Transcript arquimedes.matem.unam.mx

Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus: Intelligent support
for teaching mathematics
Teresa Rojano
[email protected]
Dept of Mathematics Education, Cinvestav, Mexico
On sabbatical during 2011 at Institute of Mathematics, National
University of Mexico
Jose Luis Abreu
[email protected]
Institute of Mathematics, National University of Mexico
LITE: Laboratory for Innovation in Technology and Education
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Motivation
Use of digital media fosters an exploratory
attitude among students, which leads them
to display a great diversity of approaches
and strategies for problem resolution and
other activities. However this makes it very
difficult to automatically provide timely,
specific and relevant feedback.
Let's look at a nice micro-world environment
with no feedback system built in.
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Although this is a good system for learning to
solve equations, some students find it
difficult to grasp it's purpose and take
advantage of the rich learning experience it
can provide. And this is because no specific
feedback is provided for them.
It is very difficult to provide feedback when no
specific artificial intelligence layer is build up
in the micro-world.
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Motivation
This limitation represents one of the greatest
obstacles encountered while implementing
models for the use of digital technologies for
teaching mathematics and science, both in
the classroom and in distance education
settings (Sinclair, Arzarello, et al, 2010).
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Background
The MiGen Project of the London Knowledge Lab
developed an intelligent support system for the
microworld eXpresser – the latter was designed to
help students in the mathematics generalization
processes – .
Inspired by robotics methodologies and by adaptive
systems, the MiGen Project proposes a layered
approach in which a microworld and an intelligent
feedback system collaborate in the educational
process.
(Gutiérrez-Santos, Mavrikis & Magoulas, in press).
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
From these ideas found in the eXpresser
project we got ours. We had a nice and
powerful tool for building micro-worlds,
called Descartes. So if we develop an
artificial intelligence layer for it we could
have a better teaching-learning system.
What about making this AI layer in the form of
a chat between the student and the
computer?
Something like this:...
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Dialogs with Prometheus
is a tool that combines a natural language
dialogue with an interactive micro-world, in
permanent communication with each other,
with the purpose of providing intelligent
support during the knowledge construction
process.
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
A typical application of Dialogs with Prometheus
simultaneously displays on the screen an
intelligent dialogue window and a micro-world
window which are dynamically hot-linked to each
other.
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
The complex interaction between the learner and the
two windows may be applied in several special simple
ways, like using the micro-world window only as visual
feedback or by providing the learner with text
feedback relevant to what he/she is doing in the
micro-world.
Of course, dialogs that take advantage of the various
forms of communication, provide a more complete
educational experience, but they are more difficult to
develop.
In any case, all this is very far away from mostly linear
computer aided instruction.
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Disclaimer
Punctual, specific feedback is and will always
be one of the main contributions of teachers
to the learning process. With software like
Dialogs with Prometheus we can only hope
to help them a tiny little bit in this arduous
task by providing some of the most
frequently needed feedback in these dilogal
interactive lessons.
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Dialogs with Prometheus
consists of three modules:
1) MW, the micro-world window and tool
2) CHAT, the dialog window and tool
3) RADial, the answer analyser
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
MW
Is really a specialized simpified version of our
micro-world developer: Descartes.
Descates is a fully developed tool with many
years of use in Spain and several Latin
American countries to develop highly
interactive learning units, mainly in math.
It has two runtime modules, one of which runs
in mobile devices, and a developing tool.
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Descartes
runtime
example
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Descartes scene creation tool
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
CHAT
Has two submodules, the chat window and
the dialog construction tool.
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Chat
window
example
(Developed
in
Descartes)
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
RADial
Is a server tool with a set of algorithms that
use a specialized database of words and
metadata defining synonim, anthonim,
hiperonim and hiponim relationships among
them. The purpose of the algorithms is to
recognize when the phrase written by the
user is logically equivalent to one of the
logical expressions expected in the dialog.
RADial: Resources for Learning (Aprender) with Dialogs
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
RADial example
The logical pattern: (to like:2)AND(fruit:2)
Evaluates as true or false, for example:
For:
“I love apples”
“She wants an orange”
“They don't like fruit”
“I like spinach”
The value is
true
true
false
false
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
RADial is Language Specific
Radial has been developed for the Spanish language. In order to
develop a simmilar system in English or any other language, one
would need to aquire a database in that language with words
and their relationships and make some adjustments in the
algorithms.
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Dialogs with Prometheus is an ongoing project
There is still a lot to be done, specially in developing
actual applications. The tool is in beta version and is
usable, but it will surely be much improved in the near
future as we receive feedback from the heroic users
that are now trying to develop applications with it.
Very little time has passed since the conception of
Dialogs with Prometheus, so we can show only a few
examples, but more will come soon and will be
published in:
http://arquimedes.matem.unam.mx/Dialogos/
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Dialogs with Prometheus: some examples
Here we show only a couple of examples of the dialogs
we have been developing; more will come soon and
will be published in:
http://arquimedes.matem.unam.mx/Dialogos/
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus
Constructionism 2012, Athens, Greece
Dialogs with Prometheus