DPRG mailing list archives: [DPRG] Re: Harvard v MIT

Thu Jan 25 16:56:11 CST 2007

Hi Mike:

Writing in Scientific American, Bill Gates says "...it is impossible to predict exactly what applications will drive the new industry" but he adds that the new personal robots "...will look nothing like the humanoid C3PO" (page 65). 

What we need is a contest sponsored by Microsoft to sketch out a design for Bill-Bot, a competitor to Robosapien. Bill-Bot can be used as a peripheral to a pc and with .NET SW, "anyone interested in robotics with even the most basic understanding of computer programming could easily write robotics applications". Well, we have .NET installed right here so we are waiting for MS to deliver on that promise. Let's use a language in common with Robotics Studio SW. How about C?

We can order VIVO HW and SW to go with Bill-Bot (or Robosapien while we wait for Bill-Bot). And voila! We are ready to program Bill-Bot. Bill-Bot becomes our Harvard teaching machine... Robosapien if MS doesn't get going pretty fast.

I agree with you below re "mixed mode" machine teaching. Students have the option of meeting with other students who live within reach and they may even be able to meet with human teachers. And for avid self-teachers, the extra help from Bill-Bot will work just fine.

So here's how it goes. One of the 100 universities now putting out OCW course materials steps up to the plate to write a teaching machine program for Bill-Bot in C. Having been instructed in C by MS, we could take care of writing the code from here. It could be any course but hey, why not have a sense of humour about this and make it  Introductory C Programming at BCIT? (That's Comp 1002). Bill-Bot is going to deliver on that statement in Scientific American by teaching C programming. Is that funny or what?

http://www.geocities.com/Bill_Gates_Challenge_in_Sci_Am 

PtP
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Mike Tintner 
  To: psychiatry-research at yahoogroups.com 
  Cc: pay_the_piper at shaw.ca 
  Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 8:51 AM
  Subject: Re: Harvard v MIT - Global Education

  PTP,

  This is a v.interesting & extremely important area. I think the answer to your point is that they should become open courses, with forums where students can talk to each other about their problems & from time to time to experts internationally volunteering time -  as they do already in computer forums.

  Of course, person to person contact is extremely important - & physical contact with relevant materials.  But the MIT experiment has to be made to work in some form or other - the ultimate benefits to global society and global education are huge. And we know it can be done - some people are largely self-taught in certain areas.

  PTP:Concerning the details of using those course materials, you may want to ask on the MIT- list. As far as I know the OCW PR man, Jonathan Potts is still on it as is David Diamond who covers OCW for Wired. 

  My main point is that OCW course materials by themselves are of limited value. Eventually they have to be taught or they are of no value. OK, what happens when OCW gets turned into machine taught courses?

  PtP

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Mike Tintner 
  To: psychiatry-research at yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 8:33 AM
  Subject: [psychiatry-research] Re:Harvard v MIT - Global Education

  Paythepiper writes:

  Around 100 world universities are participating in the Great MIT Boondoggle, which is to put course materials for thousands of courses into sets of notes which only instructors can use. If they maintain their success in creating the illusion of giving something away, perhaps the apocalypse will relieve them of any pangs from the equally illusory MIT conscience.

  Could you expand on this? I did have a quick glance at the MIT Net course materials recently & did find them confusing - sometimes downloadable, sometimes not... Are they in fact more or less inaccessible? Or only accessible to instructors?

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