1. An arrangement comprising:
a light transmission path arrangement which includes at least one of an optical fiber or an optical waveguide for propagating at least one electro-magnetic radiation, wherein the at least one electro-magnetic radiation is propagated to illuminate a sample with a beam of light, the light transmission path arrangement including a first fiber cladding region; and
a light collection path arrangement which is separate from the light transmission path arrangement, the light collection path arrangement including only a second fiber cladding region configured to receive a further radiation from the sample, wherein the light transmission path arrangement includes a fiber core and the first fiber cladding region.
2. The arrangement of claim 1, further comprising at least one of:
(a) a double-clad fiber;
(b) a multi-clad fiber;
(c) one single-mode and one multimode fiber;
(d) a single-mode fiber for illumination and one or more multi mode waveguides for signal collection; or
(e) a plurality of a single-mode fibers for illumination and one or more multi-mode waveguides for signal collection.
3. The arrangement of claim 1, wherein at least one of the at least one first cladding region or the at least one second cladding region comprises an irregularly shaped cladding layer.
4. The arrangement of claim 3, further comprising a coherence detection arrangement coupled to a connection portion of the arrangement so as to receive signals from at least one of:
a single-mode illuminating core which includes the further fiber core; or
a single-mode waveguide which is one of the optical waveguides in a probe such that at least one coherence detection procedure can be performed.
5. An arrangement comprising:
a light transmission path arrangement which includes at least one of an optical fiber or an optical waveguide for propagating at least one electro-magnetic radiation, wherein the at least one electro-magnetic radiation is propagated to illuminate a sample with a beam of light, the light transmission path arrangement including a first fiber cladding region; and
a light collection path arrangement which is separate from the light transmission path arrangement, the light collection path arrangement including a particular fiber core and a second fiber cladding region, wherein the first fiber cladding region propagates the at least one electromagnetic radiation to illuminate the sample.
The claims below are in addition to those above.
All refrences to claim(s) which appear below refer to the numbering after this setence.
1. A method to serve fresh media content for a plurality of student computers coupled to a local area network (LAN) with a router coupled to the Internet to access multimedia educational content originally stored on a remote server, the method comprising:
attaching a local server to the LAN to locally store educational multimedia content and periodically synchronizing contents of the local server with contents on the remote server;
determining requests for Internet contents and directing the requests in real-time to directories on the local server by creating proxies and reverse proxies to force web pages to route to the local server;
presenting the multimedia educational content to the students and testing for student comprehension of the multimedia content and presenting additional multimedia educational content based on student performance on earlier questions, wherein the presenting further comprises:
redirecting predetermined multimedia content requests to the local server; and
forwarding other requests to another server or to the Internet;
periodically checking content freshness between the local server and a remote server;
if a stale content exists on the local server, replacing the stale content with a fresh content from the remote server; and
serving the fresh content from the local server.
2. The method of claim 1, comprising providing educational adaptive diagnostic assessment of student performance.
3. The method of claim 1, comprising adaptively testing a student by:
receiving one or more parameters for an assessment and one or more sets of test questions for a sub-test;
selecting a set of test questions from the sub-test;
presenting the selected set of test questions to the student and collecting responses thereto;
generating a score for the responses to a completed set;
applying the score to select either the current set of questions or a new set of test questions; and
using a final score for the sub-test to select a new set of questions in a subsequent sub-test.
4. The method of claim 3, wherein the parameters comprise one or more of: a number of subtests; a number of sets of questions for each subtest; a number of questions per set of questions; an assessment starting point; a grade level; a student age; a prior score; a parameter specifying a transition between subtests; a parameter specifying a movement within a subtest; a termination condition for each subtest; a termination condition for the assessment; a graphical interface parameter; an audio parameter; a summary score formula.
5. The method of claim 1, wherein a student responds to test questions through a teacher management application.
6. The method of claim 1, wherein the student responds to test questions through a third party application having a security key code.
7. The method of claim 1, wherein the student begins the assessment based on one of: a grade level, an age, a student type, a previous test score from a completed assessment.
8. A system, comprising:
a remote server to store fresh content;
a wide area network coupled to the remote server; and
a local server coupled to the wide area network, the local server periodically replacing stale content with fresh content from the remote server and serving the fresh content in response to a request from one or more clients coupled to the local server, wherein proxies and reverse proxies route web pages to the local server for presenting multimedia educational content to students and testing for student comprehension of the multimedia content and presenting additional multimedia educational content based on student performance on earlier questions, wherein predetermined multimedia content requests are sent to the local server; and
other requests are forwarded to another server or to the Internet.
9. The system of claim 8, comprising:
means for receiving one or more parameters for an assessment and one or more sets of test questions for a sub-test;
means for selecting a set of test questions from the sub-test;
means for presenting the selected set of test questions to the student and collecting responses thereto;
means for generating a score for the responses to a completed set;
means for applying the score to select either the current set of questions or a new set of test questions; and
means for using a final score for the sub-test to select a new set of questions in a subsequent sub-test.
10. The system of claim 9, wherein the parameters comprise one or more of: a number of subtests; a number of sets of questions for each subtest; a number of questions per set of questions; an assessment starting point; a grade level; a student age; a prior score; a parameter specifying a transition between subtests; a parameter specifying a movement within a subtest; a termination condition for each subtest; a termination condition for the assessment; a graphical interface parameter; an audio parameter; a summary score formula.
11. The system of claim 8, comprising means for modifying a user’s response by directing matching requests to the local server and forwarding non-matching requests to the Internet.
12. The system of claim 8, comprising means for controlling traffic using one or more proxies.
13. The system of claim 8, comprising means for providing one or more reverse proxies.
14. The system of claim 8, comprising means for forcing certain requests to route through the local server.
15. The system of claim 8, comprising means for communicating through a primary local area network (LAN) directly coupled to the Internet.
16. The system of claim 8, wherein the local server is coupled to the LAN.
17. The system of claim 8, comprising means for communicating through one or more sub-LANs coupled to the primary LAN.
18. The system of claim 8, wherein the local server is coupled to one of the sub-LANs.