I propose the Obsidian for School service, which allows students to build their own personal knowledge management (PKM) system and enables teachers to use it for learning management and assessment. This service can maximize students’ learning efficiency and facilitate teachers’ management and feedback, thus improving the quality of education.
1. Personal Knowledge Management System (PKM) for Students
Students can create study notes and connect new learning content to related knowledge. By automatically recommending previous notes related to new learning content, students can easily integrate and understand the connections between different pieces of knowledge.
- Knowledge Connection Feature: Utilize Obsidian’s backlink feature to naturally connect knowledge.
- Automatic Note Recommendations: Automatically recommend related notes based on keywords and topics, helping students quickly find relevant notes.
2. Self-Assessment and Dashboard
Students can self-assess their understanding and mastery of the learning content, entering this information into their notes along with assignments. An interactive dashboard allows students to see their learning status and assignments across various subjects and topics at a glance. This helps students easily identify areas where they have not met learning goals and understand their overall learning progress.
- Self-Assessment Feature: Enable students to check their progress and recognize areas where they need improvement.
- Interactive Dashboard: Visually display learning progress so that students can manage it easily.
- Goal Setting and Tracking: Allow students to set and track learning goals, reinforcing self-directed learning.
3. Teacher’s Dashboard
Teachers can use a comprehensive dashboard that aggregates students’ dashboards to monitor learning progress. This allows teachers to access each student’s PKM system to examine detailed learning status and provide feedback.
- Comprehensive Dashboard: Enable teachers to manage the learning status of multiple students.
- Detailed Feedback: Allow teachers to closely monitor individual student’s learning status and provide targeted feedback to maximize learning outcomes.
- Notification Feature: Notify teachers when a student fails to meet learning goals, enabling timely intervention.
4. Vault and Document Template Distribution
Distribute ‘vault templates’ that include a unified folder structure and note format to help students consistently create and manage study notes. Additionally, provide a feature for teachers to easily distribute lesson guides, study materials, and assignments.
- Unified Folder Structure and Note Format: Standardized templates help ensure consistent study note creation.
- Document Template Distribution: Facilitate efficient class operations by making it easy to distribute study materials and assignments.
- Version Control Feature: Add version control for templates, allowing easy updates and distribution of changes.
- Template Gallery: Provide a gallery of templates suited for various lessons, enabling teachers and students to select and use templates that meet their needs.
Examining whether the connections in a student’s mind are well established is crucial for assessment and feedback. The student’s PKM system visualizes these connections. Obsidian’s core features of knowledge connection and visualization greatly aid students in integrating and understanding learning content, and they enable teachers to provide more effective feedback and assessment based on these connections.
The Obsidian for School service will be an invaluable tool that promotes self-directed learning for students and helps teachers effectively manage learning. If these proposed features are well-implemented, it can bring significant changes to the educational field.
I mean, AI is good for a lot of things, but we don’t want to get kids used to relying on it. We already rely far too much on GPS, to such an extent that I’m not even sure they teach kids how to read maps anymore… surely they do, but I was quite disturbed that a friend of mine, a fellow intellectual even, eschewed maps and landmarks for GPS. /oldmanyells@cloud