Author: primaryt

Everyone wants to be like facebook.

Posted on by primaryt

I keep forgetting the name of the damn project and I always type it into Google wrong.  Anyway.  Diaspora has momentum.  And it looks like a Ruby project too?

Looks like Ning/Edmodo etc. have their work cut out competing with this open source monster.  Although we have been here before with open source/free social networks.  I feel a touch of de ja vou.  Wasn’t there a project called open social or something?  Anyways..  If you care, good for you.  Social networks aren’t productivity tools.

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XPArena – Slowly, slowly.

Posted on by primaryt
WARNING: This is a horrible idea for a use of technology. It completely dehumanizes pupils. It was an abstract idea and is left here for historical purposes. Since I wrote this some companies have begun developing this tool, these companies should be ashamed of themselves and read this to begin walking their path of enlightenment

Me and Chad have been chatting about the scoring / reward / xp mechanism and how we can use it to try to encourage learners to “learn more”.

Without going off on one  I wanted to quickly update everyone with where we are at.   By we I mean the 3 developers, 1 designers and 2 teachers working on the project.

More than one user interface for primary age kids.

Whoa, now this is big. But it is right. The problem is that primary kids web based skills are developing so quickly at home that at 9-12 year old 3 years ago is the equivalent of a 6-8 year old now in the way they negotiate web sites. This report recently published suggests 2 interfaces, 6-8 then 9-12. My brain explodes.  So many providers just provide one interface, us included.  I often pondered this but to read it in this report confirmed it for me.

XPArena should therefore be theme-able

So these are the themes we hope to make available:

  • A very basic theme for 6-8
  • A slightly more advanced theme or 9-12
  • A theme for teenagers.
  • A theme for adults.  <– Will adult learners actually be engaged by a mechanism such as XPArena?

How do we compete with facebook?

We don’t try to.  We must leverage social networks by writing plugins/addons.  Our current list reads:

  • WordPress
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Ning
  • Moodle

Note: We wont promote any of these services directly to the user.

When will XPArena be live?

I don’t even have a due date or anything for this, it’s not because I don’t want to do it.  Over the last month I have bashed our SearchyPants and Satpin, the reason for making those sites specifically is because they don’t have any layers of complexity, they are simplified versions of already existing relatively well understood concepts.  So I guess maybe early 2011.  I’m currently waiting on Ning developer access so I can see if it is possible to easily send points from a ning post to XPArena.

I really need teacher help with this project so if you can see a use for it please get in touch because without it being tested in it’s beta stage it could end up growing into something that completely misses the point.  I’m considering writing it for Ruby on Rails.  There, I said it.

Will XPArena be the point scoring mechanism?

Usually what happens is some well marketed system comes along and forks off our existing source code, closes it off then calls it their own.  I’m fine with that.  The only way we can compete against big business is with transparency and by proving to educators we are being security concious.   The main thing XPArena will need to do is facilitate new learning tools as they are launched.  Services like Edmodo will fall by the way side as they have no API/developer tools, schools will hopefully become aware of this ability to link tools together and begin choosing the open system..  Of course this in theory..

So I have some (rough) designs, what do you think?

Obviously these designs are aimed at 6-8, maybe 9-12 too..

Classdroid on the iPhone

Posted on by primaryt


I keep getting asked if Classdroid is coming to the iPhone…

It is complex so I wanted to write a specific blog post.

Firstly, I don’t like the iPhone. I don’t like how its marketed, how it’s sold, how it’s app store works, how the community support is supposed to work, how the licensing model works and what impact it has on the tech industry as a whole. “We need substance, not glitter” is probably the best way to put it.

Now you know how much I dislike the iPhone it will be of no surprise that I love Android, but this isn’t about love/like/dislike. It’s about economics. I would need to charge $5 per device or so and sell 400 copies of Classdroid on the Appstore and still wouldn’t break even.

Classdroid must remain free and open source to encourage others to use it, if you don’t know about crowd sourcing and how that develops applications then here is a quick example of why open source is good…

Before Classdroid got to market someone had made language support for traditional/simplified Chinese. That would of taken me hours to do, but it’s now done just by some guy I don’t even know. Classdroid includes parts of the WordPress open source App so we were able to make it, test it and publish it quickly without writing too much code.

Stop ranting and tell us when it’s coming to the iphone!

It’s coming to the iphone as soon as:

a) Apple allow iphone apps to be developed on something other than Apple devices.
b) Apple reduce/drop the ridiculous 100$ annual SDK fee.

OR

c) Someone who does done apple/ios development reads our source code and makes an apple version then publishes it under their name (that is fine with me). The code must remain open source, that is the only prerequisite.

So that’s it, Basically I would need about $1100 just to start coding.. It’s not worth it for a handset that is losing market share month after month.

If you really still want Classdroid for your iPhone then ask about, see if someone you know, knows an iPhone developer who will be happy to help out. If so then get in touch or point them at the source code.