Ideas and feedback
Initial ideas #
There is a few things I haven't worked with yet that I'd like to give a try. For example cloud computing, node based networking, AI, machine learning and more backend focused infrastructure.
While presenting these ideas at a consult, Wouter told me that I should think of something more Devine worthy, something creative and something that's fun and useful.
I've been thinking of a concept to combine these ideas with something creative but I'm having a hard time getting a concrete concept down.
Right now I'm thinking of making a sort of ARG (Alternate Reality Game), which would incoporate challenges made in part by the teachers and have the students solve them.
I think this platform could be of great value, allowing the students to do small challenges to get a grasp on the course material and learn the content better.
The student challenge platform #
The platform would consist of a student and teacher section, the teacher would be able to add challenges which the students can then solve.
The app would run on a cloud host for the interface and backend, the challenges would be transferred to a raspberry pi on location for the students to try the challenges on.
The students would only have a limited time to access the pi and try and solve the challenge.
The reasoning for this is that the students can log into the pi, get the challenge and then have a few minutes to look around the file system of the pi for any hints. After a specified amount of time, they would get kicked off and not be able to log back in for a few hours. This prevents people from getting a head start and finishing before others have even started.
Each student would also have their own pgp keys, which could be 'leaked' on 'accident' to help them decode messages for example. This all depends on the challenge and difficulty of it.
The experimental part of this project would be to link a real live shell (running locally on the pi) to the app and either integrate it in the app itself, or link the user's commands and actions to the app in some way. Getting the data to and from a physical, on premise device will take some work but is definitely possible. I'd love to integrate some 'minigames' where the students have to decrypt hints, find some key, or work together to solve challenges.
Each challenge would get the user(s) points and each week or month, these could be exchanged for IRL points, some candy, or a snack from the teacher as reward for completing it.
Each student could be tracked by the ssh keys they use to log in, or their gpg keys on github commits or other data... still TBD.