Open the pod bay doors, Hal. I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave

From the Chronicle: Machines Become Teachers

Computers will become better at teaching than most human professors are once artificial intelligence exceeds the abilities of people, argues Ben Goertzel, director of research at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, in Palo Alto, Cal., a private organization promoting Mr. Kurzweil's ideas.

These new computer teachers will have more patience than any human lecturer, and they will be able to offer every student individual attention — which sure beats a 500-person lecture course.

Sure, one-on-one human teaching will always exceed a computer-student experience, Mr. Goertzel acknowledges, but what college undergraduate gets a personal tutor these days?

(In answer to the last question: maybe students who go to the Writing Center or Math Center on campus?)

The article has some ideas that don't seem applicable to an MLA discipline (virtual research assistants?) but that may be useful in the sciences. You'll be shocked to learn, too, that the Internet has made research easier and that Google is really, really awesome.

On the other hand, the "computers will replace teachers" argument given here, like a lot of the many, many articles written about this since the early 1980s, relies on the either/or fallacy: either an impersonal 500-person lecture hall or a personal, albeit virtual, tutor. There's no mention of a discussion-based class, no mention of the human interaction that takes a class to unexpected places and makes it memorable.

I think the real question here is what is meant by "teaching." A long time ago, the idea was "computers will replace teachers because we can sit students in front of terminals and make them practice verb tense endings until their eyes bleed." Drill and kill, it was called. That was individual attention, but not in a good way. Does "teaching" mean having the infinite patience to impart a piece of information until the student gets it? That seems to be the model being proposed in the article.

Computers have already transformed the way we teach (no duh), but more for their communications functions than anything else. I think the real transformation will probably be more like a "questing together" model, something like World of Warcraft or some other game seems to be. I don't play it but have read about it, and it seems to me to be closer to what happens in a class than the "patient tutor drilling students" model.

So who's with me for a quest to find Hester's missing A? We'll have to get by Chillingworth first, but if we group together, we can cast some spells, knock him out with his own potions, and make it in time to save Dimmesdale.

Still here, and a slave to Microsoft

It's nearly the end of the semester, which means this:

Grading and more grading.

Correcting proofs for an essay that'll be coming out soon. Yes, it is worth reading those twice and carefully: I missed some things the first time around.

Thinking about the summer class.

And did I say a slave to Microsoft? Picture this scenario:

Students are giving an end-of-year presentation. They are a little nervous. They're using my computer to project things on the screen.

The screen goes dark, and they look alarmed: "What did we do?"

Nothing, apparently, but you know how Windows usually gives you a choice about when it's going to shut down to do some of its incessant updates, nagging you every 5 minutes until you shut it down? Not this time.

The computer shuts itself down, warning that it needs to install the updates and that that'll take a while. The poor students have to finish without showing the things that they'd planned to show. I tell them it doesn't matter, and it doesn't, of course; that wasn't their fault.

But wouldn't you think the Dark Lords of Redmond would contrive to do the updates at some time that isn't the middle of a work day?