ednet.ftd

-- ds.page: `ednet` protocol

`ednet` protocol is an open source standard for organising educational content
of the world. This protocol can be used to designate what online `content`
helps one learn what `concept`, prescribed by what `board` or in what
`syllabus`. This protocol helps `classroom` teachers create learning material
for their class. This protocol also helps learners keep track of what they have
learnt, and evaluators to easily review what a learner knows.

Our goal is to make learning accessible to everyone in the world. To be part of
`ednet` network, all content should be public and licensed under permissible
license.


-- ds.h1: High Level Protocol Design Guidelines

-- ds.h2: Complete Lack Of Authority

Anyone create a board, or anyone create content etc. No need for "politics" of
talking to the right people. Autonomous protocol.

-- ds.h2: As Software Light As Possible

Websites go down. If one uses any dynamic language, or database etc, keeping
site up is hard. Therefore all the pages are static pages.

-- ds.h2: Fully Download-able Content

Standardised on FTD (subset). So that it works on as many devices as possible,
and yet is as interactive as it can be. We can't do PDF which is most widely
supported, but lacks interactivity etc.

-- ds.h2: Study Without Internet

Once learner has "subscribed" to a class, their app (browser extension, desktop
or mobile app can download entire content). And then on, no internet is
required. Xray uploads would be done opportunistically, when the internet is
available, in the background.

-- ds.h2: Data Collection Done In Privacy Friendly Way

Only teachers can identify students. Content creators, board etc can not. And
only xray information is availble, not any other information.

-- ds.h2: Self Learning But With Guides

Teachers are needed at times.

-- ds.h2: Low Hardware/Power Requirements

We want people in remote areas with limited access to internet, elecronic
devices, power etc to be able to learn using the `ednet` network. We will be
identify low powered tablets and all content should support those devices.

Content should fail gracefully in case there is a hardware or internet or power
constraint, for example if there is not enough internet, maybe only download
and show text. If some more internet is there also download images. And then
videos. Content is consumable even if only text is available.


-- ds.h1: Key Concepts Of *`ednet` Protocol*

-- ds.h2: Board Of Education

Most education content is decided by some sort of a `board`. It can be a
university for college education or a school board for school education. We are
using the term `board` to also describe aprenticeships or tradeschools. In case
of companies, there is internal training, so a lot of companies can be
considered `boards` too. Finally our protocol allows anyone to create a
`board`, and start prescribing `syllabus` for learners.

Examples of `Boards`:

- Central Board Of Secondary Education in India
- IIT Bombay
- Mongo University (training arm of MongoDB company)

-- ds.h2: `Syllabus`

A `board` can have one or more courses. Each course has a syllabus. The
`syllabus` describes all the `concepts` that are taught or is a required
learning for that `syllabus`.

A syllabus is for a single subject, for a single education periods, like:

- [CBSE has a syllabus for 10th standard Mathematics](https://cbseacademic.nic.in/web_material/CurriculumMain23/Sec/Maths_Sec_2022-23.pdf)
- [Introduction To MongoDB's syllabus](https://learn.mongodb.com/learning-paths/introduction-to-mongodb)

-- ds.h2: `Concept`

Every `syllabus` is composed of `concepts`. Each `concept` is an atomic unit of
learning. Like the CBSE 10th Standard Mathemtics `syllabus` has `concepts`
like:

- representation of natural number
- integers on number line
- non recurring, non terminating decimals
- existence of irrational number
- irrational number on number line
- nth root of a real number

Each concept requires some content for you to learn.

-- ds.h3: Concept Dependencies And Concept Graph

Concepts also have related concepts, like `dependencies` (to learn this concept,
you must be at `Good` for this other concept first), learn more (if you like
this concept and want to improve your understanding or are curious, you should
learn this checkout this other `concept`).

`concept dependencies` allows the `concepts` to be organised in a `concept
graph`.

-- ds.h2: `Content`

In order to learn a `concept` the learner needs some `content`. The `content`
can be an explainer for the `concept`, or it can be a quiz for the `concept`.
Same `concept` can be taught by `content` in different languages, styles, or
even medium (text vs video vs audio vs games?).

-- ds.h2: `Classroom`

There can be a plathors of `content` available for the `concepts` required by a
`syllabus`. Online search engines can help you a little bit in find the
relevant `content`, but we believe in curation. Searching each concept to find
content that is easy to digest is not optimal for every learner. `Classroom` in
`ednet` is created by some teacher, and the teacher picks some `concepts`, and
for each `concept` they pick one or more `content`.

Classroom is a learning cohort.

-- ds.h2: `xray`

Xray or a learner is stream of learning data for a learner. The learning happens
on an ongoing basis, whenever the learner has reviewed some content, they are
prompted to do self evaluation in the form of "Again" (I did not undestand the
concept, I have to study it again), "Hard" (I understand the concept but find
it hard), "Good" (I think I am quite good with this concept) and "Easy"
(this concept is too easy for me). The learner can re-evaluate themselves on
the same concept as many times as needed.

The `xray` of the a learner can be shared by the learner with either the
teacher, or the hiring manager for a job, so people have a good understanding
of the knowledge of the learner.

`ednet` protocol helps shared anonymised xray with `content` creators and
`board` administrators to help improve the `content` and `syllabus`.

-- ds.h1: How Is Knowledge Organized?

Board, Syllabus, Concept, Content and Classroom are all URLs. Each URL exposes
data about itself using meta tags in the HEAD section.

-- ds.h2: Board Data

Board exposes the following:

-- ds.code:
lang: html

<head>
    <meta name="ednet-entity" content="board">
    <meta name="ednet-board" content="<board-url>/board.json">
</head>

-- ds.markdown:

Any page can designate itself as a board by linking to a `board.json`.

-- ds.code:
lang: json

{
    "ednet-version": "1.0",
    "entity": "board",
    "name": "Name Of Board",
    "syllabuses": [
        {
            "name": ["10th Standard", "Mathematics"],
            "url": "<url-to-syllabus.json>"
        }
    ]
}

-- ds.h2: Syllabus

A syllabus page puts these in the meta tag:

-- ds.code:
lang: html

<head>
    <meta name="ednet-entity" content="syllabus">
    <meta name="ednet-syllabus" content="<syllabus.json url>">
    <meta name="ednet-board" content="<board-url>/board.json">
</head>

-- ds.markdown:

The `syllabus.json` looks like this:

-- ds.code:
lang: json

{
    "ednet-version": "1.0",
    "entity": "syllabus",
    "board-url": "<url>",
    "name": "name of syllabus",
    "xray-sink": "url of xray sink - optional",
    "concepts": [
        {
            "name": ["Number System", "Real Numbers"],
            "url": "<url-to-concept>"
        }
    ]
}


-- ds.h2: Concept

A `concept` page puts these in the meta tag:

-- ds.code:
lang: html

<head>
    <meta name="ednet-entity" content="concept">
    <meta name="dependency" content="<url of other dependency>">
</head>

-- ds.markdown:

Please note that there is no link back to syllabus or board, this is done
intentionally so a concept can be re-used in different syllabus. Concept is
just a URL. The content of the concept page can be ignored.


-- ds.h3: Deprecation Of Concept

From time to time maintainer of a `concept` may realise their concept is
actually a duplicate of some other concept and would want to let everyone using
their concept know of this.

They can do so by adding:

-- ds.code: current concept deciding to deprecate themselves
lang: html

<head>
    <meta name="ednet-entity" content="concept">
    <meta name="ednet-canonical-concept" content="the other concept"
</head>


-- ds.h2: Content

Content can be present on any URL. The content can express what concepts it is
good for by adding the following meta tags:

-- ds.code:
lang: html

<head>
    <meta name="ednet-entity" content="content">
    <meta name="content-url" content="url of content.ftd">
    <meta name="ednet-concept" content="url of the concept 1">
    <meta name="ednet-concept" content="url of the concept 2">
    <meta name=xray-sink" content="url of xray sink - optional">
</head>

-- ds.markdown:

Same `content` can be used for different `concepts`, so the `ednet-concept`
meta can be repeated any number of times.

The `content-type` can be one of `explainer`, `video`, `audio`, `quiz`.

-- ds.h3: Download-ability Of Content

For a `content` to be part of `ednet` network, it must be easily downloadable,
and must work in cross platform study apps.

`ednet` uses `ftd` to author all content. When authoring content the content
must be linked against `ednet-protoco.github.io/ednet-content` package, with an
alias `ec`.

-- ds.h2: Classroom

Any page can become a classroom by adding a classroom.json link:

-- ds.code:
lang: html

<head>
    <meta name="ednet-entity" content="classroom">
    <meta name="classroom" content="url of classroom.json">
    <meta name="xray-sink" content="url of xray sink">
</head>

-- ds.markdown:

The classroom.json looks like this:

-- ds.code:
lang: json

{
    "ednet-version": "1.0",
    "entity": "classroom",
    "name": "name of classroom",
    "xray-sink": "url of xray sink - optional",
    "concepts": [
        {
            "name": ["Number System", "Real Numbers"],
            "concept": "<url-to-concept>",
            "syllabus": "<url of syllabus>",
            "content": [
                {
                    "name": "Display name for this content",
                    "url": "<url of content.ftd>"
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}

-- ds.h1: XRay

-- ds.h2: XRay Data

Xray json looks like this:

-- ds.code: xray schema
lang: json

{
    "classroom": "url of the classroom",
    "concept": "url of the concept",
    "syllabus": "<url of syllabus>",
    "timestamp": "nanoseconds, stored as i64 not string",
    "content": "url of content",
    "time-spent": "time in seconds, spent on this content",
    "resolution": "skipped | again | hard | good | easy"
}

-- ds.h2: XRay Sharing


-- ds.h3: With Classroom

Learner can share their xray information with the `classroom` (vis the
`xray-sink` url). This allows the software on teacher to plot completeness of
learners so learners and their designated gaurdians can see progress of student
with their learning cohort.

-- ds.h3: With Syllabus Creators

Learner can chose to allow the classroom to periodically share the XRay
information with the syllabus (via the `xray-sink` url). This allows software
with the board / syllabus creators to fine tune the syllabus.

The information also lets syllabus creators understand what content is most
helpful to learners, so they can publish link to good content against each
concept which helps future classrooms access better content to include in their
classrooms.

-- ds.h3: With Content Creators

Learners can chose to allow the classroom to periodically share the xray
information with the content creators, via the `xray-sink` url. This allows the
content creator to improve their content.

-- ds.h1: Concept Re-normalization

When the ednet network starts, each board or syllabus will create all their
concepts, and this will lead to duplication of concept. Like CBSE 10th Std
Math's "irrational numbers" may have the concept url of
`https://cbse.org/10th/maths/irrational-numbers/`, but ICSE in 10th may teach
exactly the same concept, but they may end up creating their own URL:
`https://icse.com/10/mathematics/numbers/irrational/`.

The xray information helps identify such duplications. The incentive of the
content author is to make their content as widely used as possible as content
creator may not care about money (being part of ednet netowrk does not itself
earn you money, this is for making world a better place), but how often your
content is included and used by learners is still a metric we believe will
drive some content creators. Those content creators have incentive to add as
many concept urls in their content meta data. Now simply spamming will not help
the reputation of the author, they will appear smappy, lose credibility with
teachers, so they will only put the link to concepts they truly believe (and
can see from data that they are indeed helpul for) is relevant.

Syllabus creators are also getting the same xray information. And they can see
what content is being recommended for the concept in their syllabus, what other
concepts, that are not part of they syllabus, but is getting taught using the
same content. If a content is teaching more than one concept, there is a
possiblity they are duplicate. Analysing the content concept linkages, and xray
data, gives an picture of concept duplication. The syllabus creators can act on
this knowledge and remove (deprecate) their concept URLs and start using the
more popular concept URLs.

This way the concept URLs will start to cluster, and duplication will go down.
Eg if `content a` was written and tagged only with `concept x` and `content b`
with `concept y`, and if clustering puts `concept x` and `concept y` as
duplicates, and syullabus creator who used `concept y` examines the data and
decides `concept x` and `concept y` are indeed duplicate, syllabus author will
ask concept maintainer of `concept y` to derecate themselves in favour of
`concept x`, and if that is done, both `content a` and `content b` will become
available to learners of `concept x` (which is also now learners of `concept
y`).

-- end: ds.page