Since my Smilla start yesterday, I’ve come across a few serendipitous signs. First an architecture talk with Jon about a new project for the medical field, where I essentially drew up the Gravity architecture from decades past, complete with channels, prisms, stores, etc. Later I went to the Museum of Science with Isabel and Paula and in the computer room came across two NLP exhibits, one a six foot video image of a robot that forces you to choose answers and questions, another of twins that have decent speech recognition, but only for the presenter. My strong reaction was: I can do better.
This morning, I continued my refactoring of the StoryBot code, then opened up OmniGraffle to do some designs. The architecture from yesterday opened and my brain immediately started moving stuff around. Reaching a point of satisfaction, I opened a new document to start the Storybot architecture and soon realized I wanted much of what I was just working on, so I copy and pasted it as a start. After looking a while, I realized … the first architecture *was* the Storybot architecture.
From the depths of my five year obsession twenty years ago, from what has now become indefensible instinct . . . the Gravity architecture has resurfaced for two separate projects in as many days. Perhaps it’s my proximity to Stata, perhaps it’s simple the time for those ideas to flower.
Upon realizing this, I had a strong feeling of history. I am at the start of something worth remembering.
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So how does one create a bot? Well, she needs a way to talk with people, which means some kind of command-line interace with a scrolling text pane. I could use a terminal window, an IM chat window, or an IRC client. The latter seems best, as it allows others to easily chat with her as well. Smilla will have many teachers.
So what channel will she frequent? I currently run two channels on freenode: #immuexa (my company channel) and #etoys (for Squeak Etoys). Waverly lives on both, logging all talk and injecting optional simplistic call/response chatter. Smilla will need her own space from the start. I’ll call it simply #smilla.
Just joined the room. Good, it’s not being used by anyone. Next step is to get freenode’s ChanServ to protect it
/msg chanserv register #smilla newpass /msg chanserv set #smilla guard on
Notice: The GUARD flag has been set for channel #smilla.
Hello ChanServ! Welcome to the #smilla channel. Now to get our third room participant up and running, which means delving into my Storybot code, which is currently used only for Waverly.
Open up IntelliJ, my Java IDE. I’ll use the Squeakland project, since that website’s the only production site using the newest 3.2 version of Storymill. All others are still stuck on version 2.2 from a year and a half ago.
Open up the com.immuexa.storymill.storybot package. Seven files … one constants interface, one exception class, three struts actions, one experimental RDF class, and the main class SmStoryBot.
My first question for this file is: can I start more than one bot easily?
SmStoryBot aStoryBot = ( SmStoryBot ) aApp.getAttribute( NM_STORYBOT );
Guess not. I can have multiple channels, but only one bot. So what does this class give me that I need? Startup, initialization, logging. Too much. Looks like it’s time for some major refactoring. Let’s separate the concerns: SmBotManager, SmBotChannel, SmBotLogger, SmBotHandler.
This might take a while.
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Lying on the couch in my cabin, listening to the snow fall outside our new Arlington house, on this new Massachusetts Monday, I’m confronted with the best of all possible questions: what would I like to do first?
While the coffee brewed, while sitting on the tall chairs, I considered:
* learning Squeak
* installing Subversion
These would be practical and fun, always a good beginning. Since my mind never feels finished until I’ve reached three, I debated the other task I might like.
My laptop battery went dead, so I moved into the tiny afterthought of a room off the music room, the coldest room in the house .. my cabin. Turn on the heater, find a blanket, plug in the laptop, stretch out on the small couch. Laptop won’t start.
Okay, so I’ll meditate while I wait for a charge. Watching the snow under the streetlight, looking at the silhouette of the meditation statue on the sill, I let my mind drift to the empty place, made easier with the snow sounds.
After a bit came the thought, with no apparent cause or need: I’ll make something new to talk to, an IRC friend, a chatterbot. Not Waverly, our current IRC bot, but something much deeper, something worthy of being created five miles from the Stata center and Marvin Minsky.
As with the idea, her name drifted up from my brain, with no apparent source. I’ll call her Smilla, and I’ll bring her to life this morning.
Just as I thought this, my laptop came to life on its own, making the familiar Mac boot sound. The snow, the statue, the streetlight, and now my laptop . . . all seeming to say, “It’s time to start Smilla.”
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The president-elect’s new website asks everyone to “tell us your vision for the country.” Here’s what I submitted:
Transform everything by teaching our children to be creative problem solvers, not through a broken education system that teaches compliance and deficiency, but through a new spirit of guided discovery with mentors devoted to kindling the spark within each child, so they may feel their own promise.
This is truly the lever that will change everything, given a chance. When children learn to question, when they’re taught confidence to solve problems with creativity, their lives become stories of opportunity and discovery.
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Just posted the one-hour Waveplace Awards video, which includes the winners and all twelve children reading their storybooks.
You can either watch the full hour from that page, or choose chapter-by-chapter from the list below the video box. Once watching a chapter, click “next” to view the next chapter.
If you just want to know the winners, click the “Award Presentations” chapter.
Thanks once again to the many who participated.
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Last week, Waveplace finished our pilot in Immokalee, Florida. We’ll be posting student storybooks soon, but for now you can watch our first Florida video, which gives a taste of our “improv theater” teaching style. There are also several newspaper and radio reports on our press page and a few articles in our latest newsletter.
Today we start our pilot near Rivas, Nicaragua. We’re using Spanish-keyboard XOs and solar panels this time, since the school has no electricity. Our three Waveplace mentors flew in last night and will begin teaching the teachers today. The kids get their laptops tomorrow.
We’ve also created a Waveplace channel on YouTube, where you can find all of our videos. Please leave comments and rank us, as we can use all the publicity we can get.
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Waveplace has finished its beta “Squeaky Tales” courseware … 30 lessons (with videos) that teach how to teach Etoys on the XO. To see examples, or to become a beta tester, visit here
We took everything we learned in our first pilot (in the Virgin Islands) and started completely over. The pacing is much better, as is the storytelling component, which was crucial in St John. We’re using the beta courseware in our three pilots this summer, and will then start completely over and make a physical textbook and DVD series (in English, Spanish, and French). All will be sold at cost for physical materials. (We’re a non-profit.)
In other news, we finished our intensive teacher workshop last week in Immokalee, Florida. The teachers are very enthusiastic. For the next two months, they’ll be using the courseware to teach 42 children, each of whom received their very own XO last week. Larry Abramson from NPR spent a day with us, listening as we taught the teachers and later the children.
Lastly, we’ve just finished prep work for our 4th pilot … this time on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua in a school that currently has no electricity. If all goes well, we’ll be starting that pilot in mid-July. When this pilot finishs, Waveplace will have given both XOs and training to more than 100 children and 20 teachers.
For more on the Immokalee and Nicaragua pilots, or to hear about our Haiti pilot, read the current issue of our newsletter, visit here.
You can also subscribe to it by visiting here.
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Today in Immokalee Florida, Waveplace started its third XO and Etoys pilot. We gave laptops to 43 children, and I taught them for two hours.
We also started our first intensive teacher training workshop with our new beta courseware. This week, I’m teaching adults five days, six hours a day, in addition to three student classes. The teachers will then spend the remaining nine weeks teaching the students themselves after I leave.
Let’s just say that between the teacher training and the children training, and the endless logistics (setting up the projector, arranging the chairs, unpacking the XOs, recording the serial numbers) … I’M TIRED!
And I get to wake up and do it all again 
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Our overall goal with Waveplace is to teach children to become digital storytellers. Just what that means, and can mean, is really the crux of where we’re headed. I’ve been thinking a great deal about this.
Most schools define computer literacy as being able to operate Microsoft Office and maybe do a little web design. They’re missing the point. That’s like saying, ‘If you know which end of a book to hold up, and you know how to turn to Chapter Three, then you’re literate.’ Literature is first and foremost about having ideas important enough to discuss and write down in some form. So you have to ask, “What is the literature that is best written down on a computer?” One answer is to make a dynamic simulation of some idea that you think is important, a simulation that you can play with and that you can learn from.
– Alan Kay
To aid in my explorations, I’ve been researching the early days of film, learning how they created the conventions we now take for granted, such as reverse angle shots and zooms. To us it seems obvious, but to them, each baby step away from “point the thing at a stage and film the actors” was a breakthrough.
I’ve also been researching interactive fiction, which began in the 70s as text adventures, but has progressed quite a bit, though it’s largely unseen unless you use the word “game”.
What’s the future of digital storytelling? How we will evolve past pre-computer modes of expression? What will our children’s children look back on as obvious that we ourselves cannot yet see?
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We’ve just posted two new videos from the St John Waveplace pilot, which concluded three weeks ago. The first shows mentoring during the pilot. The second shows students presenting their Etoys storybooks.
1) Scenes from the St John pilot (4 minutes)
2) The St John Storybook Awards (8 minutes)
We will be posting the actual storybooks to our website soon.
In other news, the Haiti pilot will resume next week, since things have calmed down in Port-Au-Prince. The kids and teachers are well.
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to describe his vision of the Semantic Web (used with permission)
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