Grading now earns stamps and stars

At the end of August, we added XP, levels and titles to the screen you see after grading with the camera. In that update, I wrote that the shape of it wasn't settled yet. This time, as the next step, we've added stamps and stars.

What XP alone can't tell you

XP goes up whenever you grade. But rising XP doesn't tell you what your child has actually learned to do. Ten sheets of addition and ten sheets of subtraction raise it in exactly the same way.

So we made a separate marker that shows how far your child has got, for each kind of practice.

Stars are given for each type of practice

On a worksheet's page, you'll see the types of practice on that sheet listed, such as "2-Digit + 2-Digit (Column Calculation)". Each type can earn from one to three stars.

• 1 star: about what it takes to get each worksheet with that type fully correct once
• 2 stars: three times that
• 3 stars: five times that

A question counts as one when every answer box in it is correct. Printing the same worksheet again and solving it counts too, so reaching 3 stars usually means doing the same worksheet a second time.

Stamps are given for each section

On the grade page, each topic is divided into a few sections with their own headings. When every type of practice in a section has at least 1 star, the section gets a GOOD stamp. At least 2 stars for all of them earns VERY GOOD, and 3 stars for all of them earns EXCELLENT.

Stars appear on the worksheets on the grade page, on each worksheet's page, and on the stamp map in the Dashboard. The screen after grading only lets you know when a stamp is earned. Stars go up almost every time you grade, and I felt that a celebration screen every single time would stop feeling special.

No "left to go" numbers

Neither stamps nor stars show a number like "N questions to go". We don't count what share of the whole grade is done, either.

I started building diglabo because I saw my daughter getting stressed by all sorts of learning materials. When what's left shows up as a number, that alone makes it feel heavy. So the design shows what's been done instead.

One worksheet to print next

On the screen after grading and on the Dashboard, we show just one worksheet under "Print this next". It's picked from the sections your child is partway through: the worksheet that contains the most types of practice without a star yet.

What comes next

Stars and stamps are counted from answers graded with the camera. They show up when you're logged in and have registered your child as a player.

The number of questions needed for each star can be adjusted later, type by type. If some type turns out to be too demanding, I'll adjust it while watching how it gets used. If anything bothers you, please tell me through the contact form.