Maxwell is an education methods developer with experience developing new methods of teaching into commercial products that have been used in public schools throughout the US and internationally. He is currently focused on developing education perspectives, methods and tools in service to the public good that will be given away for free on over the internet.

A SOCRATIC PERSPECTIVE ON THE MISSION TO EDUCATE
Socrates believed that the most important aspect of human living is a successful journey of self improvement. His perspective on self improvement focused heavily on the acquisition of knowledge. The great choice for humanity at this time is: Shall we choose to create ourselves or to destroy ourselves? Will we seek to travel the path of increasing knowledge and cooperation in service to solving our problems and thrive as a species, or do we continue as we are by allowing fear and ignorance to dominate so much of our living in the destructiveness that comes with the lack of understanding?

Socrates believed that improvements in our ability to acquire knowledge were so essential to the welfare of humanity that they should be available to all. Even though he had a reputation as a teacher worth getting to know, he never made it his mission to make a living off of his contribution to education. He never refused to participate in someone's quest for knowledge because they lacked the ability to pay. In our time this is more important than ever.

Innovations in education that have any chance of improving people's ability to learn should be given away for free as much as is possible. This is necessary to the survival and thriving of our species. The wide adoption of effective education methods and tools is much more important to the prosperity of humanity than is the cultivation of business structures that operate with the typical corporate mentality of giving as little as possible while taking as much as possible. We cannot afford to completely subjugate improvements in the cultivation of human understanding to the priorities of business profits.

The survival of our various civilizations demands that we become the best learners, gain the finest understanding, and cultivate the greatest wisdom that is possible for us to bring forth. This means we need to create free access to improvements in education methods that are able to be distributed as efficiently as possible. The internet is perfect for this mission.

MISSION STATEMENT:
The Socratic Method Research Portal is dedicated to advancing the use of the Socratic Method and the human quest for knowledge.  All perspectives, methods and resources developed for this purpose will be given to the public at no cost. To support our efforts to give away free education resources, some secondary software tools designed as a non-essential, but very useful, practice benefit will be sold at very low cost to help raise money to further research and development. Resources that are essential to the learning involved with the online courses will all be free. We will also have a couple of dedicated fundraiser products.

Exciting Development:
I started giving education perspectives and methods to the public for free on my own. In 2011, I teamed up with Dean Vaughn Learning Systems, Inc. (DVLS). This company has also embraced the idea that innovation in education should be free to the public as much as is possible. DVLS has committed to give millions of dollars of research, development and products to the public for free and to continue to offer future products for free. The truly exciting part of this is that all of their education innovations, most of which I helped develop, are very powerful tools. I am now working with DVLS to fulfil a vision of bringing useful education innovations to the world for free. The first DVLS course offered is listed in the "Project Mathema" section below. It is a three hour video course that can teach the multiplication facts in an average of six hours. Courses developed in conjunction with DVLS will be listed here, but the links will direct to the DVLS website.

FREE EDUCATION RESOURCES
(Some projects still in development)

HOW TO USE THE SOCRATIC METHOD
A series of essays designed to provide a clear explanation of the principles that must underlie any Socratic philosophy of education and to teach the systematic use of the Socratic Method. Two introductory essays are currently posted. An essay on the philosophy of education, "The Fundamentals of Education: A Socratic perspective on the cultivation of humanity" is currently in work.

PROJECT MATHEMA:
This project's goal is to develop methods and tools that will empower even persons with below average aptitude in mathematics to develop a superior ability in two areas of focus.

The first area is basic calculation. The methods and tools will focus on giving people an effective pathway to the development of skills in rapid and accurate calculation using their minds, as opposed to dependence on calculators. There is a philosophy in some of academia that we should lean on computer based calculators as much as possible. I find this to be a weakness to the extent that we are very capable of developing our own minds to do much more. A superior ability to do basic calculation also makes learning the rest of mathematics easier.

The Vaughn Cube for Multiplication

I have teamed up with Dean Vaughn Learning Systems, Inc. and we have just released our first free course. It is an extremely effective course that teaches the multiplication facts in an average of six hours. It has both superior results and superior retention. Click the link above to use this course.

We tested this three hour video course on multiplication with students that had borderline mental retardation and emotional/social problems. These students were unable to attend public school and went to a private boarding school. The students achieved the same bell curve as a typical public school classroom on an exam of the 100 multiplication facts. The truly satisfying part is that they were able to do this with only eight hours of study (including all practice time). Public school classrooms achieve class averages above 90%. This means many students score at or near 100%. This tool is a great equalizer. With this method, the worst students are often the class's best student. It is deeply gratifying that DVLS has chosen to release this much needed multiplication instruction method to the public at no cost.

The entire three hour video course we developed is online for free. Click the link below to check it out. It is, with no exaggeration, the world's fastest and easiest method to learn the multiplication facts. For those wanting their student's to accel in math, this is a fantastic tool. For those who have students struggling or failing to learn multiplication, it is a life saver. This is also an excellent method for the remediation of older students. As the video course is paced for second and third grade students, we are in the process of creating a shortcut version of the course for middle school, high school and adults.

The second area of focus is algebra. The failure to learn algebra is a great stumbling block in mathematics education. If Algebra is not mastered, access to success in the rest of mathematics studies is limited or destroyed. The goal of this second area of focus is to make it possible to teach algebra to younger students, with much greater success than is currently possible. They must not only pass tests, but develop the long term ability to use algebra in their thinking and problem solving. In this second area of focus, it is also deemed absolutely necessary to make such success in algebra possible for students of below average mathematical aptitude.

We have a similarly powerful method for addition and subtraction and we are planning to work on creating new methods for teaching algebra in the coming year.

MUSIC THEORY ADVANTAGE™:
There are two methods released with this project, which have been tested down to seven years of age. The first is an effective mental musical interval calculator. As I developed math and music courses for use in public schools, I noticed that the frequency ranges of musical intervals (as measured in semitones) have the exact structure of natural numbers. This observation led to the insight that music students should be able to learn to spell intervals as easily as math students learn to count. This method works by simply memorizing a seven note interval structure and learning a few simple rules. Then you can name the note that is any interval above or below any given note. With this method, being able to spell a series of intervals as easily as you can count single digit numbers is the expected norm. For the first time, all music students can easily master interval spelling even at the beginning of their music studies.

The second method is the scales portion of the course, which is designed to make it very easy to memorize musical key signatures. This means you will know what notes are sharp or flat in every musical key. This knowledge is what you need to be able to spell the diatonic scales for all the musical keys. This method works by remembering a series of easy to learn images that decode into the number of sharps or flats. This is an extremely easy method to teach the spelling of the major and natural minor scales for all the musical keys.

Both methods are designed to facilitate the rapid development and superior long term retention of important skills in handling basic music theory facts.

Software will be developed for the practice of the methods presented in this music course. This software is not needed to master the content, but will be a plus to use.

Comming Soon: More Free Teaching Methods

Most of the methods and courses below, which I have helped develop, have already been tested in public schools in various states. They will be given to the public online for free over the course of the next few months.

SAT VOCABULARY
Learn AND remember 300 high-frequency SAT English words with meanings and synonyms at the rate of one word per minute. This course employs the same techniques found in Medical Terminology 350 (A Dean Vaughn Total Retention System^TM), which is the worlds leading medical terminology course used by over three million students.

LATIN AND GREEK FOR ENGLISH VOCABULARY
Learn AND remember 300 Latin and Greek roots, prefixes and suffixes most used in English vocabulary at the rate of one element per minute. This course employs the same techniques found in Medical Terminology 350 (A Dean Vaughn Total Retention System^TM), which is the worlds leading medical terminology course used by over three million students.

THE VAUGHN CUBE^TM FOR GEOMETRY
Learn AND Remember 60 plane and solid geometry formulas in an online 90 minute video course. It provides an easy way to understand the transition from plane to solid geometry and enables students to easily remember all 60 formulas.

MEMORIZE THE MODES OF THE MAJOR SCALE
Dean and I invented an amazingly fast and effective new method for memorizing the modes of the major scale. It is so effective that you can teach someone to easily recite the interval structure of any requested mode. Total time to implement this method from start to finish is as little as five minutes and it is easy to remember the method for the long term.

HOW TO LEARN AND REMEMBER THE PERIODIC TABLE
This course is the fastest, easiest, and most effective method to learn and remember the Periodic Table. You will learn seven facts about each of the first 92 elements on the Periodic Table. The first 92 elements are those which occur naturally. In the vast majority of studies at the high school, college/university, and graduate level, the elements above 92 are not studied nor encountered in laboratory work, since they are all man-made and radioactive - some with exceedingly short half-lives.

The seven facts you will learn about each of the 92 elements are:

1.  the element
2.  the atomic number
3.  the symbol
4.  the period
5.  the group
6.  the block
7.  the atomic weight

The memory system will utilize your natural ability to remember what you see and where you see it (whether real or imagined). You will be amazed with the ease and speed with which you will learn the Periodic Table with this unique and effective learning system.

THE READ-IT ROBOT
In one pilot, the most at risk kindergarten students from an entire school district were brought into one classroom. These students struggled for six months and remained unable to learn the alphabet. In three days, using a new teaching method developed by Dean Vaughn, students could recite the alphabet forward and backward.

HOW TO MASTER THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING
You can quickly and easily develop the ability to speak in public or at business meetings, club or fraternal meetings, sales presentations or any meeting – confidently and without notes!

HOW TO TELL TIME
This video teaching aid, presented in under 2 hours, makes it incredibly easy for children to learn how to tell time. Many students learn how to tell time on digital clocks and watches, etc., but have difficulty telling time on an analog clock (by the positions of hands).

TEACHING THE PIANO
A new philosophy and method for teaching Piano are in development. It has in common with the Music Theory Advantage™ the idea that skills normally relegated to more advanced students should be developed in the first year of study.

This style of teaching:

• Develops specific sight reading skills in the first three to six months of piano study that is normally not achieved until after years of study. This refers to being able to instantly know and be able to finger the correct key for any note on the staff be able to sight read simple melodies and chords with superior skill. It does not refer to the higher level of sight reading more complex music that must be accompanied by more advanced playing technique.
• Does a better job teaching the notes on the grand staff without, ironically, ever teaching the notes on the grand staff. Students realize they know the notes of the grand staff after the fact.
• Develops improvisational skills and musical creativity immediately

Due to a very heavy production schedule, I may just write up an outline of these piano methods (as opposed to producing fully developed curriculum) in order to let people start experimenting sooner.

FUNDRAISER PRODUCTS

In order to stay online and continue to offer innovative education methods to the public for free, we will sell low cost course supplements in order to fund the public giveaway.

The first example of this is our multiplication course. We give the whole multiplication course away for free, all that is left is to practice what you learn. Parents and teachers can let their students practice any way they desire, such as drilling with flashcards or use tests from their textbook. However, to optimize student success as well as make it possible for us to offer free courses, we provide superior practice software and other printable activities that are custom designed to go with each lesson. The software tracks errors and builds custom practice sessions to force students to work with just the multiplication questions they miss on earlier practice sessions.

You can check out the multiplication package here:

Multiplication Skill Development kit

INSTANT SPANISH
This will be dedicated fundraiser product.
I am currently writing the software for this course. This course is designed to teach conversational Spanish. It will be sold at a low cost to raise money for our free public giveaways. For those interested in basic conversational proficiency, the use of highly effective memory techniques to teach over 1000 words and the verb tenses of past, present and future provide the user with a learning tool that is vastly superior to Rossetta Stone.

We have been told by cirriculum coordinators, principles and teachers that our Spanish course is so effective it will not likely be used in its entirity in public schools because it actually eliminates the need for a trained spanish teacher. For homeschoolers, this is the way to go. This course was developed over the seven years and tested for one full year in a public school pilot.

Spanish Vocabulary Teaching Example: The link below shows how we use images to teach vocabulary in the Instant Spanish program. All vocabulary and grammar is taught using memory techniques. You immediately remember what you see in association with the content you want to learn.

The course will have over 5,500 learning frames and over 3,500 translation exercises. The link below is an example of just one learning frame that will be in the Instant Spanish course.

Spanish Vocabulary Teaching Example

THE VAUGHN CUBE^TM FOR WORLD GEOGRAPHY
We are unable to release this four hour video course online for free due to licencing issues with the images used in the 3.5 hour DVD video. If you desire to help us move forward with our free courses and obtain a great way to know the names and locations of every country in the world, then this is a great course. We tested it in a public school pilot at the fourth grade. At the end of six hours of training, almost all the students were able to draw a very crude world map on their own and write the name of all the countries on the map.

You can see a demo of how it works here:
World Geography Demo Video

Help us give education innovations to the public through the
Purchase of the World Geography Course

page updated on 2-15-12