End of the First Day

After the first day, I’ve managed to install TinyWebGallery and upload some images. I’ve also installed WordPress and the MathJax plugin and tested it. Lastly, I’ve installed Mantis to manage bugs. Hopefully these packages will meet my needs. Now I just have to learn how to manage them!

Now is the point for reflection. First, let me say that the whole idea of finally building a single platform for sharing all of my data and recording all of my ideas is exciting. When I used to teach both at Columbia College Chicago and as a high school teacher in the suburbs, I always wanted to develop a single tool to facilitate the transfer of my knowledge. But if no one ever uses it, it exists to help me organize my thinking and to provide a quick access to my own ideas. I believe as we move forward, the role of technology in augmenting human intelligence of the average citizen is where we’ll see the most transformational effect on society. The ability to spend time creating, reviewing, and quizzing ourselves in an automated and rapid fashion affects the very core of our persons because it opens the potential to advance both our fluid and crystallized intelligence.

For those of you who are familiar with the architecture of PCs, you know there’s a hierarchy of storage. The ability to create a rapid means of extending our memory by having tools which help us reinforce memory, test it, or even force us to grow it have the capacity to help us learn faster, do better, remember more, and solve problems more effortlessly. For me, that journey starts with the documentation of what is important in my own thoughts within the domain of computer science, mathematics, and science.