[math4] ImageQuiz

[Enimihil]

Greetings,

Comments inline...

> From: Tony37 <tony_anderson at usa.net>
> Date: Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 9:55 AM
> Subject: ImageQuiz
> To: FGrose <fgrose at gmail.com>
>
>
> Hi,
>
> ImageQuiz uses a cvs file format for questions. I have added an XML file
> format. Currently, both files are used to load questions
> into an sqllite database.

Is this CSV or XML format documented anywhere?
(http://wiki.laptop.org/go/ImageQuizPlus doesn't seem to have much)
Secondly, how attached are you to the file format; that is, would a
more general file format be acceptable (supposing it supported the
necessary components).

> For me, the problem is figuring out how to interface with the
> journal/datastore. In a hierarchical file system, quizzes would be sets of
> questions
> in XML or CVS format within categories determined by the folder names. An
> imagequiz_library would be a base folder containing these quizzes. This
> organization does not map well to the journal/datastore at present. In time,
> there will be a journal objectchooser which can show entries of the proper
> mimetype in the journal or in specific repositories on the schoolserver, usb
> keys, etc.

The design we (the RIT student team working on a question API) have
been working from eschews the Journal entirely, focusing on a URI
approach to locating lists of questions. This could conceivably
include specialized URI schemes like "journal://uuid", but can also
include very straightforward access mechanisms like "file://" and
"http://".  Using a URI-based scheme allows query parameters to
filter/select specific types and categories of questions; I'm still
undecided as to whether something more sophisticated for question
filtering/selection is needed.

> Another problem is whether the unit should be a set of questions or a
> question. This is similar to the issue of where to store an image or mp3
> file and how to organize a set of them. Perhaps the journal could have an
> album where a single question (or image or mp3) could be located by tag
> (album name) by looking in many different albums (similar to picasso for
> example).

We've, so far, been treating the question as the fundamental object,
essentially ignoring the grouping problem by making it external to the
API.  This is easier to do when a specific URI is required to load
question data — but also inhibits automatic discovery of question
content (without explicitly providing an additional mechanism to do
so) as there is no central way to ask about "every question
available".  You could query a list of potential URIs for questions,
but that's probably not the best way to go about it unless you know
the URIs have questions or the list is small.

> The implementation I am working on will find sets of questions (called
> quizzes) and map them into categories based on the folder structure. The
> base will be 'imagequiz_library' and, hopefully, there would be one in the
> activity bundle (built-in samples), on the schoolserver, and on removable
> drives.