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I: "Create Create Create" Tasks

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(Done) I11 - Enter Educational Curriculum Content

Once the system is nearing completion, we will need to load it with English and Swahili educational content.

This challenge is closed

stage:
Closed
prize:
$219,000

This challenge is closed

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Summary
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Summary

Overview

 

The ShiraX Challenges are an ambitious plan for compassionate coders to
create a self-teaching educational system that will significantly improve
the status quo of impoverished girls around the world,
by providing hope, freedom, and possibility.

Join  •  Code  •  Innovate  •  Win!

 

Background


Global Learning XPRIZE is a competition challenging teams to develop open-source software that will enable children with limited access to schooling to teach themselves basic reading, writing and arithmetic. XPRIZE, a non-profit organization, is the world’s leader in designing and managing incentive prize competitions for the benefit of humanity.

Midnight Illusions Ltd. is a +20 year strong digital media solutions company specializing in award-winning start-to-finish mobile application development services for all major mobile platforms.

The Global Learning XPRIZE is a crowdsourced problem designed for the world to solve. Midnight Illusions has taken on the challenge of addressing this problem by crowdsourcing the solution.

We have conceptually developed our solution, known as The ShiraX System™, from the ground up specifically for the Global Learning XPRIZE competition.  The System will not only achieve the competition goals but has massive potential to greatly exceed them.  And we look forward to adding YOU to our team by working together to fully realize this System!


What is The ShiraX System™ ?


The Cocktail Party One-Liner

The ShiraX System™ is a web-based magic toolbox that will allow anyone to easily create and share their educational app with the world.

The Geek Meetup Two-Liner

The Super Helpful Intelligent Resource Architect (Shira) X System™ (or simply, “ShiraX”) is an open source layperson-friendly modular platform that facilitates the creation of educational apps for Android, iOS, Web, PC, and Mac deployment.

ShiraX blends a highly-intuitive User Interface (UI) with strong User Experience (UX) design principles and strong MVC architecture at its core.

 

Prize Payout Structure


PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS AN INDIRECTLY FUNDED CHALLENGE
Awarding of any prizes in any of The ShiraX Challenges is contingent on the Midnight Illusions Ltd. team being chosen as either a Finalist or Winner in the Global Learning XPRIZE.

The following breaks down the potential prize amount ranges:

Global Learning XPRIZE Team Status Prize Payout
Non-Finalist $0 to the winner of this challenge
Finalist $19,000 USD to the selected winner of this challenge
Winner $200,000 USD additional to the selected winner of this challenge

 

Submissions and Team Invites


We will evaluate all submissions, comparing against this Challenge's technical requirements and all other judging factors.  See the Guidelines tab for this Challenge for more information.

Innovator submissions will be short-listed and organized by the top performing submission, onward.  The Top Innovator will be contacted first.  A list of Finalists will also be assembled, in the event that the Top Innovator is unable to continue.

An invitation will be sent to the Top Innovator submission for this Challenge to officially join Team "Midnight Illusions" in the Global Learning XPRIZE Challenge.  The Innovator must meet all Global Learning XPRIZE requirements and sign both an agreement with Midnight Illusions Ltd. and a Team Member agreement with Global Learning XPRIZE.  All documentation and forms will be supplied.  

Should the top Innovator decline the invite, the invitation will then be sent to the Finalist(s) in the order of their evaluation in this Challenge.


Open Source.  Variable IP.


Should our team earn the status of Finalist or Winner, our collective software solution will be open sourced to the world.  As per Global Learning XPRIZE regulations, IP is retained by the team (Midnight Illusions).

Shoud our team not earn Finalist or Winner status, our collective software solution will still be open sourced to the world.  You, the Innovator, will retain the IP related to your code.

 

Post-HeroX Challenge &
Global Learning XPRIZE Timeline


The ShiraX Challenges on HeroX represent one key component of our solution submission to Global Learning XPRIZE.  After the winners are announced for each HeroX Challenge, with your assistance as an official Team Member we will continue to enhance the System, while our team educators load in English and Swahili content, to meet the requirements of Global Learning XPRIZE.  This process will occur from mid-Sept to end of October 2016.  We officially submit to XPRIZE on or before November 1, 2016.

After submission, we wait to hear back from Global Learning XPRIZE to learn if we have made it the semi-finalist level (currently March 1, 2017).  In the interim, solution development will continue, as we are able to submit updated software at each evaluation milestone.

Should (no....WHEN!) we make it to the Finalist announcement (currently July 10, 2017), we will arrange prize payout with each ShiraX Challenges HeroX sub-challenge Winner, as per the "Finalist" Prize Payout Structure outlined above.  Solution development will further continue, with your assistance as an official Teal Member from July 2017 to September 2018.  We will have several opportunities to submitted updated code while our solution is being tested in the field (with appox. 800 children in several villages in Tanzania), further enhancing our opportunity to fully win Global Learning XPRIZE.

Should (no...WHEN!) we make it to the Global Learning XPRIZE Grand Prize announcement that team Midnight Illusions has W-O-N (currently April 2019), we will arrange prize payout with each ShiraX Challenges HeroX sub-challenge Winner, as per the "Winner" Prize Payout structure outlined above.

And of course, we'll have to arrange some sort of massive party to celebrate!  ;)

 

Additional Rules


Who can participate:
The Challenge is open to individuals and teams. To be eligible to compete, you must comply with all the terms of the Challenge as defined in the Challenge-Specific Agreement.

Selection of Winner:
Based on the winning criteria, one or more prizes will be allocated, pending the performance of the Midnight Illusions team in the Global Learning XPRIZE.  See "Prize Payout Structure", above.  In the case of a tie, the winner will be selected at the discretion of the Judging Panel.

Submissions:
All Team submission materials must be submitted online on or before the Submission Deadline indicated in the Timeline. No submissions will be accepted after this time. Incomplete submissions will not be accepted. All submissions must be received online, via the Challenge website, and all uploads can be in PDF format only. Submission reporting requirements are detailed in Judging.

Challenge Guidelines are subject to change. Registered competitors will receive notification when changes are made, however, we highly encourage you to visit the Challenge Site often to review updates.

 

The ShiraX Challenges are an ambitious plan for compassionate coders to
create a self-teaching educational system that will significantly improve
the status quo of impoverished girls around the world,
by providing hope, freedom, and possibility.

Join  •  Code  •  Innovate  •  Win!

 


Guidelines

Description

Once the system is nearing completion, we will need to load educational content that the children while Global Learning XPRIZE evaluates the system.  

Our in-house team of educational instructors is currently preparing this content, which will then need to be loaded into the ShiraX system so it can produce an Android app for submission.

Tackle the Following Tasks:

  • Create an ENGLISH Project:  Using the ShiraX system as intended, create an English Project and integrate provided educational curriculum.  This will include:
    • English alphabet characters and character combinations
    • Potentially hundreds of practice English words
    • Potentially hundreds of practice Sentences
    • Sentence structure
    • Storybooks
    • Number basics (“1”, “10”, “100”)
    • Order and series
    • Addition, subtraction, multiplication teaching
    • Basic word problems, e.g., Jane has 1 apple and gets 2 more.  How many does she have?”
    • Shape identification and naming
  • Create an SWAHILI Project:  Using the ShiraX system as intended, create an Swahili Project and integrate provided educational curriculum.  This will include:
    • Swahili alphabet characters and character combinations
    • Potentially hundreds of practice Swahili words
    • Potentially hundreds of practice Sentences
    • Sentence structure
    • Storybooks
    • Number basics (“1”, “10”, “100”)
    • Order and series
    • Addition, subtraction, multiplication teaching
    • Basic word problems, e.g., Jane has 1 apple and gets 2 more.  How many does she have?”
    • Shape identification and naming

 

Technical Code Guidelines
 

  • Code runs on PHP 5.6 or higher
  • Renders to a web browser as HTML5 and CSS3.  Responsive (mobile) layout.
  • JavaScript allowed
  • MySQL Database
  • No Adobe Flash
  • No Java

Style Guidelines
 

 

Code Licensing Requirements
 

  • Code must be released under the Apache License 2.0 and contain the boilerplate notice at the beginning of each file in your solution.
  • Content must be released under the Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license
  • Any existing code/libraries from other sources must be released under an approved Open Source Institute (OSI) license listed in the OSI Open Source Licenses by Category index at opensource.org/licenses/category
  • This licensing must be granted by September 31, 2016 or earlier.
  • Any third party code must also be released under a license that does not conflict with Team Midnight Illusions licensing its own code under the Apache License, 2.0 as part of the same application.  
  • NOTE:  Some open source licenses (such as the GNU Public License) do not meet this criterion, as they require any derivative work to be released under the same license.

 

Timeline
Forum
Teams7
FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Absolutely!  We will have a "cross-Challenge" weighting during the Judging process and you will score more points if you or your team compete in more Challenges. 

With over 50 sub-Challenges, it will make our job a lot easier if teams submit cross-Challenge integrated solutions vs. many many individual non-integrated solutions.

If Midnight Illusions Ltd. does not achieve Finalist or Winner status with Global Learning XPRIZE, we will continue as planned and open source The Shira System™ to the world.  This is a fantastic platform and it will go far in achieving the goal of educating underprivileged youth, regardless of our competition status.

We have allocated 30% of the Global Learning XPRIZE prize to The ShiraX Challenges on HeroX.  The balance has been allocated to various other aspects of our overall challenge strategy, including:

1  Compensation to the 8 core members of Team Midnight Illusions
Our 8 core members developed the ShiraX concept and have supported the project in a variety of ways before launching our development phase on HeroX. 

In addition, the majority of these Team Members have created and will be integrating all educational aspects of our submission, which will then be field tested over the course of 18 months.  ShiraX cannot win if it does not perform immaculately in the field and ensure the children are able to read, write, and learn basic math.

2  Post Global Learning XPRIZE Foundation funds
We will be substantially contributing to a Foundation being established by XPRIZE post-competition to ensure the platform will reach target populations, that devices are available for the children there, and that the infrastructure is in place to support all aspects of the program in the field.

3  Company Reinvestment
Midnight Illusions Ltd. is committed to continue to head ShiraX development over the long term.  To this end, we will ensure sufficient resources are in place to help realize this objective.

4  Team Mergers and Collaborations
Once the Global Learning XPRIZE competition heads into the final couple of months before submission deadline, we will approach a variety of existing Teams and discuss combining forces to make for an incredible submission. 

There are a number of Teams creating incredible solutions for Global Learning XPRIZE.  We believe in the power in numbers (hence our challenge presence on HeroX) and that many individual solutions can be merged into 1 stellar solution. 

All mergers will only help to solidify our position and ranking with Global Learing XPRIZE.  We look forward to the possibilities!