Computing has already transformed education in many ways. Most schools around the world had to close due to the pandemic, but they've been using Google Classroom or Zoom to teach virtually. Years ago YouTube kicked off a revolution in teaching tactile skills: woodworking, car pair, cooking, plumbing, and so on. In the 2010s Coursera and others made college-level courses available online, often for free.

But I don't think we've tapped into the full potential of computers on education yet. The biggest gap I see today is in pedagogical tools. Tools for teaching are still limited to chalk and blackboard, text-books, and if we're lucky, a bit of video. We primarily rely on lectures and books to teach complex ideas despite the fact that both mediums aren't great at this.

We need rich, playable simulations that can help us understand complicated ideas more deeply. Kevin Simler's interactive essay on disease outbreaks and Nicky Case's interactive guide to voting systems are two great examples. You can build a deeper understanding of the topics they cover by playing with the simulations than by simply reading a bunch of text and looking at a few diagrams.

Another example of using computing to improve education is Quantum Country, which interleaves short quizzes into the content along with carefully timed email reminders to make sure you remember what you've learned.

We need more learning experiences like these. And because creating them is currently quite expensive and time consuming, we need better tools to create these richer learning experiences.