Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

In August 2011 mild-mannered Stanford professor, Sebastian Thrun, offered his course in Artificial Intelligence online with free enrollment for anyone -  160,000 thousand signed-up. Remarkably (well maybe not so remarkably, this is a computer science guy) he was able to accommodate all who wanted to virtually attend.
As Reuter’s Felix Salmon reported: “There were more students in his course from Lithuania alone than there are students at Stanford altogether. There were students in Afghanistan, exfiltrating war zones to grab an hour of connectivity to finish the homework assignments. There were single mothers keeping the faith and staying with the course even as their families were being hit by tragedy. And when it finished, thousands of students around the world were educated and inspired. Some 248 of them, in total, got a perfect score: they never got a single question wrong, over the entire course of the class. All 248 took the course online; not one was enrolled at Stanford.”
How do you follow that act?  At the recent Digital Life Design Conference  Thrun explained his new idea – Udacity -  a new online university.  With David Evans a professor at the University of Virginia, he will be offering a new course  on building a search engine – your own private google, consider the possibilities.

Gathering Indigenous Knowledge

Meanwhile on campus around the world – students are exploring other ways of knowing based on indigenous cultures and are collecting knowledge and stories before they disappear. American University’s Center for Environmental Filmmaking And Filmmakers for Conservation 7th Annual Spring 2012 Film Series will feature  Defending Eden: Indigenous People, Conservation and Film.  This film shows how the power of storytelling over multiple media platforms might enable Ecuador’s Waorani people to defend their biologically rich territory from the incursion of industry.

My grandmother knows and my grandfather knows, but I don’t remember.

Filmmakers Keith Heyward and Jennifer Berglund of Prehensile Productions will discuss their film and their experience as new environmental filmmakers trying to hang on to their values in a competitive industry.

Penn State is the host school for ICIK, the Intercollegiate Consortium for Indigenous Knowledge.

 

 

 

 

 

We’re all scientists and inventors now.  We are all students, we are all educators.  Get out there and learn something/teach something – any way you can.

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