tuxmath-devel

[Tuxmath-devel] GSoC 2012 potential - my introduction and some ideas for mobile

[Kento L. <me...@kl...>]

Good day ladies and gentlemen!

I sent out a similar email yesterday to tux4kids-discuss, but since then 
have been informed that this list is more active. So I apologize in 
advance for the repetition (which is really just the next paragraph).

My name is Kento Locatelli, and I'm a 3rd year undergraduate in Computer 
Science and Engineering. I would like to develop a new (not ported) 
mobile tux4kids app under the Google Summer of Code for the tux4kids 
family. I have a fair amount of experience in a wide range of area which 
I won't go into for brevity, but suffice it to say I believe I am 
technically fit for the project.

The reason I'm in favor of new non-ported mobile tux4kids apps is that 
the existing software don't seem "fit" for mobile phones (aside from 
TuxPaint, but similar albeit non-FOSS apps already exist). For example, 
Math command would work well on a tablet... but most mobile devices are 
phones, and fitting that game on a small screen wouldn't be a pleasant 
experience. Plus the target demographic is more likely to have a cheap 
android phone than an iPad tablet.

So what new mobile-friendly games do I propose instead? I am still 
working on specifics, and I'll provide more detailed write ups or 
sketched later this week (after I finish a couple midterms)... but I'd 
still like to share the concepts I've had so far.

- Math racer (vertical screens): I'm sure everyone's familiar with the 
classic 2d racing game where your car steadily speeds up and you have to 
steer between other race cars and avoid a crash. Lets take that idea and 
invert it, where the car automatically steers and you have control of 
the speed. The top half of the screen would display your car steering, 
maybe with the standard little semi-transparent race track overlay. 
Toggleable to show your position, high speed, etc. The lower half would 
be your "gas pedal". Equations! An equation would display, and below 
that would be various options for the solution. for example "9 + 5 = ?" 
and options "95 59 12 14...". The faster you solve your problems, the 
faster your car goes. The advantage of this game is after it's 
developed, it would be fairly easy to modify it to support algebra ("9 + 
2x = 15") or have toggle-able operations (so a parent teaching their 
child addition could have only addition, and then select subtract, 
multiplication, etc as the child progresses). And I rather like the idea 
of tracking how fast equations of various types are solved, so progress 
can be visualized. Plus penguins driving race cars? Seriously, always 
awesome.

- Worder (horrible name): This game is for teaching parts of speech, so 
it would be helpful for students learning english regardless of their 
age (and actually, it should be easy to port the game for learning other 
languages as well). Basically it's the river portion of frogger (but 
with a penguin and ice floes, instead of a frog and logs). Your penguin 
has a part of speech (ie a Noun penguin), and to cross the river it has 
to hop across word ice floes with the appropriate part of speech.

- Something along the lines of oregon trail, with more 
historical/geographic accuracy and less dysentery/death.

- Music composer: This is probably the least viable for a GSoC project, 
but it's something I personally repeatedly wanted as a kid. Basically, 
the idea is the name. To simplify the project, it could be turned into a 
music tracker like Sonant (or Sonant live: 
http://sonantlive.bitsnbites.eu/). I haven't thought of a great way to 
fit it on a small screen, but I know it can be done. Musical education 
is just as important as anything else!

Note again these are just very early concepts I've worked on a little 
bit between tasks since yesterday. I'm sure better ones will come up 
after I have time to actually spend brainstorming later this week, but I 
still want to know how I'm doing so far.

As far as the technical platform goes, I'm in favor of the 
HTML5/JavaScript/Phonegap stack suggested previously. Appcelerator might 
be another potential platform which also compiles down to 
objective-c/java. Google offers PlayN too, which compiles Java to 
desktop Java, HTML5, Android and iOS (so new apps could be both mobile 
*and* desktop). PlayN's community support is rather lacking though...  
Again, I'll do more research later in the week to see if there aren't 
any buried gems out there.

All the best,
Kento Locatelli

Re: [Tuxmath-devel] GSoC 2012 potential - my introduction and some ideas for mobile

[Kento L. <me...@kl...>]

Clarification for the "Worder" game:
the ice floes would be various words (eg car, duck, run, dance, blue..), 
and the objective would be to cross the river by jumping on ice 
floes/words that match the penguin's part of speech (eg noun). Some of 
the ice would not match the penguin's part of speech, and those would 
sink so the penguin has to try again.

On 3/19/2012 4:14 PM, Kento Locatelli wrote:
> Good day ladies and gentlemen!
>
> I sent out a similar email yesterday to tux4kids-discuss, but since 
> then have been informed that this list is more active. So I apologize 
> in advance for the repetition (which is really just the next paragraph).
>
> My name is Kento Locatelli, and I'm a 3rd year undergraduate in 
> Computer Science and Engineering. I would like to develop a new (not 
> ported) mobile tux4kids app under the Google Summer of Code for the 
> tux4kids family. I have a fair amount of experience in a wide range of 
> area which I won't go into for brevity, but suffice it to say I 
> believe I am technically fit for the project.
>
> The reason I'm in favor of new non-ported mobile tux4kids apps is that 
> the existing software don't seem "fit" for mobile phones (aside from 
> TuxPaint, but similar albeit non-FOSS apps already exist). For 
> example, Math command would work well on a tablet... but most mobile 
> devices are phones, and fitting that game on a small screen wouldn't 
> be a pleasant experience. Plus the target demographic is more likely 
> to have a cheap android phone than an iPad tablet.
>
> So what new mobile-friendly games do I propose instead? I am still 
> working on specifics, and I'll provide more detailed write ups or 
> sketched later this week (after I finish a couple midterms)... but I'd 
> still like to share the concepts I've had so far.
>
> - Math racer (vertical screens): I'm sure everyone's familiar with the 
> classic 2d racing game where your car steadily speeds up and you have 
> to steer between other race cars and avoid a crash. Lets take that 
> idea and invert it, where the car automatically steers and you have 
> control of the speed. The top half of the screen would display your 
> car steering, maybe with the standard little semi-transparent race 
> track overlay. Toggleable to show your position, high speed, etc. The 
> lower half would be your "gas pedal". Equations! An equation would 
> display, and below that would be various options for the solution. for 
> example "9 + 5 = ?" and options "95 59 12 14...". The faster you solve 
> your problems, the faster your car goes. The advantage of this game is 
> after it's developed, it would be fairly easy to modify it to support 
> algebra ("9 + 2x = 15") or have toggle-able operations (so a parent 
> teaching their child addition could have only addition, and then 
> select subtract, multiplication, etc as the child progresses). And I 
> rather like the idea of tracking how fast equations of various types 
> are solved, so progress can be visualized. Plus penguins driving race 
> cars? Seriously, always awesome.
>
> - Worder (horrible name): This game is for teaching parts of speech, 
> so it would be helpful for students learning english regardless of 
> their age (and actually, it should be easy to port the game for 
> learning other languages as well). Basically it's the river portion of 
> frogger (but with a penguin and ice floes, instead of a frog and 
> logs). Your penguin has a part of speech (ie a Noun penguin), and to 
> cross the river it has to hop across word ice floes with the 
> appropriate part of speech.
>
> - Something along the lines of oregon trail, with more 
> historical/geographic accuracy and less dysentery/death.
>
> - Music composer: This is probably the least viable for a GSoC 
> project, but it's something I personally repeatedly wanted as a kid. 
> Basically, the idea is the name. To simplify the project, it could be 
> turned into a music tracker like Sonant (or Sonant live: 
> http://sonantlive.bitsnbites.eu/). I haven't thought of a great way to 
> fit it on a small screen, but I know it can be done. Musical education 
> is just as important as anything else!
>
> Note again these are just very early concepts I've worked on a little 
> bit between tasks since yesterday. I'm sure better ones will come up 
> after I have time to actually spend brainstorming later this week, but 
> I still want to know how I'm doing so far.
>
> As far as the technical platform goes, I'm in favor of the 
> HTML5/JavaScript/Phonegap stack suggested previously. Appcelerator 
> might be another potential platform which also compiles down to 
> objective-c/java. Google offers PlayN too, which compiles Java to 
> desktop Java, HTML5, Android and iOS (so new apps could be both mobile 
> *and* desktop). PlayN's community support is rather lacking though...  
> Again, I'll do more research later in the week to see if there aren't 
> any buried gems out there.
>
> All the best,
> Kento Locatelli

Re: [Tuxmath-devel] GSoC 2012 potential - my introduction and some ideas for mobile

[Brendan L. <che...@gm...>]

Hey Kento,

Like I said, these ideas all have potential. I don't think any of them is a
clear winner. I'm personally sort of partial towards the music idea, but
like I said, it has to actually be an educational tool and not a toy.

It's a tough decision you have to make yourself. For your proposal you can
can mention all four and say you'll decide later--that's fine. You will
have to pick a game to stick with, though--quality over quantity. You might
want to dedicate a week or so to banging out prototypes and then, based on
feedback (hopefully you can find some real, authentic kids to play with,
too), pick one to develop fully and polish.

Let me know if you have more questions ;)

-Brendan

On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 1:57 PM, Kento Locatelli <me...@kl...> wrote:

> Hi Brendan!
>
> I appreciate your advice, I'm new to the development side of educational
> apps for kids and knew some of my assumptions wouldn't hold. If chosen I
> will definitely try to make the end product play nicely on as many
> platforms/devices as possible... whether it's a cheap android phone or an
> iPad. In fact compatibility one of my most important criteria for both
> concept and framework; my goal is to make a new tux4kids educational app,
> without a "for Android" or "for Linux" or any other qualifier.
>
> That said, I was wondering if you thought any of those concepts in
> particular were a better fit for kids or the tux4kids family than the rest?
> I don't really have a way to measure the newer concepts I've had without
> having to guess or share them all (besides comparing them to existing
> tux4kids apps). I'd also like to start refining/creating mockups of ideas,
> but I can't decide where to direct my effort.
>
> Thank you for your time,
> Kento Locatelli
>
>
> On 3/19/2012 6:22 PM, Brendan Luchen wrote:
>
>> Hi Kento,
>>
>> It sounds like you've already put some thought into your proposal--that's
>> great. Everything you mentioned sounds reasonable, so I only have a couple
>> of thoughts:
>>
>> * I don't necessarily agree that the "target demographic" (I'm assuming
>> you mean kids here) will be more likely to rock a cheap Android phone. The
>> way I've typically seen kids play mobile games is on mom or dad's device,
>> which could be an iPad, an Android phone, a Blackberry, whatever. Older
>> kids may have smartphones of their own, but I feel like that's even
>> relatively rare. I'll let the parents on the list chime in on this one :)
>>
>> * Any of the game concepts you mentioned have potential if fleshed out, I
>> think. Worder makes me think of Mad Libs. Jesus Mager did some work on a
>> "TuxHistory" game, you may want to chat with him about that.
>> * I wouldn't discount your music idea as not viable--especially if it's
>> something you're personally vested in. It will take some effort, though, to
>> give it a real educati
>> onal component, and not be simply a toy. Illustrating basic music theory
>> concepts so a 5-year-old can grasp them would be amazing, IMO.
>>
>> Good luck on your exams.
>>
>> Best,
>> Brendan
>>
>
>

Re: [Tuxmath-devel] GSoC 2012 potential - my introduction and some ideas for mobile

[Kento L. <me...@kl...>]

Hey Brendan,

Thanks for the advice, I hadn't thought of doing things that way. 
There's a fairly long pre-coding/community bonding phase before official 
coding starts which would be great for making and evaluating quick 
prototypes.

I just have a couple questions regarding the application;
- Is there a preferred format for answering the required questions? Can 
I just do it free-form as long as all the questions are answered in a 
readable fashion, or is it better to treat the application template as a 
literal template and insert my answers after the questions?
- I'm not sure if it's kosher, but could someone in the organization 
look over my application before I submit it? Just to get a second set of 
eyes from within the project on the proposal, make sure nothing is 
unclear or what-not.

Thanks!
Kento Locatelli

On 3/23/2012 4:21 PM, Brendan Luchen wrote:
> Hey Kento,
>
> Like I said, these ideas all have potential. I don't think any of them 
> is a clear winner. I'm personally sort of partial towards the music 
> idea, but like I said, it has to actually be an educational tool and 
> not a toy.
>
> It's a tough decision you have to make yourself. For your proposal you 
> can can mention all four and say you'll decide later--that's fine. You 
> will have to pick a game to stick with, though--quality over quantity. 
> You might want to dedicate a week or so to banging out prototypes and 
> then, based on feedback (hopefully you can find some real, authentic 
> kids to play with, too), pick one to develop fully and polish.
>
> Let me know if you have more questions ;)
>
> -Brendan
>
> On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 1:57 PM, Kento Locatelli <me...@kl... 
> <mailto:me...@kl...>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Brendan!
>
>     I appreciate your advice, I'm new to the development side of
>     educational apps for kids and knew some of my assumptions wouldn't
>     hold. If chosen I will definitely try to make the end product play
>     nicely on as many platforms/devices as possible... whether it's a
>     cheap android phone or an iPad. In fact compatibility one of my
>     most important criteria for both concept and framework; my goal is
>     to make a new tux4kids educational app, without a "for Android" or
>     "for Linux" or any other qualifier.
>
>     That said, I was wondering if you thought any of those concepts in
>     particular were a better fit for kids or the tux4kids family than
>     the rest? I don't really have a way to measure the newer concepts
>     I've had without having to guess or share them all (besides
>     comparing them to existing tux4kids apps). I'd also like to start
>     refining/creating mockups of ideas, but I can't decide where to
>     direct my effort.
>
>     Thank you for your time,
>     Kento Locatelli
>
>
>     On 3/19/2012 6:22 PM, Brendan Luchen wrote:
>
>         Hi Kento,
>
>         It sounds like you've already put some thought into your
>         proposal--that's great. Everything you mentioned sounds
>         reasonable, so I only have a couple of thoughts:
>
>         * I don't necessarily agree that the "target demographic" (I'm
>         assuming you mean kids here) will be more likely to rock a
>         cheap Android phone. The way I've typically seen kids play
>         mobile games is on mom or dad's device, which could be an
>         iPad, an Android phone, a Blackberry, whatever. Older kids may
>         have smartphones of their own, but I feel like that's even
>         relatively rare. I'll let the parents on the list chime in on
>         this one :)
>
>         * Any of the game concepts you mentioned have potential if
>         fleshed out, I think. Worder makes me think of Mad Libs. Jesus
>         Mager did some work on a "TuxHistory" game, you may want to
>         chat with him about that.
>         * I wouldn't discount your music idea as not
>         viable--especially if it's something you're personally vested
>         in. It will take some effort, though, to give it a real educati
>         onal component, and not be simply a toy. Illustrating basic
>         music theory concepts so a 5-year-old can grasp them would be
>         amazing, IMO.
>
>         Good luck on your exams.
>
>         Best,
>         Brendan
>
>
>