stub posts

Education done like work flex-time

*** reasons
scheduling classs around work, home, and other parts of life can be very difficult
especially when a rigid schedule week after week is required and
required classes frequently have few available scheduling options
long, fixed terms mean students must plan in advance and be scheduled for months

*** possible implementation characteristics
* semesters
no more fixed semesters or similar fixed periods
students attend lectures, office hours, etc. whenever they want
each lecture, etc is offered at one of many pre-scheduled times
students can pick and choose which time they want to go
times and frequency chosen based on previous demand
student must attend a certain set of lectures, plus perhaps some from an optional collection
can take as long as they want to complete a course
take tests/evaluations/projects when they feel they are ready
tests given in a testing center where they can be taken any time
monitored, students from many classes take tests at once
much harder than current tests to give flexibility in determining competency
getting 50% of the questions right probably good target normal grade
one on one type evaluations scheduled with prof for most convenient time
at least as important as tests
profs spend time with student determining their capabilities
projects are like homework, but larger and with a more defined purpose
projects last a certain duration, must be finished by a due date
some longer and bigger, some short and small
groups projects will require students signing up, running once a quota is reached
competencies rather than grades
not fixed
students can keep going until they achieve desired/required level of competency
profs decide competency based on tests, projects, evaluations, time spent with in class and office-hours
many profs involved, whole department perhaps
no homework per se normally
in class, supervised work only most of the time
perhaps some courses will have some continuity between some lectures with coursework given between
required to be taken in a certain order
should be rare
projects will be the majority of work done outside of class
Office-hours/tutoring
Some students obtain and undertand information in certain classes very easily while other students need a lot of help.
Part of profs time will be spent in an office hours / tutoring like teaching methodology where students are encouraged to seek assistance from the profs
in a larger capacity setting than an office.
An entire class should be able to show up and be handled in this setting.
Possible student activities would be private study with occasional questions to prof or longer discussions with prof about certain points.


Workshop Paradigm

apps + files organized by job/workshop

example: music making workshop has music creation apps + users personal (and other’s shared?) music files

different users have same apps (tools) but their own files (works)

different jobs/workshops may use same tools ie music making and music listening workshop may both need some listening tools


finder desktop views

similar to desktop paging type applications – these allow you to switch between several ‘desktops’ each with a set of windows or designated applications. This would be like the ability to save these desktops, but including the ability to include windows in a ‘desktop’ view that might be visible in other desktop views as well.

one would have a large collection of views, that, upon opening, would launch requisite applications and open windows, possibly moving them to certain positions, and possibly filling them with certain contents (such as a certain finder directory or the last edited project file), and hiding all other windows. One could quickly switch between these as in normal desktop paging. One could leave multiple open, or quit some. When quitting a view, all windows in it are closed, and the applications involved in that are quit if they are not open in another view (a la adding to and removing from a retain count).

due to the nature of these views, there will be many more to choose from than would be in a normal desktop paging system. Therefore, a different access method would be good. I’d propose a list accessible via button and keyboard shortcut. When opened, this menu would work like a normal menu, but all keypresses would enter into a search field and would work to narrow the list items via a search through it. All currently open view items would be highlighted in some way, and could be filtered into this list. One could also quit all open views. This would then open the default view, likely a finder one with windows or just a view of the desktop.

in using a computer, there are many different sets of tasks that a user might perform. some or many of these tasks might cause the use of a certain set of windows, perhaps even setting them into a certain pattern for ideal use. They often span multiple applications, so that a single application properly sorting its windows would not be sufficient.

stub, sorry I’m tired, I will have to revise this jumble later.