education

Inspired by: I like smart people. — Firuza Pastakia (@firuzap) January 6, 2015

The semester is ending and I am getting lots of emails from my students on how to get the most out of the summer break. So here’s a little list, in no particular order, (which I might keep on expanding later on) outlining some of the things that might make your summer productive. Make a study group: Find some fellow thetas, pick up a tough, interesting book (Knuth anyone?), distribute chapters/topics and teach each other....

For under $1 million, every high school student in Punjab can have access to a computer. Number of high schools = 5600 (source) Price per computer = 16500 PKR (source) Total = 92,400,000 PKR = 976,206 USD Imagine a whole generation growing up on Khan academy lectures and the Gutenberg library. Imagine these kids using Wikipedia to get both sides of an argument and playing around with Wolfram|Alpha. Imagine them falling in love with physics by appreciating the mysteries of light and getting high on chemistry by designing molecules....

Today, I got a copy of the policy guidelines against sexual harassment in institutions of higher learning in my inbox which has been published by the Govt. of Pakistan Higher Education Commission. It contains a “listing of sexual harassment” along with “actual reported cases”. The last item in the list is Forcing students to publish their research work in Supervisors name. While the most obvious implication of this statement is that plagiarism (by the supervisor) is sexual harassment, I think there is a hidden message there as well....

 

A friend of mine is carrying out research in classroom based e-assessment in developing countries such as Pakistan. The aim of the research is to assist primary school teachers with computer software that: · Is aligned with the particular subject curriculum they follow in their schools. · Provides pupils with challenges and interactive short quizzes and tests to take after completing a topic taught by the teacher in the classroom....

I made a small 10 min demo to simulate the classic river crossing puzzle for teaching state space search in my AI class. I did exercise my right to be creative by changing the characters a bit. Jerry, Tom and Spike have to cross a river, going from the right side to left, in a boat. While you are in the boat, they behave. But as soon as you leave Tom with Jerry or Tom with Spike on one side WITHOUT the boat, they start fighting....

I will be teaching a course in Artificial Intelligence this summer. For some parts of the course, I plan to show implemented demos along with the course material. Looking from the students’ point of view, such tools not only decrease the learning time while in the class room, but also give enough material to play around at home in case you want to repeat what was taught. (I can empathise because I was once, and will be again (hopefully soon), a student)....

There was a talk today by Dr. Richard Larson at FAST-NU on an initiative by LINC called BLOSSOMS (Blended Learning Open Source Science or Math Studies). It focuses on developing open ware modules for high school students which can be recorded and shared in classrooms. The creative twist is to create a ‘blend’ between the video lectures and an in class teacher. Participants are to be selected from US (MIT), Jordan and Pakistan....