Steve Wozniak to teach at University of Technology, Sydney
arnnet.com.au
arnnet.com.au
> Students will also be permitted to interact with Wozniak on a one-to-one basis via telepresence, dependent on his availability upon request.
I had a class in grad school that was taught by 3-4 different professors (it was HPC, and each of them was highly knowledgeable in a particular subfield). One of them did the whole thing by telepresence, and it was far from a great experience.
I don't think there's a single factor I can neatly describe - it's just that tele-presence is everything BUT presence. You don't get the micro interactions with the students, you don't get the professor pacing back and forth and scribbling things on the board on the fly, you just lack all those subtle things that you expect from a live lecture.
It's closer to watching a pre-recorded video than to the real thing. Maybe this was particularly apparent because this was a graduate level class, with only a dozen or so students, but still.
In one case it turned out the "remote" teacher was in the next room across from where the class was sitting, which made the experience all the more insulting.
Making teaching non-reliant on a teacher's presence, improved by the possibilities of digital communication, interaction and teaching tools is trying to write a revolution of sorts. You can't dabble in revolution.
Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were both hackers and phone phreakers. Plus Jobs smoked a whole lot of mind altering drugs in India something that I think gave his mind a different perspective.