce some kind of hope+actionable plan, it doesn’t have to be too specific, but something that doesn’t just leave the learner depressed and anxious at the end of it.
I love these recommendations, I think a strong storytelling approach like you mentioned will be very powerful! Bookmarking your ideas to keep in mind for for future content :)