Sprucing up history

I had a smile when I first saw this and, the more I thought about it, the more logical and opportunistic it is.

We know that Artificial Intelligence is the hottest thing going these days. You sit at your keyboard and chat back and forth with an Artificial Intelligence agent as it works its resources to help the conversation.

As a result of this resource, I went to Bing to see if it could duplicate the experience. I just felt like I wanted to have a conversation with Sir John A. MacDonald. It turns out I couldn’t.

I actually knew that but was hoping that Bing could at least work something up. After all, we’ve heard that sometimes things happen and you just have to apply your spidey sense to it. It didn’t give up completely; I was presented with a couple of suggestion that it could answer. Did I want more information? Sure.

I could have got that from The Canadian Encyclopedia or any other credible encyclopedia.

There was a resource on YouTube from a few years and and just feels dated.

So, I went back thinking about the inspiration for this line of thought. The resource is called Hello History.

It comes in the form of an application that you can download and interview historical features. The claim is that no two interviews will be exactly the same. There is a section on the website devoted to Education.

This isn’t a free application. The website indicates that you get 20 free messages.

It seems like an interesting concept. Since its application to education is so immediately obvious, I was curious. Now, I’ve never taught history or social studies and probably wasn’t the most motivated student although I knew that I need to do a certain amount of work to pass.

I wonder though; would this be enough to inspire me to engage more?

More importantly, is this the tip of the iceberg for this technology to enter our traditional classrooms?