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

[Sean DALY]

I don't know if this is related from a technical standpoint, but I was
wondering about the possibility of a mechanism for an Activity to
signal to a teacher (or the Neighborhood, or a Friend) when an
Activity task is completed. As a way of simplifying identification of
students who need more attention on a task than their peers.

Back in the Stone Age when I was in school, this was accomplished
during a quiz or writing task by the leading students ostentatiously
throwing their pens down onto their desks and looking around smugly.
Maybe things have changed in the 21st century?

Dell wants to differentiate their K-8 education netbook offer
(Latitude 2100) with a white LED bar in the lid which can light up via
a software call. Although in marketing materials they describe its
default setting as lighting up when there is any network activity
(they imply Internet access during study time), their documentation
states that any software can hook into it. I also read that if the
idea takes off, they will consider adding other LED colors to the bar,
so as to indicate simultaneously for example wireless activity /
Internet activity / application task state, or file transfer / school
filter hit / low battery condition. In each scenario, allowing the
teacher to see what is happening at a glance.

Would such status indicators work for Sugar? Should they be visible
only to the teacher, or to everyone? (I'd vote for the teacher - it's
really a classroom context feature, unnecessary while the Learner is
enjoying her computer outside school hours). Could a Learner achieving
an Activity milestone show that right away, in such a way the teacher
could see it? Or notice it if the Learner achieved it outside school
hours?

In 1968, when I was six, I wrote a little 4-line poem about the
astronauts going up into orbit. My first-grade teacher, Mrs. Menzi,
typed it up and put a gold star sticker on it, and a gold star sticker
on my forehead too. Like a star in outer space! I'm still proud of
that :D  So yes, I think an award system could be a useful feature.

Sean




On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 9:50 PM, David Van Assche<dvanassche at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > FourthGradeMath at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/fourthgrademath
>>
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