[Sugar-devel] [math4] Activity Awards, Activity Alerts, Frame Alerts

[David Van Assche]

Yeah, due to the lack of resources and time, we didn't get to finalise the
end vision for such an award based system, but the idea came to me due how
successful the collection of these is in computer games. As Gary pointed out
to me, there are even games where the sole purpose is to unlock awards
(which could be as silly as, dying by drowning 42 times.) The concept in
gaming, as adopted by nintendo, sony, and Microsoft, has been a real success
and a means by which to get users 'hooked' to achieving them. If the same
thing can be translated to Sugar, we can have a system which by its nature
pushes users to delve deep into the guts of activities to 'discover' them,
if you will, all the while getting recognition for that discovery. The
coupling of this with collaboration brings together a whole world of
possibilities, many of which have caused measurable excitement within myself
and Gary, as well as others listening/discussing the ideas.

The inital activity we wanted to do this with was a quiz based activity,
where the teacher puts labels on the different parts of a picture s/he has
uploaded and lets the user then fill in the labels. We can measure a whole
host of things, such as, were the labels filled in while connected to the
internet (they could have used wikipedia to gather the information), and
should the user be encouraged to do that or not...

What I guess I'm pointing out is, we need to delve deep into how this should
all work, but the initial concept rocks, and we should try and either adapt
an existing activity (Gary suggested using his moon activity to name the
various parts of it) or make an easy framwork that would allow a teacher to
upload a picture and then tag the various points in the picture together
with the possible answers. Either is fine, though the later is more
desirable as it would allow us to explore the possibilities a little more
deeply, and would allow for the immediate creation of content there for,
which could be easily stored in moodle or an activity meta bundle, or
whatever... So lets decide how we move forwards on this and get to it
then...

kind regards,
David Van Assche

On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 3:35 AM, Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:

> 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
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > FourthGradeMath mailing list
> > FourthGradeMath at lists.sugarlabs.org
> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/fourthgrademath
>
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