Aren’t There Existing Educational Resources Online?
Currently, no website or resource exists that does what Project FrEd will do. All existing resources are very specific or lack any sense of curriculum whatsoever.
Project FrEd is the first curriculum-driven, systems approach to free online education that upon completion will encompass all textual, interrogative, research, and graphical resources necessary to teach a complete education from Kindergarten through to Grade 12 in all subjects required for graduation (and eventually all subjects offered). Moreover, its presence will allow for free university preparation material (i.e.: if a university student needed to complete Physics 12 to attempt a university level Physics course).
Project FrEd is the first curriculum-driven, systems approach to free online education that upon completion will encompass all textual, interrogative, research, and graphical resources necessary to teach a complete education from Kindergarten through to Grade 12 in all subjects required for graduation (and eventually all subjects offered). Moreover, its presence will allow for free university preparation material (i.e.: if a university student needed to complete Physics 12 to attempt a university level Physics course).
The Concept of Project Free Education (Project FrEd)
Project FrEd is an online tool that aims to supplement and increase the quality and volume of education provided both domestically and internationally. This will allow those in rural areas or those who cannot afford materials to get an education, provided that they have access to any internet ready computer either at home or at a public library. Moreover, it will reduce the cost of education per pupil by reducing materials used including fuel for transportation as well as stationary, textbooks, and teaching hours. For those that do have access to conventional education, it provides a free tutoring service for those lagging and a free enrichment service for those gifted. Moreover, it will support many different curricula from many different provinces and countries for a truly global, free education system through use of its innovative and efficient conceptual modularization.
Modularization
Project FrEd satisfied each learning outcome in a curriculum with one or more modules, each made out of components. Components (such as video lectures, flash animations, wiki textbook excerpts) and thus all pertinent information are added to a module. This module is done in redundancy such that many different teachers create the same module in many different ways, each trying to encompass all of the various learning styles bringing their own passion, teaching experience, and uniqueness to the module. Teachers can tag which learning styles are best represented in their version of the module which is then adjusted by user feedback. Some may include activities or exercises to try at home for kinaesthetic learners while others may focus more on traditional note-based lecture. Ideally, modules will teach as many learning styles as possible, but this may not always be possible.
Feedback from Students
Every student will have a learning profile based on how strongly they learn through each learning style. An explanatory evaluation page will help students assess how strongly they learn in each way. The result will be a quantified numerical score in each learning category. Their feedback will then be weighted based on their ability to learn. As a result, modules will receive quality scores for each learning style separately even though each user will affect every score with their feedback. The FrEd website will then compare the learning profiles of all modules for the desired learning outcome as well as the student's learning profile and serve the best suited module.
Questions from Students
As students use modules, feedback will also be left on a comments page. This feedback will allow educators to tighten their presentation. Students will be able to post questions in a forum for the course they’re taking on a thread specific to their module (each module will have its own thread). Other students can then answer their questions or post their own. Each unanswered question will have a flag. Once it has been answered, the flag can be taken down. This can be done by either students or educators. Educators can set their accounts to “watch” certain pages such that they are e-mailed when new questions are waiting for their course. This can be set to a weekly or daily reminder, or to a reminder for each question.
Diversity of Curriculum
While the first set of finished modules will form a complete representation of the BC, K-12 curriculum, each module may be reused. Thus, other curricula can be very quickly supported on FrEd by simply re-using all of the existing modules and filling in the unique or missing learning objectives with new modules. As the base of re-usable modules grows, so too does the number of curricula that can be supported by Fred. Thus, FrEd becomes an online repository of many different forms and styles of education with each available to any user for free. Moreover, the storage of these curricula is very compact and efficient.
Retention with Minimal Redundancy
Modules will be indexed and searchable. Therefore, instead of having to recapitulate review material, students can be re-directed to workbook problems of a previous section to test their knowledge. Then, workbook problems in the summary of the new course can use a synthesis of previous and current concepts without having to directly reiterate old concepts. If a student needs to refresh a previous idea, they can search a subject, course, or chapter for it and quickly (or slowly) review the material to retrieve the lost datum or idea. This allows students to revisit prerequisite material without needing to have redundancy incorporated into new courses, saving educators time.
The basic idea is to avoid redundancy of concepts in modules; however, maintain integration and synthesis through sections and chapter summaries, as well as workbook problems. In fact, workbook software will be able to analyse which problems were answered correctly and incorrectly and determine which modules should be reviewed for improvement. Moreover, corrections will be available in the form of new questions testing those modules after a student has had time to review the appropriate material. This will empower students to fix their own mistakes and learn more independently.
Sections and Chapters: Making Sense of Modules
Each course comprises many sections. Each section comprises two or more modules as well as an optional introduction and/or summary module. Workbook problems can be written and associated with any kind of module (intro, learning objective, or summary). However, summary problems allow more challenging integration and synthesis problems. Chapters may have similar introduction and summary modules (although not all sections or chapters need introduction modules). Usually, introduction and summary modules are shorter than typical concept modules. Introductions may pose questions to consider while learning the material (in the module text), and summaries may have associated workbook problems.
Modularization
Project FrEd satisfied each learning outcome in a curriculum with one or more modules, each made out of components. Components (such as video lectures, flash animations, wiki textbook excerpts) and thus all pertinent information are added to a module. This module is done in redundancy such that many different teachers create the same module in many different ways, each trying to encompass all of the various learning styles bringing their own passion, teaching experience, and uniqueness to the module. Teachers can tag which learning styles are best represented in their version of the module which is then adjusted by user feedback. Some may include activities or exercises to try at home for kinaesthetic learners while others may focus more on traditional note-based lecture. Ideally, modules will teach as many learning styles as possible, but this may not always be possible.
Feedback from Students
Every student will have a learning profile based on how strongly they learn through each learning style. An explanatory evaluation page will help students assess how strongly they learn in each way. The result will be a quantified numerical score in each learning category. Their feedback will then be weighted based on their ability to learn. As a result, modules will receive quality scores for each learning style separately even though each user will affect every score with their feedback. The FrEd website will then compare the learning profiles of all modules for the desired learning outcome as well as the student's learning profile and serve the best suited module.
Questions from Students
As students use modules, feedback will also be left on a comments page. This feedback will allow educators to tighten their presentation. Students will be able to post questions in a forum for the course they’re taking on a thread specific to their module (each module will have its own thread). Other students can then answer their questions or post their own. Each unanswered question will have a flag. Once it has been answered, the flag can be taken down. This can be done by either students or educators. Educators can set their accounts to “watch” certain pages such that they are e-mailed when new questions are waiting for their course. This can be set to a weekly or daily reminder, or to a reminder for each question.
Diversity of Curriculum
While the first set of finished modules will form a complete representation of the BC, K-12 curriculum, each module may be reused. Thus, other curricula can be very quickly supported on FrEd by simply re-using all of the existing modules and filling in the unique or missing learning objectives with new modules. As the base of re-usable modules grows, so too does the number of curricula that can be supported by Fred. Thus, FrEd becomes an online repository of many different forms and styles of education with each available to any user for free. Moreover, the storage of these curricula is very compact and efficient.
Retention with Minimal Redundancy
Modules will be indexed and searchable. Therefore, instead of having to recapitulate review material, students can be re-directed to workbook problems of a previous section to test their knowledge. Then, workbook problems in the summary of the new course can use a synthesis of previous and current concepts without having to directly reiterate old concepts. If a student needs to refresh a previous idea, they can search a subject, course, or chapter for it and quickly (or slowly) review the material to retrieve the lost datum or idea. This allows students to revisit prerequisite material without needing to have redundancy incorporated into new courses, saving educators time.
The basic idea is to avoid redundancy of concepts in modules; however, maintain integration and synthesis through sections and chapter summaries, as well as workbook problems. In fact, workbook software will be able to analyse which problems were answered correctly and incorrectly and determine which modules should be reviewed for improvement. Moreover, corrections will be available in the form of new questions testing those modules after a student has had time to review the appropriate material. This will empower students to fix their own mistakes and learn more independently.
Sections and Chapters: Making Sense of Modules
Each course comprises many sections. Each section comprises two or more modules as well as an optional introduction and/or summary module. Workbook problems can be written and associated with any kind of module (intro, learning objective, or summary). However, summary problems allow more challenging integration and synthesis problems. Chapters may have similar introduction and summary modules (although not all sections or chapters need introduction modules). Usually, introduction and summary modules are shorter than typical concept modules. Introductions may pose questions to consider while learning the material (in the module text), and summaries may have associated workbook problems.
If you would like more detailed information as to how the software will work, please visit us at www.fredsoft.weebly.com. If you'd like to contact us, please e-mail projectFrEd@live.ca.
