eduSteem (Introduction)

Repository

https://github.com/bflanagin/EduSteem

New Project: eduSteem

eduSteem is a LMS (Learning Management System) / Lesson Plan sharing service that uses the Open Seed API and Steem cryptocurrency to reward educators through payments and students through what we like to call "continuous scholarship". Though there are many LMSs currently on the market, our aim is build our software around the few core ideas:

• Preparing students for the future, both educationally and financially.
• True integration among teacher, student, and parent.
• Creating a place where both students and educators are rewarded for good work and adding to the network.

Key Features

For Educators

• Student Interaction: The students on the system are required to create and revise works done within eduSteem until the educator deems it worthy of submission. Once submitted, the tasks are considered complete within the system and the student is rewarded for the work. To guide the students' work to this state, the software includes messaging, annotations, and chat services. There is even a dashboard for an At-A-Glance overview of the students' progress.

• Lesson Plans: A common staple in the life of a teacher, a good lesson plan takes hours to create. Having everything from a list of resources to a final product, it is the core to any good learning environment. It is our belief that teachers should be rewarded for this hard work. Though there are other services that allow teachers to share, and be paid for their lesson plans, many of these services have no way to curb plagiarism or unfair use of the plans. With eduSteem, we are creating both a way for teachers to get paid for the work, as well as get credit for the plans they've done by only crediting original works within the system. As an added benefit, when someone uses your lesson plan for their students, you can be notified as the students post their work, and can be awarded curation benefits by liking or commenting on their posts. (Keep in mind it is up to their local Educator to approve the posts so be professional when you comment.)

• Mobile Application: The mobile application is used as more of a companion app to the main eduSteem system. Your lesson plans can include questions that will be added to a daily review time that the students will engage with before the beginning of the day's lessons. It is our hope that these review questions will help the students keep on track day by day.

For Students and Parents

Based around the idea of continued learning through reflection, each student is required to write about each day's lessons to solidify their learning while also giving the educators a day-by-day assessment of the students' progress. At the end of the week, and at the educator's approval, the students will be able to post their weekly report to the Steemit network as Proof-of-Work, and eduSteem will award the students a certain payout based on the quality of their work. This payout will go to an account created by the parent or guardian of the student to be managed until the student is able to create their own account when 18 years old. The payout will be split between the student, their education, and the software itself. The current payout structure is listed below:

• Education 60% : A savings account that the parent can use toward school or educational programs.
• Student 25% : This should be used as an allowance, and, if done correctly, will be used to encourage the student to continue working toward making better content.
• Software 15% : This keeps the lights on and the servers running.

• Mobile Application: The mobile application gives parents access to the review questions whenever they want to help the student get in extra practice with recent content and maintain mastery of earlier skills. It also allows parents to check students' Steem balance.

What works so far

The product is split into three separate programs: Desktop, Mobile, and a third client not yet started, but will be available around the 2.0 release. We are focusing on the Desktop client at the moment and have most of the lesson planning features finished. With the goal of having 1.0 released before the end of August of this year we are well on our way to reaching that goal.

Technology Stack

• QT 5.11 community addition (QML)
• JavaScript
• PHP
• C/C++

Desktop Roadmap

Version 1

• Creation of Schools.
• Creation and sharing of Lesson Plans.
• Student administration for School / Educator.
• Parent / Guardian Interface for Student management (Pay outs, and the like).
• Student interface to turn in work, receive feedback, and have it shared to Steemit when approved.

Mobile Roadmap

Version 1

• Parent Mode.
• Educator Mode.
• Collection of questions for quizes.
• Synchronizing with student accounts to give them "edupoints" for correct answers .

How to contribute?

You can find this project along with all my other projects on github if you would like to make suggestions, or bug reports. You can reach me on Telegram (@HumbleBeaver) and can follow me on Twitter (@VagueEntertain).

GitHub Account

https://github.com/bflanagin