-------- Original Message -------- Subject: RE: [Politech] Company claims patent over online testing [ip] Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 12:47:22 -0000 To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> <Quote>## Company Claims to Own Online Testing A patent holder demands fees from colleges that use a common tool of distance education</Quote> Just another case of the Patent Office not being able to find it's rear end if it was sitting on it's hands. I am amazed that several items of Prior Art were not found. IANAL but, these items when taken in context would seem to invalidate the Patent (see below for the abstract of the patent and items that point to Prior Art). PLATO was the forunner of them all, I remember working on PLATO systems in College in the 70's. I created lessons and testing students using the TUTOR language via the PLATO systems running out of the University of Illinois at Champagne/Urbana. Perhaps the subjects of the Shake-down attempt should contact the University of Illinois and/or personnel from Control Data who were involved in the development of PLATO and the TUTOR language? I am pretty sure that the University of Illinois, NovaNET, PLATO Learning, Inc and VCAMPUS would find the Patent amusing to say the least. Prior Art can be found relating to the PLATO system and many other online testing systems that were based on its groundbreaking ideas. Regards, Eric Guy <Quote> 6,513,042 Internet test-making method Assignee: Test.com (Cleveland, OH) Issue Date: 01/28/2003 Filing Date: 02/11/1999 Class: 707/102 Legal: Renner, Otto, Boisselle & Sklar, LLP Abstract: A method of making a tests, assessments, surveys and lesson plans with images and sound files and posting them on-line for potential users. Questions are input by a test-maker and then the questions are compiled into a test by a host system and posted on-line for potential test-takers. The compiled test may be placed in a directory for access by the test-takers, the directory preferably having a plurality of categories corresponding to different types of tests and the compiled test is placed in the appropriate category. For ease in administration, a just-made test is placed into a temporary category so that it may be later reviewed (by the proprietor of the host system) and placed in the most appropriate category.</Quote> Just a quick Google finds a multiplicity of sites that can be used to locate Prior Art. http://www.platopeople.com/ "PLATO was created at the University of of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and beginning in the mid-70s was marketed commercially by Control Data Corporation (now long gone, the last remnants being a part of the current Syntegra Corp.). PLATO as a branded product continues to this day, in an evolved form available from PLATO Learning, Inc. (now the owners of the registered trademark, "PLATO"). Other offshoots CDC PLATO include CYBIS® from UOL Publishing, Inc., which has evolved into VCampus, Inc.. And of course, there's NovaNET, the successor to PLATO at the University of Illinois, and now marketed by Pearson Ed Tech. (Ironically, the great rivals PLATO and Computer Curriculum Corporation are finally under one roof -- Pearson owns both.)" http://www.physics.uiuc.edu/General_Info/History/PLATO.htm "Bitzer collaborated with Chalmers Sherwin (Physics) to design the PLATO hardware. A staff of creative eccentrics, ranging from university professors to high school students, few of whom had any computer background, wrote the software. Together they built a system that was at least a decade ahead of its time in many ways. More than 15,000 hours of instruction, based on B.F. Skinner's behavioral learning model, were developed for PLATO—representing perhaps the largest single investment in educational technology content ever made, even to this day." http://www.iicm.edu/iicm_papers/edmedia_2002.doc It is well known that the first serious attempt to use computers for educational purposes was the PLATO system developed in the early sixties at the University of Illinois and later commercialized by the then powerful Control Data Corporation. Of its many competitors, PLATO did fairly well for quite a long time. PLATO went through many versions, but the basic idea was to offer a central computer with courseware and use the material from a (then very rudimentary) terminal. However, the fact that all students accessed the same computer allowed for some communication between participants, for keeping track of scores and other statistical information, including feedback on the quality of the courseware. PLATO - CDC 60's thru the 80's http://www.coe.uh.edu/courses/cuin6373/idhistory/plato.html PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) Another partnership between the University of Illinois' Computer Education Research Laboratory (CERL) under the direction of Donald Bitzer, Control Data Corporation and the National Science Foundation resulted in the development of a CAI system called PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations). PLATO was designed to use a mainframe-based system rather than a smaller minicomputer because of greater program and storage capability. A larger library of programs would be available for student use; more sophisticated programs could keep track of individual student's progress; and the number of simultaneous users could be dramatically increased (Pagliaro, 1983). Kinzer et al. (1986) stated that "the goal of PLATO was to deliver cost-effective, computer-assisted instruction (p. 26). The PLATO system used a special-purpose programming language called TUTOR to write educational software. PLATO remained a small communications system during the 1960's supporting only a single classroom of terminals. Around 1972, PLATO was moved to a mainframe environment that allowed up to one thousand users to connect simultaneously (Woolley, 1994). During the early 1970's PLATO IV was introduced, a large time-shared instructional system. Hundreds of terminals were available where each terminal serviced one terminal display and keyboard. All data and programs were stored on a central computer. Six-hundred students could use the system simultaneously to access and use interactive educational and communications software. This system allowed instructors to design instructional material at the same time students are studying lessons (Alessi and Trollip, 1985). In 1973, David R. Woolley designed a communications software for the PLATO system called Notes. From this program other on-line communication programs such as Talkomatic, Term-Talk, Personal Notes, and Group notes were released. The original PLATO system continued to grow throughout the 1970s and early 1980s from a classroom of about 20 students to over a thousand terminals throughout the country (Alessi and Trollip, 1985). Control Data Corporation starting setting up PLATO systems around 1975. They had over 100 PLATO a systems operating around by 1985 (Woolley, 1994). NovaNet - 1989-90's http://www.usg.edu/oiit/pubs/oiitnews/1990/oct90.phtml Computer Based Instruction - NovaNET NovaNET is an educational, testing, and communications network system delivered via satellite by the University of Illinois. Elaborate curriculum design and management features allow instructors to tailor curriculum offerings by selecting lessons from an extensive library of courseware. Communications capabilities including electronic bulletin boards, notes files, and an interactive "talk" feature encourage sharing of information with faculty and staff located around Georgia and at other NovaNET and PLATO sites. _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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