Games With A Purpose 17 May, 2008
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, Internet, Life, education, games.Tags: games, gwap, human computation, intelligence
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Humans compute very differently to computers. Knowledge, Intelligence and Wisdom are not terms often attributed to computers. The closest descriptors in the computer world are Data, Processors and Recursion. They’re just not the same.
A human could quickly look at a photograph and immediately identify all the elements in it - a man, a woman, a park bench, a tree, a child on a bicycle, grass, a pathway and a cloudy sky. But who could be bothered teaching a machine these elements that even a child can easily identify? How long would it take to type in all those words and point out each of the elements in just one photo? Then even if you did teach the machine everything about one photograph, would the computer be able to identify the same elements in another photo taken from a different angle?
What about words? A computer may have data that labels milk and cola as liquid foods, but it wouldn’t know that milk goes with cereal, but cola doesn’t (usually). The human ability to recognize and recall experiences allows a person to make appropriate decisions. But how can these skills be imparted on a computer? The amount of data entry required would be astronomical. The cost of the required data entry operators would be prohibitive and the staff burnout would be disheartening.
That’s where Games With A Purpose (GWAP) comes in. If there’s no money for the staff required to teach the machine, you need volunteers. But volunteers come and go and usually represent a miniscule proportion of society. This was the challenge facing Carnegie Mellon University. How can we get ordinary Internet users from around the world to teach the machine? And how can we be sure they are teaching the machine accurately? Who will quality control that amount of teaching?
I will. You will. We will. And we’ll do it because it’s great fun, motivational and promotes thinking skills. Teaching the machine is a by-product as far as the players are concerned. I’ve been playing it for two days now and have amassed over 100,000 points. What for? Who knows, but it’s really enjoyable. Five different games to choose from and you can come back whenever you like to carry on your score.
Quality control? You play in real-time with another unidentified, uncontactable person and the machine is watching. In the game Verbosity (my favorite), one person (the narrator) receives an input word and using pre-supplied template sentences must accurately describe that word sufficiently well so that the second player can guess it correctly. Only English words can be used. Multiple players agreeing on terminologies and contexts ensure accuracy. The game is quick at only four minutes and each player takes turns being the narrator.
In Tag a Tune, each player listens to music and using words, describes the music they are listening to. Fast, slow, baroque, violins, techno, opera, rock. Based on the descriptions they see from their unseen partner, they each must decide whether they are listening to the same or a different piece of music. All the while, the machine is learning that this MP3 file has these attributes - provided to it and cross-checked by multiple human game players!
Of course, you won’t think you’re actually “working for Carnegie Mellon University” because you’re enjoying it so much. And one of the first things you’ll discover is that most of the people you are chosen to play with must be complete idiots! It could never be you who is the idiot. GAWP is tackling a complex problem in a very innovative and effective way. So instead of firing up that next game of Solitaire, why not try a Game With a Purpose?
Still Interested in a Class Blog? 22 April, 2008
Posted by jeopardygame in Brad & Phil, ICT in Education, Internet, Web 2.0, blogging, children, education.Tags: blogs, classroom, education, students
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If you’re still listening, I’ll assume you’re still interested in creating a class blog at your school. In part one, we concentrated on WHY teachers and schools should be blogging. In part two, we looked at WHAT had to be done to ensure student privacy and security. Now, in this third instalment of the class blogging series, we’ll look more closely at the HOW TO get started process.
Getting Started with Class Blogs 21 April, 2008
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, ICT in Education, Internet, Life, Web 2.0, blogging, children, education, technology.Tags: blogs, classroom, education, schools, students, Web 2.0
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In the article “Why Teachers and Schools Should be Blogging“, I discussed the reasons and benefits of blogging in the classroom, but for the blogging-novice, there are student privacy, security and policy concerns that must be considered. Assuming you took notice of the content of that first article, this one will take you through the first steps of creating a class blog and is part of a series that will clarify and develop this process for teachers and schools starting out.
Why Teachers and Schools Should be Blogging 12 April, 2008
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, Internet, Life, My Thoughts, blogging, children, education.Tags: blogs, education, Life, students, teachers, Web 2.0
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MANY of our students leave school in the afternoon and go straight on-line as soon as they get home. They immediately start chatting with their friends on MSN, often holding down multiple conversations at the same time, seamlessly changing subjects and maintaining discussion threads as they swap from one chat window to the next. Their typing speed continually improves and in just one on-line session, they might type more text than they handwrite during their lessons at school in a whole day.
The Needle and the Damage Done 2 March, 2008
Posted by paralleldivergence in Life, Music, children, education.15 comments
The unexpected demise of famous young people due to “accidental” drug overdoses has dotted modern history. Janis Joplin, John Belushi, River Phoenix, Kurt Cobain, and Heath Ledger all succumbed to an addiction that snatched away their lives when they were in their prime. While crystal-meth, crack and ecstasy are now the most “popular” of illicit drugs, Heroin still remains the pinnacle.
Heath Ledger: Dead at 28 23 January, 2008
Posted by paralleldivergence in Life, Movies, My Thoughts, heath ledger, shock.10 comments
January 22 2008: What a shocking, tragic waste. An all too stunning but brief spectacle - like a meteorite that flashes across the midnight sky. At only 28 years of age, a young man in the prime of his emerging career is dead. What can you say? What can anyone say?
SHOCKING - or De-sensitizing? 2 December, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in Internet, Life, TV Shows, advertising, education, shock.8 comments
GOVERNMENTS and authorities around the world have been using shock tactics in ”Public Service Announcements” for several years now, but their use of graphic advertising has been on the increase. Certainly, it is universally acknowledged that smoking, driving without a seat belt and drugs are dangerous and carry certain risks, but it seems the public needs to be reminded, often on a daily basis, of these dangers in gory detail.
Brad & Phil’s Information R/evolution 25 November, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, Half-Life 2, Humor, ICT in Education, Internet, Life, My Thoughts, Web 2.0, education, film review, technology.9 comments
In early 2007, I discovered an amazingly-constructed video on YouTube by Dr Michael Wesch, an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. The title of his video is “The Machine is Us/ing Us” and in under 5 minutes he managed to grab my attention like nothing else in recent times. If you’ve never seen this video, you really must- but you also must concentrate on it for full effect.
Microsoft Vista Overtakes Apple OSX in Only Eight Months 2 October, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, Internet, Life, apple, mac vs windows, vista, windows.Tags: apple, microsoft, osx, vista, windows
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Microsoft Vista was released publicly and globally on January 30, 2007 and it’s taken only eight months for this troubled operating system to overtake Apple’s computer flagships, the iMac and OSX. In fact, as the graph below indicates, percentage-wise, Apple has either been stagnant or declining over the past five months while in the same timeframe, Vista has shown steady if not strong linear growth throughout each survey.
How “Spirit” Killed God… 16 September, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in Earth, God, Life, My Thoughts, Religion, astronomy, creationism, heaven.20 comments
MARCH 2004: On the 63rd Martian Day of its tour of duty, the Mars Rover “Spirit” raises its “eye” skyward and captures a series of mosaics of the horizon just one hour before sunrise to produce another symbolic nail in the coffin of God. Those images combined to form the first image ever taken of Earth from the surface of a planet beyond the Moon.
Unique and Complex Passwords for Everything 19 August, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, Internet, Life, passwords, security, technology.11 comments
When we were children, our “world” was a very small place. Everything that I knew was within a five-kilometer radius of my home. From time to time, I would catch a bus or a train that would take me out of my world, and into another. My little circular world was joined by a line to another small, temporary circular world when I went on holidays. While I realised that planet Earth was enormous, my world never got close to any of it. Then along came the Internet.
The Private Lives of Google Street View 3 June, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, Earth, Google Earth, Internet, Life, Political Correctness, Street View, funny photos.24 comments
I believe Google wants to be ubiquitous. It’s the world’s favorite search engine, cataloging every nook and cranny of the Internet and boasts more than 380 million unique visitors every month. Google’s AdSense and AdWords are “widely recognized as the Web’s most efficient advertising vehicles”. It now owns the world’s most popular video-sharing site, YouTube as well as the already popular Google Video and it’s revolutionized understanding of the planet’s geography through the release of Google Maps and Google Earth. Fortunately for us, Google’s mantra is “Don’t be Evil”.
Creation Museum Madness… 28 April, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, Earth, God, Life, creationism, heaven, hell.229 comments
May 28, 2007: The intelligence of Man takes a giant leap backward, into the Middle Ages, with the opening of the “Creation Museum” in Petersburg, Kentucky where it seems not only is the Bible 100% correct, but so were The Flintstones. If it wasn’t so serious, it would be laughable.
The Best Fool is an April Fool! 28 March, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in April Fools, Brad & Phil, Life, My Thoughts, jokes, pranks.17 comments
I was looking at a calendar the other day and realised April 1st is coming up again. I’m not usually the kind that plays pranks on others, but it reminded me of one day many years ago when I did exactly that on my family. Don’t worry, it’s nothing as lame (athough effective) as wrapping every item of a workmate’s office space with tinfoil as shown beautifully in this image, my prank took preparation and cunning. If you’d like to know more, read on…
Swing with Me… Please? 23 March, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, Life, My Thoughts, NSW, Politics, debnam, elections, iemma, voting.7 comments
Most democratic nations hold open elections regularly - usually every three or four years. Most democratic nations also only have two major parties vying to form government. As democratic nations mature, the two major parties tend to move from a traditional left-wing/right-wing battle to an almost converged state where on many platforms there is little to distinguish the parties.
