[Sugar-devel] L-earning

[Charles Cossé]

On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 7:45 AM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>
wrote:

>  "I've discovered that using internet access as a currency results in
> effective learning."
>
> Do you have some documentation regarding this assertion? I find it suspect.
>
>
No documentation, but I'd say plenty of potential for future publications
and research.

Historically, the idea of a credit-meter came second.  I was still at work
and my kids were home from school.  I would send them emails with links to
articles I wanted them to read.  One day I saw my daughter's email account
and all of my emails were unread.  Imagine that :)  So I made this
JavaScript app which took an input file (pasted-together Wikipedia article,
according to my own formatting conventions, for example) and parsed it back
to the kid 1x paragraph at a time, first in complete form, then with a
configurable percentage of words from the passage replaced with drop-down
selections.  So it's a "paragraph reconstruction" exercise.  That app
ensured that they read carefully.  The effectiveness depends on the app, in
general, not the currency.  So I had an effective app but they weren't
getting the most out of it, because it was a burden and they were being
used as guinea pigs again, etc.  Anyway, it wasn't much of mental leap from
that point to conceive of a credit meter.  Particularly because the app was
html and the immediate first thing that happens is they pop another tab and
start doing something else.  Watching that happen, after so much hard work,
resulted in credit-meter v0.1 within hours.  And that did prove to be the
magic, missing ingredient.  Using it the first time after building v0.1 did
feel like a scientific discovery.  Maybe something analogous to breaking
the speed of sound in an aircraft, where there's violent shaking in the
build-up and then the threshold is crossed and everything is smooth ... the
self-serve kiosk takes over and you're suddenly not at the center of any
study-related drama anymore.


> I am not sure that the nature of most Sugar Activities maps well to this
> model: most are tool-oriented as opposed to a specific set of tasks or
> achievements that can be marked as completed. Curious as to how we could
> map their use onto your model of measurement.
>

For sure, I see that too.  I would certainly find a way to implement a goal
with the Gears Activity, and several others.  Maybe not all Sugar
Activities can incorporate easily the concept of a goal, but going forward,
all ideas for credit-earning activities that I can think of seem like they
would also be suitable for use in the greater Sugarizer environment, so
there's that.  And with a working incentive system and careful "marketing"
who knows?  It could work really well and lead to all kinds of interesting
new software.

-Charles



>
> regards.
>
> -walter
>
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
> <http://www.sugarlabs.org>
>
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