October 25, 2007: The E-Learning Adventure. By Nicole Girard. TechNewsWorld. "Improvements in the processing power of personal computers combined with Internet delivery applications provide a tremendous opportunity for novel approaches to preparedness training. The power of virtual learning environments lies in creating 3-D spaces that give users a sense of learning by doing. ... A simulation-based training game designed to equip players with the ability to deal with crises in a military situation was developed by research and development firm Stottler Henke. The system -- developed by the Navy to train tactical action officers (TAO) -- allows players to train within a battlefield simulation. As officers second in command to the captain, they are the individuals who run the ship in a crisis situation. 'In real life, the captain commands a cadre of about 15 people,' Jim Ong, group manager for Stottler Henke, told TechNewsWorld. Ong leads the development of artificial intelligence-based systems for training, performance support and decision support. ... Instead of pressing buttons on a dashboard, the player is talking to a person through the use of automated speech recognition and speech synthesis provided by a tool called 'Symbionic.' It's an intelligence agent toolkit used to monitor the students actions. It consists primarily of voice commands and questions and assesses whether or not the student is doing the right thing or not.... Stottler Henke specializes in turnkey applications and developing tools. Their main area of expertise is developing advanced training systems. Their core competition is artificial intelligence. 'We use [artificial] intelligence to make training more effective,' Ong said. 'A lot of simulations used by corporations tend to be pretty simple. Artificial entertainment games tend to have the intelligence of the characters that are in the game, the non-live characters.' The way to make the characters smarter is to enable the sim to automatically assess the students' performance, Ong said."
>>> Education, Military, Video Games, Speech, Applications

October 5, 2007: British patients counseled by a computer program. By Maria Cheng. The Associated Press / available from HeraldTribune.com. "Last year, 'Fearfighter' was one of two programs endorsed by Britain's health advisory watchdog for people with panic attacks, mild depression or phobias. People uncomfortable with getting advice from a computer can still choose to see therapists, but the option of logging on for help is now available -- and will be paid for by the government-run National Health Service. In Britain, patients registered with the NHS routinely wait up to six months to see a psychiatrist; nearly 90 percent of people with mild depression never actually see a therapist. The computer programs now mean that for some patients, getting psychiatric counseling is as easy as getting a password from their general practitioner to access the program online. ... 'The idea is that the repetitive parts of the therapy are done by a computer, which can then make decisions based on these answers,' said Dr. Isaac Marks, a professor emeritus at King's College Institute of Psychiatry in London, and co-developer of 'Fearfighter.' ... Many experiments in Britain, the United States and elsewhere showed that patients counseled by computers made just as much progress as those counseled by real live therapists. Using computers to treat patients was also much cheaper and could help cash-strapped health systems expand care. One study estimated that therapists using computer programs could double the number of their patients."

• Also see: Computer therapy access 'for all.' BBC News (March 27, 2007).

>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Cognitive Science, Medicine, Applications

September 26, 2007: Intelligent playgrounds. By Michelle Jana Chan. CNN.com. "Pick me! Pick me! The weakest children may no longer be left out of playground games. New technology may help to put kids on a more level playing field, which may in turn motivate them to learn and encourage competitiveness. Using modern artificial intelligence and robotics, new playground games can recognize a child's behavior and respond accordingly -- in real-time -- to make the game harder or easier. The industry calls it augmented cognition, or 'aug cog', a technology that is also being developed by the armed services to reduce mental overload in the battlefield. ... The team at the University of Southern Denmark developed the technology by first studying children in a playground. They categorized the behavior of children, comparing those who played in a disruptive manner with those who played in a continuous way. When they brought a new set of children to the playground, the neural network they had programmed had learnt to recognize different children's abilities. It could even distinguish when a child was tiring. Every thirty seconds, the neural network re-categorized the child and changed its response if necessary. ... Denise Nicholson, Professor of Modeling and Simulation at the University of Central Florida, is also researching aug cog in the gaming industry, as well as in education and even advertising. 'We want to understand more about people's reactions and find ways to measure that.' Nicholson is currently looking at a system, which will aid speech therapy."
>>> Interfaces, Neural Networks, Education, Video Games, Military, Machine Learning, Systems, Applications

September 3, 2007: The Thinkers - He's taking unknown out of teaching algebra. By Mark Roth. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "Last month, Los Angeles School Superintendent Roy Romer said that high school algebra 'triggers dropouts more than any single subject. I think it is a cumulative failure of our ability to teach math adequately in the public school system.' ... It is that kind of dismal performance that Steve Ritter is dedicated to overcoming. Dr. Ritter is the chief scientist at Carnegie Learning Inc., a Downtown company that markets one of the leading computer-based math teaching programs in the United States. The company's a spinoff from Carnegie Mellon University. ... The Cognitive Tutor's software lets students learn at their own pace, Dr. Ritter said, and can automatically change the mix of problems a student sees to help him work on the skills he is struggling with the most. And, in an unexpected benefit, the company has found that during the computer-learning sessions, teachers interact with 91 percent of their students -- far more than they would during a regular classroom session. ... [S]tudies have shown that the Cognitive Tutor program not only outperforms traditional algebra teaching, but also is especially effective in raising the scores of special education students."

• Also see: High Tech Ed. By Reid R. Frazier. Pop City (September 5, 2007). "At the core of Carnegie Learning is the Cognitive Tutor, a full math curriculum that employs an intelligent tutor. It uses artificial intelligence software to mimic how a real teacher would show a student coefficients, equations, and word problems. ... The program was created by a team of Carnegie Mellon psychologists and computer scientists studying how humans learn and think. The end product is a computer program that adapts to a student’s strengths and weaknesses the way a human teacher does."

>>> Education, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Applications, Resources for Educators

August 24, 2007: Artificial examiners put to the test. BBC News. "As GCSE students pick up their results this week, they may like to spare a thought for the examiners who devoted thousands of hours to marking their answer booklets. But in future, computers could help them reclaim their summer holidays. Professor Sargur Srihari's research team at the University at Buffalo, New York, is developing software to fully automate the essay-marking process. ... Exam scripts are scanned into the computer, the software reads the handwriting and translates it into computer type, and then grades the response as an examiner would, Professor Srihari explains. ... Professor Srihari asked human examiners to grade 300 answer booklets. Half of the graded scripts were then fed into the computer to 'teach' it the grading process. The software identified key words and phrases that were repeatedly associated with high grades. If few of these features are present in an exam script, it generally receives a low grade. ... Next, the computer was switched from 'learning' mode to 'grading' mode. Professor Srihari fed the remaining 150 scripts into the computer without the human grades attached. The computer predicted which grade a teacher would give each answer. The computer was within a grade of the human examiners 70% of the time. The results are published in the journal Artificial Intelligence. ... Dr Mary McGee Wood at the University of Manchester is also studying the role of computers in exam marking. 'It's interesting stuff,' she says. 'But they've been very clever to limit this to a specific domain - reading comprehension.'"
>>> Image Understanding, Neural Networks, Education, Machine Learning, Applications

August 16, 2007: Computers Driving Education in Marion. By Brett Garrett. KAIT. "In Marion, artificial intelligence is driving the intelligence of their students. Thursday, teachers in the district trained on a program that is helping students score 31% higher on state assessment tests in reading and writing. As the old saying goes practice makes perfect.  ... 'If you had to do it in a traditional manner, you would spend all of your time including your free time grading essays," said [Glenn] Hudspeth. That's why Marion has turned over the job to artificial intelligence. ... The program called My Access by Vantage Learning trains the system to grade papers based by grade level with input from three to five hundred example papers. It also frees up time for teachers for more specialized learning. ... The program costs around $30 per student a year. Principal [John] Heath feels that is a small price for the results they have already seen." [Watch the video report via sidebar link.]
>>> Education, Applications

July 9, 2007: Using a Robot to Teach Human Social Skills. By Emmet Cole. Wired. "Children with autism are often described as robotic: They are emotionless. They engage in obsessive, repetitive behavior and have trouble communicating and socializing. Now, a humanoid robot designed to teach autistic children social skills has begun testing in British schools. ... Developed as part of the pan-European IROMEC (Interactive Robotic Social Mediators as Companions ) project, KASPAR [Kinesics and Synchronisation in Personal Assistant Robotics] has two 'eyes' fitted with video cameras and a mouth that can open and smile. ... The researchers hope that the end result is a human-like robot that can act as a 'social mediator' for autistic children, a steppingstone to improved social interaction with other children and adults. 'KASPAR provides autistic children with reliability and predictability. Since there are no surprises, they feel safe and secure,' [Dr. Ben] Robins said, adding that the purpose is not to replace human interaction and contact but to enhance it. ... Using robots to interact with children is nothing new, although there's been a lot of new research lately into this kind of work. The Robota dolls, a series of mini humanoid bots developed as part of the AURORA project, have been in use as educational toys since 1997. The Social Robotics Lab at Yale is collaborating with a robotics team from the university’s department of computer science to develop Nico, a humanoid robot designed to detect vulnerabilities for autism in the first year of life."
>>> Robots, Education, Cognitive Science, Applications

June 26, 2007: Students Imagine Tech Solutions for Education. By Molouk Y. Ba-Isa. Arab News / available from NBN Lebanon. "Last Tuesday, some of the brightest students in the Kingdom were recognized as Microsoft Saudi Arabia proudly announced the winning team to represent Saudi Arabia in the Software Design category at Microsoft’s international Imagine Cup finals due to take place in Seoul, South Korea, in August. ... The winning Saudi team this year in Software Design is SmartPal, from King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM). Their concept is to design a 'teacher' based on advanced artificial intelligence that will be able to acquire information in any field via multiple sources including the Internet, and then answer any question or query in that field via normal human conversation (sound), video presentation (animation) or text representation (writing)."
>>> Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Education, Applications

June 18, 2007: Today’s tutorial will take place on the virtual beach. By Alexander Frean. Times Online. "Increasing numbers of British universities are setting up shop in Second Life, the virtual world where users can design exactly how they look -- and where the educational establishments say that there are boundless new opportunities for teaching and research. At Edinburgh University, one of the first in Britain to build its own island there, students from all around the world take part in tutorial groups sitting on a virtual beach around a campfire. ... Austin Tate, of VUE, the virtual University of Edinburgh, said that this fun element was an important part of Second Life. His own avatar conducts lectures wearing a skydiving suit. Professor Tate, whose research specialism is the application of artificial intelligence to search and rescue work, is also creating a virtual diorama, where students will be able to extract survivors from burning buildings or blocked tunnels."
>>> Education

June 15, 2007: Catching up to the 21st Century. By Susan McLester. TechLEARNING. "We sat down with Sharnell Jackson, Chicago Public Schools' chief e-learning officer, to get her take on the state of education today. ... Q. What is the biggest national issue in education technology today? A. One huge issue is how we're evaluating the effectiveness of technology in schools. We're publishing studies in the national press that don't truly reflect the impact of technology in the classroom. ... Q. What are some of the things we should be doing to catch up? A. We need to take advantage of artificial-intelligence applications such as Apangea and Cognitive Tutor that offer students virtual tutoring online so they can move ahead at their own pace. ..."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Applications

June 5, 2007: Pushing the Limits of Game AI Technology. AiGameDev.com. "AIIDE ‘07 starts tomorrow (Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment), featuring the most cutting edge research in game AI. The proceedings read like a 'who’s who' in the field, and there’s lot to learn from! Here’s a collection of highlights from the conference, and references that can be found online. ... "
>>> Video Games, Storytelling, Education, Applications, Conferences (@ Resources for Students)

May 29, 2007: Robot helps develop social skills. BBC News. "A robot is being taken into schools to study how it could help children with learning difficulties or autism to form relationships and learn social skills. ... The idea is that Kaspar will be a 'mediator' for human contact, Dr [Ben] Robins said. 'We are seeing already that through interacting with the robot, children who would not normally mix are becoming interested in getting involved with other children and humans in general. We believe that this work could pave the way for having robots in the classroom and in homes to facilitate this interaction.'"
>>> Robots, Education, Applications

May 29, 2007: Carnegie Mellon, WPI Grants To Explore "Intelligent Tutoring."  By Paul McCloskey. Campus Technology. "The United States Department of Education has awarded Worcester (MA) Polytechnic Institute and Carnegie Mellon University a four-year, $2 million grant to enhance a computerized program to help middle school students hone their math skills. The tool is designed to tie tutoring to the assessment of student performance under federal teaching and learning guidelines. The grant will help the schools add new capabilities to the system, called ASSISTment, which was developed over the last four years with support from the DOE, the Office of Naval Research, and the National Science Foundation."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Applications

May 14, 2007: Grading system put to the test. By Linda Conner Lambeck. The Connecticut Post Online. "Bridgeport is one of a handful of communities statewide selected for a pilot program using the computerized system to grade writing assignments. ... The program is much more sophisticated than the typical spell-check, combining artificial intelligence and the background to draw on thousands of human-scored essays so that it can offer critiques such as: 'You had a good opening sentence, but need to work on your transition between paragraphs.' If successful, the system could greatly increase the number of open-ended responses to questions on the Connecticut Mastery Test and perhaps eliminate the potential for human scoring errors that have plagued the state in recent years. 'Do I think it will encourage writing? Absolutely,' added Curiale Principal Milagros Vizcarrondo."
>>> Education, Natural Language Processing, Applications

May 10, 2007: Live Ink offers better way to read text online. By Mark Coker. VentureBeat. "When our ancestors first invented written language about 5,000 years ago, they unfortunately didn’t have armies of neuroscientists standing by to tell them block type was the wrong way to format their papyrus rolls. But fret not. Help is on the way. Walker Reading Technologies’ CEO and co-founder, Randall Walker MD, believes he and his team have developed a solution with a product called Live Ink that allows online publishers to improve reading speed and comprehension. Live Ink works by analyzing written language for meaning and language structure, and then applies algorithms that reformat the text into a series of short, cascading phrases. It breaks complex syntax into simpler syntax, which makes it easier for the brain to absorb the material. The company presented its latest findings yesterday at the sold out Digital Book 2007 conference here in New York."
>>> Education, Natural Language Processing, Applications

May 6, 2007: Schools Turn To Web Site As Interactive Writing Coach - State grant gives students access to MY Access! By Jenna Cho. theday.com. "Harry Barfoot, vice president of sales and marketing at Vantage Learning, said about 1 million students use the Pennsylvania-based company's MY Access!, including an estimated 15,000 students in about 60 Connecticut schools. ... Stonington [High School] is one of seven high schools that last year received a new state grant that provided funds to purchase laptops for high school classes in which writing is vital to instruction. It also included money for use of artificial intelligence-based writing software such as MY Access! Karen Kaplan, executive director of the state Commission for Educational Technology, educational technology consultant for the state Department of Education and program manager for the grant, was enthusiastic about the value of such programs. 'With artificial intelligence, students can get specific, targeted feedback several times in a PERIOD!' Kaplan wrote in an e-mail. '... This gives students a chance to write more, and learn how to improve their writing with immediate feedback.'"
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Applications

May/June 2007: Games and Their MIT Makers - Participatory games advance education. By Nancy Duvergne Smith. Technology Review. "The best modern video and online games do more than entertain. They also teach--and give players a say in how they learn. MIT is a pioneer in this participatory, games-to-­educate approach, with a growing number of faculty and alumni leading the field. And students interested in this kind of gaming can tap MIT's academic strengths, such as artificial intelligence, as well as industry savvy right on campus. MIT is bolstering the educational value of games. The Education Arcade, a joint initiative between Comparative Media Studies (CMS) and the MIT Teacher Education Program is demonstrating the potential of video games that are fun to play and involve academic skills. ... The history of computer-based games at MIT begins with the legendary invention of Spacewar in 1961 by members of the Tech Model Railroad Club, led by Stephen Russell '60, SM '62, EE '66. Another educational-gaming pioneer was Seymour Papert, a mathematician and artificial-intelligence researcher who, in the late 1960s, broke new ground in computer-based learning with Logo, the first programming language for children. ... As the industry swells--Americans now spend $7 billion annually on retail video games--MIT alumni are making an impact. "
>>> Education, Video Games, History, Applications, AI Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students), Industry Statistics

April 23, 2007: Virtual tutor adapts to student's limitations - Integrates artificial intelligence and advanced learning techniques. By Andy Blatchford. The Gazette (canada.com). "If Claude Frasson gets his way, canned computer courses will soon be a teaching method of the past. Through a decade of research, Frasson has found a way to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced learning techniques into computer-based education. He says his Montreal-based company, uMind, has taken eLearning beyond the pages of static text fed onto a computer screen. Instead, uMind's teaching tool adjusts to the strengths and weaknesses of each student. ... Launched in March, uMind employs AI to create a virtual tutor that recognizes and adapts to the student's limitations and emotional distress. The instructor knows when a student is stumped and activates extra teaching modules on the specific subject. ... 'The role of the teacher is enhanced,' said the Universite de Montreal professor, who has written more than 300 publications and four books on AI. 'Our tools provide a better way for the teachers to interact with more learners.' ... Under its former banner of Virtual Age International, uMind has already designed courses for such organizations as the Department of National Defence and the Montreal Transit Corporation. ... [Orly] Benchetrit predicts that by 2011, American companies will have spent $38 billion on eLearning, a growth rate of 82 per cent a year."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Business, Applications, Industry Statistics; also see this related article

April 16, 2007: If wired right, computers do belong in classrooms. Bob Sipchen's School Me column. The Los Angeles Times. "A buzzed-about U.S. Department of Education study released this month found that some popular software programs schools use to teach math and reading are pretty worthless. ... To increase my understanding, I visited USC's Information Sciences Institute in Marina del Rey. Carole Beal, a former professor of child development and education at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, has been working with brainy grad students to develop educational software that transcends the rote 'drill-and-kill.' She is familiar with many of the programs in the software study and says she wasn't surprised that they didn't produce big results. The problem, she said, is that only one of those tested uses the sort of artificial intelligence technology that encourages high-level interactivity. ... Call me an industry cheerleader, but what I see at [William Mulholland Middle School in Van Nuys] suggests that computers are already helping students learn and will become increasingly important year by year. Call me a Bush apologist, but I think that every classroom teacher, flesh and bone or silicone and circuitry, should be subjected to rigorous, objective assessment. When a good teacher and good technology get together, watch out."
>>> Education, Applications; also see these related articles: 1 & 2 (and this AI ALERT)

April 11, 2007: Research Center Explores How Humans Process Information. Northwestern University NewsCenter. "Human beings have developed specialized abilities to process information about the world around them in a number of ways. One of our most important mental abilities is spatial intelligence -- the ability to perceive accurately and to recreate or transform aspects of the world. The Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (SILC) [link], Northwestern's new interdisciplinary center, brings together researchers from four leading universities in a collaborative effort to understand and solve scientific puzzles of spatial learning and to enhance the mental skills people need to compete in today's technological workforce. Northwestern University scholars have joined with colleagues from Temple University, the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania to form SILC. ... Ken Forbus, computer science and education, studies spatial processes by building intelligent artificial intelligence (AI) systems that can represent and reason about spatial relations. Forbus and his team are developing a unique research platform called CogSketch [link] -- a program that will be able to interpret sketches in a humanlike way. CogSketch will allow students to sketch on a screen and receive feedback on their work. Once installed on hand-held computers, CogSketch could be used in classrooms to promote spatial learning or by engineers working out conceptual design issues."
>>> Cognitive Science, Education, Engineering, Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students)

April 16, 2007: If wired right, computers do belong in classrooms. Bob Sipchen's School Me column. The Los Angeles Times. "A buzzed-about U.S. Department of Education study released this month found that some popular software programs schools use to teach math and reading are pretty worthless. ... To increase my understanding, I visited USC's Information Sciences Institute in Marina del Rey. Carole Beal, a former professor of child development and education at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, has been working with brainy grad students to develop educational software that transcends the rote 'drill-and-kill.' She is familiar with many of the programs in the software study and says she wasn't surprised that they didn't produce big results. The problem, she said, is that only one of those tested uses the sort of artificial intelligence technology that encourages high-level interactivity. ... Call me an industry cheerleader, but what I see at [William Mulholland Middle School in Van Nuys] suggests that computers are already helping students learn and will become increasingly important year by year. Call me a Bush apologist, but I think that every classroom teacher, flesh and bone or silicone and circuitry, should be subjected to rigorous, objective assessment. When a good teacher and good technology get together, watch out."
>>> Education, Applications; also see these relatedarticles: 1 & 2 (and this AI ALERT)

April 10, 2007: RAND to assess algebra curriculum developed by CMU. By Eleanor Chute. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "The RAND Corp. will study the effectiveness of Carnegie Learning's Cognitive Tutor algebra curriculum with a $6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education. RAND announced the grant and the five-year study last week. Cognitive Tutor, which is based in Pittsburgh where RAND has an office, uses a software program that adapts to each student's understanding of the subject. ... The company's Cognitive Tutor programs are currently used by more than 475,000 students in 1,300 school districts across the United States. The math programs of Carnegie Learning are based on cognitive science research done at Carnegie Mellon University, where researchers study how students think, learn and apply new knowledge in mathematics."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Cognitive Science, Education, Applications; also see this related article

April 5, 2007: Software's Benefits On Tests In Doubt Study Says - Tools Don't Raise Scores. By Amit R. Paley. Washington Post (Page A01). "Educational software, a $2 billion-a-year industry that has become the darling of school systems across the country, has no significant impact on student performance, according to a study by the U.S. Department of Education. ... The study, released last night, is expected to further inflame the debate about education technology on Capitol Hill as lawmakers consider whether to renew No Child Left Behind this year. 'We are concerned that the technology that we have today isn't being utilized as effectively as it can be to raise student achievement,' said Katherine McLane, spokeswoman for the Department of Education. Industry officials played down the study and attributed most of the problems to poor training and execution of the programs in classrooms."
>>> Education, Applications; also see this related article

April 2, 2007: New Breed of Digital Tutors Yielding Learning Gains. By Debra Viadero. Education Week (Vol. 26, Issue 31, Page 9). "Struggling algebra students in the Everett, Wash., school district get help from special tutors who diagnose their weaknesses, tailor instruction to their needs, and provide on-the-spot feedback -- all with an inhuman degree of patience. That’s inhuman literally: The tutors are computers. Three years ago, the district started employing Cognitive Tutor, a series of computer programs based on artificial intelligence that were developed by researchers from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The programs provide an alternative form of math instruction to secondary school students who haven’t succeeded in regular classrooms. The experience proved so successful that officials in the 20,000-student district have expanded the program. ... 'What distinguishes intelligent tutors from integrated learning systems or skill-building software is that the tutors sort of both scaffold and support more complex cognitive processes,' said Margaret Honey, the director of the New York City-based Center for Children and Technology. 'Well-designed tutors are smart enough to know there’s not a single way to solve a problem, and that’s what makes them "intelligent."' ... 'Our goal isn’t to replace teaching,' said Mr. Koedinger, who also co-directs the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center, a $25 million operation run jointly by the University of Pittsburgh and CMU that uses intelligent-tutoring systems to study learning. 'It’s to give teachers more time to do what they do best.'"
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Applications

March 28, 2007: System lets troops practice working with virtual interpreter. By Bill Hess. Sierra Vista Herald & The Bisbee Daily Review. "As the war on terrorism continues, GIs need faster capabilities to learn their jobs, such as becoming interrogators. General Dynamics C4 Systems of Orlando, Fla., has stepped up to provide a system for which student soldiers can interact with a virtual, screen-projected cast of characters. On Tuesday, the government contractor displayed its Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Tactical Proficiency Trainer, also known as a Human Intelligence Control Cell, a system that uses speech recognition, artificial intelligence and computer synthesized speech to train interrogators, at the Training and Doctrine Command Cultural Awareness Summit at The Palms. ... The avatars, as the characters on the screen are called, can be modified to add to or delete from a program to help a student react to changing circumstances, Lansverk said. While avatar is a computer word, its root is from Sanskrit, meaning god-like creatures. ... 'We’re learning from the gaming industry. But these are big-time games,' [Darryl Hackett] said."
>>> Military, Speech, Machine Translation, Education, Agents, Video Games, Natural Language Processing, Applications

February 20, 2007: Grand challenges free researchers to explore what can be imagined. By John Jernery. The Daily Yomiuri Online. "By design, grand challenges are dreamed up to push the envelope, to break through barriers, and to ignore limits. ... In the previous 'Report from Silicon Valley,' we began looking at some of the grand challenges currently under way in Britain under the auspices of the U.K. Computing Research Committee (www.ukcrc.org.uk). ... We continue here with some of the other grand challenges that the British are exploring. The Architecture of Brain & Mind: Cognitive science, artificial intelligence (AI), and robotics, while related, have traditionally followed distinct trajectories. Cognitive science is primarily concerned with understanding the human mind, while artificial intelligence would be happy to create any type of intelligent system, humanlike or not. Robotics brings programmed action, intelligent or otherwise, into the realm of the physical. In the true spirit of a grand challenge, the Architecture of Brain & Mind project aims to bring these three disciplines together in a single demonstrable system. ... Learning for Life: Computer tutoring, e-learning, and distance learning are fast becoming a common ingredient in education-and not just for children. Learning today is a lifetime endeavor and the Learning for Life grand challenge seeks to discover what that means in the coming age of ubiquitous, possibly intelligent machines."
>>> Grand Challenges, Cognitive Science, AI Overview, Robots, Education

January 30, 2007: Robotic Fish Cleared In Computer Glitch. By K.C. Jones InformationWeek. "The Association of American Medical Colleges' first computerized administration of medical school admissions tests experienced a glitch, but the error appears to be of human origin and not caused by robotic fish. ... No problems have been reported with the software provided by Prometric and or a new artificial intelligence scoring system from Vantage Learning. ... Computerization allowed all scores from the Saturday test to be tallied by 5 a.m. Monday, Jones said. It used to take 30 days to collect all of the exams at a single location and another 30 days to send students their scores."
>>> Natural Language Processing, Education, Applications; also see this related article

January 12, 2007: Artificial Intelligence Used To Grade Medical School Tests. By K.C. Jones. InformationWeek. " The Association of American Medical Colleges will use artificial intelligence to score the writing portion of the Medical College Admission Test. Vantage Learning and Prometric announced this week that they will provide intelligent, computer-based essay scores beginning this year. ... The new format allows AAMC to administer the test 22 times annually, up from two."
>>> Natural Language Processing, Education, Applications

January 5, 2007: Emotion-aware teaching software tracks student attention. By Tom Simonite. NewScientist.com news. "Tutoring software that knows when students' are losing interest in a lesson and can adjust to keep them on track is being tested by researchers in China and the UK. The system keeps track of students' attention by measuring physical signs of emotion. ... 'We've built a prototype that can moderate the flow of educational information as a result,' Callaghan told New Scientist. For example, it can slow down or change topic if a student seems disinterested, or appears to be falling behind. The software might also try a different mode of delivery, switching from text to video, for example. 'It can also learn that certain types of material are more stressful to the student than others,' he adds. This could help the system determine which material is most difficult for a student and requires further focus."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Interfaces, Emotion, Applications

December 23, 2006: Learning center coming to town. By Rick Stouffer. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "'Two years ago, we had a handful of people, now we have 30, and by the end of 2007, we should have 50 to 60,' [Louis A.] Piconi said. 'Today, 30,000 school students in 14 states and 175 school districts are using our products.' ... Apangea [Learning]'s hybrid tutoring utilitzes a software program that uses artificial intelligence to pinpoint learning problems, which is reinforced by a human tutor."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Applications

December 17, 2006: Caught in the swarm - How Hanoi's chaotic traffic system fascinated, and almost killed, MIT computer-science guru Seymour Papert. By Matt Steinglass. The Boston Globe [boston.com]. "The fields of computer science and education suffered a blow on Dec. 5, when Seymour Papert, the 78-year-old cofounder of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab, was struck by a motorbike in Hanoi. Papert, who had come to Hanoi for a conference on teaching math with computers, remained in a coma as of Friday. Strangely, shortly before the accident, Papert had been discussing how to build a computer model of Hanoi's notoriously chaotic traffic. He found it an interesting instance of a theme closely associated with his work: 'emergent behavior,' or the way that large groups of agents following simple rules, with no central leader, can spontaneously create sophisticated systems and activities. ... Papert's involvement in emergent behavior grew out of Logo, a child-friendly programming language he invented in the 1970s for teaching math."

• Also see: Accident deaths highlight Vietnam's traffic crisis. The Associated Press / available from The Taipei Times (December 17, 2006). "A chartered plane yesterday flew technology and education expert Seymour Papert, 78, back to Boston, along with family members, a nurse and a neurologist."

>>> Multi-Agent Systems, Education, Transportation, Agents, History, Languages; also see these related articles

December 12, 2006: Microsoft Research goes to school - Technology alone won't solve U.S. tech education woes, says Rick Rashid, head of Microsoft Research. Newsmaker interview by Martin LaMonica. CNET News.com. "At a panel discussion, [Microsoft Research chief Rick] Rashid said that it's 'reasonable to start panicking' about the low number of computer science engineering students graduating from U.S. colleges and universities. During the conference, Rashid spoke to CNET News.com about how Microsoft's work with universities casts some light on how technology can enhance learning through social experience and hands-on participation."

• Also see: Q&A: Rick Rashid - The director of Microsoft Research defends the company's past, present, and future. By Jason Pontin. Technology Review (December 13, 2006). "RR: ... You can see a little of it with our interfaces today. In various Microsoft applications today we have systems that dynamically adapt their menus based on usage patterns. For instance, they depopulate the menus they know are not being used. ..."

>>> Computer Science, Education, Resources for Educators, Interfaces, Interviews

October 25, 2006: An innovative, interactive way to learn maths. IST Results. "Mathematics is a demanding subject to learn for both students and teachers. Now a new web-based system, LeActiveMath, helps students to learn the subject by adapting to the pupil and to the learning context. The system is based on personalised, tool-supported exploratory learning. LeActiveMath combines cutting-edge technologies with the functionality of the web to develop intelligent tutoring techniques. The result is an innovative system that provides mathematical course material which can be adapted to learner goals, the learning scenario, users’ individual competence levels and preferences. Project partners point to pedagogical research claims that the purely 'instructivist' approach seems to fail in many learning situations. Learning mathematics should not be aimed solely at solving the problem, but also at thinking mathematically and arguing about the correctness or incorrectness of the problem-solving steps and methods. 'This is the idea behind competency-based pedagogy,' explains project coordinator Erica Melis of the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence. She notes that the 'constructivist' view of learning is based on the theory that knowledge cannot be directly taught to a student, but must be constructed by every single student in relation to his or her prior knowledge and experience."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Applications

October 16, 2006: TeachTown a service for autistic children. By Kim Peterson. The Seattle Times. "What: Seattle-based TeachTown ... What it does: Sells a computer-based treatment program for children with autism that includes online and offline activities and video-game technology. "
>>> Education, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Video Games, Applications

October 11, 2006: Interview with W. Lewis Johnson, Founder of Alelo. By Ben Kuo. socalTECH.com. "We recently ran across Alelo (www.alelo.com), a startup and University of Southern California spinout developing interactive games used by the military. The company's very engaging, interactive 3D role playing games teach languages like Arabic and Pashto to troops being deployed to the Middle East. Using speech recognition and other technology, the titles teach foreign languages to players as they go through the game in simulated environments like Iraq. We spoke with Dr. W. Lewis Johnson, CEO of Alelo, about the firm's technology and plans. Ben Kuo: Tell us a little bit about Alelo, and what the company and product does? W. Lewis Johnson: Our overall company is called Alelo, and we also have a government subsidiary called Tactical Language Training LLC which develops projects for the government. We develop interactive products for teaching foreign languages and cultures using video game and artificial intelligence technology. We're a spinoff of the University of Southern California, where I am a research professor in Computer Science. ... Ben Kuo: Where's the idea come from for using games to teach a language? W. Lewis Johnson: I have been doing research for several years in what we call pedagogical agents - animated characters that can act as guides and tutors.  ... Ben Kuo: Can you talk about the user experience with the language recognition? I was impressed by the fact that the software recognizes what you say in Arabic. ..."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Video Games, Agents, Speech, Natural Language Processing, Interfaces, Education, Military, Applications, Interviews

September 12, 2006: Colleges see the future in technology - Online classes are only the start of how schools are looking at ways to use high-tech gear and change the way students learn. By Stuart Silverstein. Los Angeles Times. "Though long known for their adherence to tradition, colleges in California and elsewhere increasingly are embracing a variety of higher-tech approaches to teaching and learning. And new gizmos, including gear with cutting-edge videogame or artificial intelligence technology, are on the way to provide more individualized instruction. Some of the most futuristic devices -- if colleges are adventurous enough to try them -- could even monitor students' brainwaves to keep track of how they're learning. The trend toward electronic technology could be particularly dramatic in California, where demographic and economic forces are likely to promote ways to stretch the state's educational resources. ... [Carol] Twigg's outlook is based partly on her center's four-year effort with 30 colleges to redesign high-enrollment courses. The 30 projects involved such things as deemphasizing lectures and relying more on online tutorials and discussion forums, along with using computerized grading to give students speedier assessments of what they were learning well and what they were getting wrong. The result: Student learning rose in 25 of the 30 projects. ... At the same time, the cost of providing instruction was reduced an average 37%.  ... Artificial intelligence experts are developing 'intelligent tutoring systems' that can help students working on problems in, say, algebra or physics where there are many ways to solve a problem -- as well as many ways to go wrong."
>>> Education, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Video Games, Cognitive Science, Applications

September 6, 2006: 'Intelligent' grading at Capistrano Unified - New software will begin evaluating Capistrano Unified student essays, one of several changes to be seen this year. By Sam Miller. The Orange County Register. "Students at 24 elementary schools will use a computer program called MyAccess, which grades essays instantly using artificial intelligence. Saddleback Valley Unified has used the program for two years; some CUSD high-schoolers have used it, and Barcelona Elementary had some fourth- and fifth-graders using it on a trial basis. 'The finding was the kids are willing to write more, and the more they write, the more they improve their writing,' said community outreach director Michelle Benham."
>>> Education, Natural Language Processing, Applications

August 30, 2006: Beating the bullies at the touch of a button. By Joanna Valley. Edinburgh Evening News. "Researchers at Heriot-Watt University led a project to develop the pioneering programme which allows children to tackle cyber bullies in preparation for real-life playground scuffles. ... The artificial intelligence programme allows children to watch bullying behaviour and decide what action the victim should take. Their decisions are acted out by characters on-screen."
>>> Video Games, Education, Applications

August 23, 2006: Joke generator raises a chuckle - Software that can construct jokes has been created by researchers. BBC News. "The System to Augment Non-speakers Dialogue Using Puns (Standup) project has been developed by scientists at the Universities of Dundee, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. Computer scientist Dr Annalu Waller, one of the project researchers the University of Dundee, said: 'Basically, the computer comes up with novel jokes - many of which are terrible.' ... Dr Waller said children who are unable to speak can suffer from communication setbacks because their computerised speech aids can lack scope for generating novel language. Language play, including use of humour, is believed to have a beneficial effect on a child's developing language and communication skills. ... 'It gives these kids the ability to control conversations, perhaps for the first time, it gives them the ability to entertain other people. And their self-image improves too.'"
>>> Humor, Natural Language Understanding & Generation, Natural Language Processing, Education, Applications

August 20, 2006: Computer mark demise of the red pen era. By Arthur MacMillan. Scotland on Sunday. "Computers will be used to mark written exam papers in Scottish schools in the most revolutionary and controversial change to the qualifications system in decades. Students will type answers directly into a PC, then sophisticated new software will assess the responses and award a grade, all without the involvement of a human marker. ... Last night, education groups gave the e-assessment plan a qualified welcome. But teachers' organisations warned that no artificial intelligence system was capable of matching the expert analysis of an experienced human marker. ... Computers have long been used to mark multiple choice exams, but there is no UK precedent for assessing and grading written answers by machine. ... Martyn Ware, business manager for the project, said: ' ... Some questions being asked involve statements of facts, or a short explanation of words in a short essay. These are areas where we think AI-based technology can be used successfully. It will also allow multiple sitting of exams, potentially removing the annual day of dread in August.' The SQA [Scottish Qualifications Authority] wants the new 'e-assessment platform' to be in use by 90% of exam centres by 2010."
>>> Education, Applications

July 26, 2006: Can a computer teach art? By Tim Whitmire. The Associated Press / available from The Austin American-Statesman [statesman.com]. "I stared at the computer screen, aghast. I had just scored five out of a possible six points on Criterion, a computer program designed to evaluate and grade writing from college freshmen. ... Through personal accounts, students can submit drafts of papers to the Web-based program and get feedback on what needs work. Professors can let the program grade a student's writing, freeing the professor to focus on content in a paper, exam or essay. ... I looked around. A couple of those kids were still hanging around the computer lab. Surely they would see the madness of allowing a mass of silicon chips to judge one's writing, the most essential flowering of one's intellectual core. Ashley Anderson, 18, had gotten a 3 on her essay. How'd she feel about it? 'It was quick. I liked that,' she said. 'I think it said something about my concept.' ... When I spoke with Donna Hollenbach, a product manager at ETS, on the telephone, she explained that ETS developed Criterion as an aid to both students and faculty. 'We developed it for students because there is a growing need for students to improve their writing skills,' she said. 'We've got a huge and growing population of kids that need remediation in order to do college-level work.' She said Criterion uses 'natural language processing' -- which she described as an offshoot of artificial intelligence -- to analyze different linguistic features in a piece of writing. ETS has spent the last decade-plus refining the program, which merges analysis and constructive feedback. ETS uses real-life student essays that have been scored by humans to 'teach' Criterion what an essay should read like at grade levels from 4th through college -- and how to recognize, say, a 6th grade '2' or a sophomore year '5.'"
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Applications; also see this related article

July 21, 2006: AI Programs Grading Student Essays. By Bary Alyssa Johnson. PC Magazine. "Professors at colleges and universities across the country are giving their students an opportunity for academic advancement via a variety of Web-based essay grading programs. SAGrader and MY Access! are among a handful of automated essay scoring programs that offer writing tips and feedback for students that want to improve their scholastic standing through a revision and re-writing process. ... Students can access the program online or through participating schools for a one-time fee of $19.00 per student per course. The fee offers unlimited access to SAGrader, enabling students to rework and revise their papers to the point of perfection. 'Students like the program because they like the immediate advice and ability to rewrite the paper,' [Ed] Brent said. 'It is also good for students who wait until the last minute to write their papers because they can get help late at night when their teacher is unavailable.' ... MY Access! analyzes student essay and offers feedback in five domains including focus and meaning, organization, content and development, language use and style, and mechanics and conventions. The program offers academic advice in multiple languages including English, Spanish, and Chinese. A Japanese version will be available in the near future. 'We combine Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology and natural language understanding concepts to train the engines to understand how to score accurately,' Barfoot said. 'Essay scoring itself is a small piece of the entire puzzle. It's all of the feedback and learning on top of that which is really the application itself.'"
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Natural Language Processing, Applications; also see this related article

July 6, 2006: ISU program awarded $1.34 million dollars. By Tony Sapochetti. Daily Vidette. "The Mind Project, a program of excellence at ISU, was awarded $1.34 million by the National Institute of Health in order to continue their research in cognitive and learning sciences. David Anderson, associate professor of philosophy, said what the goals and main research aspects of The Mind Project are, and how it will incorporate the newly awarded money towards student and faculty research and teaching practices. ... Anderson said the main aspects The Mind Project will be focusing on with their research will be based in medicine and robotics, by teaching students about robots and artificial intelligence in general and to learn about different types of surgeries."
>>> Medicine, Robots, Cognitive Science, Education, Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students), Applications

July 2, 2006: A better math idea? Check the numbers. By Robert Miller. Dallas Morning News. "A Russian-born mathematician has created a nonprofit program that he thinks will revolutionize education in the U.S. He created Reasoning Mind because he had a dismal opinion of American education, from kindergarten through high school. ... 'Students today prefer to learn and learn math best when complex information is delivered in an individualized way through the Internet,' Dr. [Alexander R. 'Alex'] Khachatryan said. 'While it was not easy to implement, the Reasoning Mind model is simple: ... *It is delivered in a competitive, gamelike environment, challenging students to push themselves to mastery. *An automated tutor (created through artificial intelligence technology) provides support and guides students through increasingly challenging concepts and tasks. * Each student's program is monitored by the computer system and reported to teachers so that difficulties can be diagnosed early and learning progress can be tracked continuously. ...'"
>>> Education, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Applications

June 18, 2006: Computers to mark papers in school trial. By Hannah Edwards. The Sydney Morning Herald. "Students at a Sydney high school are set to take part in a trial in which computers will mark their English assignments, examining grammar, punctuation, spelling and style. ... The program, titled Criterion, allows students to upload responses to essay questions that are then submitted to a computer server for checking. Mr [David] Hawkes said the program would relieve teachers from duties such as checking spelling, allowing them to concentrate on assessing areas such as content. 'Its chief advantage will be teachers being able to develop a closer relationship with the students,' Mr Hawkes said. 'Second, teachers will be able to concentrate on deeper aspects of essay writing such as context development and the structuring of the essay. "It's a really clever area of computer science. It's called natural language processing. The program's accuracy is now around 90 to 95 per cent of what a human marker would mark at.'"
>>> Natural Language Processing, Education, Applications

June 5, 2006: Robo-student answers roll call - Hospitalized kids keep up on studies with help of robots. By Jim Fitzgerald. The Associated Press / available from the Daily Herald. "Lying in his hospital room, on a mattress designed to protect his fragile skin, 13-year-old Achim Nurse poked his bandaged fingers at an orange button on what looked like a souped-up video game console. Half a second later, in a social studies class discussing the Erie Canal, a 5-foot-tall steel-blue robot raised its hand. 'You have a question, Achim?' said the teacher. Achim is using a pair of robots -- one, called Mr. Spike, at his bedside, and its mate, Mrs. Candy, in the classroom -- to keep up with his schoolwork and his friends for the months he will be bedridden at Blythedale Children's Hospital in Valhalla, just north of New York City. The robot in the classroom, which displays a live picture of Achim, provides what its inventors call 'telepresence': It gives the boy an actual presence in the classroom, recognized by teachers and classmates. It can move from class to class on its four-wheel base and even stop at the lockers for a between-periods chat. ... The robot system was developed in Toronto by Telbotics with Ryerson University and the University of Toronto. It is managed in the United States by The Learning Collaborative, under a federal grant. ... [Andrew] Summa said one student used a robot so fully that it joined the boy's classmates to sing a song at a school show. He said a child in the audience asked, 'What's that thing up on stage?' to which a friend of the student replied, 'That's no thing. That's Jimmy.'"
>>> Robots, Education

May 31, 2006: The educational computer myth. Commentary by Thomas W. Hazlett. Financial Times. "Learning is mostly about growing an ability to think, and web surfing skills – or even championship agility in the point-and-click Olympics – scarcely pings the higher cerebral reaches. At best. At worst, the classroom PC sucks up valuable oxygen, diverting youngsters from frog dissections, multiplication tables, and the ABCs. ... The point is that modern systems - from networked communications to artificial intelligence - are not a boon to mankind, or that children should be barred from enjoying their fruits. It is that computers, which complement the sweaty mental work-outs that grow young minds into strong thinkers, do not substitute for exercise."
>>> Education

May 26, 2006: UNR students creating high-tech war games. By Don Cox. Reno Gazette-Journal. "Advanced computer science and engineering students at the University of Nevada, Reno are creating high-tech war games for use by the Navy to train ship captains and officers. ... 'The Navy uses simulations for training,' said Sushil Louis, computer science and engineering professor. 'A lot of good simulations are very much like a big video game.' But the simulations are serious. ... 'What we are designing for them is artificial intelligence to control a large number of (ships),' Louis said of the computer programs."

• Also see: UNR team uses technology to improve Navy training. The Associated Press / available from USAToday.com (May 31, 2006). "Programs created by the UNR students and teachers will allow a computer to control hundreds of vessels for a single simulation. 'The problem they have is realism,' said Sushil Louis, director of the Evolutionary Computing Systems Laboratory at UNR. 'We're giving them the ability to make it more realistic.'"

>>> Education, Video Games, Military, Applications

May 10, 2006: Website helps users develop reading skills. USAToday.com. "IBM will give schools, libraries and community centers free access to a new website that allows young children and adults with limited English to practice reading aloud, the company announced Wednesday. The website uses newly developed speech-recognition software that 'listens' to readers and helps correct errors. The Reading Companion program...."
>>> Speech, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Applications

April 20, 2006: Stottler Henke to enhance intelligent tutoring system for U.S. Navy. Military & Aerospace Electronics Online. "Stottler Henke Associates Inc., previously involved in the intelligent tutoring system (ITS) for training U.S. Navy tactical action officers (TAOs), has been contracted to develop an enhanced version of a simulation-based training system designed to make the training experience more realistic, engaging, and effective. ... 'The speech-enabled graphical user interface will more accurately represent how a TAO actually works on board a Navy ship by enabling the student to converse with simulated crew members to issue commands and receive information,' Dick Stottler, president of Stottler Henke Associates, says. 'The new TAO ITS will employ intelligent agents, rather than instructors, to play the roles of simulated crew members. This will reduce the staff overhead required to conduct effective TAO training. The new system will automatically evaluate the student's performance in real-time and infer tactical principles that were applied correctly, or not applied, so it can coach the student during each scenario.'"
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Agents, Education, Military, Applications

April 11, 1006: Troops Learn to Not Offend. By Gretchen Cuda. Wired News. "A seemingly harmless gesture could get a soldier in hot water, especially in a war-torn country. Body language that's meaningless in the United States -- such as showing the soles of one's feet -- is offensive in Iraq. So the American military is adopting a new video game created to help soldiers navigate the mysterious world of international nonverbal language. Developed by the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute, the Tactical Language Training Program is different from interactive language programs of the past, which focus solely on spoken language. In Tactical Iraqi, players navigate a set of real-life scenarios by learning a set of Arabic phrases, culturally relevant gestures and taboos. Other titles include Tactical Levantine and Tactical Pashto. Following each lesson, the player is asked to interact with other characters using speech and gestures, while a speech-recognition system records and evaluates the responses. Accurate responses allow the soldier to build a rapport with other characters and advance to the next level."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Military, Video Games, Education, Speech, Applications

March 29, 2006: CMU uses game maker's characters to interest girls in computer programming. By Mark Roth. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "The delights of computer programming can be a tough sell to many students -- particularly girls. 'If you walk into a roomful of middle school girls and say "Do you want to learn how to program a computer?", only a few hands will go up,' says Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Randy Pausch. 'But if you walk in and say "Do you want to learn how to tell a story and make a movie?", all the hands go up.' That's one reason why Dr. Pausch is so excited about a groundbreaking deal announced earlier this month in which video game giant Electronic Arts has agreed to donate the animation for characters from 'The Sims' to Carnegie Mellon for use in a novice programmers' course the school has developed. ... If that encourages more students, particularly girls, to become computer science majors, no one will be happier than video game companies like Electronic Arts. A survey by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA showed that the number of college freshmen interested in becoming computer science majors has dropped more than 60 percent over the last four years. The dropoff has been worse for women. ... 'There's kind of a critical period during middle school where girls sort of decide for or against math and science,' Ms. [Caitlin] Kelleher said."
>>> Education, Resources for Educators

March 24, 2006: Internet taking on new role in education. By Gina Delfavero. Blairsville Dispatch / available from PittsburghLive.com. "A decade ago, computers and the Internet were a rare commodity in schools. Today, they are as commonplace as the textbook. And the role of technology within education is continually growing, reaching into new areas. ... [The Apangea Learning] system, called SmartHelp, uses artificial intelligence with all of its tutoring, but it integrates the use of human tutors, as well. According to Matt Hausmann, vice president of marketing and business development for Apangea, the artificial intelligence system handles 80 percent to 90 percent of the tutoring. But it will recognize when the student needs more help than it can provide, and flags a live online tutor to 'help students through the hurdles,' he said."
>>> Education, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Applications

March 12, 2006: Carnegie Mellon to use 'Sims' in educational software. By Daniel Lovering. The Associated Press / available from USA Today.com. "Carnegie Mellon University plans to incorporate characters and animation from the popular video game The Sims in its free educational software that strives to make computer programming more appealing to students. The university will use the animation to enliven the next version of Alice, a teaching program developed over the past decade and used at more than 60 colleges and universities and about 100 high schools, said Randy Pausch, a computer science professor and director of the Alice Project. ... The effort to revamp Alice is intended to boost interest in computer programming among students, who have historically found the skill frustrating to learn. ... Redwood City, Calif.-based Electronic Arts Inc., which publishes The Sims, wants 'more women in computer science, they want more minorities in computer science ... any underrepresented group,' Pausch said. ... Steve Seabolt, vice president of Electronic Arts, said that 'by marrying the characters, animations and playful style of The Sims to Alice, we are helping make computer science fun for a new generation of creative leaders.'"
>>> Education, Resources for Educators

February 27, 2006: Pioneering artificial intelligence project outlined at British University in Dubai. Posted by Lara Lynn Golden, News Editor. AME Info. "A pioneering research project from within the Middle East, which aims to examine how an artificially-intelligent tutor can help teach English as a foreign language, is set to be discussed at the British University in Dubai (BUiD) in March. The experimental program - 'Intelligent Tutor' - is capable of systematically correcting errors for students studying English as a foreign language, and adapting to their preferred style of learning. Developed by Dr Marina Dodigovic, it could provide an important tool for students of the future looking to develop their language skills and has been hailed as one of the major 'technologies of the future' by experts in artificial intelligence. Dr. Marina Dodigovic, Assistant Professor of English and TESOL, the American University of Sharjah, will deliver the lecture, employing her wide knowledge of the field of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL)."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Applications, Events (@ Resources for Students)

February 17, 2006: Learn Arab Language, Culture. By Stefan Lovgren. National Geographic News. "Researchers have developed an interactive computer system that uses artificial intelligence and gaming techniques to teach Arabic to U.S. soldiers. Soldier-students equipped with microphones navigate through an Arabic-speaking environment on a computer screen. If they successfully phrase questions and understand the answers, they can move on to the next level of the game. ... The characters that users face in the game, meanwhile, are animated by artificial intelligence. ... 'Language without any context is hard to learn,' said [Högni] Vilhjálmsson, a research scientist with the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. 'But if you put it into the context of face-to-face communication, allowing for gestures and other non-verbal behavior, it becomes easier [to learn].' ... In each mission, students must complete an overall task focused on civil affairs and reconstruction efforts. In the Afghan version, the task is to rebuild a clinic in a remote village. ... A speech recognition system allows the speaker to communicate with characters on the screen. ... Users can gauge how well they are doing by the reactions of the other characters."

• Also see:
  • February 19, 2006: US troops taught Iraqi gestures. By Paul Rincon. BBC News. "The US military has funded a computer game to teach its troops how to use and decipher Iraqi body language. The purpose is to teach soldiers that using the wrong gestures can potentially cause offence and escalate already tense situations. ... Tactical Iraqi is built on top of the game engine for Unreal Tournament, a first-person computer 'shoot-em-up'. In the training tool, though, subjects use communication to resolve situations."
  • February 18, 2006: Gestures can help soldiers, students alike. By Andrew Bridges. Associated Press / available from MercuryNews.com / also available from BostonHerald.com. "The study of gestures is relatively old, said Justine Cassell, a professor of media technology and society at Northwestern University. What is new is the acceptance that gestures themselves can tell something about how humans think. In Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East, that knowledge has found its way into a video game and training program that the Pentagon is using to give soldiers a crash course in how to speak and gesture like locals. ... The simulators are equal parts tutorial and video game. They place soldiers in simulated, three-dimensional Middle Eastern environments and expose them a variety of social situations. The soldiers can interact with local residents, including curious boys, shy women and suspicious men, after learning basic language and gesturing skills. The 'natives' are all independently endowed with artificial intelligence and react according to how well or poorly a soldier handles a situation."

>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Video Games, Military, Education, Speech, Applications

December 22, 2005: Upstart educational software firm growing again after retooling strategy. By Corilyn Shropshire. post-gazette.com. "It was late 2004, and Carnegie Learning was performing poorly in the school of business. Sales were low, morale even lower and the 6-year-old educational software and publishing firm had yet to follow up on its successful maiden product, 'Cognitive Tutor' -- a secondary-school math curriculum that melds computer-based learning with classroom teaching and workbooks. ... Mr. [Dennis] Ciccone's tenure is the fourth iteration for Carnegie Learning, which evolved out of a collaboration in the 1990s between Carnegie Mellon University computer science and psychology researcher John Anderson and Bill Hadley, a former Langley High School math teacher who now serves as Carnegie Learning's chief academic officer. ... Carnegie Learning's problem wasn't a lack of customers. 'Cognitive Tutor,' its secondary school math curricula that includes algebra and geometry, is being used in about 6 percent of the nation's school districts, staffers say. The trick was expanding its market share beyond that level. ... So many software firms have floundered because they embrace the tech mantra, 'If I build it, they will come,' said [management consultant, Suzy Teele]. But the reality is that understanding the market and the competition is tantamount to success, she said, not just developing a great product."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Education, Applications

December 10, 2005: Officers to get war training by gaming. By David Irvin. MontgomeryAdvertiser.com. "Think video games are just to entertain? Well, the Air Force is going to use them to educate its officers. Starting next spring, officers attending Air University at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base will learn how to fight a war using simulations developed by Stottler Henke Associates, a California-based software company. ... Many scenarios, however, go well beyond target destruction. They offer a look at the 'complex geopolitical and strategic climate' of war, the developers said. 'When you are prosecuting an air war, you have other considerations than merely destroying your target,' [Alex] Davis said. Under one scenario, trainees must consider the diplomatic, military and economic implications of dropping bombs."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Video Games, Military, Education, Applications

December 3, 2005: Smart toys. By Jano Gibson. The Sydney Morning Herald. "All of these toys are part of a generation of playthings known as 'smart toys'. Built with every conceivable piece of electronic gadgetry - from voice recognition and animatronics to infra-red vision and artificial intelligence - it would seem these toys can do everything except drive the kids to school. As the hype over intelligent toys cranks up, some experts are raising concerns about the impact such toys are having on childhood development. Far from believing toys with pre-programmed personalities are making kids smarter, critics argue that smart toys are actually dumbing down playtime. Yet parents don't appear to be worried about any potential fallout in the development of their children if sales of smart toys are anything to go by. According to toy market research company GfK Australia, parents are spending record amounts on electronic and interactive toys with sales this year already hitting $51 million, a 97 per cent leap on last year. ... [Judy] Shackelford is the inventor of one of the smart-toy generation's most successful products, the Amazing interactive doll series, of which Amazing Amanda is the latest and most sophisticated. Designed for little girls who like playing 'pretend mummy', Amanda has many high-tech gizmos. She can differentiate between her mummy's' voice and someone else's. She knows when it's night or day. And, like real-life toddlers, she knows how to get her own way. ... So are there any educational benefits associated with smart toys? Professor Nicola Yelland, of the School of Education at Victoria University, believes the interactive elements of smart toys have some use in childhood development. 'The more interactive they are in having speech capacity and other bells and whistles, the more they stimulate multi-modal activity, like gestural, audio and tactile. The more you stimulate all of them, the more learning you get,' Yelland says."
>>> Toys, Applications, Education, Ethical & Social Implications, Industry Statistics

November 16, 2005: Virtual professors draw student attention - Study suggests they could be used to confront stereotypes, too. LiveScience / available from MSNBC.com. "There's a simple reason why computers have not taken over teachers' jobs: They're boring, unpersuasive, unattractive and soulless. That may soon change if Amy Baylor can perfect the virtual professors she's working on. 'Up until now, the personal computer's potential to be a valuable teaching and learning tool has been stymied by its 'soulless' nature,' says Baylor, a professor of instructional systems at Florida State University's Research of Innovative Technologies for Learning (RITL). 'We're using computers to simulate human beings in a controlled manner so we can investigate how they affect and persuade people.' ... The characters --- Baylor calls them pedagogical agents --- will ultimately be more than just 3-D animations and voices. Software will allow them to adapt to a student's skill level in a given subject and provide feedback, both cognitive and emotional."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Interfaces, Education, Applications

November 3, 2005: Ask Dave. By Michael Shaw. The Times Educational Supplement Online. "Drama teachers can rely on Dave to stay in character when they direct improvised scenes with pupils. That is because Dave is not a student but a form of Artificial Intelligence (AI) who joins in when pupils take part in drama sessions on computers - usually without them knowing he is not real. The creation of an automated pupil is a new development for the makers of EDrama, which has been used in schools for three years. ... The software, developed by Hi8us in Birmingham, has proven popular with some drama teachers because its anonymity encourages shy pupils to come forward and allows groups to improvise scenes around difficult topics. In partnership with Birmingham university, the program-makers have now developed the AI element which they hope to include in a published version of the program next year."
>>> Video Games, Education, Drama, Applications

November 2005: Transforming America's Schools. By Jonathan Potts. Carnegie Mellon Today. "The technology that drives intelligent tutoring systems is grounded in research into artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology, which seeks to understand the mechanisms that underlie human thought, including language processing, mathematical reasoning, learning and memory. As students perform problems using these tutoring systems, the program analyzes their strengths and weaknesses and on that basis provides individualized instruction. Intelligent tutoring systems do not replace teachers. Rather, they allow teachers to devote more one-on-one time to each student and to work with students of varying abilities simultaneously."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Cognitive Science, Applications

October 27, 2005: Sir, the Gamers Are Revolting! By Chris Kohler. Wired News. "For Ivan Marovic, video games are serious business. As one of the founders of the Serb student-resistance group Otpor ('resistance'), Marovic helped remove former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic from power. Since then, he has worked with the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, or ICNC, helping human rights activists to organize pro-democracy movements. ... The game doesn't require an itchy trigger finger or keen hand-to-eye coordination; rather, it relies entirely on strategy. As well as historical recreations, players can set up their own scenarios, based on their own situation on the ground, and experiment with different nonviolent strategies. The game's artificial intelligence calculates the results. ... Marovic sees games as a weapon of change, and so does BreakAway Games. For the last few years, the Maryland-based developer has been a leader in what it calls 'serious games.' The company has worked closely with various arms of the Department of Defense to create military training and war-game simulations, and has also worked with health care professionals to develop Code Orange, a game that helps doctors learn to manage mass-casualty emergencies."
>>> Video Games, Politics, Education, Social Science, Applications

October 26, 2005: Robotic toys may one day diagnose autism. By Lee Gomes. The Wall Street Journal / available from post-gazette.com. "Autism is a heart-rending mental illness that has become entwined with a contentious social issue. While neither is conducive to easy solutions, some Yale University researchers are hopeful that the clever use of technology might prove helpful to both. ... Brian Scassellati is a robotics researcher in Yale's computer-science department, and is part of an interdisciplinary group on campus that includes doctors and others. Part of his contribution has been to build very simple robotic heads -- more like smart toys -- then to watch how different children, autistic and nonautistic, respond to them. ... Working with autistic children can be exhausting, notes Prof. Scassellati, but machines don't tire. 'It is hard to focus on eye contact if the kid is standing a centimeter away from you,' as autistic children do, he says. 'But that would be very easy for a robot to do.' Researchers at Yale, and many other places, are designing robots and tools such as videogames to teach socializing skills to autistic children."
>>> Robots, Medicine, Education, Video Games, Applications

October 11, 2005: 'TalkTown' new website launched by NSPCC. News Release from The Westmorland Gazette. "People in Kendal are invited to visit TalkTown', a new online town launched today by the NSPCC [National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children] to help tackle child abuse. TalkTown, which can be visited at www.talktilitstops.org.uk, is a pilot website which is part of the charity's largest ever national call to action, Talk 'til it stops'. It is the first time the Society has used artificial intelligence to help anyone worried that a child is being abused. People can turn to the town's virtual residents for help on what they can do and how they can contribute to ending child cruelty. ... Talktilitstops.org.uk uses a technology called Lingubot to enable members of the public to interact directly with one of the four characters. By asking the residents questions, individuals will be able to start talking to the characters about the difficult subject of child abuse and learn more about the role they can play in ending cruelty to children. The underlying technology is based on a sophisticated word and phrase pattern recognition system that matches preprogrammed responses in the Lingubot's knowledge base with questions typed in by users. As people interact with the Lingubot, sophisticated analysis tools will be used to expand the characters' knowledge throughout the campaign. It is the first time this technology has been used to address such a sensitive topic."
>>> Natural Language Processing, Education, Applications

October 11, 2005: New Online Test Is Intended to Help Colleges Measure Students' Learning Outcomes. By Burton Bollag. The Chronicle of Higher Education Daily News. "The Educational Testing Service introduced on Monday a new version of its test of general education outcomes for use by colleges to assess students' skills in reading, writing, critical thinking, and mathematics. The new examination, called the Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress, replaces a test called the Academic Profile, which has been in use since 1987. ... Institutions can purchase an optional essay section, which grades students' writing samples by computer. Linda L. Tyler, ETS's executive director of new product development for higher education, said the program uses 'natural language-processing technology, which mimics human scoring.'"
>>> Natural Language Processing, Education, Applications

October 3, 2005: Ministry promotes robot to teach students. By Chang Chung-hoon. JoongAng Daily. "The days of hiring robots as English tutors in Korea may not be too far away. The Korea Advanced Intelligent Robot Association, an organization developing artificial intelligence technology under the Ministry of Information and Communication, announced yesterday it has begun operating, on a test basis, robots that can help young students pronounce English words."
>>> Robots, Education, Applications, Speech

October 2005: R Is for Robot- What bots can teach tots (and vice versa). By Larry Gallagher. Wired (Issue 13.10). "For the past six months, the children in Classroom One [at 'the Early Childhood Education Center, a preschool attached to UC San Diego'] have spent half an hour of each school day interacting with one of two robots. Rubi takes on the role of a teacher, leading songs and playing games that instill basics like ABCs, shapes, and colors. She alternates days with Qrio, Sony's swanky prototype humanoid, whose role is more peer-to-peer: He spends his time dancing with the kids. The class is taking part in a project developed by [Javier ] Movellan, who directs the university's Machine Perception Lab. For him, the short-term goal is to watch the kids and use what he learns to develop interactive teaching tools. ... Movellan hopes to distinguish Rubi from existing automated teaching software by adding an emotional component to the interaction between kids and the machine. "The success of Rubi as a learning system is going to depend on whether she can engage these children - make them feel good about learning," he says. Movellan is not the first AI researcher to propose this approach. Indeed, the past decade has seen the emergence of what's called affective computing, whose proponents believe we need to build emotions into robots."
>>> Education, Robots, Emotion, Vision, Cognitive Science, Applications

September 26, 2005: Children imagine a flying future. By Rebecca Smithers. The Guardian. "Today's 10-year-olds imagine a future transformed by technology in which their lessons will be taught by robots and they will learn about celebrities and alien languages. ... Participants in the study by internet provider AOL to mark its 10th anniversary are the first generation born in the internet era, and their views show how central technology is to their lives. Most believe there will still be schools to go to, but that technology will play an increasingly important role in learning. The 600 children surveyed think there will still be teachers, but 37% imagine them to be robots. ... When it comes to the curriculum, they predict future generations will be learning robot building (63%)...."
>>> The Future, Robots, Education

August 27, 2005: Play and learn. By David Stonehouse. The Sydney Morning Herald. "[Steven] Johnson went on to write a book that dares to suggest that video games are actually good for your kids. Recently released in Australia, Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter contends that not only is gaming beneficial but so is popular television. ... Jane Healy, an educational psychologist in Colorado, is much more wary. Healy isn't against video games but she is concerned about overuse and an increasing reliance on computers in schools. The author of Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds, she argues that children have to be supervised properly both at home and at school to make sure they are, indeed, learning and don't fall into dangerous territory. ... Video games, aka computer simulations, are widely used at Cherrybrook Technology High School, in northern Sydney. Students use simulations to learn about everything from how a plane flies to the intricacies of artificial intelligence. ... James Laird, head of IT at the school, says learning through the computer is a natural fit for students today. 'There is an ease of learning and degree of comfort that they get out of it. Given that this is a tool in the environment that they live with these days, it is not something they have to think about - they just do it,' he says. ... The students are expected to study the theories and details behind what is unfolding on the screen. In the chess game they are expected to study the strategies of chess and deduce whether the computer is relying on textbook moves in its matches against human players or acting on its own. 'They are having a look at artificial intelligence: is the computer really thinking or is the computer responding using predefined strategies?' Laird says."
>>> Education, Video Games, Resources for Educators, Ethical & Social Implications, Chess

August 25, 2005: Pupils learn through Myst game. By Jo Twist. BBC News. "I have entered an alternate world and it is a far cry from the inner city. I have just met Tim Rylands, a teacher who uses the best-selling PC game series ever, Myst, in the classroom. Tim won this year's Becta (British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) award for the best use of technology in the class. ... The difference between using a mainstream popular computer game and an edutainment title is that there is no 'learning goal' at the end. Tim sets his own. To him, the rich, multimedia, immersive games, such as Myst, have huge potential for getting creative. ... 'Myst games are peaceful and mind expanding rather than mind-numbing.' They encourage children to problem solve, and think creatively and, according to him, the games have a 'solid social structure'."
>>> Education, Video Games

August 10, 2005: Games to be tested in classrooms. BBC News. "The use of computer games in education is going to be tested out in four secondary schools in the UK. The project aims to find ways in which school teachers can include video games in their teaching. It will also be trying to help game developers learn about potential educational uses for their products. ... Futurelab, which is leading the research, hopes that the study will contribute to a move 'away from the bland edutainment games that are currently on offer towards genuinely compelling games that support learning.'"
>>> Education, Video Games, Applications

August 7, 2005: Is pop culture good for your brain? By Peter Ellingsen. The Age. "[N]ow we are being told that the latest media technology, like video games and reality TV, are not just entertaining, but a way to boost the brain. Interestingly, the charge is being led by a new book that argues trash TV and the likes of Space Invaders lifts IQ. In Everything Bad is Good for You, American writer Steven Johnson insists that what is making us smarter is what we thought was making us stupid: popular culture. The culture he is talking about is electronic.... Johnson says brains are set up to respond to the kind of problem-solving hurdles posed by games and work for children because they tap into the brain's natural 'reward circuitry'. This happens through what he calls the 'dopamine system', the mechanism that distributes feel-good chemicals. Thus, spending hours driving through virtual streets playing Grand Theft Auto is not aimless, but a structured narrative in which desire is engaged to solve problems. ... When Johnson says 'In the games world, reward is everywhere', he is talking about behaviour that engages with computer-generated responses, not human ones. It is no accident that the test for artificial intelligence is the capacity of a computer to convince a person that it is human. No machine has so far succeeded in managing this deception because what is human goes way beyond decision-making."
>>> Video Games, Education, Ethical & Social Implications, Turing Test, Applications; also see this related article

August 4, 2005: Chasing the dream. The Economist. "Is it a new medium on a par with film and music, a valuable educational tool, a form of harmless fun or a digital menace that turns children into violent zombies? Video gaming is all these things, depending on whom you ask. ... Amid all the arguments about the minutiae of rating systems, the unlocking of hidden content, and the stealing of children's innocence, however, three important factors are generally overlooked: that attitudes to gaming are marked by a generational divide; that there is no convincing evidence that games make people violent; and that games have great potential in education."
>>> Video Games, Education, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications; also see this related article

July 25, 2005: Computers graduate in education. IST Results. "Computers will increasingly behave like real teachers thanks to a recently completed EU project that developed an information and communication technology (ICT) training system that chooses course materials appropriate to the topic and the student. Currently, educators develop courses appropriate to particular topics, to be used in classes of 10 or more. But the Diogene project’s system can select course materials suited to the topic and a single student, something that would be too time consuming for most teachers. It means students get exactly the materials they require, and that is relevant to their level of expertise and the subject they want to learn."
>>> Education, Knowledge Management, Ontologies, Fuzzy Logic, Applications

July 22 - 28, 2005: I Think, Therefore I Am -- Sorta. The belief system of a virtual mind. Quark Soup column by Margaret Wertheim. LA Weekly. "Far more than mere cartoons, these virtual people have each been endowed with a virtual mind complete with its own internal 'desires' and 'goals.' Technically known as 'agents,' they are driven by a revolutionary software system known as PsychSim that enables programmers to simulate the cognitive faculties of human minds. Dr. Stacy Marsella, a leading agent researcher and one of the primary architects of PyschSim, declares that agents actually 'think for themselves.' Indeed, the ultimate goal of agent research is to create autonomous self-determining minds capable of a full spectrum of human behavior. A small, dark-haired man with a doctorate in artificial intelligence, Marsella is a project leader at USC’s Information Sciences Institute in Marina del Rey, one of the world’s top centers for agent research. ... Last year, Marsella and his colleague Dr. David Pynadath developed an agent-based game [Carmen’s Bright Ideas] in which parents of childhood cancer patients engage in virtual counseling sessions with a virtual therapist. ... But what does it mean to talk about a virtual mind? What, indeed, is a mind of any variety? ... Until very recently, artificial-intelligence researchers believed that modeling the mind was simply a matter of simulating rational cognition, an activity that was seen to be epitomized by strategical games such as chess and go -- but over the past decade, computer scientists have come to understand that a virtual mind needs a virtual psychology. To 'think' requires not just an ability to carry through a chain of logical inferences; it also requires a mental environment, or psychic context, in which such rationalizations can be given meaning. "
>>> Agents, Multi-Agent Systems, Video Games, Education, Military, Chess, Go, Cognitive Science, Representation, Reasoning, Chatbots (@ Natural Language Processing), Applications

July 13, 2005: Video games not necessarily turning kids' brains to mush. Kevin Maney's Wednesday Technology column. USA Today. "Video games might be about the best thing your kids can do to ensure their future success. Better, even, than reading. At least that's what two books (ironically enough) and a growing chunk of conventional wisdom are saying. Yes. Right. If you want your offspring to pay your Florida condo bills when you retire, better start telling them to put down that stupid Faulkner novel and get back to Halo 2. Which feels a lot like the moment in Sleeper when Woody Allen finds out that in 2173, cream pies and hot fudge are health foods. ... 'With most video games, at every point you have to make decisions,' [author Steven] Johnson says. 'You have to think about patterns and long-term goals and resources, and then you make decisions and get feedback from the game, and use that to adjust your decisions.' Which is exactly what a Silicon Valley entrepreneur does every day on his or her way to becoming a multibillionaire. ... Isn't the violence bad in video games? ... [T]he authors are challenging the belief that books are automatically better than video games. Johnson writes a funny bit about what critics would say if video games had been around for 300 years and books were just invented. The send-up calls books 'tragically isolating' and says libraries 'are a frightening sight: dozens of young children, normally so vivacious and socially interactive, sitting alone in cubicles, reading silently, oblivious to their peers.'"
>>> Video Games, Education, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications, Libraries

July 11, 2005: 'Hard fun' yields lessons on nature of intelligence. By Chappell Brown. EE Times Online. "The RoBallet project run by MIT's Future of Learning Group doesn't look or sound like hard research: Nine children, dressed in sweats fitted with flexible sensor strips, stomp on pressure sensors to trigger changes in the ambient lighting and sound. The performances are choreographed by a professional ballet dancer in collaboration with the kids. The idea is to give students the experience of controlling technology to realize the stuff of imagination. Other projects use software, robotics and sensors as tools with which children can design environmental exploration projects, such as water-quality studies. It's what Future of Learning co-director David Cavallo calls 'hard fun' -- creative yet disciplined and purposeful uses for technology. ... EE Times: What was your first encounter with computers and digital technology, and how did it influence your intellectual development? David Cavallo: The first was in the '60s, when I was in high school. I grew up in Cleveland, and our math class had a connection to Case Western Reserve. We were able to do some work, things around Fortran, to think about math and computers. I thought programming was just a blast, a different way of thinking about problems. That led to thinking about how you could use computers for learning -- first thinking about artificial intelligence and intelligent tutoring systems. A professor at Rutgers, Ken Kaplan, introduced me to Logo [a programming environment widely used as a classroom tool], and that's when my interest really took off. ... EET: The computer and AI have been compared to the mind in some ways, but they are also very different from how the mind works. Is the computer the appropriate instrument for that type of work? Cavallo: What's really been rich in AI, what's really rich in the computer and what has helped us to understand minds better was trying to build models of minds. ... EET: What would you say is a seminal idea that has come out of this that was not known before? Cavallo: ... If you go back 50 years, the view of what developed minds did was mostly limited to just planning, reasoning, logic. We now realize the richness of thought --- that there are many ways of thinking. For example, [MIT's Marvin] Minsky is doing work on common-sense reasoning. [Earlier], people put so much work into building expert systems, and then we discovered that [building an expert knowledge base] was much easier to do than thinking about how you could cross the street safely, which a 3-year-old could kind of figure out. Intelligence is really mixed; there are tons of stuff going on that work together, and we learn from it [all]. What we've tried to do on the computer has helped break the more-restricted view of what intelligence really is. ... EET: So what is the future of learning? ... "
>>> AI Overview, Cognitive Science, Education, Nature of Intelligence, Commonsense Reasoning, Expert Systems, Interviews

July 10, 2005: Software highlights text. Column by Paul Gilster. newsobserver.com. "Just how far do we want to go in turning daily human judgments over to computers? The subject comes up because there is a new proposal that goes beyond getting us to write better. This one would help us read better. It comes from the fabled Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), and thus has clout, since PARC is where so many early innovations in computer technology became reality. ... The new PARC technology, bearing the odd name 'ScentHighlights,' is designed to save you time while avoiding hard copy altogether. It's based on artificial intelligence and could be thought of as a yellow highlighter with smarts. ... I look askance at nothing that comes out of Xerox PARC, and do think that for research purposes such software may be useful. But assume something like this built into future computers for daily reading and you are looking at a problem. We are training people to stop exercising their own skills of discernment and judgment and to turn these over to a digital surrogate that cannot perform as well."
>>> Education, Ethical & Social Implications, Information Retrieval, Applications

June 15, 2005: Students put tech skills on display. By Ryan Foust. NewsTimesLive.com. "The company's Web site promises better learning through technology. The problem is that not all students learn the same way, and teachers are unable to adopt their teaching styles to fit each student in the classroom. The solution, according to Adaptive Education Management Services (AEMS), is a software tutoring system called U-Gene, utilizing Artificial General Intelligence that allows it to learn to a student's strengths and weaknesses through direct interaction. U-Gene is then able to cater to the student's individual needs as a learner. However, U-Gene doesn't exist today. Then again, neither does AEMS. The company and program are a project of New Milford High School's Information Technology Leadership Academy team. The team showcased its project last month at IT Expo 2005, where it won the IBM Business Case White Paper Award for its use of IBM technology, research and patents. ... 'The more I learned about the capabilities of AI (artificial intelligence), the more I wanted there to be a system like U-Gene available,' said [Megan] Kapsiak."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Applications, Competitions (@ Resources for Students)

June 8 - 15, 2005: Immersed in the Future - Randy Pausch on the Future of Education. Ubiquity (Volume 6, Issue 20). "UBIQUITY: As the head of an entertainment technology center, do you have to defend the seriousness of what you do? PAUSCH: Yes and no. The first thing is that, I don't focus as much on entertainment as you might think. So, for example, we run an entertainment technology center here. And I would say that almost a quarter of the students in our student body want to go out and use their powers for good and not evil, meaning that they want to work for non-profits. They want to do museum exhibits. They want to do educational software over the Web. ... PAUSCH: ... The biggest project we have going on at the Entertainment Technology Center is called Hazmat, and is for training firefighters and other first responders to respond to chemical attacks — whether they're poison gas attacks or just industrial chemical hazards. ... PAUSCH: I was referring specifically to the Alice Project, and what I was saying there was that if you ask, 'Who here has any kind of a potential solution to the fact that enrollments are dropping like a stone?' you don't get many answers from people. Do you know anybody in the computer science community who says, 'Oh, here is something that could change the fact that young people are not going into our discipline'? When I say I'm the only game in town, I'm saying that we have an entirely novel way to introduce people to programming, where we have huge amounts of evidence that we have a teaching strategy that works even at the middle school level. Typically, a kid's first exposure to programming frankly sucks, right? It's not an accident that the highest rates of academic dishonesty occur in introductory programming courses, and that's not just because it's mechanically easy to copy code; the reason is that we put people into the most frustrating situation in the world. ... PAUSCH: I am. And by the way, why is it that programming is the gateway to computer science? I mean, I realize that it's a valuable skill, and computer scientists should be able to program. But other disciplines have figured out that the first course should be a survey of all the cool things in the discipline, you know, mixed in with some laboratory sessions about doing the stuff. To us, it's all laboratory sessions. I used to teach in a lecture format, which is kind of a stupid way to teach people a lot of this stuff. But with the Alice system, you drag words around, you can't make a syntax error."
>>> Education, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Applications, Interviews, Resources for Educators, Computer Science, Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students)

June 3, 2005: Video-game industry mulls over the future beyond shoot-'em-ups. By Gloria Goodale. The Christian Science Monitor. "Video games are no longer the geeky stepchild of popular entertainment. Last year, US sales of what is now called 'interactive entertainment' topped $7 billion, closing in on the $9 billion film industry. Throw in a host of other measurements, say those who study popular media, and what used to be the noisy baby in the backseat is now helping steer the entire culture, technologically and creatively. ... Perhaps most important, interactive entertainment is changing the way an entire generation sees itself in relation to the world, expanding popular storytelling beyond passive consumption to include involvement in the development and outcome of an experience. ... Peer Schneider, editorial director of IGN.com, a game website, points to the emerging world of educational and training software being used in venues such as hospitals ('Escape from ObeezCity,' a game to teach children about obesity) and the military ('America's Army'). All these tap the sophisticated interactive tools developed by the video-game industry."
>>> Video Games, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Applications, Industry Statistics, Software Development

May 16, 2005: Government 2.0. By Eggers. FCW.com. "To fully exploit the potential of today's technologies, government officials must move beyond Web sites, Web portals and internal improvement projects to embrace fundamental transformation. To understand what this means, let's take a closer look at three opportunities for change. The infinite classroom. ... Using artificial intelligence, the computer can adapt to the pace, complexity and direction of the learning experience according to each child's learning style and attention span. Children in the same classroom could learn different things in different ways at the same time. 'No more teaching to the middle. No more one-size-fits-all,' said John Bailey, former director of the Education Department's Office of Educational Technology. 'Instead of mass production through assembly lines, it's mass customization tailor fit to the student.'"
>>> Education, Applications, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Transportation

May 15, 2005: HAL and Artificial Intelligence. Viewpoint by Jason Ohler. TechLEARNING. "HAL gets such a bad rap that we forget the opportunity he offers education: truly sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) that can help students in many areas, from chess to drawing to speech. A full grown HAL may be far off, but infant versions are already used to 'understand' and mentor students in many areas. ... In a future in which students' interests will greatly out-pace a teacher's knowledge domain, AI mentors will become a teacher's best friend. Let's hope they are more human-friendly than HAL."
>>> Education, Applications, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Science Fiction

May 11, 2005: NogginLabs making inroads in e-learning. By Sandry Guy. Chicago Sun-Times. "A software development company in Ravenswood is winning recognition for its e-learning tool that boosts productivity without requiring extra tech workers. ... The technology, called the Instructional Genome, uses artificial intelligence to change Web-based instructional programs on the fly, eliminating the need for human programmers to start every project from scratch. The result: a sophisticated, interactive program that engages learners in a way a 'talking head' instructor never could.
>>> Education, Applications

May 1, 2005: Teachers look to computers to critique student writing. By Matt Sedensky. Associated Press / available from the Sioux City Journal. "Final papers are still handled by [Ed] Brent and his two teaching assistants, but students are encouraged to use the professor's SAGrader program to give them a better shot of earning an A. 'I don't think we want to replace humans,' Brent said. "But we want to do the fun stuff, the challenging stuff. And the computer can do the tedious but necessary stuff.' Brent's software -- developed with National Science Foundation funding -- is part of a global movement to digitize a facet of academia long reserved for a teacher and a red pen. SAGrader is just the latest offering entering a market responding to burgeoning classroom use, from routine assignments in high school English classes to an essay on the GMAT, the standardized test for business school admission. ... Work to automate analysis of the written word dates back to the 1950s, when such technology was used largely to adjust the grade level of textbooks, said Henry Lieberman, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before long, researchers aimed to use such applications to evaluate student writing."
>>> Education, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Applications

Summer 2005: SoftWARe - Servicemembers are being introduced to a new type of military training: video war games. By Eric Minton. Today's Officer Magazine. "Here’s something no parent wants to read: Video games can make you smarter. Not that you should let your kids spend six hours in front of a computer or Xbox playing virtual warriors, but when video games use real-life scenarios, include constant feedback and ratings, and meld with an overall training regimen that includes book study and live experience, they make for a wiser and more adaptable individual and team player. That is what the U.S. military is discovering as each branch embraces video games and gaming technology in its training regimen. ... A new version of the Marine Corps’ Close Combat: First to Fight takes the artificial intelligence quotient a step further by giving all virtual members of the fire team abilities known as 'Ready-Team-Fire-Assist.' Instead of the players micro-maneuvering the members of their teams, those members automatically engage in mutual support tactics, 'just like a real Marine would,' [Michael] Woodman says."
>>> Military, Video Games, Education, Applications

April 11, 2005: Essays marked by computer program. By Justin Parkinson. BBC News. "Computers are being used to mark American university students' essays in a project which could radically alter the teaching role of academics. Qualrus, a program developed at the University of Missouri, offers instant feedback on even complex subjects. It picks up word patterns, from which it can tell whether students' arguments are sound, and gives the essay a score. ... Qualrus is not designed to replace the academics' marking, but to ensure undergraduates are thinking along the right lines before handing in their final work."

• Also see: Teachers leave grading up to the computer. By Alorie Gilbert. CNET News.com (April 7, 2005). "How can a cold, mechanical computer comprehend the art and nuance of writing? The program is actually quite sophisticated, [Ed] Brent said. It's not enough to just throw keywords into an essay willy-nilly. The program analyzes sentence and paragraph structure and can ascertain the flow of arguments and ideas. It gives each work a numeric score based on the weight instructors place on various elements of the assignment."

>>> Intelligent TutoringSystems, Education, Applications

February 27, 2005: Online program helps students prepare for SAT. By Vernon Fraley & Web Staff. News 14 Carolina. "The online prep course is free and students get graded instantly so there's no waiting to see how you did. That point is what got the attention of administrators. According to Athena Kellogg, the Senior Administrator for high school math, "The online scoring is what really appealed to us when we were doing the research of all of our options of additional tools for SAT. The scoring is instantaneous whether the students are taking multiple choice or creating an essay online. The College Board uses artificial intelligence to grade those essays.”
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Natural Language Processing, Education, Applications

February 17, 2005: A Virtual Course in Iraqi Arabic. By Ina Jaffe. Radio broadcast of NPR's All Things Considered. "About 100 U.S. soldiers and Marines serving in Iraq will soon have a new tool intended to help keep them safe, and perhaps make their jobs easier -- a computer game designed to teach them how to speak Iraqi-style Arabic. NPR's Ina Jaffe reports on the game's appeal to a new generation of troops already familiar with interactive video games. Dr. Lewis Johnson, director of the Center for Advanced Research in Technology for Education (CARTE) at the USC Information Sciences Institute, created the game Tactical Iraqi using the base gaming 'engine' used by the popular point-and-shoot game Unreal Tournament, plus voice recognition and artificial intelligence software."
>>> Military, Video Games, Education, Speech, Applications

February 9, 2005: UMass team receives grant to aid computer improvment in secondary schools. By Sheyene Desillier. The Daily Collegian. "A University of Massachusetts research team is working to improve the use of computers in secondary school learning environments through a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The educators are working on computer programming that will mimic learning through experience to provide an enriching educational experience for high school students. ... The basis for the programming mounts on the idea that the principal advantage of a human teacher is the ability to learn from past interactions with a student. ... The main goal is to develop computer sophistication that identifies student learning habits and responds with personalized individual lesson plans for each student."
>>> Education, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Applications

January 31, 2005: A.I. researchers struggle with human toll of automation. By John Scruggs. Memphis Business Journal. [Note: this article appeared in the 1/28/05 print edition.] "Artificial intelligence is becoming a reality as adaptive technologies revolutionize the way businesses operate. Industries ranging from transportation and distribution to healthcare and education are all target markets for adaptive technologies. As the limitless advantages and huge impact of artificial intelligence on the business world are slowly gaining acceptance, ethical questions arise concerning the impact such technologies could have on the labor market. ... Art Graesser, co-director of the Institute for Intelligent Systems and chairman of the department of psychology at the U of M, says that adaptive, intelligent systems will improve the labor market. 'The printing press didn't put scribes out of business,' says Graesser. 'This will allow workers to move from human repetitive tasks to more intelligent, engaging tasks.' He referenced the market for intelligent tutoring systems such as the AutoTutor software developed at the U of M. 'Teachers can now focus on developing content instead of the repetitive delivery of that content,' Graesser says. ... Artificial intelligence is driving much of the research at the FedEx Institute, but the acceptance and implementation of many new technologies is a slow process. "There's a chasm between the work that has been completed here and getting these systems into the market," [Eric] Mathews says."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Medicine, Expert Systems, Education, Natural Language Processing, Applications, AI Overview

January 19, 2005: Artificial intelligence alive and well in a robot named Maria. Auckland University Press Release available from Scoop. "While statistics students at The University of Auckland are taking a break from studies for summer, their new 'teacher' can't wait for the new semester to begin. Maria, an assistant teacher in Statistical Interference, is an unusual individual. ... Maria is a robot, or artificial intelligence entity, created over two years of intense work and study by Shahin Maghsoudi, a PhD student and member of the Artificial Intelligence Group in the Faculty of Science. As part of his Masters degree in Computer Science, Shahin embarked on a project to create virtual robots which could be used as teaching assistants, helpdesk operators and web-based marketing assistants."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Marketing & Customer Service, Education, Applications

December 29, 2004: Math + software = learning. By Lynn Thompson. The Seattle Times. "A half-dozen high-school math students tell a remarkably similar story. Last year they didn't understand algebra. They came to class, listened to the teacher, tried to do the homework and failed. This year, using a computer-based program called Cognitive Tutor, these students are progressing steadily and staying engaged. ... Research indicates that Cognitive Tutor, an interactive program that analyzes students' strengths and weaknesses and allows them to work at their own pace, significantly increases math skills."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Applications

December 6, 2004: Contrarian finding - Computers are a drag on learning. By G. Jeffrey MacDonald. The Christian Science Monitor. "From a sample of 175,000 15-year-old students in 31 countries, researchers at the University of Munich announced in November that performance in math and reading had suffered significantly among students who have more than one computer at home. And while students seemed to benefit from limited use of computers at school, those who used them several times per week at school saw their academic performance decline significantly as well. ... For some in education, these results indicate how thoroughly this field of research has come to resemble that of the conventional wisdom about weight loss, which seems to shift with the tide. Yet others see hopeful signs of a maturing debate, where blind faith in the educational benefits of technology is giving way to greater appreciation for an understanding when computers are useful and when they're not. ... Still, there were a few exceptions: Academic performance rose among those who routinely engaged in writing e-mail or running educational software."
>>> Education, Applications

November 20, 2004: Record Research Grant for USC. By Stuart Silverstein. Los Angeles Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "USC has received a five-year research grant for $100 million -- its biggest research deal ever -- from the Army to continue developing high-tech training technologies for U.S. troops. University officials, in announcing the grant Friday, said that it will expand upon a previous five-year, $45-million deal between the Army and USC's Institute for Creative Technologies. ... The institute's researchers are developing 'virtual reality' simulated environments and sophisticated games to mimic the kinds of complicated situations soldiers face in battle zones. ... The institute has a permanent staff of more than 80, but also draws on researchers from around the USC campus to work on such areas as artificial intelligence, computer graphics and sound."
>>> Military, Education, Video Games, Applications, Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students)

November 16, 2004: Video Games Grow Up. Radio broadcast of NPR's Talk of the Nation. Hosted by Joe Palca. "Video or electronic games have long stopped being just for kids. The average age of game players today is 29 according to the Entertainment Software Association. Another sign of the industry's coming of age is the amount of money it generates. The electronic game industry made $10 billion last year, compared to Hollywood's $9.5 billion. Guests: Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired; John Singleton, director of the film Boyz n the Hood; Sherry Turkel, professor of social studies of Science and Technology at MIT. Has been studying computer culture and games for 20 years. Author Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet." Excerpt: "Palca: ... I'm sure there's no simple answer -- but is there any way to judge whether these video games are good or bad for us? Professor Turkel: Well, I think the point is not that they're good or bad; I think that they're powerful and they're very different in their effects on different kinds of people. For example, if you're a loner and yet you don't want to be alone, games can offer you the illusion of companionship without the threat of intimacy. ... On the other hand, there are some people who start to play a game like The Sims or The Sims Online -- the game where you create a character and build a character and form a parallel life; it's a little bit like being a god, says my daughter -- and you get a chance to work through issues or to act out issues. Some kids construct families that are like their families and get a chance to do things differently in the new families they create. Some kids get a chance to take their greatest fear and live it out in the game. In other words, it's very constructive. So I think that what -- I think you raised the issue of parents and how to think about it; I think that with the game form as with all forms you have to know your kids, you have to know the game, you have to look carefully at the match and really say what's happening...."
>>> Video Games, Ethical & Social Implications, Education, Industry Statistics, Applications

November 13, 2004: PluggedIn: Smart New World of Digitoys. By Lucas van Grinsven. Reuters UK. "Toy land is digitizing, and the victory march of GameBoy and computer games is just the tip of the iceberg. ... Smart toys came onto the market around five years ago, but Moore's Law of exponentially increasing computer power means manufacturers can put a lot more sensors, processors and memory into a plaything for the same amount of money, toy retailers say. ... One reason for the $20 billion a year U.S. toy industry becoming 'smarter' is that the video games generation is casting a shadow over traditional toys. Boys ages 5 to 12 spend more time playing video games than with each of the traditional toy categories, market researcher NPD Group found. ... Stirling University professor Lydia Plowman found that 'touchable technology', such as a soft toys, may encourage very young children to interact with computers and even improved social interactions. But she also found that a child's interest in talking toys, with a vocabulary of up to 10,000 words, diminished over a relatively short period. Most children learned little from talking toys and found they became monotonous or irritating, she noted. ... 'You can give a 3-year-old a toy train that moves by itself, but that doesn't support the child's development, because it won't have to choose if the train should go left or right at a junction,' says Norien Jansen, who owns a store Cedille in Amsterdam...."
>>> Video Games, Toys & Robotic Pets, Assisitive Technologies, Education, Applications, Industry Statistics

November 11, 2004: Emotional computing. By Ann Geracimos. The Washington Times. "People talking back to a computer is common enough -- usually in a moment of pique or frustration. Getting the computer to respond in kind is a far different task, one that computer scientists are undertaking with various degrees of success and consternation. The challenge isn't simply a matter of inventing new software and sometimes hardware, difficult enough as that is, but also of coming to grips with some of the ethics involved. If computers are to have emotional components, what role would they play in everyday life? Do human beings really want an emotional relationship with a mechanical mind? The field is called 'affective technology.' ... The term 'affective technology' has different meanings for different groups around the country doing research on human interaction with computers. ... Computers don't have emotional intelligence yet, in the sense of being able to express emotion intelligently, points out Ms. [Rosalind W.] Picard, who wrote at length on the subject in a 1996 MITPress book called 'HAL's Legacy: 2001's Computer As Dream and Reality.' HAL, of course, was the anthropomorphic computer in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 movie '2001: A Space Odyssey.'  Ms. Picard is especially interested in finding ways the technology could help children overcome frustrations in the learning process -- using the computer almost as a companion to work alongside the child who is attempting to process a great deal of information at once."
>>> Emotion, Interfaces, Ethical & Social Implications, Education, Science Fiction, Cognitive Science

November 3, 2004: Using technology for learning & teaching science. IST Results. "Researchers are demonstrating how technologies when applied to science learning can help motivate and engage pupils and promote better take-up of scientific disciplines at school and university. The following eight IST research projects are focusing on technology-enhanced learning methods, in subjects as varied as astronomy, space research, physics, mathematics and the earth sciences. ... A learner-centred approach is the tack taken by the LeActiveMath project. It aims to design a third generation intelligent learning environment to support Web-based active learning in maths, adapted to the needs and context of the learner by offering interactivity and personalisation. This 36-month project that started in January 2004 builds on its successful forerunner, ActiveMath. Learner feedback from this earlier project revealed that 'students like a lot of interactivity in exercises and benefit from it,' says Erica Melis, the coordinator of LeActiveMath at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence. While ActiveMath had some of these features, LeActiveMath will offer much more. ... It will provide intelligent feedback and involve the student in tutorial dialogues that stimulate the student to think rather than learn by heart. 'Dialogues are a natural way to communicate and human-centred dialogues are known to improve learning,' says Melis."
>>> Education, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Applications, Resources for Educators

October 23, 2004: A lot to be learned from computer's bad jokes. By Sam Leith. Telegraph. "Computers that can spew out jokes faster and more groanworthy than Jimmy Tarbuck would have dreamed may be a vital tool in teaching children to learn a second language, or in teaching disabled children to speak, an expert in Artificial Intelligence will tell a one-day conference next week. For most of us, being asked 'What do you give a hurt lemon?' and being told, 'lemon aid' sounds like the occasion for deep depression. But the fact that a computer program was able to ask that question and supply that answer has implications for structural linguistics, and for artificial intelligence. And, as Dr Kim Binsted will tell next week's Humour, Art and the Brain festival at Winchester, its applications may go far beyond the automated production of lolly sticks. ... The 'System To Augment Non-speaker's Dialogue Using Puns,' to give [Standup] its full name, helps speech-impaired children incorporate humour into their exchanges. Other versions of the technology can be used in automated 'chatbots' for second-language teaching."
>>> Humor Research (@ AI Toons), Education, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Chatbots (@ Natural Language Processing), Applications

September 24, 2004: Learning science, virtually. By M. Harish Govind. The Hindu. "Thanks to a tie-up with the Centre for Development of Imaging Technology (C-DIT), the Science & Technology Museum at the PMG Junction here has got itself a new 'edutainment' corner, which boasts of a 'Cyberlady' and a virtual laboratory. The main attraction is that the visitor can interact with a computer screen projected on a large screen. ... The 'Cyberlady' is an artificial intelligence tool with audio-visual support. The software is designed to grip the user's attention by making an intelligent analysis of questions posed on a wide variety of topics. As the questions are keyed in, pop come the answers in Malayalam in a pleasing synthesised voice. The responses are strikingly natural, but if the conversation is prolonged, they become less and less intelligent. The software team of C-DIT, however, has designed the 'Cyberlady' to 'learn on her feet', as it were, since each question keyed in by the visitor is stored in the hard disc and new answers developed."
>>> Natural Language Processing, Education, Applications

September 23, 2004: A different way to study - Cram101 seeks to help students get better grades in less time. By Shannon Barney. fsunews.com. "Cram101 is an online program designed to help students study more effectively, and in turn, get better grades. This tool gives students the opportunity to view chapter outlines and take practice tests dealing with whatever textbook they are using. Cram101 was officially launched in 2003. Currently, it is offered nationally with 47 university bookstores selling Cram101.com. By January, an additional 768 participants are expected. Online registration is also available. 'Cram101 was designed by studying how students actually study and succeed,' CEO of Academic Internet Publishers Scott Parfitt said. 'Using artificial intelligence and our 25 years experience in educational technologies, we built a more efficient and effective tool for students to help them get better grades in less time.' Cram 101 automatically extracts all testable information from a textbook and arranges it into outline form."
>>> Education, Information Retrieval & Extraction, Natural Language Processing, Applications

September 20, 2004: High-tech tools help with FCAT - Students can access online tutors and test aids that monitor individual progress. By Beth Kormanik. The Times-Union & Jacksonville.com. "A friendly genie and Merlin the Magician spout instructions on math and reading problems from a computer screen, and brightly colored handheld computers that resemble a combination of an iMac and a GameBoy are the newest tools and toys to help students on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. ... Hip design and kid-friendly software draw students into online tutoring programs offering extra help preparing for the FCAT. Web-based programs have grown in number and popularity, and advances in technology customize lessons for students and pinpoint where they get stuck on math problems or reading comprehension. ... One research-based online program could be headed to Florida. The 'Assistment' tutoring system helps middle-school students prepare for standardized math tests. It quickly predicts a student's score on a standardized test, provides feedback to teachers about how to adapt their lessons to help students and tailors tutoring for each student. The program combines research on artificial intelligence and the psychology of human learning, said Ken Koedinger, professor of human-computer interaction and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, which developed the model. 'The system is smart enough to solve problems in a step-by-step way,' he said. 'If a student gets stuck, it knows where in a problem the student gets stuck.' ... Effective personal tutors can raise student scores by two grade levels, Koedinger said, but the average human tutor helps raise grade level only by one-half. His computer-based system falls in between, raising students' scores by one grade level."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Applications, Industry Statistics

September 16, 2004: Software Tutors Offer Help and Customized Hints. By Katie Hafner. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "As she sat at a computer screen, she kept typing 2.8, an incorrect answer. Eventually a hint popped up: 'Think about the sign of your answer.' When Rochelle finally typed the correct sum, -1.8, the computer showed its appreciation by allowing her to move on to a new problem. She smiled at her small triumph. Since January, Middle School 301 in the Bronx, where Rochelle is an eighth grader, has been using a software program called Cognitive Tutor to help students learn math. The software, from Carnegie Learning, a six-year-old company that got its start at Carnegie Mellon University, is designed to give students individualized instruction when personal attention is scarce. Although such intelligent tutoring systems have their share of skeptics, students at schools that use them have not only improved their performance in math but now profess to enjoy a subject they once loathed. ... Broadly defined, an intelligent tutoring system is educational software containing an artificial intelligence component. The software tracks students' work, tailoring feedback and hints along the way. By collecting information on a particular student's performance, the software can make inferences about strengths and weaknesses, and can suggest additional work. When Rochelle, for instance, displayed a weakness when working with negative numbers, the program repeatedly asked her to solve similar problems. ... The artificial intelligence built into the Carnegie Learning program helps set it apart. Not only does the program present drills according to a student's weaknesses, but it watches the work step by step, detecting where the student stumbles, and chimes in when necessary."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Applications, Interfaces

September 12, 2004: Online textbook service draws interest from Memphis investors. By Michael Sheffield. Memphis Business Journal / available from MSNBC. "College students will get one more learning resource with Cram101, a new company with a Memphis connection. Cram101 is an online service that uses artificial intelligence to read textbooks, summarize them and post highlights and key points of the material online. ... Cram was started by Scott Parfitt, a former Harvard professor who has been working with artificial intelligence since the 1990s. ... He says the goal is to provide students with a new method of studying. ... Daniel Brown, president of Preferred Advisors, the investment banking firm that coordinated the capital funding of Cram101, says when he first met Parfitt in 2003, he was skeptical that the artificial intelligence service could perform at the level Parfitt said it could, but was quickly won over. ... Despite obvious comparisons, Phillips says Cram is not an 'online Cliff Notes' program."
>>> Information Retrieval & Extraction, Education, Natural Language Processing, Applications

September 9, 2004: MyVista ready for market. By Charles F. Moreira. The Star Online. "Intelligence Systems Sdn Bhd director See Wan Chee said his company acquired 20 customers for its SmartScan imaging application since it won the regional APICTA 2003 award in the Best in Education category in Bangkok last December.  'Most of them, including Nottingham University's Malaysian campus, use SmartScan to read and mark answers to multiple-choice exam questions, as well as for data collection,' See told In.Tech at ACM2004.  It also indicates students' strengths and weaknesses so that teachers can take remedial action to help students improve in those areas where they are weak.  SmartScan (www.smartscan.com.my) uses artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, including pattern recognition, neural networks and fuzzy logic to analyse answers on an objective test answer sheet."
>>> Pattern Recognition, Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic, Education, Applications, Machine Learning, Reasoning

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