[Grassroots-l] Grassroots Digest, Vol 13, Issue 11

[Jeroen van der Ent]

I have a question for creative thinkers regarding language learning  
software that we are making for the xo and other devices.

here is the situation:

-we have a group of 30-60 kids and 2-3 machines (no funding yet for  
one laptop per child) and no supervisors when the laptops are used.
- we want to measure progress of the individual children as good as  
possible to give them an auto-advancing curriculum

what we tried (during a user-pilot in tribal villages in india):
- give each child a neck cord with their own unique picture of an  
animal and make them login with that picture on the screen

result:
- kids exchanged/traded the animals amongst each other after a while  
(one boy having 10 cords)
- kids taking turns and not logging in (forgetting/not caring) under  
their own id
- not enough animals available for villages with more than 60 kids, we  
made some kids share the login.

solutions we are thinking of:
- make a photo with the webcam and make that their id
- fingerprint scanner mouse (expensive)
- make it profitable in the software to log in under your own id  
(earning points/rewards etc)
- no login at all in the first stage and wait until a later stage  
until they can type their names to log in
- tattoo a barcode on their arm and scan it in upon use  (ok getting  
desperate now :P )

does anyone have any better ideas for us how to make them log in in a  
non-supervised environment? How to avoid that they do not log in under  
their own id when they are taking turns

br,
Jeroen