I'm basically the worst science blogger! I went to a week of great lectures at the Science in the 21st Century conference last month and Jacks of Science has been in complete silence for weeks. How embarrassing!

Unfortunately, I had an unhealthy amount of class/general burdens of life during the week of the conference so I had to keep a low profile. I mostly just snuck around when people weren't looking and ate unhealthy amounts of snacks/nanaimo bars in between the lectures.

However, just a few days ago, I was recently reminded of the rapidly approaching future of science when I read the syllabus of Quantum Theory (AM473) taught by Robin Blume-Kohout at U. Waterloo this semester. I'm not currently enrolled in it, but simply hearing about it from my classmates, I could tell it was dripping with the 21st century:

1. The course web-page makes use of Garrett Lisi's LaTeX hacked TiddlyWiki (downloadable here). Lecture notes are included, so there is a whole lot of potential for adding depth to lectures.
2. The mark breakdown for the course includes 10% for participation, which specifically encourages wiki contributions! You can either add to the course wiki or submit improvements to the math and quantum physics articles on Wikipedia.
3. Class projects suggest critically analyizing open-access papers on arXiv and presenting them to the class.
4. Assignments must be submitted electronically and LaTex typeset assignments receive 10% extra credit. Environmentally friendly!

As an aside, I have heard that the workload of the class is far too heavy, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. I have never heard of an undergraduate course which is so integrated with online resources. Even in Waterloo's prestigeous Computer Science department...

Death to the "PDF repository" course webpage!