Yay or Nay: Sweatcoin Payslip
Sweatcoin is an app that rewards you for your walking. The Sweatcoins you gain from your steps can be used to garner discounts on various products or even donate to myriad causes. There is also talk of the company launching the Sweatcoin crypto in summer, which is music to my ears since I hope to convert it to some more commonly-used crypto. But today’s article is not about the viability of the Sweatcoin crypto.
Rather, I was very impressed with the layout of its weekly payslip. I work as a teacher and know all too well how motivation - be it intrinsic or extrinsic - plays an important role in boosting the learning outcomes of my students. So I related very much to the payslip because I think it’s very effectively organised and inspires me to keep on walking.
Modern people have no patience for contrived pieces of information, so the payslip arrested my attention by declaring that I was in the top 10% of all users. It also tracked the total number of steps I had walked the previous week - and the corresponding number of Sweatcoins I earned.
I also appreciated how there was a comparison between last week’s steps and the steps I had walked two weeks ago in terms of percentage. If you examine my screenshot, you will realise that my steps for last week declined about 20%. This data could incentivise me to reflect on my actions and pinpoint the reasons for my decline.
Relating this back to my profession, I should think about using data to motivate my students more profoundly. What I need to do is to find a platform that allows students to learn the definitions of unfamiliar words and keep track of the ones they have mastered in a given week. If I can help to quantify their learning, they might feel enthusiastic about bettering their personal record and strive to learn more and more words as the weeks go by. It would be even better if this platform uses algorithms to pit users against one another so as to channel their competitive spirit. I know that Quizlet is good for helping students learn via flashcards, but I am not so sure if it can churn out such beautiful stats. I gotta keep exploring!
