i dont think that grading a student based on his/her fold it score is constructive. i just started fold it and each time i click the mouse, it seems like my score ranges from 0 to 9200. thus it could just be by chance that you fold a perfect A.
Well it could also just be by chance that you cure cancer. I was actually thinking more along the lines of the more you play the higher your grade is, or the amount of proteins you have tried folding. I think that a lot of science is by chance, and that by randomly doing things with the proteins you should still be rewarded. Folding with schools would be much better with extra additions, like a feature that the teacher can use to see the most active foldit users in his/her class.
ooh i see what you mean. the teacher can see who is participating and base grades that way. thats not such a bad idea i suppose.
Aside from scoring points, is there any real incentive for students to play this game? Suppose they do create a novel solution for a protein. How will the solution be acknowledged by the foldit/Baker lab? How will there solutions be used in any scientific publications, if at all?
My School Blocks Foldit as well, like they block gwap (see new scientist, which is how I learn't about foldit). Foldit would make learning about proteins fun. Lots of my friends complain as they say it's boring
this very nice, thank you.
Tanushri – please no signature spam. Thanks, admin.
I got same problem here and my school can't control the permission to view centain websites and internet services because it bought network called Redstone which blocks supposely uneducational stuff.
So I think we could use proxy that is not blocked by your internet provider or network to bypass the block so we can play online.
Well, I wrote to Redstone requesting them to unblock us. I'll let you know if they reply.
Does anyone know what other major content filtering companies schools outsource this job to? I'd like to make sure that none of them block Foldit.
admin
@ admin maybe make a special proxy for the foldit? It that what at log in screen asked if i know a proxy or something?
I love the idea of schools using Foldit in their curriculum. I think at this point the game doesn't do quite a good enough job helping the new player understand what protein folding is all about though.
I'm hoping in another month or so I'll have improved the intro levels and such that not only will players be able to reliably learn about proteins just by playing, but that it will be fun enough that they'd want to do it on their free time, and not just because they have to for school.
Once that is the case, then I think using Foldit in schools could really be a success, both for learning about proteins, and helping Foldit become more popular.