[Patents] Internet education methods patents.

[fermigier sf@fermigier.com]

Hi,

Following a suggestion from Jean-Paul Smets, I have found the following
education related patents on http://ep.espacenet.com/

I then wrote to the ministry of education in France asking basically:

1) Do you believe that network-based (Internet or Intranet) education
systems will become widely used in the public education system ?

2) How much do you think your administration will have to pay to companies
like Samsung, NTT, Fujitsu (some of the patents owners) if those patents
become valid in the EU ?

I suggest some of you try a similar approach in your own country.

Regards,

        S.

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ELECTRONIC EDUCATION SYSTEM USING INTERNET
JP11282826

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an electronic education system which
can provide educational services in response to the degree of skill of
every trainee and also enriches the services of educational enterprisers
including an automatic home page generation function for the exercises,
etc.  

SOLUTION: A trainee terminal and an educational enterpriser
terminal are connected to an electronic education server via an
internet. The electronic educational server includes a means which
performs educational enterpriser services to store the learning contents
which are remotely inputted from the terminal via the internet  in
a data base or an image/sound file and a means which performs trainee
services to receive a lecture taking inquiry from the terminal,
to generate the multimedia teaching aids screens in response to every
trainee by means of the data base or the image/sound file and to transmit
the generated images to the terminal.

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COMPUTER EDUCATION AND EXECUTION INTERFACE OPERABLE OVER A NETWORK

WO9822864
A computerized, multimedia education and execution interface system and
method for educating and entertaining a student user according to a teacher
user's options. The system incorporates the education techniques of video
segments, on-line student and/or teacher activity, written instructions,
student's activity monitoring, student rewarding and education and
entertainment program content filtering.  The environment uses various
input devices including a mouse and a keyboard. Compact disk drive with
main memory and disk drive store the various programs and education data.
An audio interface and video controller and screen with a central
processing unit communication over a bus completes the system.

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Network-based education system with capability to provide review material
according to individual students' understanding levels

US6024577

A network-based education system allowing an instructor to give a lecture
to a plurality of students via a computer network, where the instructor
can grasp the individual students' understanding levels at his/her
discretion and take appropriate supplementary actions to the students in
accordance with their respective understanding levels. A questionnaire
conducting unit conducts a questionnaire to survey the understanding level
of each student concerning a class he/she attends. In response to this,
a questionnaire responding unit disposed in each student terminal returns
an answer to the questionnaire according to response data entered by
the student through a keyboard or other input devices. An understanding
level data displaying unit, as part of the instructor terminal, collects
the responses to the questionnaire returned from the student terminals
and displays the distribution of students' understanding levels on
a monitor screen of the instructor terminal. This feature allows the
instructor to easily grasp the understanding levels of the individual
students. Further, the system provides the students with appropriate
review material suitable to their respective understanding levels,
thereby allowing better supplementary actions to be taken according to
each student's understanding level.

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INTERNET EDUCATION METHOD AND DEVICE

KR191329

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To manage individual's progress by capacities and
next course choices and to provide education responding to capacities by
individuals by evaluating and analyzing learning results individually
and managing the educational result information by the individuals.

SOLUTION: A control part receives user information applied from
an Internet host through a network connection part and controls
respective devices for remote learning. A remote learning execution part
executes a remote learning program which provides learning data for
users and provides evaluation data responding to the learning data to
analyze learning results. A data base management part manages a data
base for learning contents implemented by the remote learning execution
part. At this time, the data base management part stores remote
learning result information by the individuals by referring to user human
items inputted in a remote learning home page so as to provide education
matching the capacities of the users differently by the individuals.

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Continuing education tracking and reporting system and method

AU7585898

A computer-based system for tracking and reporting attendance of
individuals at continuing education activities and the like. One or more
suitable identification devices, such as card readers, are placed at the
site of the educational activity. An identification card is distributed to
each of the prospective attendees prior to occurrence of the educational
activity. Upon entering the site of the educational activity, data from
the identification card of each attendee is electronically recognized
by the card reader.  For example, a magnetically encoded card may be
swiped through the card reader in a manner similar to that by which credit
cards are validated.  After all of the attendees have been identified in
this manner, data stored in the card reader is transferred to a central
computer. The data is then used to update various database files stored
in the central computer. The information can then be analyzed, sorted
or otherwise manipulated to generate selected attendance reports and
the like.

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An interactive education process

GB2339954 
An interactive education process permits students at remote locations to
provide feedback to an instructor in an ordered manner. Each student is
provided with a network connection to an interactivity engine which include
a natural language interface. Responses to the feedback are provided
through the interactivity engine to the student. In addition, the responses
are ranked in accordance to the number of users logged on, and the number
and nature of the questions or other feedback. If there is a significant
number of questions or feedback on the same subject, the responses are
grouped and are provided to a stage manager or the instructor for broadcast
response. The inquiries and responses are published at an Internet site and
are accessible by all the students. By using this technique, student
feedback during remote instruction is facilitated, without overburdening
the instruction process. In addition, the students are given an abitlity to
participate in the instruction in an active manner.


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NETWORK TYPE EDUCATION SYSTEM

JP10268743

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To efficiently retrieve and display relative
information on a reference problem sentence, etc., by composing the system
of an information reference means which informs a user of the result of
retrieval from a test result data base and relative information together
according to an inquiry item specified by the user.

SOLUTION: A result registration means of a center-side device
once receiving answer data of a mock examination from a user terminal
identifies a user of this system by using a student information data base, 
stores the scoring result in a mock examination result data base,
and also reports it to the user terminal. The information reference
means, on the other hand, refers to a mock examination data base,
a question data base which manages problem contents of the examination,
an answer and explanation data base which manages the answers to and
explanations for the problems, and examination information data base
which manages examination information corresponding to the scoring results
according to the contents of various inquiry items reported from the
user terminal, and informs the user terminal of the reference results.


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