21st Century Educator

Build presentation software that makes sense

I'm tired of PowerPoint, and I find Prezi's spinning and zooming hard to follow. I'm tired of having to use third parties tools to embed websites with limited functionality so that I can embed my gizmos in my presentation. The web has been around for more than 30 years; why does today's presentation software consider it an after-thought? Why is it so difficult to use hyperlinks to link within a presentation itself?

I want presentation software that will:

• Allow me to embed live versions of websites using whatever browser rendering software I choose.
   
• Allow me to edit the presentation on the fly, so that I can take notes during a workshop in my presentation.
   
• Allow my presentation to be streamed online (with audio and a webcam stream) using the same tool that I'm presenting with.
   
• Allow me to save the state of 3rd party software and include it in my presentation. Think of what you could accomplish with your presentation if you didn't have to flip between programs all the time.
   
• Suppress notifications from other programs. No, I don't want to know about that email I just got, and yes, I'm aware that I should have shut down my email in advance of my presentation, but I forgot, okay?
   
• Can I ask for any webcam stream to be included in my presentation? I'd love to be able to embed a webcam stream from a person on the other side of the planet, while I take notes or share images on their behalf on my end of the conversation.
   
• Allow me poll the audience (or embed a live chat) within my presentation itself. The audience is part of the presentation, not just a passive recipient of information, they should be included as much as possible where feasible.
   
• Make the presentation software easy to use. We need to write more software remembering that the people on the other end may not be experts in a wide variety of software. Every time I have to teach somehow how to use software it makes me frustrated because I know it is possible to build software that is more intuitive than what currently exists.
   

I'm sure I'll come up with some more features, but this is good enough for now.

Gödel's incompleteness theorems and human self-inconsistency?

From Wikipedia:

The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an "effective procedure" (e.g., a computer program, but it could be any sort of algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the relations of the natural numbers (arithmetic). For any such system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second incompleteness theorem, a corollary of the first, shows that such a system cannot demonstrate its own consistency.

My question:

Is there a relationship between Gödel's first incompleteness theorem and the ability of humans to hold seemingly self-contradictory thoughts?

In other words, has our brain been designed in such a way as to allow us to prove as much as possible about the universe, and consequently we must hold some thoughts in a contradictory fashion; we hold an inconsistent set of axioms about the world, and so we can potentially prove anything about the world (although many proofs would be invalid, but to an inconsistent system, perhaps an invalid truth is acceptable?).

Modular cars

Imagine you get in your car, and drive it to the highway, where you pause for a moment to physically join with 5 or 6 other cars. Now you join the highway, which automatically moves your mini-train of cars at the fastest "safe" speed possible, before moving you off of the highway so that you can decouple from the other cars in your unit, and continue on your way to work.

There would be a few advantages of this system

1. The total energy cost of the system would be less, since the total drag (from the wind) on the mini-trains would be less than the drag on each individual car.
    
2. The mini-trains could run on tracks, which could provide the energy for them to move, and to recharge the batteries of the individual cars. It would help increase the range of an electric car, while simultaneously helping solve the problem of "refueling time."
    
3. It would likely decrease the number of fatal accidents that would occur on highways. Most accidents on highways are the result of operator error, which would presumably be greatly reduced with a computer at the controls. See Google's driverless car for an existing example of automated driving.

Create a brick and mortar university where every course is open

What would a university look like where every course was open and accessible to any interested student?

The whole reason we'd use a brick and mortar institution is to attempt to preserve as much of the structures of universities which are vital, in my opinion, to their position in our democracies. For example, I see universities as places where people with very different ideologies meet (and often conflict) and in online institutions, I think differing world views are quite often siloed from each other.

Imagine a place where students could drop in and attend lectures, learn how to use lab equipment, and access learning materials on demand, rather than on the administrative schedule of the university. Students would pay a flat fee to attend the university, rather than paying per course. The onus would be on the student to attend classes, and as many of them as they like, and as often as they like.

Students could meet with faculty advisors who could help them chart a course through the university. They could submit assignments to an assessment centre (digitally) which could give them feedback on their thinking. Students could use the information given to them by the assessment centres to guide their learning. As the students submit assignments and demonstrate mastery of concepts or skills, they could receive digital badges indicating mastery in a certain area. Collect enough badges, and you get certification. Collect more, and you get the equivalent of a degree. If a student failed to complete a degree, they could likely still demonstrate mastery of a subset of concepts.

The pace through the university could be self-directed by the student. Instead of focusing on the "four year degree," students could focus on mastery learning, and emerge from the university based on how much they've accomplished, rather than how long they've attended.

Students could move from a course which is too difficult for them to one that is more appropriate to their background without the expensive surcharges many universities use to discourage this practice. Courses could be structured to open on continuously enrollment, and given a large enough campus, Calculus 100 could start fresh every week. If a student attempts week 1 of Calculus 100 and doesn't get it, they could try it again, perhaps with a different instructor, or with more support, instead of having to wait until the end of the semester to restart the course.

Students could transfer between similar university systems using their badges as evidence of learning, rather than transcripts. Essentially, their assessments of their learning would be their transcripts rather than uncertain standards between different instructors.

While there are obviously some issues with this idea (I can think of a half-dozen objections to it off the top of my head), I'd be interested to hear how we could extend it.

Create a video instead of sending an ecard

My sister said to my mom, "We need to send an ecard to my son for his birthday." I suggested a video, and they loved the idea. We went around the room and each person said happy birthday. I then uploaded the video to Youtube, and marked it as unlisted, then sent the link to her son. I think this is a much more personal experience than one of those lame ecards... 

Trading card game based on celebrities

Someone could make a fortune with a trading card game, like Magic the Gathering, or Pokemon, based on real-life celebrities. The goal of the game would be "to be the most famous person on the planet."

On gravity

I was down on the beach today, throwing a rock in my hand, wondering about how it "knows" which direction to fall, and realized that this is not a trivial thing. The rock always falls down toward my hand as I throw it up. 

I thought about the graviton theory of gravity, in which the force of gravity is carried by gravitons between each mass, and as I did this, I wondered how many gravitons it would take to communicate forces between each mass on Earth. I then realized that the gravitons would also transport the information of gravity between each particle in the universe, and every other particle in the universe, and this made me think that is a bit weird. The number of particles in the universe is enormous, so the number of gravitons required to communicate the force of gravity would be absolutely disgustingly big. So it seems to me a bit weird that we should require all of these particles in order to communicate gravity. Surely Okham's razor suggests that this can't be so. That we shouldn't need an enormous number of particles we can't see to describe this force of gravity. If these particles had even the slightest bit of mass, they could easily outmass the rest of the universe.

I then thought, if we had gravitons, then each particle would have to individually "calculate" the total force applied from every other particle in the universe, which means that every atom would have computational power greater than any computer we could ever hope to build. Given that this seems a bit ridiculous as well, it stands to reason that this cannot be the case, that gravitons are a failed theory, at least from this perspective.

I then wondered about the theory I've heard wherein space-time itself is warped by mass, and as a result, particles travel along paths of least resistance through space, and thought that this handled nicely both the problem of a gigantic number of gravitons and the ability of individual particles to calculate the sum of the forces present on them. Instead of needing to "know" about every other particle, this information would be contained in space-time itself, and each particle would "calculate" it's own contribution to the deflection of space-time.

I also wondered, if space-time is warped, is it wrinkled anywhere, and if so, could we measure the size of these wrinkles. This may be a false analogy, but if you had a thin sheet of rubber, and then rolled something along the rubber in an elliptical path, the rubber would form wrinkles perpendicular to the direction of the motion, and in space-time, this would correspond to small perbutations in the force of gravity.

For example, imagine the Earth travelling in orbit around the sun. As it does so, it could bunch up and wrinkle space slightly. This deflection, should be in principle, measureable, although the effect would be incredibly small. I know there is some work being done to measure gravitational waves, which would also confirm the "rubber sheet" theory of gravity, but that we have yet to find any evidence this occurs.

Does anyone know if this wrinkling of space-time has been discussed before, and if so, how much an effect it would show? Does it even make sense to think of space-time as wrinkling?

Idea: Build a Facebook app that gives badges + points for examples of civic/political engagement.

The basic idea is:

• Invite a friend to vote, you get a point
• Post a video about the need to vote, get 2 points
• Post a video proving you have voted, you get 10 points
• Bring a friend to vote and post a picture proving you both voted, you get 20 points
• Write a post explaining your position on a topic, you get a point.
• Write a post explaining a political party's stand on a topic, you get 2 points.

Essentially, you could take the game of Farmville (or something like it) and turn it into an a game around the act of voting, and potentially other acts of civic engagement. Make it fun to vote, so that the 20 or 30 minutes to do it doesn't seem like a chore.