LAB 1 - littleLEARNERS PRODUCT DESCRIPTION 1

LAB 1 - littleLEARNERS PRODUCT DESCRIPTION 1

Lab 1 - littleLEARNERS Product Description

Gabriel Del Razo

Old Dominion University

CS410

Professor Janet Brunelle

12/12/2020

Version 1


Table of Contents

1. Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………… 3

2. Product Description ……………………………………………………………………... 4

2.1. Key Product Features and Capabilities ………………………………………….. 5

2.2. Major Components ……………………………………………………………… 7

3. Identification of Case Study …………………………………………………………….. 8

4. Product Prototype Description …………………………………………………………... 8

4.1. Prototype Architecture (Hardware/Software) ………………………………....… 8

4.2. Prototype Features and Capabilities …………………………………………….. 9

4.3. Prototype Development Challenges ……………………………………………. 11

5. Glossary ………………………………………………………………………………... 12

6. References …………………………………………………………………………….... 15

List of Figures

Figure 1: Real World Product Major Functional Component Diagram ………………. 7

Figure 2: littleLearners Prototype Major Functional Component Diagram …………... 9

List of Tables

Table 1: littleLearners Real World Product vs. Prototype Features …………………

10


1. Introduction

Online education and asynchronous learning was not as relevant as it is today compared

to a year ago. This sudden shift online is caused by the threat of Covid-19 and its effect is far

reaching. To help stop the spread, schools were forced to go online, and to continue their

teaching asynchronously. The transition from live to online left many key aspects of learning

behind.

Traditional in-person education has students all share a learning environment. Such an

environment is constructed by the teacher and the school system. In contrast, the asynchronous

learning environment can be any environment. Students' success can be traced back to how well

their environment is. If an elementary aged student is placed in a setting that is not ideal for

learning then the success of their education careers is stumped (Pianta et al., 2008). Now that

students are learning from home school can no longer provide a learning space. This will leave

behind students because not all of them have access to a quality learning environment at home.

Along with the learning environment, caretakers also play an important part in the

learning success of elementary age students. In a traditional school, students have access to a

wide variety of helpers. Similar to the space in which a student learns, the quality of the teacher

child relationship plays an important role in education (Maldonado-Carreño & Votruba-Drzal

2011). When online, teachers are now more distant and the interactions are less personal. At

home, the only authority figure to assist students are their caretakers. But even then, the quality

of the parents' involvement may hurt the success of their child (Nokali et al., 2010). At home

there is no guarantee that someone will be able to help a student in a timely manner like there is

in a traditional classroom.


The shift to asynchronous learning is negatively impacting many students and leaving

them behind. The underlying thread that connects all the problems is there is no foundation for

all students. In a live classroom, all students have the same environment, instructors, assistants,

and opportunity to learn. At home none of this can be guaranteed to be of quality.

Elementary aged students are the most at risk during online learning because they are still

being taught the skills that will help them learn. littleLearners is an application dedicated to assist

elementary school students navigate asynchronous education. To assist students, littleLearners

takes all the key components that traditional school left behind and puts them on the student’s

computer. Navigating from classroom to classroom is made simple with Macros. The

LittleAssistant will help students throughout the day by providing them with helpful reminders

and navigating the web for them. Parents also benefit from littleLearners because they can

communicate with other parents and share advice and Macros.

2. Product Description

littleLearners is a desktop application aimed to assist elementary aged students navigate

with the troubles of asynchronous education. littleLearners has three objectives that will raise the

quality of the home learning environment. The first is to provide help for students. The second

objective is to navigate students from one online activity to another, and the last objective is to

keep track of what the student needs to be doing at any given time. To carry out the objectives,

littleLearners has constructed tools to assist students and caretakers. To help students,

littleLearners monitors students as they go about their day. If they need help, littleLearners will

look for possible ways to assist the student. If the application does not have an answer, it will

contact a caregiver. To assist students with web navigation, littleLearners gives parents the


ability to create a shareable Macro. When a student uses a Macro, they will be automatically

brought to where they need to be. littleLearners will also provide a schedule to keep students on

track.

2.1 Key Product Features and Capabilities

littleLearners is an application to help students. There are two ways littleLearners is

designed to help students. The first is to empower the caregiver with tools, and the second is the

littleAssistant. The littleAssistant is a virtual avatar that will help students much like an in person

assistant does. The littleAssistant helps students stay on track with their current activities, lead

them from class to class, and to answer questions. Much like an assistant in the classroom, the

littleAssistant can not do everything, so they will contact the appropriate person if they are

presented with a request they can not facilitate. If the littleAssistant can not help the student it

will put the student in contact with their caretaker.

Along with the littleAssistant, caregivers also can help their child. littleLearners provides

caregivers with tools. One of the tools is the Macro recorder. With this tool, caretakers can

automate web navigation for their students. When logged in as a caregiver, the application

provides a way to record web navigation to be played back for the student. It does this by saving

the contents of each page and what element the caregiver clicked on. After the caregiver

successfully navigates to the destination, the macro will interpret user input and save the

information. Along the way the macro will scrape class information. The application does this to

build a database of information that it can use to better help students.

Another tool for caregivers is the message board. Many students are in the same class and

because of this, it would be redundant for each caregiver to record the same Macro. Along with

communicating with other caregivers, littleLearners provides a way to share macros on the


messageboard. Caretakers also have the ability to manually input destinations if the navigation is

as simple as entering a URL. Along with navigation, caretakers can also input information

pertaining to each class or give the application URLs to scrape this information.

The Goal of this application is to help elementary school age students, littleLearners

provides settings to best match a student’s reading and digital literacy skills. Depending on the

student’s skills, aspects of the application will be different from user to user. The differences

may include how a student interacts with navigation and scheduling.

To further assist students, littleLearners implemented Easy Buttons. The Raise Hand

button is to alert the application that a student needs help and to perform the necessary actions

required to help the student. There is also an Easy Button to instantly navigate to the current

activity. This Easy Button is in place just in case a student gets lost or sidetracked.

To help students conceptualize the different online learning spaces, littleLearners

presents the information with the school house in mind. Navigation is displayed to the student as

a hallway. Each classroom in the hallway represents the different online locations they need to

go to.

Along with the desktop application, littleLearners is accompanied with the mobile

application to further help caretakers. In the mobile application, parents can add and or edit

students' information. This includes inputting school information and links along with changing a

student’s skill level. Caretakers can also view and assist students who need assistance.

Caretakers can also interact with the message board though the mobile application.


2.2 Major Components (Hardware/Software)

The minimum hardware required to run littleLearners is a computer with internet access.

To fully utilize all the features of the application, the user needs a mobile device, a computer

with a microphone, and video camera.

The structure of littleLearners is shown in Figure 1. The four components of the

application are the caretakers, the backend database server, the student, and the collection of

caretakers making up the message board. The major functional component diagram (MFCD)

describes the interactions between users and the components that make up littleLearners.

littleLearners is a desktop application that is split into a parent and student interface.

When logged in as a parent, users can interact with the message board and class information. In

the message board, parents can share schedules and Macros, and help students. Parents can also

record and edit macros. Internally, macro recording is achieved with the utilization of

PyAutoGUI. User information is stored on a server running a MySQL database.

Helping elementary school age students is the goal of this application, and because of this

they are the primary user. Students can play Macros and interact with the littleAssistant. When a

student needs help there are Easy Buttons to help them.

Figure 1

Real World Product Major Functional Component Diagram


3. Identification of Case Study

littleLearners is designed to help elementary students and the caretakers of those students.

This is not a product for teachers nor is it intended to further any student that is already ahead.

Instead, this application is to create a common area for all students. As if they are all in the same

classroom. littleLearners will be used to better manage scheduling for elementary school age

children and help students navigate to any website their teacher needs them to navigate to.

Caretakers can use this application to monitor their child and help them if they need it. Childcare

professionals can benefit from this application because they will have more time to help other

children if their students are using littleLearners. The construction of this application is focused

on helping students who do not have digital literacy skills.

4. Product Prototype Description

The prototype of this application is aimed to demonstrate the functionality of Macros, the

littleAssistant, and the Easy Buttons in a mock classroom environment. All parent and child user

information will be simulated along with the classrooms they will be interacting with.

4.1 Prototype Architecture (Hardware/Software)

For the prototype, only the desktop application will be developed. The development of

this application will primarily be done in Python. The database will be running inside a Docker

container on an ODU Linux virtual machine. Dependencies will also be tracked using Docker.

Gitlab will track versions of the build throughout development. The prototype will run on

Windows and MacOS. Macros will be tested on Chrome, FireFox, and internet explorer.

The MFC differs from the real world product version and can be seen in Figure 2. The

main difference is the database, message board, and the backend server will be run on an ODU

vm acting as our server.


Figure 2

littleLearners Prototype Major Functional Component Diagram

4.2 Prototype Features and Capabilities

Many features of the real world product will be realized in the prototype. One of the key

differences is the uses of simulated classroom environments. Schedules, classroom pages,

assignments, etc. will be simulated for testing purposes. The development of the prototype will

focus on Macros, littleAssistant, and the raise hand features.

Table 1 shows how the real world product differs from the prototype. Features are

organized by administrative, scheduling, navigation, monitoring, and help. This organization

covers the core functionality of the application.


Table 1

littleLearners Real World Product vs. Prototype Features


4.3 Prototype Development Challenges

The challenges with developing littleLearners is integrating all the features together in a

way that is intuitive for young students. All of the features need to seamlessly integrate together

but also run fast enough to annoy the user. There are a wide variety of online classroom

environments, and because of this another challenge is to accurately create classrooms that cover

the functionality of the many online ones.


5. Glossary

Administrator: a member of the littleLEARNERS development team.

Amazon Comprehend: a natural language processing (NLP) service used to extract the

student’s schedule information from a document.

AWS (Amazon Web Services): Amazon’s complete cloud computing platform that provides

remote computing power and storage options.

Amazon RDS (Relational Database System): Amazon’s cloud relational database system.

Asynchronous activity: assignments to be completed by the student without the virtual presence

of an educator.

Broken Link: an Easy Button that allows the student to report a link that is broken with a single

click, the parent is immediately informed of the problem, allowing for remote correction

Connector/Python: a Python extension for MySQL database connections.

Data management: collection, storage, and dissemination of information.

Docker: an open-source project for automating the deployment of applications as portable,

self-sufficient containers that can run on the cloud or on-premises.

Easy button: A button that can be clicked to automatically carry out a set of tasks.

Firebase: A cloud database system used for remote storage of application information for mobile

applications.

Git: a version control system used to coordinate work and track changes throughout the

development of littleLEARNERS.

Go To Class: An Easy Button which facilitates immediate navigation to a scheduled class which

is already in session


GUI (graphical user interface): The visual interface users interact with to input and receive

information.

Hallway: littleLEARNERS interface that provides access to the student’s schedule information.

IDE (integrated development environment): an application that provides a complete set of

development tools in a single convenient environment.

LMS (Learning Management System): software that is designed specifically to create,

distribute, and manage the delivery of educational content either in a stand-alone product or via

the internet.

littleAssistant: littleLEARNERS desktop avatar that is designed to appeal to elementary aged

children whose purpose is to present navigation links and schedule reminder prompts.

Java: a high-level programming language used to create stand-alone, handheld, and web

applications.

K-5: Elementary school students from kindergarten to fifth grade.

Macro: a single instruction that expands automatically into a set of instructions to perform a

particular task.

MySQL: a database management system that manages the creation and maintenance of

information within an application.

Navigation: as it pertains to the internet, destinations include Zoom meetings and asynchronous

assignments.

OpenTok: online video conferencing software.

PyAutoGUI: a third party library that allows python scripts to control mouse and keyboard

input. It is used to automatically carry out web navigation.


PyQt: a Python binding of the cross-platform GUI(graphical user interface) toolkit Qt,

implemented as a Python plug-in.

Python: an interpreted programming language used to create stand-alone, handheld, and web

applications.

Raise Hand: littleLEARNERS help system that facilitates transmission of help request and

response messages between students and parents.

Schedule: a listing of daily virtual class times

SQLite: database management system for mobile devices to work with react native framework.

Synchronous learning: instruction and activities completed by the student with the virtual

presence of an educator.

Virtual Machine: a program that runs a second isolated operating system as if it were a separate

computing system.

Visual Studio: an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to

develop computer programs, as well as websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps.

WebRTC: An open framework for the web that enables Real-Time Communications (RTC)

capabilities in the browser.


6. References

A day in the life of a student attending online high school. (2018, August 30). Achieve Virtual

Education Academy.

https://achievevirtual.org/blog/online-high-school/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-student-attending

-online-high-school/

Bernard, S. (2011, May 17). A day in the life of a virtual school student. KQED.

https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/11558/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-virtual-school-student

Amsterdam, T. (2018, October 2). Schoology vs. Google Classroom: 8 common questions

answered. Schoology.

https://www.schoology.com/blog/schoology-vs-google-classroom-8-common-questions-a

nswered

Average public-school student: teacher ratio. (n.d.). Public school review.

https://www.publicschoolreview.com/average-student-teacher-ratio-stats/national-data

Black, E., Ferdig, R., Thompson, L. A. (2020, August 11). K-12 virtual schooling, COVID-19,

and student success. JAMA Pediatr.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2769434

A day in the life of online students. (2020). Day in a life. https://dil.k12.com/

Elementary and secondary mathematics and science education. (2018). National Science

Foundation.

https://nsf.gov/statistics/2018/nsb20181/assets/481/elementary-and-secondary-mathemati

cs-and-science-education.pdf

https://achievevirtual.org/blog/online-high-school/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-student-attending-online-high-school/

https://achievevirtual.org/blog/online-high-school/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-student-attending-online-high-school/

https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/11558/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-virtual-school-student

https://www.schoology.com/blog/schoology-vs-google-classroom-8-common-questions-answered

https://www.schoology.com/blog/schoology-vs-google-classroom-8-common-questions-answered

https://www.publicschoolreview.com/average-student-teacher-ratio-stats/national-data

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2769434

https://dil.k12.com/

https://nsf.gov/statistics/2018/nsb20181/assets/481/elementary-and-secondary-mathematics-and-science-education.pdf

https://nsf.gov/statistics/2018/nsb20181/assets/481/elementary-and-secondary-mathematics-and-science-education.pdf


El Nokali, N., Bachman, H., & Votruba-Drzal, E. (2010). Parent involvement and children's

academic and social development in elementary school. Child Development, 81(3),

988-1005. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40599147

Gould, J. (2020, December 11). "Attendance is a symptom": educators struggle to keep track

of students during pandemic. Gothamist.

https://gothamist.com/news/attendance-symptom-educators-struggle-keep-track-students

during-pandemic

Gruman, D., Harachi, T., Abbott, R., Catalano, R., & Fleming, C. (2008). Longitudinal effects of

student mobility on three dimensions of elementary school engagement. Child

Development, 79(6), 1833-1852. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27563596

Harcourt, J., Tamin, A., Lu, X., Kamili, S., Sakthivel, S. K., Murray, J....Thornburg, N. J. (2020).

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 from patient with coronavirus disease,

United States. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 26(6), 1266-1273.

https://dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid2606.200516.

Heggeness, M., & Fields, J. (2020, August 18). Parents juggle work and childcare during

pandemic. The United States Census Bureau.

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/08/parents-juggle-work-and-child-care-durin

g-pandemic.html

Hudson, H. (2020, March 31). Kids (and teachers) don’t need to spend 8 hours a day on

schoolwork right now. WeAreTeachers.

https://www.weareteachers.com/virtual-learning-schedule/

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40599147

https://gothamist.com/news/attendance-symptom-educators-struggle-keep-track-studentsduring-pandemic

https://gothamist.com/news/attendance-symptom-educators-struggle-keep-track-studentsduring-pandemic


https://dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid2606.200516

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/08/parents-juggle-work-and-child-care-during-pandemic.html

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/08/parents-juggle-work-and-child-care-during-pandemic.html

https://www.weareteachers.com/virtual-learning-schedule/


Kelly, H. (2020, September 4). Kids used to love screen time. Then schools made Zoom

mandatory all day long. Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/04/screentime-school-distance/

Maldonado-Carreño, C., & Votruba-Drzal, E. (2011). Teacher-child relationships and the

development of academic and behavioral skills during elementary school: a within-and

between-child analysis. Child Development, 82(2), 601-616.


Mann, K. (2020, August 24). A day in the life of virtual learning with four kids | COVID

E-Learning. Indy with Kids. https://indywithkids.com/virtual-learning/

Map: where has COVID-19 closed schools? Where are they open? (2020, July 28). Education

Week. Retrieved November 1, 2020 from

https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/map-covid-19-schools-open-closed.html

McElrath, K. (2020, August 26). Schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic. United States

Census Bureau.

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/08/schooling-during-the-covid-19-pandemic

.html

Pianta, R., Belsky, J., Vandergrift, N., Houts, R., & Morrison, F. (2008). Classroom effects on

children's achievement trajectories in elementary school. American Educational Research

Journal, 45(2), 364-397. www.jstor.org/stable/30069451

United States Census Bureau. (2020, November 23). Week 19 household pulse survey:

November 11 – November 23 [Data file].

https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2020/demo/hhp/hhp19.html#techdoc

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/04/screentime-school-distance/


https://indywithkids.com/virtual-learning/

https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/map-covid-19-schools-open-closed.html

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/08/schooling-during-the-covid-19-pandemic.html

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/08/schooling-during-the-covid-19-pandemic.html


https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2020/demo/hhp/hhp19.html#techdoc

Documents

LAB 1 - littleLEARNERS PRODUCT DESCRIPTION 1