Education 3.0

Inspiration

The recent trend of education gamification is a valid albeit misguided effort in redefining education. The core concept of utilizing short term dopamine release to make education more desirable fails to consider the long-lasting impacts this form of learning will leave on student learning both within the same system and external to it. Instead of mimicking such play patterns to achieve short-term benefits, our group wanted to explore the unwavering social aspect of learning. By utilizing social learning ideals, we wanted to create a way for students to connect, explore, and discuss ideas. Through this interconnected form of learning, students would augment their knowledge gaining both connections and intelligence.

What it does

Although far from our ideal, the current app is able to display a central web page with access to a chatbot, discussion page, and profile page. Had we more experience in the field (our entire team is made of first year hackers) we would've realized a much more completed version of our vision. Specifically, we intended to incorporate video answers to daily educational questions. Clients could then scroll through the videos seeing different perspectives on the common daily question. As they scroll, they could like explanations they thought were particularly insightful, and those explanations would be displayed globally for all users. Additionally, through the use of OpenAI api, we planned to compare answers for the daily question and match individuals who had vastly different answers so that they could discuss their difference and hopefully learn from it.

How we built it

Using a combination of vanilla Replit, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, we created a locally hosted website.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest problem we encountered was one of direction. As intro hackers, we were unsure of where exactly to start our project; the frontend? backend? if so using what? how? We lost a lot of time discussing our ideal goals, with little specificities as where to begin. Furthermore, once we did begin hacking, we quickly realized that our intricate goals required a lot more knowledge than we initially assumed. For example, finding a way to centrally store data was a large hassle. We spoke to some mentors who suggested learning the React.js framework. However, considering our lack of experience in even basic web dev, consulting such advanced frameworks was extremely difficult and something we were unable to do during this time.

To put it simply, our eyes were bigger than our stomachs; we were unable to create the things we dreamt up. Regardless, I believe we put in a consistent effort to learn and make the most of what we could.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Considering this is most of our first hackathons, there were a lot of steep learning curves. Despite the struggles, we are proud of what we created. It isn't the most pretty, functional, or innovative website, but it's ours! It was empowering to learn of just what we could create using a few tutorials online. Especially so considering the collaborative environment we were in. We helped each other become better hackers, and had a lot of fun doing so!

What we learned

In all honesty, the most important take away from this experience is discovering the possibilities of what we can create and learn. It is scary as intro programmers to see people creating entire startup-ready websites in the span of 36 hours. But seeing how that is made of simple deviations of basic programming logic, and the fact that we are able to learn that basic programming, fills me with hope.

What's next for Education 3.0

I'm unsure if we will continue the project after this hackathon. However, it would be amazing to see our vision fully realized. In a few years maybe we'll come back to this project, doing it again, and seeing how much we've grown in the process.

Built With

• css
• html5
• javascript
• replit