1.0 Overview of SOI Certified Learning

SOI Certified Learning has six aspects that make it a unique education implementation.

• Management System. Certified Learning is based on a computer management system for each classroom which tracks the progress of each individual student on a weekly basis.
• Detection of Problems. The curricular content in the system is organized into modules with specific objectives, specific short-term durations of completion, and specific tests of content mastery, so any progress of all students is immediately available to the system, and, importantly, lack of progress by any student can be identified for helping procedures.
• Oversight and Real-Time Consultation. Reports of student progress are sent to SOI Systems weekly; these reports are reviewed, problems identified, and real-time consultation given to address the problems.
• Physical and Social Development. A significant portion of the curriculum is devoted to insuring that the students have the necessary physical development for learning -- sensory motor integration, body control, and perceptual (both visual and auditory) skills. The curriculum also includes units in learning deportment -- how to work in a group, how to maintain attention, and, importantly, how to become self-directed in learning.
• Unique SOI Content in the Curriculum. The curriculum not only teaches the fundamentals of each grade level, it also prepares students for learning in two ways -- both of which are unique to SOI Systems:
  • SOI Learning Abilities. Students are taught the general abilities that are foundational for learning curricular content -- cognition, memory, evaluation, problem-solving, relations, and transformational thinking -- in the content learning mode that is appropriate to their development -- figural, symbolic, or semantic. These abilities are based on the Structure of Intellect model and have been developed over the past forty years.
  • Concepts Before Content. Portions of the curriculum teach students the concepts they need for understanding the facts and skills that they learn by rote. For example, with something as simple as counting, we teach what counting is and how numbers are made, before students learn to recite the number series. Then, when they are taught the number series they know where and how it fits into their repertoire of learning. What is true of counting is true of all mathematics, reading, composition, math, science, health, social studies -- in fact any area of content.
• Half-Day Curriculum. The SOI Certified Learning model is based on one-half of the school day, leaving the second half of the day for group instruction, field trips, and content that is specific to a district or region. This also permits teachers to offer special help for those students who have been identified as having difficulty.

SOI Certified Learning provides all of the materials required by the system -- computer programs, instructional guides for teachers, computer-based overviews for orienting teachers new to the system, workbooks, mastery tests for both computer and workbook exercises, worksheets, flash memory devices for each student, and all of the incidentals -- student ID stickers, assignment cards, mastery tokens, flash cards, and kinesthetic learning components.

2.0 Parameters of the Current Implementation

The current implementation of SOI Certified Learning was developed for schools in Texas. This imposed some parameters that satisfy local conditions, but these can be modified for implementations in other contexts. These are the variable parameters of the current implementation:

• Twenty-two Students per Classroom. Texas has a state law limiting classroom size to 22; the program is currently implemented to fit that limitation, but the number can be modified to accommodate more or less.
• Teacher and Aide per Classroom. Each classroom has one teacher and one aide for the four hours of SOI Certified Learning. One person handles the group instruction and the other oversees the computer and workbook instruction, which are largely self-directed by the students. A single teacher could handle all three aspects of the curriculum, but the class size would probably need to be smaller.
• Five Computers per Classroom. One computer for every five students is the requirement. If a given implementation is for twenty students, the class would need only four computers; if an implementation were for 30 students, then six computers would be needed.
• Five Computers per Classroom. One computer for every five students is the requirement. If a given implementation is for twenty students, the class would need only four computers; if an implementation were for 30 students, then six computers would be needed.

2.0 English-Language Orientation of the Current Implementation

Any implementation for foreign clients might need to change if they did not want to teach English as well as their native language. There are obvious changes in the written and spoken instructions in the student instructional exercises, but there would be some more subtle changes that might need to be made as well -- the curriculum presently emphasizes left-to-right processing for language; some of the classification tasks may include components that are not familiar to foreign students; the entire LOCAN series is focused on English syntax and sentence structure; and, obviously, the letter recognition units would be irrelevant for a country with a non-alphabetic language.

These are areas that need consideration, but the modifications that would be necessary for a foreign-language implementation would not compromise the overall design of the system.

Minimum student computer specifications: 512 MB of memory; 256 MG Graphics 3.2 ghz with ht;
sound card, CD/DVD combo drive; 17” LCD monitor;
USV keyboard and mouse