[Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 81, Issue 23

Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ardito at gmail.com
Sun Jan 12 11:45:33 EST 2014 

Tony,
I don't want to speak for the teachers in Nepal, but I think, Speaking as
an educator, that more real data is better than the red light green light
scenario you propose.
I would be happy to participate in the design if that would be helpful.
Gerald


On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 11:13 AM, Tony Anderson <tony_anderson at usa.net>wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am taking a simplistic approach to this problem. KA-Lite has a simple
> coach
> report which basically shows a table with a row for each registered student
> and a column for each activity. The cell is blank for no attempts, a light
> green
> for attempts which did not reach 'proficiency', and a dark green to show
> proficiency in that task.
>
> I think this is adequate for teachers, particularly if they can click on a
> cell to
> get more detail (e.g number of items completed, number of questions
> answered correctly, and so forth).
>
> Many of the sites I am supporting do not follow the one laptop per child
> model. In one case, the teachers pass out laptops without regard to who
> used it previously. In other cases, a set of laptops are used in more than
> one class.
> This means recording data against the laptop serial number is insufficient.
>
> The implementation strategy is to have the site provide a list of students
> (currently first and last name with the username as a concatenation of the
> two). The student logs in (By using the Journal activity, login is assured
> at boot
> time. After that, students must login as laptops are passed from class to
> class).
>
> A modification to activity.py adds id, start, stop, and outcome to the
> metadata.
> The id is the db id of the student (not the username). The outcome is a
> string - empty by default. A procedure 'write_outcome' added to
> activity.py, analogous to read_file and write_file enables a Sugar activity
> to add specific outcome
> information (either a string or a json with one of the keys: 'comment':'').
>
> The ds_backup.py is modified to save objects in the datastore to the school
> server (item by item, not rsync).
>
> A data collection script on the school server can go through the saved
> Journals
> adding this information to a database so that reports (such as the coach
> report) can be created on demand.
>
> Similar to KA Lite, the goal is to make information available to teachers
> on the
> progress of their students so that teachers can provide extra help and
> encouragement as appropriate. Currently, KA Lite does not provide feedback
> directly to the students but the main Khan Academy site has many examples
> of
> this (badges, points, etc.).
>
> Tony
>
> On 01/12/2014 04:31 PM, server-devel-request at lists.laptop.org wrote:
>
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>>
>> Today's Topics:
>>
>>     1. Re: [Sugar-devel] The quest for data (Sameer Verma)
>>     2. Re: [Sugar-devel] The quest for data (Walter Bender)
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2014 20:27:21 -0800
>> From: Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu>
>> To: Martin Dluhos <martin at gnu.org>
>> Cc: Devel's in the Details <devel at lists.laptop.org>,    XS Devel
>>         <server-devel at lists.laptop.org>,        Sugar-dev Devel
>>         <sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>,      Nina Stawski <
>> me at ninastawski.com>,
>>         Leotis Buchanan <LeotisBuchanan at exterbox.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Server-devel] [Sugar-devel] The quest for data
>> Message-ID:
>>         <CAFoGK8Go=Fh+Z0v7u+cj8yBqNhnPPz8hMupi_ZcrHD-e0f=N
>> OQ at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>>
>> We had our January meeting at OLPCSF (and our 6th birthday). We talked
>> about contributions to this project. Introducing Nina Stawski to the
>> thread. She works with HTML and Javascript and is familiar with
>> visualization. She suggested d3js.org as one of the options.
>>
>> Has anyone created the wiki page as yet?
>>
>> cheers,
>> Sameer
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 12:37 PM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 3:26 AM, Martin Dluhos <martin at gnu.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 7.1.2014 01:49, Sameer Verma wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:28 AM, Martin Dluhos <martin at gnu.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> For visualization, I have explored using LibreOffice and SOFA, but
>>>>>> neither of
>>>>>> those were flexible to allow for customization of the output beyond
>>>>>> some a few
>>>>>> rudimentary options, so I started looking at various Javascript
>>>>>> libraries, which
>>>>>> are much more powerful. Currently, I am experimenting with Google
>>>>>> Charts, which
>>>>>> I found the easiest to get started with. If I run into limitations
>>>>>> with Google
>>>>>> Charts in the future, others on my list are InfoVIS Toolkit
>>>>>> (http://philogb.github.io/jit) and HighCharts (http://highcharts.com).
>>>>>> Then,
>>>>>> there is also D3.js, but that's a bigger animal.
>>>>>>
>>>>> Keep in mind that if you want to visualize at the school's local
>>>>> XS[CE] you may have to rely on a local js method instead of an online
>>>>> library.
>>>>>
>>>> Yes, that's a very good point.  Originally, I was only thinking about
>>>> collecting
>>>> and visualizing the information centrally, but there is no reason why it
>>>> couldn't be viewed by teachers and school administrators on the
>>>> schoolserver
>>>> itself. Thanks for the warning.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  In fact, my guess would be that what the teachers and principal want
>>> to see at the school will be different from what OLE Nepal and the
>>> government would want to see, with interesting overlaps.
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>> Sameer
>>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Sun, 12 Jan 2014 09:33:07 -0500
>> From: Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>
>> To: Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu>
>> Cc: XS Devel <server-devel at lists.laptop.org>,   Devel's in the Details
>>         <devel at lists.laptop.org>,       Sugar-dev Devel
>>         <sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>,      Leotis Buchanan
>>         <LeotisBuchanan at exterbox.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Server-devel] [Sugar-devel] The quest for data
>> Message-ID:
>>         <CADf7C8tuPYwCQEWx0P5M87dykecjNaRT+DYhzrJf6=y7rCgyEA at mail.
>> gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 3:37 PM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 3:26 AM, Martin Dluhos <martin at gnu.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 7.1.2014 01:49, Sameer Verma wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:28 AM, Martin Dluhos <martin at gnu.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> For visualization, I have explored using LibreOffice and SOFA, but
>>>>>> neither of
>>>>>> those were flexible to allow for customization of the output beyond
>>>>>> some a few
>>>>>> rudimentary options, so I started looking at various Javascript
>>>>>> libraries, which
>>>>>> are much more powerful. Currently, I am experimenting with Google
>>>>>> Charts, which
>>>>>> I found the easiest to get started with. If I run into limitations
>>>>>> with Google
>>>>>> Charts in the future, others on my list are InfoVIS Toolkit
>>>>>> (http://philogb.github.io/jit) and HighCharts (http://highcharts.com).
>>>>>> Then,
>>>>>> there is also D3.js, but that's a bigger animal.
>>>>>>
>>>>> Keep in mind that if you want to visualize at the school's local
>>>>> XS[CE] you may have to rely on a local js method instead of an online
>>>>> library.
>>>>>
>>>> Yes, that's a very good point.  Originally, I was only thinking about
>>>> collecting
>>>> and visualizing the information centrally, but there is no reason why it
>>>> couldn't be viewed by teachers and school administrators on the
>>>> schoolserver
>>>> itself. Thanks for the warning.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  In fact, my guess would be that what the teachers and principal want
>>> to see at the school will be different from what OLE Nepal and the
>>> government would want to see, with interesting overlaps.
>>>
>> You left out one important constituent: the learner. Ultimately we are
>> responsible for making learning visible to the learner. Claudia and I
>> touched on this topic in the attached paper.
>>
>> Just to place all my cards on the table, as much as I hate to suggest
>> we head down this route, I think we really need to instrument
>> activities themselves (and build analyses of activity output) if we
>> want to provide meaningful statistics about learning. We've done some
>> of this with Turtle Blocks, even capturing the mistakes the learner
>> makes along the way. We are lacking in decent visualizations of these
>> data, however.
>>
>> Meanwhile, I remain convinced that the portfolio is our best tool.
>>
>> regards.
>>
>> -walter
>>
>>
>>  cheers,
>>> Sameer
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>>>
>>
>>
>>
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