[math4] Activity Awards, Activity Alerts, Frame Alerts

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Frederick,

On 6 Jun 2009, at 00:30, Frederick Grose wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 6:32 PM, Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com>  
> wrote:
> ...
>
> FWIW, David Van Assche raised some interesting Activity ideas at
> SugarCamp Paris and I'm interested/active in getting us to at lease
> 'demo' state in the Sugar 0.86 release timeframe. The idea is to focus
> on an 'awards' mechanism/style to encourage exploration and provide
> (sometimes) unexpected rewards. Idea is that Activity authors can
> define a range of badges/medals/icons for certain behaviours/
> accomplishment in an attempt to get students to dig deeper (mix of
> 'easter eggs' and specific goals). It's mainly Activity side work (a
> demo activity to start with) but perhaps could find a home in the
> Journal (through an ability of Activity to set some private entry tag
> and for Journal to display that in a user appealing graphical form).
>
> Even for something as hard to measure as the Write Activity, there
> could be 'awards' (hidden or hinted at) for things like "found 10 or
> more collaborators for one document", "gained at least 100 words each
> from 5 or more collaborators", "wrote more than 1,000 words", "you
> used the word entomology!". The idea is many would be hidden
> ("surprise, you did something cool!") and that some initial more
> obvious and visible 'awards' would hint that others were there for
> discovery.
>
> Regards,
> --Gary
>
> P.S. Mechanisms for 'awards' could hook into services like Moodle, the
> Journal, or via collaboration (so perhaps a shared Write session would
> show awards gained by the collaborators). Having a view to show all
> Activity Awards would also be a good driver (could be an activity, or
> ideally at some point part of Journal). The general idea for awards
> drifts in from the gaming environment, where awards are used to
> increase re-playability and tempt folks to try some other possible  
> path.
> ...
>
> Nice concept.
>
> Some design and code integration with Activity Alerts, http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Development_Team/Almanac/sugar.graphics.alert 
> ,
> and Frame alerts, http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Designs/Frame#12 
> , http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Designs/Frame#13, etc.  
> may be appropriate.

Yep, I imagine it's being up to the activity how it reveals a new  
'award' being reached, but it could be as simple as showing an  
activity alert message (perhaps as a default design guideline for  
awards, if it is accepted), or some fancy splash/animation if the  
activity deems it appropriate.

> http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/722 has some discussion.  I would  
> like to see more noticeable messages for chat invitation alerts, for  
> example.

I think this is intended more for Activities (or Sugar shell) in the  
background to get your attention, but I guess it could be appropriated  
also for awards. I'll keep it in mind, thanks.

> Don't know where this is recorded for the Sugar 0.86 roadmap, http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Development_Team/Release/Roadmap/0.86#Proposal_Goals 
> ?

It's not there. Though it did get discussed at SugarCamp Paris (along  
with a many other good ideas). I see awards as happening first as a  
single Activity demonstrator, not initially needing any Sugar  
integration work or time, but I (and David) would like to see it in  
the same time frame as 0.86. If it works, and is of demonstrable  
value, then we have fair grounds to lobby for the integration of  
useful/generic code, already written, into Sugar 0.88 for other  
Activities to easily reuse.

> The software infrastructure you propose could also be used for  
> random or rule-based, single-point lesson reminders or reinforcers  
> of learning.

Yep :-)

Regards,
--Gary

>     --Fred
>
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