Listening to
Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun teach introductory AI is at once calming, life-affirming, and inspiring. I imagine it's kind of like the experience some people get going to church. Except you learn more about AI with this.
I know I've said this a lot, but looking at what's going on with Udacity and Coursera and then comparing it to my own teaching. I
love these bite-sized bits of lecture, interspersed with asking a question. I wish I could do that with a classroom. I guess I could: I would just need some feedback mechanism that really makes the students engage with a question. I never had a class with those "clicker" things -- I found the idea really repellent until recently. It seemed like the sort of thing you would only need for a giant soulless assembly-line lecture. But now thinking about it harder, it serves a really good purpose. Make sure people are awake, force them to engage with a question, and give the lecturer some sense about whether people are following. You even get feedback from the shy students. Also its magically takes attendance. I would have used it, even for my 30-person class.
It could be a webapp too, very easily. Should we build that?
