FINAL I2P PROJECT

Group Members: Chloe Li, Selina Li (Me)

Criterias:

• Design Thinking Questionnaire – results
• Design Thinking Sentence to summarise chosen idea
• A list of equiptment needed for project
• Flow chart
• Algorithm and Pseudo Code
• Code project with at least 3 references (sited)
• Screenshot annotations and linked on Git Hub
• Images / video introducing your project and a working prototype (Please include: titles, music/VO and upload to You Tube to share the video)
• Testing Document – showing various tests over the project creation
• Evaluation of final summative project and and your own reflection in I2P this semester

Brainstorming Stage:

In the beginning, we brainstormed many possible ideas for our project. We tried to pinpoint some of the areas in the HKIS community where students might be having trouble with and where we had the potential to solve. Some of the ideas include the following:

1. Choosing classes: A platform that would have quizzes that would ultimately narrow down class choices for users and help them decide which courses they should take in the following years

2. Class Reviews: A platform that has class reviews and everything the teacher wrote in class to help students who missed class

3.Book recommendations: When students borrow a book, this platform would tell the student similar books that he/she might be interested in

4. Overdue Books: Email sent when book is about to be overdue

5. Book reviews: A platform where students can submit book reviews for other students

6. Teacher’s schedules: A platform that students can access to see teacher’s meetings and schedule to know when to find them

7. Pre-ordering lunch: A platform that will allow students to pre-order lunch so they don’t have to queue up when they arrive in the cafeteria. 

8. Grades: A program that inputs the student’s grades and looks at trend, provides projected GPA and what they need to obtain a certain grade; colleges that fit your grade

Questionnaire Stage:

We conducted 2 surveys: the first one on a few ideas we came up with, and based on the answers of the first survey, we directed our focus onto one specific area. Out of all our brainstormed ideas, ideas #1, #2, and #8 stood out to us the most, and our questionnaire was mainly comprised of questions that could help us narrow down to one of our three choices.

After we conducted the survey, we found that most people were supportive of the idea of having a survey available to help students target course options that were suitable for their personal interests and passions. The results of the survey will lead students to more information on each of the classes with specific answers by respective teachers of common questions asked about the classes. The survey would be based on what the teachers thought of the course, and what kind of students they think would excel most in the school. The program will also give users a possible four year plan that they can develop upon. This is a link to the form for you to view the results of the survey: https://docs.google.com/a/hkis.edu.hk/forms/d/1zkSRT_eHrmcJczwF5BrvHZ-B3tf8LVFGq1cqbcl4fRc/edit#response=ACYDBNhepvjTHZozfKD0UdOXiTsQ55h3ySW987ITapY0smtucWZw70X2I4fzgg

We designed a separate questionnaire specifically on this idea, and we asked questions such as:

• Are there any classes you are unfamiliar with?
• If you answered yes to the first question: What department are those unfamiliar classes part of?
• If you answered yes to the first question: Do you think your course selections would change if you were aware of all the available classes? Please explain
• What do you consider when you chose your classes for this year?
• Do you think it would be useful to have a survey designed to find courses that are most suited for your interest and passions? Please explain.
• How often do you refer to the students handbook for information on available courses?
• For people who chose 5 or less for the previous question, what is the reason why you don’t refer to it very often?

We found that large majority of the students admitted that there are courses HKIS provides that they are not familiar with.

The classes that students were unfamiliar with are mostly in the arts, religion and humanities departments.

Most students agreed that their course selection would have changed if they had been more informed on the course options, and that a survey designed to help students discover classes suited to their interests and passions would be very useful.

It is also very clear that the student’s handbook is not very commonly used among the students. Even though there is much information on all the courses in the handbook, students find it difficult to scroll through, and that it doesn’t really help them to decide whether or not classes are suitable for them. The information given is vague, and doesn’t apply personally.

Overall students expressed enthusiasm towards the idea of having a survey that recommends a targeted list of classes to each student. The link to the questionnaire is here: https://goo.gl/forms/rZFxAIg7bq6lvzxu2

Design Thinking Statement

Our HKIS students are having difficulty choosing the right courses for themselves because they rarely refer to the student handbook, so we are creating a short quiz that would help them narrow down their options and make their course selection process easier.

Downsizing Process

Interviewing stage: 

We soon discovered that despite our eagerness to make our plan become reality, the project was simply too big to complete within a week time. What we originally had in mind was to interview teachers of all classes to gain more insight into classes that they teach. We spent a class interviewing teachers, asking questions such as:

1.What are the common characteristics of students who take your class?

2.What personality leads to excellence in this class?

3.How would you describe this class?

4.What makes this class different from all other classes?

5.What do students take away from this class?

6.How heavy is the workload, and what do they mainly consist of?

I acted as the scribe during the interviews, while Chloe asked the majority of the questions. We interviewed 3 students within the first programming class. Although we were able to obtain very detailed responses from teachers, we found out that this process would simply take too long if we wanted it to do it for every class offered in HKIS, and it would be impossible to complete within a week. We decided that instead of creating a survey that would recommend courses of each topic, we would focus on the math department specifically. However, because we still wanted to gain more insight about each math course (on top of basic information provided in the student handbook), Chloe created a short survey for math teachers to fill in:

In doing so, the responses were standardized.We then spent the next class collecting responses in the Math Department, and by the end of class, we had collected approximately 12 survey responses. However, we realized that since we limited the choices of their answers to few multiple choice questions, we could not use them as determining factors of the student survey. We decided that instead of implementing them in the student survey, we would use it as data to introduce the different classes along with the information given in the student handbook to give students personal insight into each course.

Research:

We realized that like the rest of the student body, we did not know all there is to know about the math courses available in HKIS. Hence, we decided that before we created the student survey, we needed to read into each of the math courses. We studied the information of each class given in the student handbook on dragonnet, then referred to the teachers’ responses from the previous survey, and created an outline of each class:

We realized that we also needed to understand the general four-year curriculum of the high school math department, so we referred to the student handbook and drew a rough sketch of curriculum map:

Pseudo Code

Draft 1:  Our first attempt to writing the pseudocode for the program proved to be extremely difficult. There too many anomalies in the system, and the countless possibilities were unimaginable. We wanted the code to first eliminate all the courses that the student has taken in the past, eliminate the ones that are taking now, and then ask for their current grade in their math class. According to their grade, we then distribute them into 3 classes: the honors, the average, the in-between, and the electives. For the students that fall in the cracks between the honors course and the average curriculum, we ask them to rate the difficulty of their current class from 1 to 10. According to their response, we then place them into a more suitable math class. For students that have substantially low grades, we place them in the elective courses, where the classes include aspects of other subjects such as social science, science, and humanities. However, we were very confused as to where to place some of the additional questions we wanted to ask, such as their preferred workload, learning strategies, and assessment format. As shown below, I attempted to write out a detailed version of the pseudo code, but it was ultimately incomplete due to the countless anomalies that we could not place within the system. This led us to our second version of pseudo code.

Draft 2: 

Our second draft of the pseudo code was also quite complicated but easier to follow. The pseudo code is written below. The first part of the survey would ask whether or not the student is a rising freshman. If he/she is, then they would move to part 2, where their grades and their current grade 8 math class (8 regular or 8+) would determine which freshman math course they should take. There are anomalies within this section, because some 8th graders take a test to skip Honors Geometry and go directly to Honors Advanced Algebra in their freshman year. If the user is not a freshman, they are asked which current math class they take. If it is anything below Honors PreCalculus, they head to Part 1, where their grades determine whether they should take an Honors or Non Honors class next year. IF they are in Honors Pre Calculus, they would go to Part 3, where their grades determine whether they should go to AP Calculus AB or AP Calculus BC, and whether or not they should take AP Statistics on top of that. Finally, if they are in a class above Honors PreCalculus currently, then depending on whether or not they are interested in continuing math next year, we recommend Advanced Mathematical Topics and AP Statistics (unless they already took it).

As you can probably see, this pseudo code is more clear than the previous one and anyone could follow along, but we knew that it would be extremely difficult to program because there are so many possibilities and exceptions.

We created a google form to go with this pseudo code. We took into account all the different grade levels, workload, preferred assessment format, etc. Here is the google form link: https://docs.google.com/a/hkis.edu.hk/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeIyrJT9EXV9UdIKth6UybWbQzz0tKdj1XbfigUOarCrnwHFA/viewform.

Pictures of the google form are attached below:

Although we were successful in creating a pseudo code and google form for the student survey,  we failed to program the google script for this complex plan. We seeked help from Ms. Mok and Mr. Lin, and decided in the end to downsize the program even more. We decided that instead of taking into account to all the anomalies and getting bogged down by the miniscule details, we should just focus on creating a rough prototype. This led us to our third and final draft of pseudo code.

Draft 3:

This is a pseudocode of our now very simplified plan. The first question that we would ask the user is whether or not they are currently taking an Honors Course. If they are, we would then ask for their current grade (semester grade). If the grade is a B+ or higher, we would send them an automated email that would give them all the Honors and AP courses available at HKIS. If the grade is a B or lower, then we would send them an automated email recommending them to non honors courses in HKIS. On the other hand, if they are currently not taking an honors courses, and they have an A, then we would send them an email saying that they might want to consider the possibility of moving up to an honors course. If they have a grade within the range of A- to C, then we would recommend that they stay in the normal curriculum. Finally, if they have a D or F, then we would recommend them to repeat their current course and consider taking a math elective if they are interested.

This is the flowchart that I made to go along with our pseudocode, using the different shapes to represent different functions.

Equipment that we used:

Unlike several other groups, the project that Chloe and I did really only required a computer and the Google Scripts program. We also used the student’s handbook along with responses from the math department to create our videos.

Program: 

We created a google form that were targeted to rising freshmen, sophomores and juniors. Because we have no previous experience on Google Scripts or Java Script, we decided to keep it relatively simple and go one step at a time. I will go through the function here portion by portion, but the youtube video at the end explains everything as well as an example of it running.

function main() {
  //opens the spreadsheet
  var ssId = "1h7PIAAgi8ZrdJdu2cqveEHbv9zHVTsKA399FHHd9n58";
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.openById(ssId);
  //opens specific sheet which is named Form responses 1
var sheet = ss.getSheetByName("Form responses 1");
  ///Logger.log(sheet.getLastRow());
  var range = sheet.getRange(1, 1, sheet.getLastRow(), 4);
  var i = sheet.getLastRow()-1;
  var grade = range.getValues()[i][2];
  ///Logger.log(grade);
  var honor = range.getValues()[i][1];
  var email = range.getValues()[i][3];

This is the first portion of our code, which we named to be the function main(). The first thing that happens is the program opens the spreadsheet of the google form. Screenshots of our google form and the corresponding spreadsheet is attached below.

Therefore, the var ssID, var ss, and var sheet are all directing the program to the specific spreadsheet that contains all the responses. The range specifies which row the program should look at each time, and a variable i is introduced the program would always look at the last row. Then, we declared certain variables, assigning them to a specific cell.

  if (honor == 'Yes'){
     if (grade == 'A' || grade == 'A-'||grade == 'B+') {
        SendEmailHonors(email);
     }
     if (grade == 'B' || grade == 'C' ||grade == 'D' || grade == 'F') { 
        SendEmailNormal(email);
}
     }
  if (honor=='No') {
    if (grade == 'A') {
      SendBothEmail(email);
    }
    if (grade=='A-'||grade=='B+'||grade=='B'||grade=='C') {
      SendEmailNormal(email);
    }
    if (grade=='D'||grade=='F') {
      SendFailEmail(email);
    }
  }

After that, still within our main function, we set up some if statements that would lead to 4 possible automated emails. How this process works is already explained in our pseudo code, but there were definitely technical things that we struggled with, such as setting up the ‘or’ operator. These problems and how we overcame them is further explained in the table attached below. Each of the if statements lead to separate functions, which are different automated emails

function SendEmailHonors(email) {
  //var doc = DocumentApp.create('Recommended Courses for ' + email);
  //https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xCUPv0PgBHYcQhIKWcBYXo9kANYCp2SDQIlbfZR7YiA/edit
  //addEditor(user.email);
  //var body = doc.getBody();
  MailApp.sendEmail({
    to: email,
    subject: 'Course Recommendations',
    body: 'Thank you for doing our survey. Based on your results, we recommend you to take an Honors or AP course next year.The link attached has descriptions of all the honors and AP courses available at HKIS, but obviously some may not be applicable to you based on your grade level. Please look at this google doc for further information: https://docs.google.com/a/hkis.edu.hk/document/d/1xCUPv0PgBHYcQhIKWcBYXo9kANYCp2SDQIlbfZR7YiA/edit?usp=sharing',
    //attachments: doc,
  });
}
  }

This is the function that sends an email that recommends all the honors and AP courses of HKIS. At the end of the body line, we link it to a google document that has all the links to youtube videos that we created for each course. The document that is attached for this specific email looks like this:

This is repeated for the rest of the code, sending an automated email based on their survey responses, and each linking to a different google doc that contains different links.

function SendEmailNormal(email) {
  MailApp.sendEmail({
    to:email,
    subject: 'Course Recommendations',
    body: 'Thank you for doing our survey. Based on your results, we recommend you to take a non Honors course next year. The link attached has descriptions of all the non Honors courses available at HKIS, but obviously some may not be applicable to you based on your grade level. Please look at this google doc for further information: https://docs.google.com/a/hkis.edu.hk/document/d/1DPucRJRTdSVnvJVHPyLU_Kjtbc5nWIehxRMv9Tf-yHQ/edit?usp=sharing',
  }); 
}

function SendBothEmail(email) {
  MailApp.sendEmail({
    to:email,
    subject: 'Course Recommendations',
    body: 'Thank you for doing our survey. Based on your results, we know that you are currently taking a non honours course, but we recommend you to consider the possibility of taking an honors or AP course next year. The link attached has descriptions of all these courses available at HKIS, but obviously some may not be applicable to you based on your grade level. Please look at this google doc for further information: https://docs.google.com/a/hkis.edu.hk/document/d/1E_kvzNGD_9o0rCJ4CvujoNxo31CB6G4gByCmTpBakJk/edit?usp=sharing ',
  }); 
}

function SendFailEmail(email) {
  MailApp.sendEmail({
    to:email,
    subject: 'Course Recommendations',
    body: 'Thank you for doing our survey. Based on your results, we recommend you to repeat your course next year. If you are passionate about math, we also recommend some math elextives for you to take next year. The link attached has descriptions of all the math elective courses available at HKIS that may be of interest to you, but obviously some may not be applicable to you based on your grade level. Please look at this google doc for further information: https://docs.google.com/a/hkis.edu.hk/document/d/16kdUrY4A1_T9l0ihEYZhOCR1Li47e7JqU2RgsGGdQQM/edit?usp=sharing ',
  }); 
}

These are the other google documents that a user might receive (some of the screenshots are part of a document, not the full one).

An example of an email that a user might receive would look like this:

The links of on the google doc take the recipient to youtube videos with details on their recommended course(s). We created a video for each of the math classes using the information on the student handbook, and the teacher’s’ responses. Since one of the biggest findings from our original questionnaire was that students dislike referring to the student handbook due to its inconvenience and great amounts of text, we created videos of us drawing key aspects of each course in forms of visual symbols and keywords. We then summarized the learning outcomes, curriculum, workload and prerequisites of each class in under 2 minutes.ounts of text, we created videos of us drawing key aspects of each course in forms of visual symbols and keywords. We then summarized the learning outcomes, curriculum, workload and prerequisites of each class in under 2 minutes. This is a link to the playlist which contains all the videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNi1s36p6TtmvGeX5uaxD6EELNW0H8lw7    and below is an example of one of them.

This is a video where we talked through our program and coding process.

Problems that we encountered and how we overcame them:

Sources:

1. https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/triggers/
2. https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/triggers/installable
3. https://stackoverflow.com/qustions/13894057/how-to-write-an-if-and-statement-in-google-apps-script

4. https://github.com/FF-Remote-Control/FF-Remote-Control/issues/9
5. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19973134/boolean-operators-and-clienthandler
6. https://developers.google.com/apps-script/articles/sending_emails

Final Product- The code!

function main() {
  //opens the spreadsheet
  var ssId = "1h7PIAAgi8ZrdJdu2cqveEHbv9zHVTsKA399FHHd9n58";
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.openById(ssId);
  //opens specific sheet which is named Form responses 1
var sheet = ss.getSheetByName("Form responses 1");
  ///Logger.log(sheet.getLastRow());
  var range = sheet.getRange(1, 1, sheet.getLastRow(), 4);
  var i = sheet.getLastRow()-1;
  var grade = range.getValues()[i][2];
  ///Logger.log(grade);
  var honor = range.getValues()[i][1];
  var email = range.getValues()[i][3];
  if (honor == 'Yes'){
     if (grade == 'A' || grade == 'A-'||grade == 'B+') {
        SendEmailHonors(email);
     }
     if (grade == 'B' || grade == 'C' ||grade == 'D' || grade == 'F') { 
        SendEmailNormal(email);
}
     }
  if (honor=='No') {
    if (grade == 'A') {
      SendBothEmail(email);
    }
    if (grade=='A-'||grade=='B+'||grade=='B'||grade=='C') {
      SendEmailNormal(email);
    }
    if (grade=='D'||grade=='F') {
      SendFailEmail(email);
    }
  }

function SendEmailHonors(email) {
  //var doc = DocumentApp.create('Recommended Courses for ' + email);
  //https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xCUPv0PgBHYcQhIKWcBYXo9kANYCp2SDQIlbfZR7YiA/edit
  //addEditor(user.email);
  //var body = doc.getBody();
  MailApp.sendEmail({
    to: email,
    subject: 'Course Recommendations',
    body: 'Thank you for doing our survey. Based on your results, we recommend you to take an Honors or AP course next year.The link attached has descriptions of all the honors and AP courses available at HKIS, but obviously some may not be applicable to you based on your grade level. Please look at this google doc for further information: https://docs.google.com/a/hkis.edu.hk/document/d/1xCUPv0PgBHYcQhIKWcBYXo9kANYCp2SDQIlbfZR7YiA/edit?usp=sharing',
    //attachments: doc,
  });
}
  }
       
function SendEmailNormal(email) {
  MailApp.sendEmail({
    to:email,
    subject: 'Course Recommendations',
    body: 'Thank you for doing our survey. Based on your results, we recommend you to take a non Honors course next year. The link attached has descriptions of all the non Honors courses available at HKIS, but obviously some may not be applicable to you based on your grade level. Please look at this google doc for further information: https://docs.google.com/a/hkis.edu.hk/document/d/1DPucRJRTdSVnvJVHPyLU_Kjtbc5nWIehxRMv9Tf-yHQ/edit?usp=sharing',
  }); 
}

function SendBothEmail(email) {
  MailApp.sendEmail({
    to:email,
    subject: 'Course Recommendations',
    body: 'Thank you for doing our survey. Based on your results, we know that you are currently taking a non honours course, but we recommend you to consider the possibility of taking an honors or AP course next year. The link attached has descriptions of all these courses available at HKIS, but obviously some may not be applicable to you based on your grade level. Please look at this google doc for further information: https://docs.google.com/a/hkis.edu.hk/document/d/1E_kvzNGD_9o0rCJ4CvujoNxo31CB6G4gByCmTpBakJk/edit?usp=sharing ',
  }); 
}

function SendFailEmail(email) {
  MailApp.sendEmail({
    to:email,
    subject: 'Course Recommendations',
    body: 'Thank you for doing our survey. Based on your results, we recommend you to repeat your course next year. If you are passionate about math, we also recommend some math elextives for you to take next year. The link attached has descriptions of all the math elective courses available at HKIS that may be of interest to you, but obviously some may not be applicable to you based on your grade level. Please look at this google doc for further information: https://docs.google.com/a/hkis.edu.hk/document/d/16kdUrY4A1_T9l0ihEYZhOCR1Li47e7JqU2RgsGGdQQM/edit?usp=sharing ',
  }); 
}

Reflection: Through this entire journey, we really learned the process of Design Thinking. In the beginning, we had a grand idea that we wanted to execute, and we created complicated pseudo codes that we thought could work out perfectly fine, but we never really stopped and considered the fact that we were complete beginners and foreign to Google Script, meaning in reality it is impossible for us to produce a perfect product in one go.  I think one of most important lessons learnt that all great creations need to start somewhere, and nobody can create the perfect prototype in the first go. It is important to start small, and edit the errors and imperfections as you proceed. If one is so bogged down by miniscule details in the planning stages of the process, the program will never be completed.

Perhaps one other takeaway from this assignment is just how difficult programming can be. Although we know exactly what we want the program to do, we didn’t know how to turn our words into codes. Since we were only familiar with the python language, having to work with java and google script was very difficult. It was like being lost in a foreign land!

We also learned that online resources can be extremely helpful when we are trying to learn a new language. In the beginning, we were sometimes too determined to figure out everything by ourselves, but through the process of coding our program, we were constantly referring  to online resources for help.

Course Reflection:

I think that overall, this course has really helped me understand the Design Thinking Process, which provided a solution based approach to solving problems. Over the course, there have been multiple times where we had to tackle some complex problems (especially coming from a background with no experience on programming whatsoever), but these five steps of empathising, defining the problem, ideating, prototyping, and testing really helped me go through my problems and be successful in my final products. I think this was especially apparent in the last project, where this non linear design thinking process ultimately lead Chloe and I to be resilient and finally succeed. I think that this course also helped me have a good introduction into programming. I learnt a lot from different programs and tools: Scratch, Makey Makey, Python, Pygame, Arduino, and of course Google scripts. This would not have been possible without online resources, which really aided me and my peers in multiple aspects and helped us figure stuff out. I also found that blogging my progress in this class was very helpful in the long run. In the beginning, I honestly thought that blogging after each lesson would be kind of useless and really tedious. However, I realised that it was actually very useful in the sense that it could help me track my progress very easily, and to my surprise I actually found that I would occasionally refer back to my previous posts for guidance. Another thing that I learned to value through this class is teamwork. In the first few weeks of this class, I viewed programming to be completely individual, and often times I would spend the class working by myself despite sitting with friends, not really willing to work together. However, I learned that it is much easier to work together with other people and figure the code collaboratively. By working on pseudo codes, flowcharts, and the codes with other people, it was nice to listen to different ideas and then together stick with one idea that we all thought would work well.

This post is a compilation of reflections throughout the journey of this project

MAY 20:          Progress from the first couple of days (Questionnaire):    

While brainstorming for ideas for this project, Chloe and I created a mindmap on the classroom whiteboards and came up with several ideas. We did not take a picture of the whiteboard, but below are some brief explanations of some ideas that we brainstormed.

1. Choosing classes: A platform that would have quizzes that would ultimately narrow down class choices for users and help them decide which courses they should take in the following years
2. Class Reviews: A platform that has class reviews and everything the teacher wrote in class to help students who missed class
3.Book recommendations: When students borrow a book, this platform would tell the student similar books that he/she might be interested in
4. Overdue Books: Email sent when book is about to be overdue
5. Book reviews: A platform where students can submit book reviews for other students
6. Teacher’s schedules: A platform that students can access to see teacher’s meetings and schedule to know when to find them
7. Pre-ordering lunch: A platform that will allow students to pre-order lunch so they don’t have to queue up when they arrive in the cafeteria. 
8. Grades: A program that inputs the student’s grades and looks at trend, provides projected GPA and what they need to obtain a certain grade; colleges that fit your grade

We narrowed it down to three main ideas that we liked the most, which were ideas #1, #2, #8, and created a questionnaire that would narrow down our options. Here are the questions and answers from this questionnaire:

This is the link to the actual form if you would like to see the results in a less chaotic way:)

https://docs.google.com/a/hkis.edu.hk/forms/d/1zkSRT_eHrmcJczwF5BrvHZ-B3tf8LVFGq1cqbcl4fRc/edit#response=ACYDBNhepvjTHZozfKD0UdOXiTsQ55h3ySW987ITapY0smtucWZw70X2I4fzgg

However, after talking to Ms. Mok about our ideas, we found out that two of our ideas were probably not the best. One of them was the grading idea, because as Ms. Mok said, HKIS just changed its grading system to look at trend and there is still uncertainty and controversy around the issue. The other one was the class review idea because Ms. Mok pointed out that students could often get help from the teacher, other students, or schoology. Therefore, we made another questionnaire over the weekend and sent it to people to fill out, this time focusing on our remaining idea. Here are some screenshots of the results from that questionnaire:

3rd question (it is a little long so I copy and pasted the responses in a table here instead): If you answered yes to the first question: Do you think your course selections would change if you were aware of all the available classes? Please explain.

4th question (also too many responses for screenshots): What do you consider when you chose your classes for this year? I have inserted 5 responses that represent the survey reponses (total 20 responses, but I don’t want this post to be extra long!)

5th question: Do you think it would be useful to have a survey designed to find courses that are most suited for your interest and passions? Please explain. ( I selected 5 responses again, but most of them are pretty similar)

Final Question: For people who chose 5 or less for the previous question, what is the reason why you don’t refer to it very often?

Link to all responses: https://docs.google.com/a/hkis.edu.hk/forms/d/1C_IijB1Lw58gbNlNHgKmoNGCMT19APn8poVuj29oJ7M/edit#responses

I think that the general feeling towards our survey idea is quite positive as many people are unfamiliar with certain classes in different departments, and I think from here, we can start going with this idea and brainstorm ways to actually create a program that would provide this service for HKIS students!

Finally, here is our Design thinking statement:

Our HKIS students are having difficulty choosing the right courses for themselves, so we are creating a quiz to help narrow down their options because this would make their course selection process easier.

MAY 23:

In the last class, Chloe and I decided that in order for us to make a successful survey, we would have to interview teachers for each respective classes to find out more in-depth details about them. From our survey, we could clearly see that a lot of the students did not use the student handbook because it was long to scroll through and the information given is often very general and vague. We decided that by talking to teachers, we could create a survey that would give accurate results of what classes the user should take. We generated a list of questions and went to the math department during class to interview Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Mccaughey. Our list of questions included (but during the interviews some questions lead to new questions):

1. What are common characteristics of students who take your class?
2. What personality leads to excellence in the class?
3. How would you describe this class?
4. What makes this class different from all the other classes?
5. What do students generally take after completing this class?
6. What do students take away from this class?
7. What are some of the things students enjoy about this class?
8. How heavy is the workload, and what do they mainly consist of?

Here is what we found out about several courses so far:

AP Capstone (Taught by Mr. Mccaughey):

-What is the point: To make a better writer out of you

-IB program: Centered around one course, which is theory of knowledge course; the AP shifts towards the model: centered around AP Capstone Seminar and Research

-Seminar: teaches about argumentation, persuasive about a particular issue, analyze, put forth own arguments, tackle issues  all about writing

-Research: produce research paper, continuation of AP seminar, whole year doing one project/product

-Students do not usually take both, but purpose is that vast majority move from seminar to research—but not the case in HKIS

-Many of our strongest students have not figured out the benefits of this yet; the one thing you’re gonna need in college is what you learn in this class

Honors Geometry (Taught by Mr. Hamilton):

-A group of very hard working students, students who would have been historically successful in algebra

-Connections to algebra

-Much more spatial in nature, proof based, paced fairly quickly

-Content itself would be good fit for students who are intrinsically quite interested in math

-Geometry:blends itself to a more problem solving nature—>often seen in contest math

-Hope that students take that away from the class

-Workload: Assigning work not as a requirement but as a reflective piece: listen some problems, if you feel comfortable, that’s great. If not, do more than assigned  20-30 minutes for a block

-There are certainly students who take no time and some who took hours in

-Larger range than other classes

-Self motivated learning is important to succeed in this class

AP Stats (Taught by Mr. Hamilton):

-Seniors mostly, several Juniors, typically students who are good at Math

-Components to being successfully: generally pretty small, AP Calc, Statistics generally atypical to that class, marketed towards students who aren’t traditionally “mathy” students

-Mostly analytical, focuses on ability to write, read interpretively–comfortable with language, generally passionate about social sciences, revolves around experimental design, not necessarily pure math

-Humanities had a baby with Mathematics, 75% is mathematical and theoretical, but a lot of it ties back to “what does this tell us? What does it mean?” drawing conclusions, everything looks back to context—different to traditional math class

-Enjoy: Different kind of math class, fundamentally tied to world

-We don’t have a lot of class options. If you’re passionate about Science, you could take Astronomy, Biology, Chem, Physics. But, for Math, its sequential, but once you get to the top, your options are limited–AP Stats and AP Calculus

-Blend itself to Computer Science as well, Certainly very important in the real world

AP Stats vs Regular Stats: Regular Stats is a semester, cover mostly what AP Stats cover in first semester, cover it in different pacing and in a more project-based format

-Non AP Course would be more real world relevant: more project centric way. Relevance of content stays the same

Workload: Students are given responsibility, not HW. Some students do readings, sample FRQs, on average 20-40 mins per block (reflection prep)

Advanced Mathematical Topics (Taught by Mr. Hamilton):

-It’s very different because it is not linear, no starting point or ending point (unlike other classes)

-If you imagine math as a treat, and each branch is a topic (Geometry, ALgebra etc) and they’re interconnected, ATM is like we take a short walk down as many branches as we can

-Unit on discrete math, non euclidean geometry etc

-Different way of teaching that class

-Treated more like modules, could be experienced in a new order with different levels of knowledge

-Introduction of college math—quite a slow paced class, pace according to class

-Other classes like AP Calc–have a limited time to cover a topic

-Flexible curriculum that follows the needs of the students

-Prerequisites: Finish AP Calc BC

-Students are very passionate about math, most dedicated if you want to go to math major

-AP Stats: if your field was or wasn’t math

-Workload: mostly entirely done in class

Semester project: required them to teach a class day: outside of class time needed

-Maybe 20 mins of work due tomorrow—abnormal (0-20 mins)

-Comfortable with topics coming in

EG: Discrete math, already

-Know that if you want to take the class and you have historically struggled in math, you might have to do more work to keep in pace with class

Summatives: 3 tests so far: Rest are projects and presentations: website, large scale presentation, two or three reflections

After Chloe and I had Humanities class, we also interviwed Mrs. Moreno, and she was able to give us some insight about different Humanitiies courses that she is currently teaching. Here is the informaiton that we obtained:

Hum 2

-Curiosity, willingness to go beyond to what is going on in class

-Interest in the world, interest in literature

-Every year, although the themes are the same, the topics are different

-Flexible curriculum, articles are different because revolves around CE

-Taking away: better understanding of what makes America the country and culture that it is today

-The great things, and the flaws and issues

-Enjoy: it’s never the same, always flexible, always different

-Interest in CE

-Look at things in a wide angle lens

Junior English

-Difference to Hums: just English credit

-Many people take Junior English: more because they want to take other courses like econ, works with their schedule

-Don’t delve into culture or history much

-Start with questions about ‘is knowing more better’, look at questions people ask throughout time, thinking about how this is relevant or why it is still a question people still ask

EG: -Satire—role of satire in the society

-Willing to take risk, to talk about what they’re reading—more interpretation

-Telephoto lens—more specific, need to be willing to think about different interpretations

-Need to be able to look critically at each issue, able to formulate opinion, different perspective, applies for different students not only strong English students

-Workload: probably around the same as Humanities 2: around 30 minutes, not too heavy

AP Lang:

-Only nonfiction

-Essays, memoirs, graphic novels

-Added to give kids more choices

As you can probably tell, we were able to obtain quite in-depth and detailed information from our teachers on that day. However, Chloe and I decided that there might be too many courses in HKIS for us to get such information for each course. We are currently deciding whether or not we should narrow down our choices (EG: only math department/only hum department) and create a prototype so our project is not such on a large scale.

Scratch Program: 

This is my program (it is a screenshot because our program was typed onto Chloe’s computer). There is also a picture of the cartoon that we created.

I’m so sorry for the screenshot not being in its best quality. There will be a better quality during the video! Here, I will talk about our program and a general idea of how it worked. If you want to listen to it, please refer to the video! So, first of all, the first line indicates that when the Green Flag is clicked, the program initiates. The first thing that happens is the program asks what the user name is, and then adds the input to the high score-the leaderboard. Then, we have an introduction that explains the game to the user, with a 2 second pause between each line to make it easier to read. Then, we move into a different group of functions. We set the space bar to start this function. When the space bar is pressed, the scratch program tells the user to “Get on”, and the timer is set to 0. Then, we have a loop next. Since we placed aluminium foil on either side of the balance board that connects to up and down arrow for either side, we made the program to start the timer when neither is pressed-because that means the balance board is not touching either side of the ground. The timer works by changing the record by 0.1 seconds for every 0.1 second time frame. This itself is a loop, until either up or down key is pressed, because that means the user has fell off the balance board. One mistake that we made along the way was placing this if statement outside, which caused the program not to work properly because the timer has to start before it can stop. Once the user has fallen down, the time is added to the leaderboard, and the timer is set to 0 again. Then, the program asks whether the user wants to play it again. If the answer is yes, then we tell the use to click the flag to start again and essentially restart the program. We had a lot of trouble with this part, because we weren’t sure how to use the scratch program to make it go back to a function, so although this solution is kind of a partial one and requires the user to manually start again, we were still happy with it because it worked. And obviously, if the user’s input is no, then the program would just stop.

Here are some challenges that we faced, and how we overcame them:

Here is the video that explains everything as well as showing a quick runthrough of our program:

Here are some references that we used that helped our program to be successful and definetely helped us make our job easier!:

1. http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-use-Scratch/

2. https://scratch.mit.edu/help/videos/

3. https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/45568/

Pygame:

This is our program:

import pygame
BLACK=(0,0,0)
WHITE=(255,255,255)
RED=(255,0,0)
GREEN=(0,170,0)
LIGHTGREEN=(0,255,0)
BLUE=(0,0,255)
pygame.init()
size=[1024,768]
screen=pygame.display.set_mode(size)
font=pygame.font.SysFont(None,50)
font1=pygame.font.SysFont(None,20)

done=False   #Loop until the user clicks the close button
clock=pygame.time.Clock()   #Used to manage how fast the screen updates
lock=pygame.time.Clock()
frame_count=0
frame_rate=30
start_time=0
pygame.display.set_caption("My Game")
recordedTime=[]


while not done:
    screen.fill(WHITE)
    person = pygame.image.load('Board.png')
    screen.blit(person,(200,200))
    total_seconds=frame_count//frame_rate
    minutes=total_seconds//60
seconds=total_seconds%60
output_string="Time: {0:02}:{1:02}".format(minutes,seconds)
    welcome_msg="""Welcome to the Balance Board timer!"""
username=""
text=font1.render(output_string, True, BLACK)
    text1=font.render(welcome_msg,True,RED)

    #usertime=font.render(usertime,True,BLACK)
screen.blit(text1,[150,100])
    #screen.blit(usertime,[300,300])
screen.blit(text, [250,250])
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type==pygame.KEYDOWN:
            if event.key==pygame.K_SPACE:
                total_seconds=frame_count//frame_rate
                recordedTime.append(total_seconds)
    if len(recordedTime)>0:
        rTimeYCoordinate=200
for rtime in recordedTime:
            text2=font.render("You stayed on the board for:" +str(rtime) +"seconds", True, BLACK)
            screen.blit(text2,[200,200])
            break
#rTimeYCoordinate += 20
            #pygame.draw.rect(screen,GREEN,[100,100,100,50])
            #button=pygame.draw.Rect(25,25,25,25, True, LIGHTGREEN)
            #mouse_pos=pygame.mouse.get_pos()
            #if button.collidepoint(mouse_pos):
                #pygame.quit()
frame_count+=1
clock.tick(frame_rate)
    pygame.display.flip()
pygame.quit()

Once again, here, I will explain our code. If you would like to listen to it instead, please refer to the video embedded below.  I would just like to say that this program is in no way perfect. I am still missing a leaderboard, and a start again. However, I am honestly quite proud of my process. After missing a week of school, it was honestly a little bit hard to catch up and to grasp the idea of Pygame. I feel like I definitely learnt a lot through the process, and although I have not fully figured everything out, I believe that the end product is something that I am proud of and something that I can continue working on when I have time to complete it.  So, first of all, I typed import pygame to initiate the pygame. Then, I defined some colors,, using the Pygame RYB color scale. Then, I initiated pygame and set the screen size to be 1024 by 768. I also set two fonts, a bigger one and a smaller one. Then, there is a done=False that would cause the function to loop until the user clicks the close button. Then, I set some basic numbers to define how the seconds would count up and how fast the screen updates. One problem that I encountered was that the seconds were going up two times as slow as they were supposed to be. To fix that, I switched frame_rate=60 to frame_rate=30, which made it go 2 times quicker. This while not done is the main program of this pygame. I started off with making the background of the screen to be white. I also imported a picture of a cartoon on a balance board-the same picture used in the scratch program- and placed that in the screen too using the screen.blit function to make it more interesting. Then, I assigned some variables for the minutes and seconds and assigned to variable output_string to show the minutes and seconds on screen using the leading zeroes. That, alongside the welcome message, is blotted onto the screen in black and red respectively. Then, the code continues to explain what would happen when the spacebar is pressed, and the recorded Time would be appended and printed onto the screen. Here is where things got tacky for us. When the spacebar was pressed, it would correctly say how many seconds the person was on the balance board for. However, the function and the timer would not stop and if the spacebar is pressed again, the amount of seconds would be printed on top of what was already printed, creating an overlapping situation. I spent around an hour at home trying to find solutions to this, and was only able to settle upon a partial solution where I write break afterwards. This did not solve everything because although this prevented the overlapping situation, it did not stop the timer. The lines in hashtag here were my attempts to create a button that would ask the user whether they wanted to play again. This, unfortunately, I was unable to do after around 2 hours of research and referencing to various sources, and I concluded that I simply am not at that ability yet-which is perfectly fine because I learnt a lot through the process.  Then, I just have a little more code at the end to limit frames per second, and would also update the screen. At the end, there is a quit function so that the program will not hang upon exit. So, although this function did not do all the things I want it to do, it does work for a very basic balance board game! Please refer to the video for a runthrough of the program!!

Here are some challenges that we faced, and how we overcame them:

References:

Trying to figure out button (learnt a lot even though I did fail in the end):

1.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh_m-Eytq0Q

2.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nh34GrYXbn4&t=454s

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KB3mTwOFCw&t=5s

4.https://pythonprogramming.net/pygame-buttons-part-1-button-rectangle/

5. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30744237/how-to-create-a-pause-button-in-pygame

Pygame fonts:

6. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38001898/what-fonts-can-i-use-with-pygame-font-font

Pygame timer:

7. https://www.pygame.org/docs/ref/time.html