Today, it’s been precisely 6 months since I joined Automattic as JavaScript wrangler. All you’ve heard about how awesome this company is in fact an understatement!
LearnMinder is a SmartPhone app that blocks internet access until a homework / coding challenge is solved.
It is intended to be installed on a child’s smartphone. Parent can set up a topic that the child needs to practice. Every time the child wants to play or browse the Internet, she/he has to first solve a challenge custom tailored to current skill level. When the challenge is solved – child can use the Internet again.
The whole challenge is presented in a narrative that “the Internet is broken” and child needs to fix a bug in the software to use it. In the process, it learns, that all services it enjoys using are created by someone, maintained constantly and it is not magical black box.
Day by day, challenge by challenge the child gets more comfortable in thinking how the websites / services / games are designed and that sometimes it’s actually more fun to create these products than to use them.
Future integrations include
Coding lessons
Duolingo – foreign language lessons
Fintess tracker – training workouts
Current state
This application will be integrated with code.org and released under Open Source license.
I decided to re-write it in React Native to iron out some kinks.
How this app came to be – EUhackathon
In 2015 I had a pleasure to participate in EUhackathon. It was a splendid 2-day hackathon held in Brussels with a theme
Tools to help teach kids digital skills
During this event I created “Interfixer“, which I’m now rebranding as “LearnMinder”
During presentations, along with a fully functioning demo, I presented:
And I won!
This was a huge surprise for me, but the Jury decided that my application was best, and as a single participants, I won the 2015 edition of EU Hackathon 🙂 (You can read more here)
I met some AMAZING people (this was such a whirlwind!)
Me with European Commission Vice-President Andrus AnsipMe with Esther Wójcicki, Sergey Brinn’s mother-in-law
Reactive compass is a navigation controller for keyboard navigation based systems. Initially developed for Smart TV and embedded devices utilizing IR Remote.
swimR is a an that will revolutionize your swimming training. You just need to attach a beacon to your swimming glasses and swimR will gather data about your progress, compares it with previous achievements and if you want it – will synchronise with endomondo and runKeeper.
You will never again forget how many laps you did!
Hackathon child
swimR was conceived on Hackwaw3 – hackathon organized in Copernicus Center of Science in Warsaw, Poland. The topic was quantified self.
Use case
Idea is simple – we connect the phone to Bluetooth 4.0 beacon – in this particular case a borrowed Estimote beacon. The beacon – the size of an MP3 player – we attach to our swimming goggles. Then we swim.
The phone, left at the bank – is counting the lapses, speed and distance. We can see which distances we performed better, which worse. We can export data and make decisions based on facts.
A great tem
Karol Kozimor
Maciek Lis
Antoni Rokitnicki
Me (Artur Piszek)
Humble interface
This is how it looks in iPad:
The first day we wanted to check how our contraption behaves in water. Copernicus is a science center, so there’s a water track. Unfortunately, 2.4 Ghz does not penetrate water very well.
We attempt to solve this by gathering measurements once the swimmer comes out for air