The Virtual Teacher

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers from Illinois and Florida are developing a networking system which will create virtual representations of real people to improve our knowledge. They will use artificial intelligence and natural language processing software to enable us to interact with these avatars. The goal of the project, sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is to give us the possibility to interact with these virtual representations as if they were the actual person, complete with the ability to understand and answer questions. We should see the results at the beginning of 2008 — if the researchers succeed."

Ask Jeeves - been there, done that, failed

[blitz487]

"Ask Jeeves" tried to do this and failed miserably. What hope does this have? Researchers still cannot even write acceptable language translation software, and this would be far beyond that.

tag: boycottroland

[joe_bruin]

I've just added *.primidi.com (Roland's blog) to my adblock filters. I obviously never go there intentionally, but I've clicked on his links a few times without checking the submitter name. I suggest you all do the same.

Unfortunately, the ZDnet article linked is also written by our buddy Roland. I do wish that Slashdot would give me a way to avoid his crap (or, y'know, just not approve his stories). Either way, I think the boycottroland tag will help me in the future.

This is no good for learning

[PermanentMarker]

I don't believe this would benefit learning.

A real teacher interacts with his students.
He notices their behaviour and based on that he adepts his lessons.
Think of it would a digital teacher help teenagers learn (adults are much the same).

More likely computer screen colors fancy graphics will distract away from what has to be learned. Remember we probaply all had tried that web advising monkey advater that could speak and would help you search the web. Nice idea but it mainly distracts. And computers dont understand people.

If you want to learn and want to learn.
You want to do it in quikest possibble way (as learning is a boring time eating proces).
You need the get facts inside your head, you could only do that optimal in environments with minimal distraction. while your mind is 'fresh' like in the morning (not tired).
Then simply the best method is "Read a book", and make some notitions of what you read.
There realy isn't anything better then that for theoretical knowledge.

If you need practicle knowledge then the best way is do it, i can talk about sculptures, but if you would like to know what it takes to make it, you need to do it.

And so far all those modern computerized les methods, i have to say crap!

(as a teacher i've often studied the way how people learn)