Method and system for classroom active learning

• US 9,240,127 B2
• Filed: 08/17/2013
• Issued: 01/19/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 08/17/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Active Learning Solutions Holding Limited
• Original Assignee: Active Learning Solutions Holding Limited
• Inventors: Wong, Howard Hing Hoi, Mak, Kevin Kam Wo
• Primary Examiner(s): Utama, Robert J
• Application Number:
  US13/969,512
• Publication Number:
  US 20140051054A1
• Time in Patent Office: 885 Days
• Field of Search: 434/323, 434/350
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/017 Gesture based interaction, e.g. based on a set of recognized hand gestures interaction based on gestures traced on a digitiser G06F3/04883
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0304 Detection arrangements using opto-electronic means constructional details of pointing devices not related to the detection arrangement using opto-electronic means G06F3/033; optical digitisers G06F3/042
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0325 using a plurality of light emitters or reflectors or a plurality of detectors forming a reference frame from which to derive the orientation of the object, e.g. by triangulation or on the basis of reference deformation in the picked up image
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 5/00 Electrically-operated educational appliances working with questions and answers G09B7/00; simulators G09B9/00; advertising or displaying in general G09F
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 5/067 Combinations of audio and projected visual presentation, e.g. film, slides
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 5/12 different stations being capable of presenting different information simultaneously G09B5/14 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 7/02 of the type wherein the student is expected to construct an answer to the question which is presented or wherein the machine gives an answer to the question presented by a student
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/401 wherein the services involve a main real-time session and one or more additional parallel real-time or time sensitive sessions, e.g. white board sharing or spawning of a subconference
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/25866 Management of end-user data customer care in data networks H04L41/5077
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4182 for identification purposes, e.g. storing user identification data, preferences, personal settings or data restricting access to computer systems by authenticating users using a predetermined code in combination with an additional device, e.g. dongle or smart card G06F21/123
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4753 for user identification, e.g. by entering a PIN or password cryptographic authentication protocols H04L9/32; networks authentication protocols H04L63/08
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4758 for providing answers, e.g. voting
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4788 communicating with other users, e.g. chatting arrangements for providing for computer conferences, e.g. chat rooms, to substation in data switching networks H04L12/1813; distributed application using peer-to-peer [P2P] networks H04L67/104
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8456 by decomposing the content in the time domain, e.g. in time segments

Abstract

A method and system for conducting interactive classroom learning that can utilize a plurality of electronic audio and video equipment, mobile computing devices, and processing servers, interconnected via a first network infrastructure in a classroom or presentation hall to deliver seamlessly interactive multimedia contents to each of one or more participants in classroom or presentation hall; wherein the participants comprises one or more lecturers or presenters, and one or more students or audiences. The method and system allow the control and coordination of the electronic audio and video equipment, mobile computing devices, and the processing servers to deliver the interactive multimedia contents to the participants in the classroom or presentation hall simultaneously and to facilitate the information input-output interactions to and from the participants; wherein the interactive multimedia contents can be divided into multiple parts or streams, and each being personalized for each or each subset of the participants.

Claims

1. A system for conducting interactive learning session in a classroom or presentation in a presentation hall, comprising:

a first network infrastructure;

a first processing server connected to the first network infrastructure and configured to serve multimedia lecture or presentation material content data and exchange data from one or more mobile computing devices connected to the first network infrastructure;

the one or more mobile computing devices for receiving and displaying the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data, facilitating user input, and receiving the input data, comprising at least one mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter and one or more mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience;

wherein the first processing server and the one or more mobile computing devices are interconnected via a first network infrastructure;

wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is configured to control and monitor display, sound volume, power on/off, sleep mode on/off, interactive multimedia contents playback, access authorization to data in the first processing server, network resource access, network connectivity, volume, storage capacity, battery level, and general device conditions of each of the one or more mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience;

wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to control and monitor the first network infrastructure, adjusting and segmenting connectivity coverage area of the first network infrastructure, enabling and disabling network connections and networked resource accesses of each of the one or more mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience; and

wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to control real-time delivery of one or more different parts of the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data to each of the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience, and to control which one or more parts of the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data being delivered to each of the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience; and

wherein the one or more different parts of the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data are delivered to the one or more mobile computing devices simultaneously, enabling a real-time synchronized interactive lecture or presentation experience among the students or audience in the classroom or presentation hall; and

wherein the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data is divided into the one or more different parts according to a pre-configured setting for the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data or user input from the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

one or more electronic audio and video equipment for receiving and displaying one or more different parts of the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data;

wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to control real-time delivery of one or more different parts of the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data to each of the audio and video equipment, and to control which one or more parts of the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data being delivered to each of the audio and video equipment; and

wherein the one or more different parts of the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data are delivered to the audio and video equipment simultaneously, enabling a real-time synchronized interactive lecture or presentation experience among the students or audience in the classroom or presentation hall.

3. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

a second network infrastructure; and

a second processing server connected to the second network infrastructure and configured to store the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data to be retrieved by the first processing server also connected to the second network infrastructure.

4. The system of claim 1,

wherein the one or more mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience being divided into two or more logical sub-groups of mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience;

and

wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to create the logical sub-group division of mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to facilitate group participation or competition in a lecture session on literature composition for the students or audience;

wherein each of the logical sub-groups of mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience receives one or more different parts of the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data;

wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to control which one or more parts of the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data being delivered to each of the logical sub-groups of mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience;

wherein each of the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience is further configured to receive input of a text composition, and to simultaneously and in real-time display a combined text composition of one or more input of text compositions received by one or more other mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience within the same logical sub-group; and

wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to receive and display the combined text composition of each logical sub-group of mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to facilitate participation or competition in a question-and-answer session for the students or audience;

wherein each of the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience receives one or more different parts of the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data, wherein each part of the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data comprises at least one question;

wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to control which one or more parts of the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data being delivered to each of the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience;

wherein each of the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience is further configured to receive input of one or more answers to the one or more questions within the one or more parts of the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data received and displayed;

wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to receive and display the one or more answers received by the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience; and

wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to display performance statistics, wherein the performance statistics include a percentage of corrected answers for each question, number of corrected answers received from each of the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience, answering time for each question for each of the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience, and number of mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience from which certain answer selections are received on each of the questions.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the lecturer or presenter, by using the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to facilitate a voting session for the students or audience;

wherein each of the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience receives one or more different parts of the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data, wherein each part of the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data comprises a series of sets of selectable items;

wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to control which one or more parts of the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data being delivered to each of the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience;

wherein each of the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience is further configured to receive input of item selections for each of the sets of selectable items within the one or more parts of the multimedia lecture or presentation material content data received and displayed;

wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to receive and display the item selections for the sets of selectable items received by the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience; and

wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to display vote statistics.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein each of the mobile computing devices is further configured to exchange data of one or more interactive multimedia contents generated from a mobile computing device with another mobile computing device.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein said interactive multimedia content comprises motion sensing data of the mobile computing device being transformed into a series of animations.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein said motion sensing data is detected by a motion sensor or a motion sensing program pre-installed in the mobile computing device.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the first network infrastructure is the Internet;

and wherein the first processing server is a Cloud computing processing server.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the first processing server is configured to deny access to its stored multimedia lecture or presentation material content data and exchange data from one or more of the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience that are not authenticated and approved by the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter for connecting to the first network infrastructure.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to approve or deny requests for authentication for connecting to the first network infrastructure from one or more of the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience that are not registered for connecting to the first network infrastructure.

14. The system of claim 4, wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to facilitate group participation or competition in a lecture session on sentence composition for the students or audience;

wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to divide a complete sentence into segments and assign each segment to each of the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience within each of the logical sub-groups; and

wherein each of the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience within each of the logical sub-groups that received the segment of the complete sentence is to be physically arranged in relative order with the other mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience within its logical sub-group so to form the complete sentence.

15. The system of claim 4, wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to facilitate group participation or competition in a lecture session on mathematical statements for the students or audience;

wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to assign a first random number to a first mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience within each of the logical sub-groups, a second random number to a second mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience within the logical sub-groups, and a mathematical comparison operator to a third mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience within the logical sub-groups; and

wherein each of the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience within each of the logical sub-groups that received the first random number, the second random number, or the mathematical comparison operator is to be physically arranged in relative order with the other mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience within its logical sub-group so to form a true mathematical statement.

16. The system of claim 4, wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to facilitate group participation or competition in a lecture session on compass points for the students or audience;

wherein the mobile computing device adapted to be used by lecturer or presenter is further configured to assign a virtual compass map or a set of directional instructions to a first mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience within each of the logical sub-groups, and two or more pictures of different facilities to the other mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience within the logical sub-groups; and

wherein each of the mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience within each of the logical sub-groups that received the picture of a facility is to be physically arranged in relative order with the other mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience within its logical sub-group so to conform with the virtual compass map or the set of directional instructions received by the first mobile computing devices adapted to be used by students or audience within its logical sub-group.