Method, device and system for providing educational services

• US 20040081953A1
• Filed: 12/05/2003
• Published: 04/29/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 03/04/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Rick L. Murphy
• Original Assignee: Rick L. Murphy
• Inventors: Murphy, Rick L.
• Granted Patent: US 6,907,223 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; 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, comprising:

automatically monitoring, by an agent, of the at least one activity;

upon an event, automatically and temporarily interrupting, by the agent, of the at least one activity;

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

,

allowing the at least one user to reengage with the at least one activity based, at the point of said interrupting, upon an interaction with the agent during said presenting;

wherein the interaction is associated with the educational services.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising detecting, by the agent, of at least one criteria comprising the event.

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

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

5. 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.

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

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the interaction is at least partially dependent upon a database of user characteristics, wherein the user characteristics are substantially indicative of the at least one user.

8. A system for providing educational services to at least one user engaging in at least one activity comprising:

at least one microprocessor device, comprising;

code for temporarily and automatically interrupting at least one user'"'"'s engagement with at least one activity upon an event; and

code for presenting at least one educational service to said at least one user during the interrupting.

9. The system of claim 8, further comprising a detector for automatically monitoring said at least one user'"'"'s engaging in said at least one activity for the event.

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

11. The system of claim 10, wherein said data indicative is provided to said code for interrupting via at least one communications network.

12. The system of claim 8, wherein said device comprises at least one device selected from a group consisting of a personal computer, a television, and a gaming counsel.

13. The system of claim 8, wherein said device comprises at least one communications device.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein said communications device comprises a telephone.

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 automatically and temporarily interrupting said engaging in said at least one activity using said enabled agent upon an event;

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, further comprising code for detecting the event occurence using said enabled agent.

17. 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, watching television, surfing the web, participating with instant messaging, and perceiving an audio/visual presentation.

18. 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.

19. 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.

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

21. 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 being generally indicative of said at least one user.