I'm Ari Bader-Natal. I design, build, and operate online learning environments that help people gain access to new opportunities and create new futures.
I am co-founder and CTO at Sparkwise. Sparkwise radically scales engaging live group learning by letting people connect, solve challenges, and practice skills together in tech-powered small groups. Check us out at sparkwise.co.
From 2019-2021, I served as the founding CTO at Calbright College.
Calbright is a fully-online competency-based college in the California Community Colleges system designed for working adults who lack easy access to traditional forms of higher education.
Before this, I served as Chief Learning Scientist at Minerva Project. I joined Minerva as Employee #1 in 2012, and spent 7 years creating new tools to support learning and teaching, including Minerva's first Active Learning Forum, tools for formative assessment, and collaborative curriculum authoring system.
In 2010, I built Studio Sketchpad, a place for creative coders to collaboratively create interactive animations in Processing (and later P5.js.) In addition to serving as a venue for informal learning, Sketchpad has been used by 100+ universities, high schools, and coding workshops. Notably, this service has been operating for over 14 years.
You could describe my work as "learning engineering."
- Web: 5-Day Gen AI Intensive Course with Google Learn Guide
- Web: Technology Quotes Activity — Civics of Technology
- Web: Building Bluesky: a Distributed Social Network (Real-World Engineering Challenges)
- Web: Introducing Extendable Articles
- Web: 40 questions to ask yourself every year
- Web: Shaping Obsidian’s Tomorrow – How Obsidian Can Embrace AI and Stay True to Its Roots – Toolbox for Thought
- Web: Zero-Cost Custom Feeds on Bluesky
- Post: Amit Chaudhary (@amitness.com)
- Web: The End of Productivity
- Web: LearnLM | Gemini API | Google AI for Developers
- Web: Self-hosting – AT Protocol
- Web: Archiving WebMemex
- More: favorites.aribadernatal.com