Firefly Adventures

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  Firefly Adventures

Firefly aims to integrate engaging stories, common core educational problems, and Gemini as the AI tutor.

Our Understanding of the problem so far

It is a proven fact that students benefit greatly from individual tutoring. AI can help bring frequent and detailed attention to individual student questions that is challenging to provide in public education. Further complicating the situation, Covid-19 quarantine and remote learning reduced the performance of the under privileged students by approximately one year. The situation is not without a measure of hope though for other reasons. For instance, Blue Collar skilled trade earnings have been on an incline for two administrations now and global unemployment is at an all time low. However, to succeed in the trades a basic level of reading and arithmetic are still required to pass licensing exams, stay abreast of technological development, and administration requirements.

How we built it

Inspired by the hackathon topic of AI in Education, Firefly-Adventure provides fascinating stories navigating a series of real-world inspired word problems that are relevant to the plot line. Each of the problems falls within a single grade and is nested in Common Core Standards. Upon successfully solving a problem, the next chapter in the adventure opens leading to another problem. Upon completing the entire story a certificate is published recording the students successful navigation including each Common Core Standard. The teacher has access to the certificates and/or is emailed them. This eliminates grading for the teacher, and elucidates which students have mastered which standard, which in turn allows the teacher to intelligently place accelerating students to assist those lagging.

Seeking to prototype our idea on Google Cloud, we envision a full-stack development with React.js/HTML/CSS/Bootstrap on the frontend. Three Cloud Run containers in the middle tier to host frontend, and manage API calls to MS SQL Server and Gemini. On the backend are MS SQL Server stories, Google Storage for story images, and Gemini AI.

Challenges we ran into

1) We joined the hackathon halfway through, so played catchup in terms of time, concept, adaption to hackathon sponsor technologies. 2) Implementation of a classic fullstack problem using Cloud services. For instance, Cloud Run latency was a problem and convert to more classic server architecture.
3) Cloud SQL has some unusual access features to use MS SQL Server. You have to login to cloud using Cloud CLT, then login to database using SSMS.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

1) The Hackathon format and topic were engaging and instrumental in identifying new assets that are often leverageable for the purposes of pedagogy. For instance, AI functions may be linked to errored questions in order to immediately provide feedback to the student for a second, better equipped attempt. We continue to review the sources of inspiration and it well titled. 2) Concept, mockup, and team formation 3) Sustained team collaboration 4) Prototype architecture using Google Cloud services

What's next for Firefly Adventures

1) Assess lessons learned in terms of architecture and adjust 2) Conduct market research 3) Refine lean startup canvas 4) Conduct user testing of students, creators, and business operators

Built With

• .net/c#
• cloudflare
• gcp
• javascript
• python
• react
• sql