“Distraction is the plague of study.” (JiK)
IM4SE: Interactive Manuals for Science and Engineering
NOTA BENE
At the moment, only the French and Italian versions are under development and this is only demonstrative content. The project will be completed, towards the end of next March.
Presentation
IBac is a complete computer system, composed of a dedicated platform with the contents of the IB (International Baccalaureate program. The This is limited to scientific subjects (Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics and Chemistry) which will be covered in depth. To these fundamental basic scientific subjects, three more will be added: applied mathematics, game theory and artificial intelligence. The interactive contents, rich in mathematical formulas, advanced graphics and animations will be created as Interactive Manuals IM4SE.
Goal
The project aims to provide students in their final year of high school speaking English, French, or Italian with a modern, complete, effective, and constantly updated tool to best prepare for the final exam and, above all, without distractions. This system will be free, free of charge, and available to everyone, without registration and without traceability of any kind.
NOTA BENE
The entire computer system, along with the enriched IB program, and in the three languages, could be contained in a USB stick with a few GB of memory. This means that a student has everything he needs to study, and done well from all points of view, in his computer, or in a stick, without the need to wander around the Internet looking for it.
The IBac system will work locally and does not require an Internet connection. This way, the student has everything he need to study and concentrate on his studies. IBac will be complete system, because it is designed to prevent students from getting distracted while studying, jumping from one site to another, from one cookie to another, from one advertisement to another, from one registration to another.
Subjects
The IB subjects that have just started are, for the moment, only two: mathematics, including applied mathematics, and computer science. This limitation is because, up to this point, all the development of the computer system has been done by a single person. Now that the Tanit platform has been completed and the WKBook defined, the development of content and applications will be very fast. However, it will also depend on how the community reacts to this project.
Mathematics Program
The mathematics program will be similar to that of the Italian scientific high school exam, extended with the topics to make it compliant with that of the IB. Then, it will be enriched with complementary contents of applied mathematics and calculation algorithms.
Computer Science Program
The computer science program will focus on the programming language Lua(1). I chose Lua because of its simplicity and flexibility. A student with little or no programming knowledge could learn Lua in a few days, and start writing small but meaningful numerical calculation applications. This program will go well beyond basic school computer science knowledge.
We will use the Julia(2) language for checking and correctness of calculations. Therefore, we will use only a few statements of the language.
As a third language, I chose SQL(3). Here you can read the reasons.
NOTA BENE
As a reference RDBMS(4), we will use SQLite because it is compact, small, portable, complete, very simple and used practically everywhere.
Other Subjects
In addition to physics and chemistry, which will certainly be the next subjects to be added, the system is also open to include other subjects, such as technical English, game theory and artificial intelligence. However, the IBac system is extremely flexible and without particular limitations. Therefore, it could easily be extended with other subjects.
Target Audience
As regards the mathematics programme, the project's target audiences are mainly four:
1. Final year high school students.
2. First year students of scientific and technical faculties.
3. Math teachers.
4. Anyone interested in the topics of the program, but not for study reasons, but for pure curiosity and scientific culture. Maybe returning students, former teachers, technicians...
As for the computer science program, the targets are certainly more varied. In fact, in addition to those already mentioned, we will add those interested in computer science and in particular in scientific programming and numerical calculation.
Where Are We At?
The Tanit platform has been completed for more than a year and is compact, stable and performant. The WKBook, on the other hand, has been completely defined, as well as the entire structure of the IBac system. At this point, we have reached the third phase of the project, which is to create the content and applications. This phase is long-term and should take place in the community. My role in the future should be limited to project coordination, maintenance, updating the platform, and improving the quality of the service.
The Community
Our community will consist of all the targets already mentioned, as well as programmers, content creators, and anyone who wants to give us a hand in some way.
Participate in the Project
Being a community project, that is "from the community for the community", it is open to all. Therefore, anyone who can contribute, in some way, to the evolution of the project is asked to do so. It would take a little from each to achieve a lot for all. This is the power of communities, as expressed by Teilhard de Chardin:
“Nothing in the universe could resist the convergent ardour of a sufficiently large number of intelligences grouped and organised.” (Teilhard de Chardin)
NOTA BENE
The project has just started, so, for now, we have very little content and applications. But, for sure, they will come because the project is interesting and useful to millions of people.
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1) Lua A very small, simple and high-performance dynamic scripting language.
2) Julia: New language for scientific programming.
3) SQL: Structured Query Language.
4) RDBMS: Relational Database Management System.
Last Update: 10 September 2024
Last update: 30 June 2024