Education and demonstration – Means for demonstrating apparatus – product – or surface...
Reexamination Certificate
2001-11-06
2004-02-10
Cheng, Joe H. (Department: 3713)
Education and demonstration
Means for demonstrating apparatus, product, or surface...
C434S30700R
Reexamination Certificate
active
06688891
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The method and apparatus of the present invention relates, when employed in the USA, to K-12 (kindergarten through graduation from high school) education. By expanding or including the student into the communications directed to the parent/guardian (or even completely replacing the “parent roll” with that of the adult student), the invention is applicable to two (2) year associate and four (4) year undergraduate programs as well as trade schools and other educational/training institutions.
BACKGROUND ART
In the United States of America, one of the founding principles of our Republic has been to provide the best public education possible to the young citizens and residents of our country. Over the past five decades, the importance of public education to our national security, social well-being, competitiveness and economic health has been underlined numerous times by our presidents and other leaders. From the “Sputnik panic” of the 1950's, the “math gap” of the 1960's, the “Nation at Risk” Report of the 1980's through presidential initiatives to “connect every classroom in America to the Internet” during the 1990's, the importance of making public schools as productive, efficient and effective remains a paramount social, political and economic issue. Some say the very existence and continuance of our democratic institutions will depend on an ever-more educated and computer-literate society in the future.
Given this importance to our society and the nation, few revolutionary innovations in the way public education is actually conducted have been made, despite tremendous advances in technology and communications. Many public schools have web-pages and Internet/Intranet connectivity. Some even have video conferencing, distance learning and video broadcast/streaming capabilities. Hundreds of thousands of new desk top computers have been added to campus computer labs and now even into the classrooms themselves. In some states students are issued relatively expensive notebook computers that they can take home, but such initiatives have been both isolated and sporadic, at best.
The typical K-12 school in America today works in the following way: At the beginning of the school year, parents or legal guardians must physically go to the local school campus and appear at the school's office and “register” their child in order for him or her to be able to attend class. Normally a paper registration form is given to the parents by the school's clerk, which is then filled-out and signed by the parents. This form normally provides basic information about the student (home address, d.o.b., last school attended, immunizations, etc.) and information pertaining to the parents/guardians (work numbers, emergency numbers, etc.). The paper document is then filed by the school clerk either manually or some or all of the data is input into a school computer database either at the campus or centrally at the district administration offices.
If the student is a “returning student” then his or her “permanent record” (normally a paper file stored in a filing cabinet) is pulled by the school clerk, the new forms are added and all is re-filed (returned to the filing cabinet). It the student is transferring from another school district or state school system, then often a phone call will suffice to fax or mail “everything” in the student's permanent record (paper file) from the previous school. Protocols for “who is authorized” to request the transfer of the student's permanent record vary greatly from school district and state. However, it is obvious that the opportunity for incomplete records to follow the child from district to district and state to state is very great. Health records, disciplinary write-ups, special testing results (gifted and talented, special education, outside professional evaluations) are often not transferred to other schools, for various reasons, not the least of which are “privacy concerns”.
Once in the classroom, the student's attendance, tardiness or absence is noted on an attendance sheet by the teacher and sent to the school's office. The student's daily performance is recorded by the teacher usually still in a paper file. Summary grades are sent to the office on a regular periodic basis. Periodic “report cards” (issued usually every six or nine weeks) are little more than summary information about the student's attendance, behavior and scholastic performance. One or both of the student's parents or legal guardians must sign the report card in ink to “certify” their receipt and review of the information. The card is thus first delivered by the student to the parents and then returned by the student to the teacher after the parent's signature.
The latest “craze” in public schools in this country is the school providing on-line “progress reports” on the Internet, accessible to a student's parents by password and log-in. But again, such simplistic approaches are limited and applicable to only those parents with knowledge of and access to personal computers and the Internet: hardly a universally fair, equitable or workable solution for this or any other country's public schools.
Seldom is there any formal, consistent daily communication between teacher and parents. The current education system usually reports only “history” rather than “news” relating to the parents' child. Interventions on the student's behalf (i.e. detecting dyslexia, attention deficit syndrome, other physical and/or emotional, disciplinary and/or health challenges) are usually slow to occur and difficult to coordinate (i.e. the school nurse collaborating with the student's teacher, parents, counselor, and personal physician regarding a potential hearing problem possibly being the root cause of the student recently having been disciplined for “not paying attention in class”).
In order to facilitate a more consistent and sustainable daily flow of information with students and their parents, some classroom teachers employ an “assignment book”, usually a spiral notebook in which the teacher may make notes specifically to the student's parents about specific assignments or specific needs of the student, and/or the parents can write specific questions or provide information to the teacher regarding their child's participation in the classroom, including excused absences.
An example of this interchange, for example, would be the “assignment book” entry from the teacher to the parents that “Johnny” has not been handing in his homework on time for the past few weeks. Johnny's parents are thus alerted of a potential problem and can “intervene” in a timely basis in the home or request to meet with the teacher/counselor to discuss the problem. The request for such a meeting is also made by the parents noting a request in the “assignment book”, which the teacher/counselor would likewise initial (thus “certifying” the communication) and stating the time and date of the requested appointment with Johnny's parents. Of course Johnny can read all this “written” traffic back and forth between his parents and his teacher.
Clearly such written assignment book based communications are neither private nor secure. The student can read everything being written about him or her by either the parents or the teacher at anytime. Often the ability to provide information candidly might be more effective in dealing with the social or academic challenges of the student. Such a system also assumes a certain level of reading and writing ability on the part of the parents.
Furthermore, with class size in the US often exceeding a ratio of 20+ students per teacher, clearly such a handwritten-based system causes an additional workload and burden on the teacher that is barely supportable with the best of intentions. It is difficult to sustain such a system manually. Each book must be updated daily “by hand” by the teacher, and therefore these communications often become too brief to be meaningful or useful to the pare
Cheng Joe H.
Christman Kathleen M.
Hunn Melvin A.
Inter-Tares, LLC
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