Next Generation Chat-Bots (search?)

Next Generation chat bot's sould be able to link into places like wikipedia, so that you ask a question and then using the semantic web a bot is able to answer the question, 

It would be cool if you had something like google, where you could ask a question through chatting and it replied in english with a list that saying the most clicked on or the most valuable reasons because....

Sort of like ASK Jeeves but waaaayyy more powerfuller.  Using intelligence to mask its flaws.

They are getting a lot more powerful though with the http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html taking place each year.

Dopamine and Education

While we are all running about trying to getas many e-learning applications out there, a method to think about is are we producing e-learning materials that are enjoyable and educational.

After all whoever says education is dull is obviously not learning as much as some who is enjoying their course.  Dopamine is the neurotransmitter which tells our body to experience pleasure among other things and it is noted and researched that we can trigger these dopamine transmitters by challenging and rewarding students on an action, the question is by how much should we reward someone? and everyones threshold is different.  

How can we bring excitment and change to an e-learning application after all, the real world outside education is all about change.  In order to prepare the mind for the outside, after all not every job you get a month to research.

Here is some research on parkinsons disease and learning 

"As it turns out patients with the higher levels of dopamine learn better from positive stimuli and patients with lower levels of dopamine learn better from negative stimuli. Although I was hoping for something a little more exciting, in the case of this experiment a positive stimulus was "Correct!" printed in blue, negative was "Incorrect!" printed in red."

Question is how do we determine whether a person has high levels or low !

Using Data visualization within Education

With the high end graphics and data manipulation the internet/ computers today can handle and process a lot of data. What has been progressing over time, is an increase in the knowledge and easiness to create data sets and visualize the data in an easy to understand format. The most common of which and is dying slowly is the tag cloud.

The tag cloud is just one example, others include the advanced communication world map which was released recently. Imagine if you could create that on a small scale see, use it to see which departments communicate with others, which student access materials the most etc the list goes on. I feel that does not happen enough within the University and would help in the change that technology gives us.