Learnminder

LearnMinder is a SmartPhone app that blocks internet access until a homework / coding challenge is solved.

It is intended to be installed on a childs 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 its actually more fun to create these products than to use them.

Future home: LearnMinder.artpi.net

FUTURE INTEGRATIONS INCLUDE

Coding lessons
Duolingo foreign language lessons
Fintess tracker training workouts

Technology

App is supposed to run both on iOS as well as android smartphones/tablets. It is built using React Native

How are you blocking Internet?

Well, it is a bit of a cheat, but it isnt actually blocking Internet. Using built-in parental control function of your smartphone, you would disable browser.

Then, the app serves as a browser with a challenge to solve. That way, if you want to browse Internet, you need to go through a challenge.

I want to help!

Perfect! Here are setup instructions:

First you'll need:

GIT
NPM
npm -g react-native-cli
Clone this repo

Android

You need Android SDK and emulator - more here: Android React-Native setup
Start an emulator with API level at least 21 - to do this: android avd
Go into the folder with the cloned repo and:
react-native run-android - this will compile app, install it on your emulator, compile JS and run everything

iOS

You need updated Xcode
Open Xcode
Run project in emulator. Thats it.

Workflow:

Do all of the above
Make some changes
Reload JS:
- Android: Press F2 in emulator and choose reload JS. You can also connect via Chrome debugger and do some other cool stuff
- iOS: CMD-R to reload