November 21, 2007 by sean.

New research conducted by Oscar Ybarra of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research shows that social interaction impacts IQ as much as “more traditional kinds of mental exercise in boosting memory and intellectual performance”:

“We found that short-term social interaction lasting for just 10 minutes boosted participants’ intellectual performance as much as engaging in so-called ‘intellectual’ activities for the same amount of time,” Ybarra said [via US News an World Report].

Posted in learning theory, social networks | No Comments »

November 20, 2007 by sean.

Massey scientists at the Auckland-based Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences, have created the world’s first affect-responsive virtual tutor:

Although Eve was developed for one-to-one maths teaching with eight-year-olds, she is a significant new character in the future of human computer interaction and could be a personalised virtual tutor by any name.

Linked to a child via computer, the animated character or virtual tutor can tell if the child is frustrated, angry or confused by the on-screen teaching session and can adapt the tutoring session appropriately. [via PhysOrg.com]

Posted in learning theory, software | No Comments »

November 19, 2007 by sean.

Migatti, PARC’s artificial intelligence software for mobile devices, could soon be data-mining your life:

(R)esearchers at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)… have developed software that turns a phone into a thoughtful personal assistant, one that helps people find fun things to do. The software, called Magitti, uses a combination of cues–including the time of day, a person’s location, her past behaviors, and even her text messages–to infer her interests. It then shows a helpful list of suggestions, including concerts, movies, bookstores, and restaurants [via Technology Review]

Posted in pervasive computing, software, augmented cognition, mobile computing | No Comments »

November 19, 2007 by sean.

From MIT’s Ed Boyden’s recently published article on How To Think:

I really like what I call logarithmic time planning, in which events that are close at hand are scheduled with finer resolution than events that are far off. For example, things that happen tomorrow should be scheduled down to the minute, things that happen next week should be scheduled down to the hour, and things that happen next year should be scheduled down to the day. Why do all calendar programs force you to pick the exact minute something happens when you are trying to schedule it a year out? I just use a word processor to schedule all my events, tasks, and commitments, with resolution fading away the farther I look into the future. (It would be nice, though, to have a software tool that would gently help you make the schedule higher-resolution as time passes…). [via Technology Review]

Posted in work, learning theory | No Comments »