Make OGS usable in school

OGS Development
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In order to use OGS in school for a class or extracurriculars, it needs to include a way to disable all chat/messaging functions for an account. It would also be nice to have a way to subordinate student accounts under a teacher account, and to register those student accounts. Maybe OGS could include a way to roster classes using the Clever API? (LiChess does something similar to this where you can disable communication in the account settings.)

Here’s more information about approved websites from my school district: https://safe.ccsd.net/

I want to use OGS in Computer Science to teach kids about artificial intelligence (we watch the AlphaGo doc first) instead of just playing on the AGA-provided plastic boards (which are great, but online they can’t make illegal moves lol).

ChessKid is a good example of how the system is set up to allow school districts to approve the site for use in schools: the teacher creates the accounts, can apply settings, and there are no communication systems available to students other than the emojis and short pre-filled phrases like “Good game!”

Thanks!

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Yes, this would be great!

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I wonder if you want the teacher to literally set up the games for the students? Or do the students have to (and have to be able to) use the OGS matchmaking system?

I can see an extension to “Challenge Links” where you create a link that you give to each pair of students, that causes them to end up in a game with each other…

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The Challenge Links system is very cool. It would be nice to be able to pair students as a group as well, or let them pick other people from the group to challenge as a sort of club ladder.

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Would it be good enough for CCSD if you set up the accounts yourself, linked to email addresses that you control, and request a chat ban for each one from a moderator?

Also good luck today @ToughSun :wink:

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That would work, but we’re talking 60+ accounts, so I’d hate to have to dump so much work on a moderator. :slight_smile:

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Isn’t Chat disabled by default? (Until you verify your email)

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I volunteer if we don’t find better solutions :slight_smile:

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For this usecase, I believe seeing other users chat also needs to be disabled (which is not currently a feature).

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Good point - students should not be able to send or receive messages or see chat from other users. This is probably an unreasonable request overall, but I love OGS and I’d be so happy to be able to use it in school! :smiley:

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You’ll need to explain stuff to people when children joyfully let them know “we’re all on OGS, all the class, and we are all chatbanned!!! :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush:”

(I think it would be a good addition to have a child-safe subspace in OGS by the way :slight_smile: )

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Tbh I wouldn’t mind writing a grant to try and get OGS some funding from a child-focused educational foundation or something to make a kid/school friendly version.

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i wonder how much work would be involved in coding a new user class wich would have chat and other social functions hidden entirely? Like it shouldnt be impossible to simply hide the chat boxes and apply automatic chatbans?

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I’m not sure how long this lasts … until you verify email or some time passes?

Anyhow … I’m keen to see this happen, I’ve put it on my list of things to do.

Of course, it needs @anoek approval as well.

That’d make me even more keen, though it’s not completely necessary :slight_smile:

At the moment my picture of it is that it starts with you wanting to enter who is in your class.

This probably means pasting into a big box a list of names, right? You will cut and paste all 60 of them in one go.

From that you end up with a “class” of “student users” that “belongs to” you.

Questions: now, how do they end up in games vs each other, from your perspective?

Are they allowed to join games with anyone else?

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I’m not sure if it will check all of your boxes or not, but we’ve been working with the AGF to create a custom interface for kids, it should be out pretty shortly I think. There’s no teacher control, mainly because there’s no accounts, you just kinda show up and play, either against other kids that are on the site or against easy computers. We’ve talked about adding teacher control in the future, but initially it’s just a safe place for kids to play.

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Won’t that make it rather difficult for kids to get a game with someone of a similar skill?

I wonder if the code from “bots” having “owners” could be borrowed/altered for “students” having “teachers” and/or “children” having “parents” :thinking:

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I wonder if it would be possible to set up a system where the teacher utilizes the existing club structure to create a classroom. Upon setting up the club, they select private classroom. The teacher could generate a limited number of guest accounts for the class through the club. The teacher may need to assign them to students offline. They could have a generic username like Classname23. Their log-in page could be the private classroom. All their games could then be marked private and only visible to those in the class.

I assume this could put a large strain on the server, so perhaps make the private classroom feature only available to verified teachers with a school account.

Question about the AGF custom interface: Will the students be able to save sgf?

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That would be a cool feature and would enable schools to participate. It would also put Go in the after-school activities spectrum and help with spreading the word.

Do you have an estimate about how many kids are likely to join?
If it’s not a huge number, I think it would be preferable to have human control in the kids’ space, at least at the beginning.
It’s always easier to persuade parents and teacher to use a kid-friendly space if they know there is a human checking “why the kids are so quiet today”.

(I know most toddlers today can outsmart the best digital safety measures, but still)

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I have about 130 students in my chess elective and another dozen or so (last year at least) that play chess & go after school twice a week.

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I’m missing something here. Why? What is the problem to be solved by banning the kids from chat?