U.S. patent application number 10/619098 was filed with the patent office on 2004-06-24 for method and system for interactive, multi-user electronic data transmission in a multi-level monitored and filtered system.
Invention is credited to Bursztein, Marcello, Irving, John, Killeen, Pierre, Lajeunesse, Patrick, Mulligan, Steve.
Application Number | 20040122692 10/619098 |
Document ID | / |
Family ID | 32599762 |
Filed Date | 2004-06-24 |
United States Patent
Application |
20040122692 |
Kind Code |
A1 |
Irving, John ; et
al. |
June 24, 2004 |
Method and system for interactive, multi-user electronic data
transmission in a multi-level monitored and filtered system
Abstract
A method and system to permit the creation of "parent" accounts
within a school system's data transmission system which are
associated with the parent's child or children who are students in
the system. A parent account is capable of creation and access by
various levels within the hierarchy of the system and is associated
with one or more schools within the community being serviced by the
entity providing the servers and community generation
implementation engine.
Inventors: |
Irving, John; (Ottowa,
CA) ; Bursztein, Marcello; (Ottowa, CA) ;
Mulligan, Steve; (Ottowa, CA) ; Lajeunesse,
Patrick; (Ottowa, CA) ; Killeen, Pierre;
(Ottawa, CA) |
Correspondence
Address: |
JAMES D. FORNARI, ESQ
SUITE 3-A
1020 PARK AVENUE
NEW YORK
NY
10028
US
|
Family ID: |
32599762 |
Appl. No.: |
10/619098 |
Filed: |
July 14, 2003 |
Related U.S. Patent Documents
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Application
Number |
Filing Date |
Patent Number |
|
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60395405 |
Jul 13, 2002 |
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Current U.S.
Class: |
709/225 ;
705/326 |
Current CPC
Class: |
G06Q 50/205 20130101;
G06Q 10/10 20130101 |
Class at
Publication: |
705/001 ;
709/225 |
International
Class: |
G06F 017/60 |
Claims
We claim:
1. An apparatus for parental community generation to permit
monitoring and filtering data transmission to screen unwanted
material comprising a parental community filter means to permit
qualified parents to join a parental community, profile creation
means to describe each qualified parent, a hierarchical
infrastructure for initially screening parents to create a varying
degrees of accessibility to data, a dynamic search engine to permit
those members of the parental community to search the data
initially screened within the limit permitted by the hierarchical
infrastructure, a dynamic filter controlled by a central location
to permit monitoring and filtering of the data transmitted and
structuring of the infrastructure and a flagging filter component
to scan messages and data prior to delivery.
Description
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
[0001] Global education has become a requirement, not a luxury.
Technology integration into a curriculum has become a must. The
Internet has become the transmission medium. Connectivity has
become the goal. The proliferation of personal computers has
permitted virtually every classroom to have the capability to be
"wired" and on-line. There is the realization that Internet
connectivity can enhance the economic advancement of students and
communities and provide a level of information on a broad scale
hitherto unknown. In can permit the current generation to leap frog
into this century. The failure to provide such connectivity can
further exacerbate the split between the haves and the have-nots.
Along with global information access has come the realization that
a level of monitoring and control must be exercised in order to
keep the information highway from becoming an open sewer. Regular
e-mail and open access chat rooms are generally not secure.
Although there are some screening tools and blockages that can be
employed, as a general matter, the flow of information cannot be
adequately controlled in an open environment.
[0002] Through community based filtered and monitored systems, such
as is described in a Provisional Patent Application No: ______,
teachers can set up accounts for themselves and for their classes
in order to provide "shared learning" through collaboration.
However, this limits the collaborative environment to those who are
willing to use the Internet and become part of a community.
Moreover, to the extent that there is any financial burden or cost
involved with the account, teachers may be reluctant to bear that
obligation personally, inasmuch as it is being used for their
professional activities. Similarly, establishing such an account
may or may not be consistent with the curriculum plans for a
particular school or for the particular school system. Classrooms
in wealthier areas may all be interconnected, while those in less
affluent parts of a community may not, thus relying on those
teachers to bear any economic cost of setting up and maintaining
the account, along with the computer necessary to access it.
Provisional Patent Application No:______ describes a method and
system for multi-level monitoring and filtering of data
transmissions (Schoolmail) that permits the creation within a
school district or school system of a secure "virtual district"
with "virtual classrooms", "virtual meeting halls", "virtual
teacher conferences" and multiple accounts to permit a hierarchical
infrastructure with varying privileges associated with each user
name or category. The system provides a universal solution to
allowing information flow to both students and educators, while
maintaining control of the type and character of material received
by students. It also permits internal community or group generation
to permit dissemination of information to different levels of
educators or administrators on a needs basis. The system can employ
common server capability to permit multiple districts to have their
individual SchoolMail, while at the same time providing the
capability of interaction and connectivity among the districts,
based upon screening and search criteria. It can also control the
desktop of the personal computers that are on the SchoolMail system
to prevent students from getting off and onto an open and
uncontrolled system.
[0003] Although school systems are coming to the realization that
they must provide uniform access to all teachers and administrators
within a system, and the capability to communicate with other
systems, the cost of setting up the necessary servers, personal
computers and information infrastructure can be prohibitive.
Maintaining the system can require substantial numbers of dedicated
personnel and rapid advances in technology can make a system
obsolete before it is even paid for.
[0004] Educators are also finding that without the participation of
parents in the educational process, teaching is hampered and less
effective. Parental involvement is critical on several levels. An
involved parent is more likely to push their child to learn and go
beyond the minimum requirements of a class session. An involved
parent is also more likely to pay for the cost of the added benefit
of technological integration into the classroom. However, parental
involvement in education can also be seen by administrators and
educators as another level of "bureaucracy" to which they have to
answer, and which may sometimes become involved in petty matters.
There is a need to enhance the educational experience by providing
the interactive, connective technological tools for collaborative
learning and involving those who ultimately are paying for the
tools while, at the same time, preventing the parents from
"micro-managing" their child's education or using the information
high-way to inundate teachers and administrators.
DESCRIPTION OF THE METHOD AND SYSTEM
[0005] The method and system to permit the creation of "parent"
accounts within a school system's data transmission system, which
are associated with the parent's child or children who are students
in the system. These parent accounts will be capable of being
accessed by various levels within the hierarchy of the system and
will be associated with one or more schools within the community
being serviced by the entity providing the servers and community
generation implementation engine. By creating parent accounts, a
school system can shift the cost of the overall system from a
school budget item to a parental expenditure. This will permit the
parents to become part of the school community, but not generally a
part of the school or district. The parents can, depending on the
level determined by the administrator, have access to certain
aspects of the system, but not to everything that the users may
have.
[0006] Parents can either be seen by the system as a new internal
category who are a designated group and can be treated as such by
both the system and the administrator who determines access, or the
system can have a vertical category coded into the operational
software. The former approach permits the addition of parents by
the administrator as a defined new group with new accounts as the
accounts are needed. This model also permits the administrator, in
the hierarchical system, to grant or deny levels of access to
parents, in much the same way as the administrator can grant of
deny access to teachers and students for monitoring and other
purposes. For example, the parents can be given access to grade
records and homework assignments, but not the private folders of
their children. Those can be accessed by the student and the
responsible monitor. The access can also be altered, if the
administrator deems it appropriate.
[0007] An additional benefit is that the schools can work with the
service provider and, through economies, can obtain both direct and
indirect project funding. The parental accounts can provide
sufficient funding to permit the school to finance additional
computers and provide accounts to the students. The service
provider can also provide parental files and information sharing
which can enhance the collaborative learning experience by drawing
the parents into the "virtual classroom" as participants, where
appropriate. By integrating the parents into the "virtual school",
they become more involved in their child's education and further
enhance the educational process.
[0008] The system is also designed to maintain the security of the
community. Parents must only have access to their own children's
information and there must be security to prevent breaches of
privacy. No parent should be allowed to obtain records that would
violate a student's right to privacy. The parents cannot be allowed
to interfere with teacher or administrator directed activities, nor
should they be able to contact or communicate with the teacher
unless requested to do so on specific matters. Parents should not
be able to generate "education spam" and waste a teacher's valuable
time, but should be able to address legitimate concerns in an
efficient manner. Having a parental component to a monitored school
data transmission system accomplished these objectives and
others.
[0009] Parental Registration
[0010] Parent accounts may be created after the student accounts
have been created or may be created simultaneously. Because they
are linked accounts, the absence of a student account will prevent
a parent account from being activated. The onus for the
authentication of parent accounts falls upon the school or
district--this enables them to use their own records to verify the
legitimacy of any application.
[0011] 1. Parents are informed of the ability to create parent
accounts that are linked to their students. One method for
registration is to give the parent the uniform resource locator
("URL") they should visit to pre-register. The district user name
can be made a part of the URL so that the parent will not wander
into a registration area for another school by accident or
intentionally.
[0012] 2. Parents visit site to pre-register. They indicate to
which students they should be associated (using student's
usernames).
[0013] 3. Parents enter information for all parent accounts. This
would permit a parent to create an account for a grandparent, or
separate accounts for a mother and a father. The particulars of the
number of accounts vary and are a function of the cost of
maintaining the accounts and the people schools permit to be
associated with a student.
[0014] 4. Parents enter information to pay for account(s). This
could be in the form of a credit card, or direct deduction from a
checking account, by way of example.
[0015] 5. Parents receive confirmation code and details in a
printable form and are told to print or save it. The parent must
get the signed code to the school in a secure way. This can be up
to the administrator/school/board, etc. to determine. One method is
to have parents physically come in to the school with ID.
Alternatively, a parent can mail a signed form in with the code, or
bring it in with the student. Exact steps to take for each scenario
should be designed to make it as easy as possible for parents to
implement them while maintaining the security of the system.
[0016] 6. Administrator activates parent account(s) using the code
or parent name. Administrators may activate only those accounts
that are in their records as being associated with the student, at
their discretion. If the parent has entered someone else's name,
the account would not be created by the administrator and a
security log will be made to show record the attemptIn addition,
the administrator must verify that the student accounts the parent
has chosen should in fact be associated with them. Thus, for
example, a parent that has been barred from seeing their child
would not be able to set up an account linked to the child's school
account.
[0017] 7. Parents logging in before the account is activated will
receive a status message telling them the account is not yet
active. If they are the primary contact (the one who did the
initial registration), they will be able to view/edit the account
details.
[0018] 8. If a `parent` fails to correctly identify the student
that should be associated to them more than a certain number of
times, their access is blocked so they will not keep guessing and
eventually guess correctly. Similarly, parents attempting to
associate a student account to them that has already been
associated to another parent will trigger an alarm to the
administrator informing them of the discrepancy.
[0019] Administrator Functions
[0020] The administrators that activate parent accounts must be
designated in the hierarchical system and be associated with the
students and the school in which the students are located. The
administrators can make changes to the settings for those
users.
[0021] Another feature of the system requires that parents have a
separate authentication and registration process for each school
that their children attend (though the process takes only one step
for the parent). Thus, it is possible for parent accounts to be
approved for association with a student at one school, but not at
another.
[0022] Parent accounts are activated the first time an
administrator at one school approves them. Subsequently, an
interface is used to set up the association at other schools--but
these administrators cannot deactivate a parent account that is
active in another school. Generally, only administrators who have
access to all of the schools associated with a parent will be able
to completely deactivate parent accounts. Administrators with more
restricted access may only be able to remove an association between
a student and parent.
[0023] Accounts interface
[0024] The system may employ a new internal categorization similar
to how teachers/students are treated, so they can be seen as a
group by SchoolMail administrative tools. Thus, each school that
decides to have parents as part of the collaborative learning
process can have a category established without changes in the code
or additional software or hardware. It requires only that the group
be recognized within the hierarchy as a new entity with access
determined by the administrator having control over that level of
the hierarchy.
[0025] The parent accounts may be treated differently from other
accounts. For example, it may be desirable to be able to store the
additional information requested, such as the address and phone
number, instead of using the contact information associated to the
school or license to which the accounts are assigned (as it is with
the other account types). Parents logging in before their account
have been activated can see the status of their application --their
account is not active, but login is still permitted to provide this
access.
[0026] As yet a further part of the system, administrators with
access will be able to see and manipulate the relationship between
students and their parents. The parent interface will show a
"children" or similarly designated column (in the same way that
students are linked to their monitors), which can be used to show
all of the children associated to that parent.
[0027] Because of the overall flexibility of the system, some
schools will have parent accounts, and some will not. Yet the
system will function on the same network and server set-up in order
to permit the economical and rapid transmittal of data, while still
maintaining the monitoring and filtering function that is important
in a secure school environment.
[0028] Changes to Appearance (Front Page)
[0029] It is a further advantage that administrators will be able
to control the look and feel of the parent interface separately
from teachers and students. A special school categorization
"Parents" can make this possible with minimal difficulty while
still maintaining the integrity and security of the system and its
hierarchical nature.
[0030] Usage Reports
[0031] It is also useful for the school administrators to have
information as to how many parent accounts have been
pre-registered, activated, and are currently active. This will
provide information to the school system as to the parental
involvement as well as the actual usage by the parents. Logging
functions can be incorporated into the system architecture and can
be made accessible to only those administrators with a need for the
information.
[0032] Parent User Interface
[0033] The user interface may need to be separate from
teacher/student, because it may be used not only for administrators
to send a parent-only message, but may eventually also contain ad
banners and possibly an entire private label. Administrators can
edit the front page appearance for the "Parent" interface the same
way they edit different schools.
[0034] Logs
[0035] As a further part of the internal security established
within the system, there is an automatic logging function that can
inform the administrators about anything unusual that happens. For
example, if a parent tries to associate a student to them that
someone else has already identified as their child, an alert will
be sent to the administrator to inform them of the situation.
[0036] Linking Students/Teachers/Parents
[0037] The system also permits the linking of students, teachers
and parents where the administrator has determined that the linkage
would be beneficial. In order to permit this linkage, the current
relationship between parents and teachers should necessarily
reflect actual teacher/student relationships in the school. The
system will allow teachers access to the parents of their students
if the system contains relationships for which teachers teach which
students. This aspect requires the administrator or their designee
to either input teacher/student relationships at the time that a
group or class is registered or created, or with a group manager
type application where the teachers find their students and select
them. This would allow special access by teachers to parents and
would allow a teacher to broadcast to a parent, or send files to a
parent's file sharing folder.
[0038] Group Manager
[0039] A group manager is useful throughout the system, but most
specifically for the parent component. It is used to allow teachers
to associate themselves with all of their students, which in turn
would associate them with their students' parents. By making this
association, it will be easy for teachers to contact all of the
parents of their students.
[0040] File Storage and Sharing
[0041] File sharing allows all users associated with a community
access to teacher/administrator shared folders. It is possible to
modify file sharing to allow sharing information with parents yet
restrict access to folders that are intended for school use.
[0042] Parent Private Folder
[0043] Like all users, parents have their own private folder. The
system will easily allow teachers/administrators to push files to
groups. At the same time, they could send information to the
private folders of parents associated with their students.
[0044] E-Mail Broadcast
[0045] Email Broadcast enables users with sufficient privilege to
send a single email message to a number of users within their
community matching certain search criteria. Although the system's
interface can be limited to contacting teachers and students, the
system can be adapted to make the account type definition dynamic
depending on those available.
[0046] The system is capable of permitting teachers with
administrative clearance to send an email to a group of recipients,
and so allow contact to their students' parents only (see above) or
all parents, or to anyone in the license. (This is contingent on
the licensee having established the relationship between teachers
and students.) This option can permit the administrator to
designate certain teachers to undertake broadcast responsibilities
along with their individual student contacts.
[0047] The system is also able to make it possible for E-mail
Broadcast to be used by other account types as well. Each account
type could have a list of other accounts they can reach, and a
setting to say whether or not they can broadcast. If they cannot
broadcast, the tool may be employed as a directory search. These
settings can be configurable by administrators. Examples of such
broadcasts are:
[0048] Administrators
[0049] Find anyone in schools to which they are assigned.
[0050] Teachers
[0051] Find anyone in schools to which they are assigned.
[0052] Parents
[0053] Find teachers of their children.
[0054] Students
[0055] Find teachers, students, administrators in their school, but
not permit a general broadcast. This would be an example of the
search function rather than the broadcast function.
[0056] The "reply-to" address used for the broadcast can be
customized, preventing a straight reply to a message from going to
the originator. This is most useful in the case of announcements
sent by the school, when an email address for further information
would be more appropriate than the address of the teacher or
administrator who sent the notice.
[0057] Banner Server
[0058] The appeal of parent accounts with their own interface is
that they can be used to push sponsorship that will not reach
teachers or students and thus not pollute the "virtual schoolroom".
A flexible, easily managed banner server which may be managed by
the entity hosting the system is one alternative. The
administrators can also be given this responsibility. The degree of
flexibility available permits various people, both within and
associated with the system hierarchy to assume the role.
[0059] Parental Monitoring of Children
[0060] It is also possible for the system to be configured to make
parents responsible for their children. The system may be
configured to allow parents to become the monitors for their
children at the time of registration, at the discretion of the
administrators.
[0061] Option for Parental/Shared Monitoring
[0062] Another feature permits the use of multiple monitors or to
send copies of relevant messages to the parents at the
administrators' discretion
[0063] Calendaring
[0064] The system's broadcast capabilities also permit the showing
of schedules to parents, inform them of homework assignments,
etc.
[0065] Quick Polls
[0066] Because the community is controlled by the administrator and
has a commonality, it is possible to assess community interest in
topics of administrators' choosing by conducting polls to all
subscribing parents.
[0067] Parent Generated Profiles
[0068] Because the collaborative process of shared learning is not
confined to the classroom and the teachers, the system permits
parents to be able to create profiles. The administrator can
determine the level at which the parent profile will be available,
and with community moderation, parental profiles could be written
in a manner appropriate to the closed community that would have
access to them.
* * * * *