Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elizabethps/3760462201/sizes/m/in/photostream/

If you could ask Ben Franklin anything, what would you ask him?

Please contribute a question to this Google document.    We really appreciate it!

What happens when you add the following ingredients together?

• 1 bright college student who has a passion for entertainment technology, drama, and computer science.
• 1 artful user experience designer who loves researching human computer interaction.
• 1 software engineer who likes to push the limits of machine learning and artificial intelligence.

What happens when you put these people in the same class and ask them to make something cool together to support great teaching and learning? What can this team cook up?

Meet our co-inventor

Patrick Mathis, a college student at Mercer University, came up with an answer. My team and I had the pleasure of meeting Patrick through a technical communications class devoted to writing proposals. My team and I served as technical mentors to this class. In the spirit of project based learning, we challenged Patrick and his fellow students to collaborate with us to create innovations in educational technology. Since this generation of students is greatly influenced by mobile technology and gaming, we asked them to consider creating game based learning experiences.

Patrick and his team proposed the following question:
Could we inspire the study of history by enabling students to talk with major historical figures of the past?
Could we make it possible for students to with talk with Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, or Steven Hawkings? This sort of experience is explored by science fiction all the time! Consider the following example from “Star Trek: the next generation.” In this scene, Commander Data using their Holodeck technology converses with Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, and Steven Hawkings as part of his personal study of humanities.

Sounds crazy! Right?

Introduction to synthetic interview – a user experience for meeting historical characters.

It turns out the research for meeting historical characters using technology has already started. Patrick and his team introduced our team to the “synthetic interview” research from Carnegie Mellon University. In their study, students could ask questions of Charles Darwin. Please visit the following link to learn more:

http://www.sepa.duq.edu/darwin/synthetic_interview.html

We have been doing some personal research on how we might reproduce the work of the synthetic interview and improve upon it.   I, however, need your help! In my first experiment, I would like to create an experience where a student can meet Ben Franklin, one of the great inventors and social entrepreneur’s of all time. If you could have a conversation with Ben Franklin, what would you ask him? What was he like when he was young? How did people react when he proposed the public library? What was it like to help influence the founding of the United States of America?

Our next step

For our personal experiment to function, we need to gather 1000 questions that represent common inquiries that teachers and students might ask.   This is the starting point for our personal synthetic interview experiment.    You can contribute your question to the Google document below.   This document also enables you to view questions already contributed.

Ben Franklin – Questions from the community

Please include your Twitter handle, link to your profile, or a link to your blog in the comment notes.    I would like to thank all contributors in public.

Key question:  If you could ask Ben Franklin anything, what would you ask him?