Inspiration
We noticed that today’s students rarely discuss real-world events in class and often rely on social feeds for news. We wanted to build a tool that makes current events as approachable and fun as a daily game—so KnowYourTimes was born.
What we Learned
- AI Prompting & Tuning: We refined prompts for Google’s Gemini to generate clear, accurate quiz questions from raw article text.
- Web Scraping Ethics: We implemented scraping routines, rate limiting and source prioritization to ensure compliance and data quality.
How we Built It
- Data Collection: Node.js scripts fetch headlines and bodies from a configurable list of RSS feeds.
- AI Integration: The backend sends scraped text to the Gemini API, receives JSON, and stores it in MongoDB.
- Frontend: A React app displays daily quizzes, leaderboards, and badge progress. Authentication and session state live in Express middleware.
Challenges Faced
- Question Accuracy: Early quizzes sometimes misinterpreted context—solved by iterative prompt refinement and filtering.
- Performance: Scraping and AI calls caused spikes in response time
- Engagement Design: Balancing gamification (badges, streaks) without distracting from learning took several UX iterations.
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