Method, device and system for providing educational services

• US 20030165802A1
• Filed: 03/04/2002
• Published: 09/04/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 03/04/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Rockstar New England, Inc. (Take-Two Interactive Software Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Rockstar New England, Inc. (Take-Two Interactive Software Incorporated)
• Inventors: Murphy, Rick L.
• Granted Patent: US 6,895,214 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 434/350
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 7/00 Electrically-operated teaching apparatus or devices working with questions and answers mechanically operated G09B3/00; computing arrangements G06F

Abstract

A method for providing educational services to at least one user engaging in at least one activity, the method including: enabling an agent to automatically monitor the user'"'"'s engaging in the at least one activity; detecting an occurrence of at least one criteria using the enabled agent; automatically and temporarily interrupting the engaging in the at least one activity using the enabled agent dependently upon the detecting; automatically presenting educational services to the at least one user using the enabled agent; and, allowing the at least one user to reengage with the activity based upon user interaction with the enabled agent; wherein, the user interaction is associated with the educational services.

Claims

1. A method for providing educational services to at least one user engaging in at least one activity, said method comprising:

automatically monitoring, by an agent, of said engaging in said at least one activity;

detecting, by said agent, of an occurrence of at least one criteria;

automatically and temporarily interrupting, by said agent, of said engaging in said at least one activity, dependently upon said detecting;

automatically presenting educational services to said at least one user by said agent during said interrupting; and

,

allowing said at least one user to reengage with said activity based upon an interaction with said agent during said presenting;

wherein, said interaction is associated with said educational services.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one activity comprises at least one of operating a software application, participating in a chat group, surfing the web, participating with instant messaging, and perceiving an audio/visual presentation.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said at least one user comprises a plurality of users, and said allowing said at least one user to reengage with said activity is based upon a collaborative interaction of said plurality users with said enabled agent.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said automatically presenting comprises retrieving data from at least one remote database by any one of manual and automatic use of a Uniform Resource Locator address.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein said retrieving comprises generating at least one Hyper Text Transfer Protocol request.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein said user interaction is at least partially dependent upon a database of user characteristics, said user characteristics generally indicative of said at least one user.

7. A system for providing educational services to at least one user engaging in at least one activity, said system comprising at least one microprocessor device, said device comprising:

a detector for automatically monitoring said at least one user'"'"'s engaging in said at least one activity for at least one predefined criteria; and

code for temporarily and automatically interrupting said user engagement with said activity and presenting at least one educational service to said at least one user responsively to said detecting.

8. The system of claim 7, further comprising at least one system resource provider being suitable for interacting with said code and to provide data indicative of said at least one educational service to said code.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein said data is provided to said code via at least one communications network.

10. The system of claim 7, wherein said device comprises at least one device selected from a group consisting of a personal computer and a gaming counsel.

11. The system of claim 7, wherein said device comprises at least one communications device.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein said communications device comprises a telephone.

13. The system of claim 7, further comprising a plurality of microprocessor based devices, each of said devices comprising:

a detector for automatically monitoring said at least one user'"'"'s engaging in said at least one activity for at least one predefined criteria; and

code for temporarily and automatically interrupting said user engagement with said activity and presenting at least one educational service to said at least one user responsively to said detecting.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein each of said plurality of devices further comprises at least one communicator for coordinating said interrupting.

15. A computer program product embodied on a computer-readable storage medium for providing educational services to at least one user engaging in at least one activity, said computer program product comprising:

code for enabling an agent to automatically monitor said user'"'"'s engaging in said at least one activity;

code for detecting an occurrence of at least one criteria using said enabled agent;

code for automatically and temporarily interrupting said engaging in said at least one activity using said enabled agent dependently upon said detecting;

code for automatically presenting educational services to said at least one user using said enabled agent; and

,

code for allowing said at least one user to reengage with said activity based upon user interaction with said enabled agent;

wherein, said user interaction is associated with said educational services.

16. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the at least one activity comprises at least one of operating a software application, participating in a chat group, surfing the web, participating with instant messaging, and perceiving an audio/visual presentation.

17. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein said at least one user comprises a plurality of users, and said code for allowing said at least one user to reengage with said activity is based upon a collaborative interaction of said plurality users with said enabled agent.

18. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein said code for automatically presenting comprises code for retrieving data from at least one remote database by any one of manual and automatic use of a Uniform Resource Locator address.

19. The computer program product of claim 18, wherein said code for retrieving comprises code for generating at least one Hyper Text Transfer Protocol request.

20. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein said user interaction is at least partially dependent upon a database of user characteristics, said user characteristics generally indicative of said at least one user.