Recent musings...

[kirby urner]

I found myself introducing NetDispenser psychology

at the outset of summer camp, 2nd thru 8th graders,

about seven.  Small windowless room in a strip mall.

HDTV to project, Chrome notebooks for each student.

https://flic.kr/p/Vg2wEp

"Our purpose" (paraphrase) "is to get ya'll addicted

to Scratch so your parents will give you unlimited

time on the Internet, because they see your progress

as programmers."  I said this with parents and

grandparents present, with a wink in my eye.

But then how would a real NetDispenser [tm]

know to reward time programming Scratch. Just

measuring activity over the wire with that IP number

(domain) would be a possibility.  A thermometer on

the local NetReceiver app racks up the credits. 

But there may be no telling how much actual

programming was accomplished, versus just

running a loop and running outside.  Which might

be a better thing to be doing.

Kirby

[Charles Cossé]

On Friday, July 7, 2017 at 12:30:33 PM UTC-6, kirby urner wrote:

I found myself introducing NetDispenser psychology

https://flic.kr/p/Vg2wEp

Very cool.

 

"Our purpose" (paraphrase) "is to get ya'll addicted

to Scratch so your parents will give you unlimited

time on the Internet, because they see your progress

as programmers."  I said this with parents and

grandparents present, with a wink in my eye.

Bet they hadn't considered that scenario :)

But then how would a real NetDispenser [tm]

know to reward time programming Scratch. Just

measuring activity over the wire with that IP number

(domain) would be a possibility.  A thermometer on

the local NetReceiver app racks up the credits. 

But there may be no telling how much actual

programming was accomplished, versus just

running a loop and running outside.  Which might

be a better thing to be doing.

 

Do you know what the web version of Scratch is written in?   

At the sub-minimal level you could wrap it in an iframe complete with some "timer" code to message the credit-feeder website after a certain elapsed time.  The whole thing loses its purpose at that point, since that approach is intrinsically flawed (thinking they'll be constructive if you just make them sit there for "x"amount of time, BUT you could even wrap a remote app in that way, as well.  Otherwise it needs two things, the concept of a goal and to send a message to the iframe's parent that goal achieved.  So you could make the goal to create something in Scratch using at least 5 of those snap-together objects (idk if that's a good #), and only need to add something in the function which executes their (Scratch) product which counts how many objects they used and if it runs, then sends the message.

-Charles