Classwork

I hope that teachers would use a teachers version of the software, where the audio would be saved along with the notes that he/she had given in class. These would be projected to the class through a front projector in a class or optionally through a wireless network within the class to all students. Teachers would have the option of going through the problem sets and assigning which they wish their students to complete. These problems could be assigned to be graded without presenting the solutions, graded based on effort of trying them without looking at the solutions (based on time or not), or just by completing them. By solution, I mean to suggest that there are many systems in place to give hints on certain spots. Teachers will also have the option of marking certain sections or "questions towards more detailed informations" as mandatory, optional, suggested, etc.

Homework

Each lesson will be broken up similar to a text book, with different levels of detail on each topic. This is important because the first level would be the basic knowledge of the subject and by mousing over sections, questions that a user might have about the subject can be clicked to gain further detail or derivations of an equation. Important to the academic integrity of the information presented would be a full reference to where the information was first discovered. A student could choose to do as much or as little work on a subject based on his or her previous knowledge or understanding of the subject. Another important feature would be a (flash?) presentation by a professor on the subject, where he/she would have an audio explanation of the subject while drawing on a sketchpad like system. This will be discussed more later. It is envisioned that there would be multiple presentations that are rated by the users with the option of leaving comments or marking it for having something incorrect within it. Students would also be able to mark sections of text and as a question so that the feedback could go back to the professor, so he/she knew to cover that in more depth in the lecture. It would also go back to the community and could be used for statistical analysis to determine what needs to be elaborated on.

Licensing

The reason that the program is separated from the modules is that the application will have the GPL license, but the modules can have any other license. This is important because the program will be freely available, but the modules will not come with the program. This allows the authors of the modules to charge for them if they wish. For example, instead of making money on text books, an author can make money by creating worthy problems. Economically, the best problems will gain the greatest monetary returns. The problem sets will be chosen by the professors and assigned to their students, so educators will be responsible for financing those most worthy. The general information available on each topic should be freely available (since knowledge should be in the free domain). It will be important that ALL material be properly sited and not in the sense that it is sited from a text book, but instead from the person or company that developed the theories or made the discovery.

Influences

There are many uses for a program link this. The GNU license allows the coding of this software to be completed publicly and provides the greatest method to link the work of people with different ideas. This software can provide educational resources to those less fortunate, while conforming to basically any schedule. It is not intended to replace teachers, but to allow educators to link homework with classwork more seamlessly. It has a place in such projects as the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative because it shall be made to be scaled down to a device that could easily be brought to class. The initial focus will be on higher education, because as of now there is little parity of education among colleges. That is not necessarily a bad thing, because it provides different view point towards an issue. The problem stems from educators that are less then qualified to teach their courses and as such follow the text book to the tee for lack of inovation. It is students in these classes that would benifit most from this new education system, because they would be able to learn through the combined intelligence of a group of qualified educators. This method has reciently been tested by MIT, where most lecture materials are publically and freely available to anyone through their website. This program would seek to expand on this idea by making the system more like Wikopedia, in that it would be a central place to gain knowledge and could link to sites that would expand on a topic.

Openning

This is meant as an informal collection of ideas for a new system of education that would use the resources available through the open source community to revolutionize the way students become educated. There are two major components of this system. The first is a piece of multiplatform software, which allows the user to interact with what is being taught and provides standards for the second part of the system. This part, is created through the combined efforts of experts and peer evaluations and is labelled "modules" because each expands the subject being covered. More will be explained about why these two are separated later. The initial focus of the project will be to design a stable application that will better allow a student to learn through interaction. What makes this program different from other interactive learning software is that it will focus on having one system that will have all the information readily available in a predictable manner and give users the chance to mark information they have questions about so that educators can go back and add information about that question in the module.