Three leaderboards are live and the framework is in place to bring the others online when there is data for them. Right now we have leaders for:

• People’s Choice Awards – Students try out the programs of their classmates and vote for the best. I’ve decided to award 3 points for first place, 2 point for second and 1 for third, just to spread the wealth a little bit.
• Deep Thoughts – We do a weekly Question/Reply forum where students respond to a question from me and then discuss each others answers. For the initial few weeks I awarded point to interesting additions to the forums. But as an experiment, I enabled ratings for the forums to see if student ratings would also work. I don’t know if I will use the ratings to award points or as pointers to interesting replies that I might have missed.
• Curious George – Points just for asking good questions.
• On the Ball – Points for: “hold[ing] my head up high and say[ing] in a loud, steady voice” the correct answer to any question asked in class. I haven’t actually awarded any point for this yet.
• Book Worm – There is a set of books that students can read for points. They don’t know about this yet.

There will be another set of leaderboards that I’ll add once we turn in our first “official” programs at the start of next week. They are based off of the points that students earn from the programming rubric.

The leaderboards only show the top 50% of the class (I’m a little worried about bruising fragile egos). But students also have access to their standings on all leaderboards via a password protected page for each student. I don’t know if they will think this is a good idea or overkill. I’ll ask them tomorrow.