Summer of Code/2016/Turtle Confusion/Flags JS

About You

What is your name?

My name is Love Mehta. I am a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech), Sophomore Year, Computer Science and Engineering undergraduate student at Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar.

What is your email address?

My Primary Email - lovemehta.me@gmail.com
Alternate Email - 2014csb1018@iitrpr.ac.in

What is your Sugar Labs wiki username?

Love Mehta

What is your IRC nickname on irc.freenode.net?

lovemehta

What is your first language? (We have mentors who speak multiple languages and can match you with one of them if you'd prefer.)

I am a native speaker of Hindi, But I am fluent in English as well.

Where are you located, and what hours (UTC) do you tend to work? (We also try to match mentors by general time zone if possible.)

I live in Punjab, India. And I tend to work from 11.00am to 9.30pm UTC on weekdays and 3.30 am to 9.30pm UTC on weekends but this is adjustable.

Have you participated in an open-source project before? If so, please send us URLs to your profile pages for those projects, or some other demonstration of the work that you have done in open-source. If not, why do you want to work on an open-source project this summer?

I am new in open source and I want to work in open source because I believe in software freedom. I use GNU/Linux for my day-to-day work and software development. I also use several other open source services like Libreoffice, Moodle, Mozilla-Firefox etc. Open-Source development has introduced me to a whole new world of software development which I was unaware of previously. It has been a great experience to learn new frameworks and to work on building something new using them from my sophomore year itself. I have enjoyed my journey of getting to know people on irc and mailing lists while applying for GSoC and learning from them. It's amazing how people from different time zones can come together to work as a community. I think it would be the best utilization of my summer holidays to work on an open-source project this summer.

About your project

What is the name of your project?

Turtle Confusion and Turtle Flags

Describe your project in 10-20 sentences. What are you making? Who are you making it for, and why do they need it? What technologies (programming languages, etc.) will you be using?

This project aims on porting two sugar activities Turtle Flags and Turtle Confusion to a Javascript based version. Also possible UI enhancements and additional features will be added to them under this project.

These two activities help children build a mindset in coding and algorithms by setting up challenges based on drawing shapes and images in a logo like framework.

I plan on working on this project using Javascript and frontend languages(HTML and CSS). The main functionalities (drawing canvas, block programming) I am going to use are from the turtle blocks JS project.

Each visual block will be mapped to a function in JavaScript. Also the generated Javascript code will be shown to kids to get idea of one to one correlation between blocks and functions.

Along with these I'll be using Inkscape or any other similar tool to produce artworks to make the activities more interactive and attractive for children.

What is the timeline for development of your project? The Summer of Code work period is from mid-May to mid-August; tell us what you will be working on each week. (As the summer goes on, you and your mentor will adjust your schedule, but it's good to have a plan at the beginning so you have an idea of where you're headed.) Note that you should probably plan to have something "working and 90% done" by the midterm evaluation (end of June); the last steps always take longer than you think, and we will consider cancelling projects which are not mostly working by then.

In my understanding this project requires the following main tasks which can be completed by using the given languages and frameworks:

1. Getting familiar with the resource book Turtle Confusion: Logo Puzzles and Riddles by Barry Newell.
2. Understanding the codebase of Turtle Blocks JS and the already built activities Turtle Flags and Turtle Confusion.
3. Designing the artworks to be used in the games and using the artworks available through various free sources and developing new ones using InkScape.
4. Designing basic shells and UI to make these activities more illustrative and pedagogic.
5. Writing code for the activities and implementation.

Timeline -

Week	Scheduled Work
April 22-May 22 (Community Bonding period)	Community Bonding Understanding the code for Turtle Blocks JS and the already built activities. Study about the activities and check for faults that can be removed or features that can be added. Experiment with the code. Consider possible enhancements and improvised ideas that are suggested by taking to the mentors. Produce some illustrations and discuss about the theme of the activity. To make the activity more attractive and interesting for children.  Note possible improvements and UI changes depending on the review. Develop a clear outline of the project and discuss other technicalities relevant for the project.
Week 1 (May 23-May 29)	Start working on Turtle Confusion: Make basic UI. (Palette, windows etc.) Implement various blocks in the palette by taking help from Turtle blocks implementation.
Week 2 ( May 30 - June 5)	Import features from Turtle Blocks JS. Write code to Load challenges Check for browser compatibility
Week 3 (June 6 - June 12)
Week 4 (June 13- June 20)	First Deliverable - Turtle Flags Activity for Sugarizer
Week 5 (Midterm Evaluations)
Week 6 (June 29- July 3)	Responding to Mid-Term Evaluations: Going through the evaluations and improving activity and fixing bugs accordingly.
Week 7 (July 4 - July 10)
Week 8 (July 11 - July 17)
Week 9 (July 18 - July 24)
Week 10 (July 25 - July 31)	Second Deliverable - Completed Activities Turtle Flags and Turtle
Week 11 (August 1 - August 7)	Buffer Week Work on Documentation Host the activity on a github page and share the link in Sugar Labs community for feedback and bugs.
Week 12 (August 8 - August 16)	Address all the feedback and fix bugs. Test all the games, clean and organize the code.
Week 13 (Code Submission and Evaluations )	Clean the code, improve documentation, and submit code .

Other commitments during this period -

April 22(Fri) – May 05 (Thu) : I have Major Examination for this semester. So, I will be less active in this duration. This duration comes under the community Bonding Period. But I will be devoting more time for the rest of the period or before exams (around ten hours a day) to compensate for this.

Convince us, in 5-15 sentences, that you will be able to successfully complete your project in the timeline you have described. This is usually where people describe their past experiences, credentials, prior projects, schoolwork, and that sort of thing, but be creative. Link to prior work or other resources as relevant.

I have been a programming enthusiast since my school days. I enjoy developing websites and doing front end work. Following are some of my projects:

• Developed an Official Mentorship Website for Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar, which helps guide freshers to have a smooth transition from school life to college life. The link to the website is - https://www.iitrpr.ac.in/smp

• Developed an Ecommerce website for a 24 hour Webathon Event held at Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar. Link to the website is - http://freecommerce.freevar.com

• Developed a game Meteor Shower using Phaser.io. It is shared on github here - https://github.com/lovemehta/Meteor-Shower
  You can also play the game here -http://lovemehta.github.io/Meteor-Shower

• Developed a simple platform game interface Jumping Jack using Phaser.io. It's source code is shared on github here – https://github.com/lovemehta/TheJumpingJack
  And it can be played here - http://lovemehta.github.io/TheJumpingJack
  
• Developed a 2048 Game. The code can be viewed here https://github.com/lovemehta/2048-Game It can be played here http://lovemehta.github.io/2048-Game/
  
• Developed a Flappy Birds Clone. The code has been shared here https://github.com/lovemehta/FlappyBirds . The game can be played here http://lovemehta.github.io/FlappyBirds/
  
• I host a blog here http://blog.lovemehta.com/ and will be posting about my work during the length of this project here. I have shared more details about me, my works, projects and achievements here http://www.lovemehta.com
  

Given below is the detailed information about time contribution to the GSoC project. As I do not have any other long term commitments this summer, completion of this project is my top priority.

During the length of this semester (i.e. Until May 06) - I can easily manage to squeeze at least 6 hours a day (due to classes in the daytime) on weekdays and 8-10 Hours a day on weekends. In total around 45 hours a week.

Most active period ( May 6 to July 25) – I will be having summer vacations during this period and can dedicate avg. 8-10 hours of work per day accordingly to the requirement of the project. On an average around 50-60 hours a week.

My next semester will start from July 25 and as the workload is very less in the starting of the semester I think I can dedicate 7-8 hours daily in this duration (July 25 - August 23).

You and the community

If your project is successfully completed, what will its impact be on the Sugar Labs community? Give 3 answers, each 1-3 paragraphs in length. The first one should be yours. The other two should be answers from members of the Sugar Labs community, at least one of whom should be a Sugar Labs GSoC mentor. Provide email contact information for non-GSoC mentors.

My answer -

Among kids learning mathematics and taking up mental ability exercise is usually associated with anything but fun. But learning can be a lot easier if we move from learning to playing. When we play we level up , when we level up we get interested , when we are interested we grow , when we grow - that's when we learn.

By the end of this project, Sugarizer will be having a whole new Sugarizer Activity which provides various games that help enhance the mental ability, mathematical and logical reasoning and scientific aptitude of children. This activity provides a different learning experience using games which can make Sugarizer more content rich and enjoyable educational platform.

Also more game developers who like this idea of making learning fun will be attracted towards this activity and the Sugar Labs Community as they can dedicate their innovative ideas for teaching based games to such activities.

Lionel Sir's (GSoC Mentor) Answer -

"To be a real part of deployment, Sugarizer should provide the same rich experience of pedagogic tools than the Sugar platform. Bringing to it a rich set of learning activities including some famous one like Falabracman and Implode will fill the gap between Sugar and Sugarizer and give more luck to new users and school to use Sugar as pedagogic platform."

Tony Sir's(GSoC Mentor) Answer - "Your proposal, if implemented, will enhance Sugar and Sugarizer to make important educational and fun opportunities available to our users."

What will you do if you get stuck on your project and your mentor isn't around?

Being a computer science major and a programmer from the past two years, I have developed great proficiency in using Google to solve my problems effectively. So my first resort will be to try to find out the solution to the problem myself.

My second resort will be the community members and other mentors I have interacted with when I was new to the community.

My third resort will be my college faculties. As IIT's are the most prestigious institutions in India, we have the most dedicated and knowledgeable teachers who are always there when it comes to helping students.

How do you propose you will be keeping the community informed of your progress and any problems or questions you might have over the course of the project?

I will be writing a blog frequently about my work which can be a good tracking record of the project and will share it with mentors if required. Also I'll be sharing each game on a Github Page for reviews which can help in tracking my progress.

Miscellaneous

If you plan to work on Sugar-Web projects we want to be sure that you're familiar with web technologies, so:

• Clone the Sugarizer repository
• Using instructions here develop your first Sugar-Web activity
• Send us a screenshot of your new activity executed in Sugarizer

I have written a simple snake and apple game for Sugarizer. The screenshots of which are shown below.

Link to thegame is http://lovemehta.github.io/Snake-Activity-in-Sugarizer

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Describe a great learning experience you had as a child.

As a child I was a very curious one. I always used to annoy people with my how's and why's about a lot of things. This curiosity instinct has helped me till now to achieve good marks and perform well in my studies. But in the start I wasn't so much fond of studying. One day when I was in fifth standard our science teacher took us to the computer lab and showed us a very nice presentation on the projector. It was about our solar system. That day I was really mesmerized by the animations and the special type of class we had for the first time. Owing to that experience I learned how to make such powerpoint slideshow and present them in the class. I also won a prize for the same in the sixth standard.

Is there anything else we should have asked you or anything else that we should know that might make us like you or your project more?

I think what sugarizer lacks as a fun to learn software is a collection of educational games. This project has potential to make Sugarizer an even better place to learn for children than it already is. I  will try my best to make this activity the best attraction Sugarizer has among children.

Really looking forward to work on this project for the summer. Life is good.