Paparazzi

Durant mon voyage au Nord du Chili, j'ai pris quelques photos d'une inconnue qui mangeait a une autre table dans le meme restaurant avec sa famille. A son depart je lui ai montre une photo, et lui ai demande l'autorisation de publier mes photographies, afin qu'elle puisse les telecharger. Elle a accepte et je lui ai donne une de mes cartes de contact avec l'adresse de mon site de photographies. Aujourd'hui elle m'a envoye un gentil courrier pour me remercier. J'adore quand je me comporte de maniere un peu deviante, et que tout le monde en est content a la fin. Une victoire de plus pour le non-comformisme!	In a recent trip to the North of Chile, I took some pictures of a girl, that I did not know, who was eating at another table in the same restaurant with her family. When she left I showed her one picture, and asked her autorisation to publish those pictures, so that she could download them. She agreed and I gave her one of my nice contact cards. Today she sent me a nice email to thank me. I love it when I behave like the weirdest of the weirdo, an original of sort, and everybody is happy in the end. One more victory for non-comformism!	En el viaje al val del Elqui, yo tome algunas fotos de une chica bella, quien estaba comiendo en el mismo restaurante a una otra mesa, sin su autorización. Cuando ella salio del restaurante, yo la mostré una foto y pedi su autorizacion para publicarlas, de maniera que ella podria descargarlas. Ella agrego, y recibí unas de mi tarjetas de visita. Hoy recibí su linda respuesta en correo, Me gusta de ser loco, cuando hace la felicitad de otros. Una otra victoria para la non-conformidad!
je t'ecris pour les fotos et en verite elles sont tres belles, elles ont un cachet distinct et le nom surtout me plait beaucoup... La belle fumeuse... au revoir, bonne continuation	I write to you for the pictures, and truly they are beautiful, they have a distinct style and I especially like the name ... Beautiful Smoker... Bye, fare well	te escribo por las fotos y la verdad que estan muy lindas tienen un toke distinto y el nombre sobre todo me encanto... Bella Fumadora... adiozz ke estes muy bn

Group Picture

Cherchez moi!	Search for me!	Busca me!
Photo du Departement d'Informatique	Picture of the department of Computer Science	Fotografía del Departamento de Ciencias de la Computación.

Teaching Arts and Sciences Together

"The difference between Science and the Arts, is not that they are different sides of the same coins even, or even different parts of the same continuum, but rather they are manifestations of the same thing." Mae Jemison, 2002, TED Talk ( Mae Jemison on teaching arts and sciences together)
I never heard someone who expressed better one of my core belief and motif of grief for current behaviors in academia. This was in 2002. Did anything change since then?

Écrire

Blue Sky

Toujours avoir avec soi de quoi écrire.
Garder, archiver, chaque bout de papier.
L'oublier, y repenser et y revenir.
Rassembler ses idées, les classifier, les publier.
En faire bénéficier les autres, leur enseigner.
N'est pas toujours évident ce qui vient naturellement.
Le transcrire, pour le partager, ou pour la postérité.
C'est de la que vient tout enseignement.

Jérémy, Spa Cochiguaz, Chile, May 2009
http://www.cochiguaz.com
http://www.valledeelqui.cl

Pedagogical Technology Center

Here is my answer to Luis von Ahn's question of the day on his blog:

Question of the Day If you had $100 million, how would you use it to improve a university? I'd like a solution with maximal impact.

Depends of what you start with (the level of the university before using the grant), and what kind of impact you want (increased popularity, increased enrollment, increased scientific output?) and whether you aim for the short or long term. I would use it to fund my favorite project: create a center similar to the Entertainment Technology Center (http://www.etc.cmu.edu/), only for pedagogy, with project oriented courses for undergraduate students, where they have to collaborate in order to develop pedagogical material of their choice (paintings, comic books for the art students, video animations, video games for the CS students, etcetera) for courses they took in the previous year, and to submit each project to a competition where the students having to learn the related material vote the material they prefer.

• The students designing the pedagogical material will
  1. relearn material they saw before, understanding it enough to explain it;
  2. practice media production (painting/drawing/animating for art students, programming/animating for CS students, telling History through a story for History students, describing/summarizing the Geography of a full country or continent through a virtual world for Geography students);
  3. produce usefull content (as opposed to the Reversi game I was asked to program in undergrad, which was very frustrating as there were already many instances available)
• The students judging the pedagogical material will
  1. see the material they have to learn in a different light. Same content, different support, helps to motivate learners.
  2. will have to ponder the differences between projects and explain why they prefer one to the other, making them think about what is taught.
  3. will get new material each year.

Beside the impact obtained by forming better students (more motivated to learn, and more creative), a selected of the best material, put online, will contribute to a growing database of pedagogical material which can be used all through the world, maximizing the impact of the school you created in the long term. While you are at it, hire me to help fund this new school, that would be the right time in my carreer, and CMU would be the right place to do it.