thanks for including me!

[kirby urner]

Hi Charles --

Thank you for including me in this fascinating discussion of NetDispenser.

I work in an after school program wherein we use MIT Scratch and Codesters, among other etoyz, as platforms wherein, with practice, mature coding skills get cultivated. 

Codesters depends on Skulpt, an in-browser Python-to-Javascript solution. 

Kids get to play with colorful backgrounds, sprites, events (e.g. collision events), in a simple physics engine (gravity and bouncy walls optional), using a medium level (incompletely implemented, nevertheless capable) version of Python.  You can drag "Sprite Collision" from the Events palette only to see it turn into a lexical template in Python code (coupled event listener and callback function).

Here are a couple of examples from recent classes:
https://www.codesters.com/preview/936442bad2494332a72aff128702ec53/

Hit green button top middle to start the game.  Should work minus any need for logging in.

However, students experience burnout if the onslaught of technical information and lack of progress triggers a frustration threshold.  They've banged their heads on source code for awhile and now want to play surviv.io, especially with friends in the room as they can sit side by side while immersed in the same "sea of green" (Beatles reference) on screen.

They might come back to the challenge more readily were we to give them some R&R, which is where Netdispenser might prove useful.  However in this model, parents might object to too much relaxing. We have the pressure of Parent Day, when each student exhibits their personal accomplishments, to incentivize Learning to Code.

I can easily imagine a future school program wherein idle game play is certainly allowed (like recess, absolutely necessary to any rigorous curriculum), but only by spending credits earned doing the core activities (e.g. Scratch and Codesters), and hardware could have something to do with that, and so could the teacher, who recognizes serious effort with credit based on merit, or simply "trying hard".  If I see junior has banged her head against source code quite a lot, and she's exhausted, I can let her play narwhale.io (a community favorite).

Of course your current model does not have to wait for someone to work out these more generic solutions, involving platforms with no internal awareness of Netdispenser (no API) -- more like the Wild Internet on balance (i.e. there's no "bird feeder" per se).

Instead, you've already developed a prototype study environment, paving the way for future developers and giving parents (and their kids) a way to vote with their feet, regarding how to micro-manage their own subscription fees i.e. skewing it towards rewarding "games" (learning experiences) of the type they like the most.

Concentrating a lot of your logic in the router suggests a future plug and play solution (something shrink-wrapped at Best Buy), perhaps with "R-Pi inside" but perhaps other dedicated hardware.   That's down the road.  For now, you have an SD card with a ready-for-testing image.

I imagine some developers might try to copy your idea as a browser plug-in, i.e. parent installs ChromeDispenser in Chrome and junior finds a meter appearing in the menu bar which drifts towards zero unless "plugged in" to specific credit-giving websites.  Name all the capitals of all the states in 5 minutes, and get a whole hour to practice typing with Nitro Type Race (big in some schools).

A Chromebook might at least make it difficult to circumvent the browser.  When the kid is old enough to hack a way around the browser, it's time for the NetDispenser solution perhaps.

"Do what you've gotta to do what you wanna" (hold a job to get time off to fish) is a time-honored model we all understand. 

There's also the working out at a gym paradigm:  rest muscle groups between sets for maximum gain.

Excessive "forcing" is a mistake many parents make.  They push junior to study past a point of marginal return whereas a luckier kid is pushed to study less, develops less antipathy for study, and learns more.  Here in Portland, we send teachers to Finland to gain insight into how to produce geniuses.  Maybe Linus Torvalds has been an influence (he lives here, as you know).

Kirby

[C. Cossé]

Hello Kirby,

What ages/grades does the rock-paper-scissors game correspond to in your curriculum?  I would guess middle school, but as you are in Portland so maybe they are advanced first-graders :)

I borrowed your quote today: "Do what you gotta to do what you wanna", that's a concise way to summarize the project.  Thanks for that.

We are facing somewhat of a chicken-and-egg phenomenon here, where the people I "reach out" to might be reluctant to endorse until more of a community exists.  The analogy to Wal-Mart putting people out of business in the 80s has been coming to mind lately.  This is a free product, but a Google take-off would be deadly nonetheless, and I see Google IPs regularly in the weblogs, not just bots, and here we are on Google groups.  I would approach them but for obvious worries of being eclipsed.  The people we need are out there, we just have to reach them.  I believe that is best accomplished by not just one approach, but a multitude of approaches ... for example today I got setup with a mobile hotspot and battery-powered R-Pi so I can demo at the local farmer's market, or anywhere else; The R-Pi doesn't require any monitor as it broadcasts its own website, so would-be adopters can try it from the middle-of-nowhere simply by connecting to the CreditMeter with their own device. 

Another approach, or variation, is that we could offer the CreditFeeder from the R-Pi itself, as it's 90% the same code on the back-end.  That would be a good option, especially for people in remote places, and easily doable, but it won't help to stimulate new ideas or compensate developers as I'd also like to see happen.  And we lack human resources for another branch at the moment. 

History shows that many successful ideas eventually succeed via "vehicles" other than the originally intended ones.  Women finally got the right to vote in the US by selling the idea in conjunction with prohibition and family preservation.  I'm still partial to the original idea, but today I found myself more and more explaining how it could be used in schools, whereas the original scheme was focused on parenting without drama and supplementing kids' education at home.

I will admit that I am dismayed that the most-likely-people to endorse, or even share/tweet the project seem to have zero interest, those being the FSF, Sugarlabs and GCompris projects, in particular.  When we do advocate the project to others it is important to emphasize that it seeks to compliment other projects as opposed to competing with them in any way.  It's alright, our community is out there and I remain optimistic that we will continue to grow.  Here is an example of a pleasant surprise endorsement from Seattle just the other day.  Support is out there, it's just tough for a fledgling project to be heard.  NetDispenser members, thank you so much for your continued support!

-Charlie

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NetDispenser" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to netdispenser+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to netdis...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/netdispenser.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/netdispenser/CAPJgG3RypRo%2BypHTFf-iy-4vax%2BHbd02ikBXp0Nv6e6gcf41MQ%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[kirby urner]

On Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 10:54 PM, C. Cossé <cco...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello Kirby,

What ages/grades does the rock-paper-scissors game correspond to in your curriculum?  I would guess middle school, but as you are in Portland so maybe they are advanced first-graders :)

​
Middle schoolers.  Our winter term ends today.  I was using Codesters for both my classes, however the company specializes in the younger half (up to and including middle school) and seems to venture into the high school aged clientele mostly through summer camps.  Minecraft programming, Arduino, 3D Games... I'm not sure what all, though I've been handing out flyers.

https://flic.kr/s/aHskYSMvKJ  (photo album of Code School work, you'll see some PDX Code Guild included)

​

 

I borrowed your quote today: "Do what you gotta to do what you wanna", that's a concise way to summarize the project.  Thanks for that.

We are facing somewhat of a chicken-and-egg phenomenon here, where the people I "reach out" to might be reluctant to endorse until more of a community exists.  The analogy to Wal-Mart putting people out of business in the 80s has been coming to mind lately.  This is a free product, but a Google take-off would be deadly nonetheless, and I see Google IPs regularly in the weblogs, not just bots, and here we are on Google groups.  I would approach them but for obvious worries of being eclipsed.  The people we need are out there, we just have to reach them.  I believe that is best accomplished by not just one approach, but a multitude of approaches ... for example today I got setup with a mobile hotspot and battery-powered R-Pi so I can demo at the local farmer's market, or anywhere else; The R-Pi doesn't require any monitor as it broadcasts its own website, so would-be adopters can try it from the middle-of-nowhere simply by connecting to the CreditMeter with their own device. 

​
Endorsements might help down the road with marketing but I don't see them as a prerequisite. 

I'll be especially reticent (the would-be endorsers) if they think you think and endorsement will be followed up with a request for funding. Once your idea is popular, a lot of 'em will jump on the bandwagon.  At the moment, it's like, "why risk it?".
​

 

Another approach, or variation, is that we could offer the CreditFeeder from the R-Pi itself, as it's 90% the same code on the back-end.  That would be a good option, especially for people in remote places, and easily doable, but it won't help to stimulate new ideas or compensate developers as I'd also like to see happen.  And we lack human resources for another branch at the moment. 

​A CreditFeeder might be as simple as a monitor of IP traffic (packets) twixt the student computer and an approved study site, such as New York Times or other "read me" of the day. 

One could assume that X bytes of traffic == student studied the article.  In that case, there'd be no need for a programmed activity that communicates a score or even knows CreditFeeders exist. 

On the other hand, your model of actual activities the pay out in a kind of local currency ( = more free time on the Internet)​

 

​could still be supported.  Games / tests / challenges that reward more or less depending on performance... that's the more utopian implementation.  More like Kaggle.

Not either/or right?
​

History shows that many successful ideas eventually succeed via "vehicles" other than the originally intended ones.  Women finally got the right to vote in the US by selling the idea in conjunction with prohibition and family preservation.  I'm still partial to the original idea, but today I found myself more and more explaining how it could be used in schools, whereas the original scheme was focused on parenting without drama and supplementing kids' education at home.

​If the idea flies, I expect commercial enterprises will see ways to adapt the system to reward (compensate) at-home workers with crypto-currency (in the limiting case, it's good for only one thing: keeping the router open).

For example, teachers who agree to read and provide feedback to aspiring animators or programmers, journalists, musicians, might get rewarded for their expert assessments with time on a service like Safari, a paywall behind which lives a stash of computer books. 

I speak from experience as my time with O'Reilly School of Technology, grading Python programs, was indeed so rewarded (but that takes the router out of the picture, so not quite the same model).

The basic idea is we get paid for our work and that pay translates into freedom (supposedly).

​

 

I will admit that I am dismayed that the most-likely-people to endorse, or even share/tweet the project seem to have zero interest, those being the FSF, Sugarlabs and GCompris projects, in particular.  When we do advocate the project to others it is important to emphasize that it seeks to compliment other projects as opposed to competing with them in any way.  It's alright, our community is out there and I remain optimistic that we will continue to grow.  Here is an example of a pleasant surprise endorsement from Seattle just the other day.  Support is out there, it's just tough for a fledgling project to be heard.  NetDispenser members, thank you so much for your continued support!

-Charlie

​What your idea has going for it is it's in the grain of the culture anyway. 

The negotiation parents have with their kids, to do X chores / homework before getting permission to do Y (the reward) is a concept a lot of us grow up with.  Having that logic crammed into an R-Pi and Creditfeeder websites​

 

​is a logical next step.

The whole model deserves to be a game / simulation in its own right e.g. it'd be fun to boot up a game called SchoolWorks and watch simulated students all dividing their time between compensating sites/activities and free play in approved sandboxes. 

My students know I'm OK with their playing surviv.io and narewhale.io as long as they have some real Codesters code to show off to their parents in Show & Tell.

Kirby
​

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/netdispenser/CABtoULg4wCu%3DbZk8DjQz-jHGF2X_0ynwQJjksAewGKzNTt9bNA%40mail.gmail.com.

[David Bucknell]

Thoughtful, interesting, and useful comment, Kirby.

Thank you!

David

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/netdispenser/CAPJgG3Rk1xadt4g4r7ym9vqiKd9FxP55d-5uYXN6saLCi%3DJQnQ%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

David M. Bucknell

91-173 Ewa Beach Rd., Ewa Beach, HI 96706