ArgoBuddy

Inspiration

In school, kids have a hard time learning and engaging with boring textbooks and presentations about ocean science. Data that is collected about ocean science is insightful, but not useful to the general public and is hard to understand.

We were inspired by popular learning apps such as Khan Academy, Beast Academy, Prodigy and popular caretaker games such as Tamagotchi and Pou to created a gamified learning app that helps to address this problem.

What it does

ArgoBuddy is a gamified educational app that allows kids to adopt a real life Argo float and learn about the impacts of changing ocean conditions. This game allows kids to learn in a fun way, while the app’s teacher side dashboard allows for a more in depth analysis of data for more engaging lessons.

How we built it

We pulled data from the EasyOneArgo dataset from SEANOE, while also using small samples of data from CalCOFI and CCE Mooring datasets. We mainly used the Python packages that are curated toward analyzing data. We used Pandas, Numpy, Matplotlib, and Seaborn to read and clean the data, generate graphs, perform tests, etc. We also used Flask to help create the framework for our demo, creating an interface for the educational app that also pulls in the graphs that we generated.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into many challenges during this hackathon, including creating a product idea that would be able to not only be supported by real life data, but also display findings about that data to the public so that they can use.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating an app that would align with educational standards
Pulling in real data from Argo floats
Performing a statistical test to help show the significance of our findings

What we learned

We learned how to deal with extremely large datasets that are available to the public. These datasets are often too big in size to load up, and are usually to expansive to fully understand the data. We learned how to clean this data, analyze it, and graph it in a way to create a story. Most importantly, we learned how to create an end to end project from problem to product.

What's next for ArgoBuddy

In our project we focused on analyzing data from a single Argo float for simplicity. However, eventually the goal to be able to pull data from thousands of real life deployed Argo floats, allowing you to compare your Argo’s data to another and seeing the trends in different locations at different times. This can help us not only generate more insightful graphs, but also will be more effective in communicating global warming.

We also want to implement more gamified features that would make kids more incentivized to use the app. For instance, we want to improve “Tamagotchi” aspects of the game such as taking your Argo on a swim (moving locations), bathing/cleaning (reduce ocean pollution), feeding, etc. as well as add in more learning techniques (quizzes, flashcards, etc) that would be good in a classroom setting.