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MS Seeks To Patent Education-Feedback Software
theodp writes "The USPTO disclosed Thursday that Microsoft is seeking an early childhood education-related patent for Providing instructional feedback to a user, which the software giant says covers the use of computers to teach little tykes to form the letter 'b', make a 'ch' sound, and divide 321 by 17. Let's hope LeapPad-toting preschoolers are indemnified against Microsoft lawsuits." "Unstructured" is the key word in this patent, which (like most) is written in language that does more to obscure than illuminate. Just how structured was Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing? How about GCompris?
This may be the big one folks. There is so much prior art for this that its not even funny. Not only that, this is the backbone of the world's economy and its rigorous enforcement may well wake up the world to the problem of broad software patents and bring about quick change to the patent system.
May it be rigorously enforced for the good of humanity.
Oh great now Microsoft is making crappy kids software. I'm waiting for the Mozzila version.
I hope they get the patent and litigate heavily. Then perhaps parents will spend time with their children, rather than plopping them in front of various boxes that they believe will do the work for them.
If only...
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
But, no reason for them to stop if they can get away with it and make money off of it.
Write your congressman and plead for reform.
...Microsoft will be trying to patent the see-n-say. Is nothing obvious?
Another stupid software patent. Its an everexpanding mess which shouldn't have existed in the first place... can you really qualify software as an 'innovative invention'? Should it be protected for 20 (or whatever) years so no one can duplicate your code?
In my opinion, it should be protected like books (and such) by copyright law only. If I can recreate the same effect without seeing your code, I can't see how your patented software is innovative. 'Normal' inventions are a different story altogether; they can be disassembled, reverse engineered, etc. (Ok, Java code too).
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
I can't believe that this could possibly withstand any attack. Education literature is filled with feedback technologies for learning, from B.F. Skinner's "Technology of Teaching" to attempts to teach vocalists with biofeedback.
I know little about patent law, but as an educator, the world is filled with many prior attempts (some very successful).
Anyhow...
Did you forget Microsoft Barney?
In a few decades when books have been practically replaced by software, the only education available will be from Microsoft. *Everyone* will be retarded!
Shold have been: "Posted by timothy on Saturday November 27, @08:11PM from the patent-system-could-use-some-learning-soft dept."
It is just me or this sounds strange when you add microsoft in the begginning
[...]education-related patent for Providing instructional feedback to a user, which the software giant says[...]
/. has already expressed the opinion most os uf have regarding the matter: crapheap.
And I thought parents and teachers were the ones to provide instructional feedback to the us... uhm, sorry child.
As regarding MS & patenting: nothing to say here,
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Blue screen of talking like a dolphin.
The PalmOS Graffiti tutor - very structured, obviously it's not prior art!
And, these much older teaching tools are also obviously too structured and not prior art!
Madlibs, a game from the Apple II days! - Obviously too structured.
Lemonade stand - Apple II
. . . Other examples, too numerous to waste time on! There is so much prior art on this, that maybe it will wake someone at the US Patent Office up!
I know there's going to be a raft of prior art examples, but what leaps to mind first is the use of email back in the days when there were only a few universities connected together. Would using email to ask one of your professors fit as prior art in this case? What about using email to ask a question of a fellow student or anyone at another university? For that matter, how old is email itself? How old is the oldest know student-to-professor email?
Microsoft: All your children are belong to us.
I hope my speak and spell from 20 years ago is ok!!!
Speak and Spell came out in 1978. This is about as plain an example of "prompt user, wait for reply, respond" as you can get. Is MS claiming they came up with this concept before 78?
Wake me up when one of these is upheld in court. That will be news. The patent office still hasn't even approved this one (and with its current rate, it will likely take a few years before it is).
I can apply for a patent for starting a fire with two sticks. Its even possible the patent office will rubber stamp it a few years later. But it is meaningless because there is no way a judge would accept it.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
The patent is for the computer responding to "unstructured input" with an instructional response.
"It looks like you're trying to..."
I'm certain that the experimental psychology literature is littered with similar methods to improve learning and memory. Computer based experimentation has been in wide use for approximately 20 years in that field. A large portion of that research is focussed on the learning and memory processes, and how they can be both positively and negatively impacted.
and a bunch of other Texas Instruments instructional toys from the last century.
next up on the microsoft patent list:
"Utilization of circular object to limit friction"
(the wheel)
Soon to be followed by a public pronouncement by Steve Ballmer that "The governments of many nations should be wary that they may be infringing on MS patents and could be sued".
There will also be a lite version of this patent freely available to everybody, limited to the letters needed to say "open source damages innovation" and "intellectual properties are an essential part of the economy".
A.CDEFG.I..LMNOP.RSTUV..Y.
Well, not so lite but the joke is there.
bash$
I wrote a program that did this for my daughter in my own voice. If Microsoft wants to come sue me, they're welcome to go ahead and try.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Q: 1 + 1 = ?
A: 2?
## We've got a bright bulb here! fork to college-level section.
Q: In the following sentence, fill in the blank with the word that makes the most sense: "Software patents _________ innovation."
A: kill
## Oh dear, it seems we've got an open source communist on our hands. silently fork to MS re-education section.
Q: True americans believe in the Constitution, baseball, apple pie, capitalism, private property, and a healthy ecosystem of private intellectual property which promotes progress.
A: fuck this propaganda!
## profanity detected. lost cause. BlueScreenOfDeath(WITH_A_VENGENCE);
--
Power to the Peaceful
Syntax Error
It gives you a output from a none structured input.
I wrote a typing tutor-esque program at least a decade ago, using GW-Basic no less. It provided educational feedback of various kinds to both students and teachers.
This patent app is referring to a (possibly networked) pen and tablet type device used as an educational tool. As this person points out, one can think of possible prior art here. But really, this is just an ordinary straightforward patent. It's not any more evil than any other patent application.
If anything, it looks to me like MS is trying to end-run some of the Nintendo DS's possible functionality.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
How long will it be before we have kids sleeptalking "Evilution is False. Science is Satan. Obey Microsoft and I will be Rewarded by God. God is Great."?
I looked at the slashdot comments for useful information and opinion on the patent, but found some worthless posts meant to better the poster's karma and some humourless funny posts. I don't know how to read patents, so can anyone please make a useful comment about what the patent actually says? Please don't make funny replies to this with posts like "you must be new here".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hey hey! Don't mod k4_pacific down! He's right! I declared in this post attached to k4_pacific's original comment that I intended to troll with it. He's entirely right to claim prior art on that first post. He should be modded up interesting or insightful, not redundant! Really, the whole thing is funny, but that's no karma bonus. I swear to God that I'm the author of this story's first post, and post #10731676. :)
Ok, this is bullsh*t....
I want to build a machine for my grandson and I'll be damned if he's going to have his mind polluted by M$ poison.
What's a Linux distro for toddlers that will run on legacy boxes? Something like DSL for preschoolers?? (And it would be nice if his mom could also use it for simple web tasks, ala-DSL)
Everything mentioned in the original post is structured. What the patent covers (to the best of my understanding of the legal mumbo-jumbo) is kind of software parent-teacher-clippy: "Oh, that looks like 'B'! Let me help you to write that again! @"
My other Beowulf cluster is... er...
I can think of at least two things that seriously pre-date MS.
Speak and Spell, for one.
Flash cards, for two...which predate by *quite* a significant margin.
Well, fortunately, Microsoft is a company with deep pockets. At least, it will have the funds to fight piracy of its patent in China. Chinese companies are notorious for outright stealing a patent and then itself applying for the patent to the Chinese ministry of technology. The behavior is utterly disgusting, but there is little that American companies can do to stop it.
"brxref
Zork and all of the Adventure-type games. They definitely took unstructured input, and one could successfully argue that many of these games served an educational purpose as well as entertainment.
...You insensitive clod!
Microsoft sucks!, whats new?
Free iPod Conga
"MS seeks retrospective patent for free speech, suing holders of the constitution"
It is so much broader then that : Its about 'concept duplication' and prohibiting that..
Should simple concepts be patentable? I donno, but should people be able to profit off their ideas, yes....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Back in 1992 I wrote a flash card program for a girlfriends daughter. I used a non-M$ BASIC language that has a compiler (ASIC I think).
I still have the program and source code if we need to show prior art to the id10ts at the USPTO. The program worked by displaying the letter or number (real big) the kid press on the keyboard. It also had basic shapes and colors (i.e. red triagle blue square, yellow circle etc.) It was interactive with he kid and parent.
I hearby patent cows farting. Every farmer that has a cow that farts must pay me a penny for every fart.
Not living in the US, I don't have a congressman to write to and yet, ultimately, these patents will affect us here in the UK.
Perhaps if we were to become the 51st state, at least we would be able to properly lobby for reform. (Although, right now, 'A fate worse than death' springs to mind).
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
OBVIOUS to the USPTO
where the unstructured input is from a computing device, possibly but not necessarily the same as respondant computing device...
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
Is it just me, or is there some connection between this patent and the $100 PC (http://linuxpr.com/releases/7357.html), which mentions its use as an educational tool in schools, possibly using networks/internet to create or find educational tools for use on these DSL computers? Whats next, will microsoft be telling developing China that it cannot buy/use these computers for educational purposes (whatsoever, due to the broadnes of that patent) without the danger of patent litigation? It seems Microsoft is a sore looser.
Plasma Panels, TUTOR and Teaching - Oh my
/ showsg.asp?rg=7&sg=13
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_system
http://web.library.uiuc.edu/ahx/uaccard/adminhist
PLATO had English as a second language, as well as Spanish, French, German, and even Esperanto in the late 1970's. They also had math lessons ranging from "2+2=4" to DiffEq (and probably beyond that). It was all interactive, to say the least.
sigs, as if you care.
I wish Billy all the feedback he can get, but other
than that -- Microsoft, get out of my life.
bjd
According to Timothy's comment on the submission,
"Unstructured" is the key word in this patent, which (like most) is written in language that does more to obscure than illuminate. Just how structured was Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing?
Actually, Mavis Beacon was very structured (I worked for Software Toolworks/Mindscape for a number of years, and am very familiar with that product). The patent app describes "unstructured" as input specifically not from a keyboard, but from a stylus or a microphone. In Mavis, the enitire point was to press the specific keys that it wanted you to at any time, either in typing practice or in the games. It's very much a call-and-response type of learning rather than a more arbitrary scribble-random-stuff method. For that matter, so is the Speak-and-Spell (as I recall), and some of the other prior art that was suggested here.
I've read and been (unwillingly) involved in a lot of patent applications, and the point is not to write them to be obufuscatory, but not to be any more specific than necessary. Patent writing has its own language and metaphors that sound incredibly dense and complex until someone translates them for you. The main idea is to state everything in such a way that it's a) not so specific that the entire thing falls apart if you change the shape of the box and b) resistant to a sharp patent attorney picking it apart for not being specific enough (hence all the block diagrams of CPUs and descriptions of The Internet and re-restatements of the initial claim in slightly different forms). It took me several years before I could read these things and not go blind. So, this application is pretty clear: a device that takes free-form input and determines if it meets whatever criteria define a "correct" answer, and optionally talks to the instructor's computer over the network to do this.
A neat idea, yes. New and novel? Not particularly. Patentable? I don't think it should be, but that's pretty irrelevant these days. I do wish the editors would think a little more about their comments on the stories, though.
What if life is just a side effect of some other process and God has no idea we exist?
Or better put: what isn't? bjd
Now I know there are loads of prior art for that sort of thing. I was developing Computer Based Training packages back in 1987 and I know there were many other companies doing the same or similar way before that time frame.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
yep
That's my why of saying "Mod parent up."
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
Here is a list of all U.S. Microsoft patents issued in the last 10 days, It should save the slashdot editors some time in creating "news" stories:
1 6,823,519 Control object and user interface for controlling networked devices
2 6,823,518 Threading and communication architecture for a graphical user interface
3 6,823,508 Automatic computer program customization based on a user information store
4 6,823,506 Metafile optimization
5 6,823,495 Mapping tool graphical user interface
6 6,823,478 System and method for automating the testing of software processing environment changes
7 6,823,391 Routing client requests to back-end servers
8 6,823,387 System and method for enhancing a server's ability to withstand a "SYN flood" denial of service attack
9 6,823,380 System and method providing continual rate requests
10 6,823,369 Using state information in requests that are transmitted in a distributed network environment
11 6,823,350 Database clean-up system
12 6,823,223 Method and apparatus for providing distributed scene programming of a home automation and control system
13 6,822,664 Browser navigation for devices with a limited input system
14 6,822,653 Methods and system for general skinning via hardware accelerators
15 6,822,650 Formatting object for modifying the visual attributes of visual objects to reflect data values
16 6,820,267 Method and system for remote automation of object oriented applications
17 6,820,256 System and method for whole-system program analysis
18 6,820,218 Persistent stateful component-based applications via automatic recovery
19 6,820,214 Automated system recovery via backup and restoration of system state
20 6,820,150 Method and apparatus for providing quality-of-service delivery facilities over a bus
21 6,820,144 Data format for a streaming information appliance
22 6,820,111 Computer user interface architecture that saves a user's non-linear navigation history and intelligently maintains that history
23 6,820,063 Controlling access to content based on certificates and access predicates
24 6,819,358 Error calibration for digital image sensors and apparatus using the same
25 6,819,345 Managing position and size for a desktop component
But due to the typical Slashbot response of "Hey! Linux boasting and MS with a dollar sign, mod up!"
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
Check out the first PLATO patent, issued in 1968 for a Versatile Display Teaching System. BTW, PLATO was conceived in 1959.
Last I checked, a word does not include a dollar sign. Fucking Slashbot idiot.
Uh... no offense.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
I worked in a middle school at the time and the school, for whatever reason, purchased a TI94x. Nobody in the building was remotely interested so I got to play with it all I wanted. I was and still am a fan of Programmed Instruction ala Susan Markle. I remember him telling me that RPG was a brand new language. (heh!)
I wrote several tutorials for the amusement of the students and myself. It was so successful that I approached the district administration about it. I got a sympathetic hearing from the guy in charge of curriculum. Together we wroted a demonstration program in RPG for one of the eariest system 34/36/38 series of machines. It was the precursor to system 34 I think.
It was a tutorial in English because the administrator was a former English teacher. The district, a blue collar area, didn't think that they could go further in it as they didn't think the community would accept it.
Being a computer ignoramus at the time, I didn't know anything about U of I's Plato system. I learned later that it was already in full bloom.
As to the issue of "unstructured input," that's a smokescreen. All input gets structured for analysis. Once the input device acquires the response, it is structured. This whole concept of unstructured is ridiculous. It is also exactly what they will hang their hat on. There is no such thing as unstructured input. Or more accurately, all input is unstructured until acquired by an input sensor.
Every input device begins the process of structuring and eventual analysis. The use of any input device is just a logical and obvious extension of the programmed instruction methodology. The computer was similarly an obvious extension of the paper and pencil methods of PI.
Unstructured could just mean that the user could be doodling, writing (grafitti? :) or doing something that the computer would figure out and launch an appropriate application or "fix" up the user input.
Autospell check as the user enters words? Changing hand drawing into a real line or curve? Interpreting motions to edit video in real time? Reconizing a penis doodle and bringing up pr0n? Doesn't say...
Sounds intriguing but not too original...
This comment does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the author.
Oops sentence in the wrong paragraph. My bad proofing. Redux:
I worked in a middle school at the time and the school, for whatever reason, purchased a TI94x. Nobody in the building was remotely interested so I got to play with it all I wanted. I was and still am a fan of Programmed Instruction ala Susan Markle.
I wrote several tutorials for the amusement of the students and myself. It was so successful that I approached the district administration about it. I got a sympathetic hearing from the guy in charge of curriculum. Together we wroted a demonstration program in RPG for one of the eariest system 34/36/38 series of machines. It was the precursor to system 34 I think. I remember him telling me that RPG was a brand new language. (heh!)
It was a tutorial in English because the administrator was a former English teacher. The district, a blue collar area, didn't think that they could go further in it as they didn't think the community would accept it.
Being a computer ignoramus at the time, I didn't know anything about U of I's Plato system. I learned later that it was already in full bloom.
As to the issue of "unstructured input," that's a smokescreen. All input gets structured for analysis. Once the input device acquires the response, it is structured. This whole concept of unstructured is ridiculous. It is also exactly what they will hang their hat on. There is no such thing as unstructured input. Or more accurately, all input is unstructured until acquired by an input sensor.
Every input device begins the process of structuring and eventual analysis. The use of any input device is just a logical and obvious extension of the programmed instruction methodology. The computer was similarly an obvious extension of the paper and pencil methods of PI.
[ Reply to This ]
Jeebus, this is basic stuff that's been done in CAI for decades. The firmest prior art is probably IBM CourseWriter which dates back to 1968, maybe even farther. I worked porting some CourseWriter programs back in the early 70s, they did exactly what the MS patent describes. In fact, that was the whole POINT of CourseWriter, to branch to extended instructional material depending on user input.
IBM even had a little "voice unit" for synthesized speech output from the old Coursewriter machines, but I forget the model number of the CPUs, I think they were 1401s. I have a nameplate from one of the old voice units somewhere, I found it lying on the floor when the old machines were decommissioned and the new DECs were installed.
Then, I'll install a money collector, along with a credit card machine, on every toilet sold in the U.S. I'll make millions!!!! Bwaaaahahahahahahahahahahah!
I'd bet you that the USPTO employees won't EVER figure out that some amount of prior art (though I won't tell you where it is) already exists.
I remember seeing a language/system on the GE/Honeywell mainframe at Griffass AFB/RADC called exper designed and used for instruction around 1970-1972 timeframe.
I worked for a company in 1999-2001 that specialized in multimedia instruction/training software.
I also seem to remember an instructional system called PLATO (?) supported/done by CDC sometime in the 60's through 70's timeframe. I've only heard/read about it, never used it so maybe this might trigger someone else's memory.
Not being a lawyer, I'm not sure which, if any of them might count as prior art.
I don't actually see how they are managing to put "unstructured" into this patent at all anyway - surely by dint of the fact that the input is into a computer that input obtains some form of encoding, and hence, structure. Whether the input is a sequence of pen-strokes, recording the user speaking, or listening to an unbounded sequence of button presses, it still has some (albeit loose) structure.
And it also seems like Microsoft shooting their own patent in the foot. It looks as though a litigee could simply stand up and say "No, No, the input in our product has structure. The structure is a time-ordered sequence of user input events". And despite this sounding bizarre, surely they could even point to the object in their code that represents the input, thus showing its structure.
This kind of "instructional feedback" has been going on at least since the early 1960s with programmed instruction (started wtih book format, but also the teaching machine). Jaw dropping that this could be patented by Microsoft. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is safe.
The Death Penalty: Killing people to show others that killing people is wrong.
Patents are not a way for the first person who does something to stop everyone else from doing it. It's a way to stop everyone after you from doing it with your invention, long enough to make back your investment, so people are protected when they publish the blueprints for their unique device. When they patent processes, human interactions, they are stopping the "progress" in arts and science that the Constitution defines as the value of the compromise in the government creating that temporary monopoly. Everything else is abuse.
--
make install -not war
and Control Data already did that in the early 80s. I think that qualifies as prior art. Bad monolith, BAD. No cookies for you.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Many of Microsoft's new software patents
are (arguably) based upon "prior art" that
the USPTO should have recognised. Microsoft
(and any other company seeking very general
software patents) are presumably working on
the premise that during the time between the
"patent pending" status, gaining USPTO approval
and a patent, and its eventual elimination
through the judicial review process, the ability
to "restrict & prevent" other companies' access
to the "software patent" is worth a lot of
money. So long as the legal costs incurred
through the judicial process is less than the
perceived monetary gain from "squatting" on an
invalid "software patent", this USPTO merry-go-
round will continue. What is really needed is
legislation to seriously penalize the "squatter"
with monetary damages that would far exceed the
perceived gain from their "window of opportunity".
Of course, even with such legislation, some
companies (like Microsoft) that have very deep
pockets would still make the gamble. Enough
losing lawsuits (and the penalties) would
eventually draw the ire of the shareholders,
the SEC, and the FTC.
Programmed instruction has been around since at least the 1970's, and that's just a codification of what a moderately engaged tutor naturally does with flash cards and a dull or unmotivated student. Even if Microsoft were the first to apply a computer to the task, it wouldn't be patentable.
.. it will come naturally...
i beieve, only some important technologies need to be patented, and defintely not toys or some smalltime shit. the argument to this might be where do we draw the line to see what is smalltime. whatever it is. currently the ptants help only the rich, the moneyed, the MNCs, the developed countries. thats it. given the way corporations like MS are aggressively patenting trivial subjects - I feel we have a long a protracted feud in a few years to come! and that time - it would be the frustration of people - there might be small colonies who would want themselves to be like the amish - just want to live in peace - and run a parallel world free of corporations and structures!
TuxRacer is educational and gives pretty unstructured feedback (how else did the summer golf course version come about). 'Your patent has prior art' :-)
...was that the patent seems to address a very real problem that doesn't have any obvious, well-established, solution.
I were usin MZ sofwore fer edoocatin . It iz goood an workeds fer mi.
Tanks.
My PhD research centers around a system that provides pronunciation feedback in response to a task-oriented dialogue situation. Assuming that MS considers speech to be unstructured input, I can cite several instances of systems similar to what microsoft is describing. Some of them are a couple DECADES old.
Their patent is bullshit.
Humorless sig goes here.
...17 doesn't divide 321
qntm.org
You see they patented Clippy .... and of course the "Press F1 for Help" stuff ... :)
Thankfully now no-one will use a clippyesque helper .
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Instead of whining about this patent application (no, it isn't a patent yet), why not do some structured research, instead?
Here is some suggested research to help reduce the level of whining and unstructured, unfunny so-called "jokes" by people who seem rather ill-informed:
(1) Most patent applications have been published in the U.S. for about 3 years now. Why not go through these and find out how many of Microsoft's applications that have been published in those three years have actually been granted as a real patent?
Sure, many of the recently published applications may not have had time to be examined yet, but certainly some of the older ones have. But if not many of the latter have issued as real patents, the Patent and Trademark Office might be doing a better job examining and/or rejecting them than you think.
(2) Of those patent applications that have issued as patents, why not compare the claims that issued with the patent against the claims that were filed in the patent application? The claims are the legally operative part of a patent application -- they give notice as to what the patent owner can exclude others from doing or making. (In Slashdotland, it's the abstract and the abstract alone that tells you this, but rest assured, Slashdotland is the only place where that's the case.)
Applying for a patent is like listing a house for sale. The asking price of the seller is almost always bargained down by the buyer (i.e., the PTO). Thus, the claims of the issued patent may differ significantly from the claims requested by an applicant. If you are too young to relate to this analogy, compare the patent application to a high school kid's application to use the car so that he or she can stay out all night with his or her friends -- the fact that the kid applied for it doesn't necessarily mean that his or her parents are going to grant the request, or that the kid isn't going to have to amend his request to something more reasonable before it is granted.
If the claims of an issued patent differ significantly from the claims of the filed patent application, that might tell you that the Patent and Trademark Office agreed with you that the claims requested when the application was filed were too broad and could not withstand the prior art. These differences might also highlight what the Patent and Trademark Office actually believes is new and patentable about the invention.
It seems like either of these research topics would not take too much work, as it is fairly easy to search for old Microsoft patent applications and recent Microsoft issued patents, and the application serial number can be used to serve as a key into both the patent application database and the issued patent database at the PTO's website. Yet I am amazed that, insofar as I am able to tell, no one here has ever suggested to do this research before for any representative patents.
is make its alternatives stop sucking. Stop requiring the user to be intimate with each detail of their system and stop requiring them to give up their lives just to get a working system... then try and actually ENGINEER the system to be usable by developers looking to implement solutions and not just hacks looking to tweak up their hobby
I am Bruno, the author of gcompris. I looked briefly at the pattent. I don't understand it clearly but there is not currently in gcompris a very advanced feedback agent. We are probably not at risk today. In the future, we are under risk by this patent. It's clearly a natural evolution to provide more and more feedback with the most possible accuracy to a child. Now it may be impossible to improve gcompris in this area.
There is a concern with their patent because it applies also to teachers. If a teacher give an exercise on a computer and want to give an audio (voice is audio if I remember) instructional response. So far, teacher did this since the invention of schools I believe. MS just replaced the pen by a keyboard.
I can't be sure but as for gcompris, I did not get any request to add a feature like that. It sounds complex to implement, will be probably unreliable and bring more confusion than it saves. I bet on the teachers for giving an appropriate feedback. Can you spell skippy.
Yes, and PLATO lives today: http://www.cyber1.org/