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https://github.com/jonhoo/icebreaker

Web app that allows students to ask real-time, anonymous questions during class
https://github.com/jonhoo/icebreaker

anonymity classroom education question-answering

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Web app that allows students to ask real-time, anonymous questions during class

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README 

        
# Ice Breaker



Ice Breaker is a web application designed to allow students to ask

real-time, anonymous questions during class. Once started, it allows the

creation of *rooms*, each with its own set of keys: a private

*instructor key*, and a public *student key*. Each key exposes a

different view of the room; students see only a form that allows them to

submit questions (optionally including a name), whereas instructors see

a stream of incoming questions from students.



The envisioned use of this application is that one of the instructors

(most likely a TA) monitors the instructor view during class, and asks

any incoming questions by proxy. The hope is that this will lower the

barrier for shyer students to ask questions during class.



Ice Breaker was designed to augment, not replace, systems like Piazza. Because of this, all Ice Breaker

rooms are ephemeral: if the server is restarted, all questions and rooms

are erased. To minimize the overhead of using Ice Breaker, there are

also no users, no sessions, and no administration interface. Rooms are

created by the first person to open them, and keys are given directly in

the room URLs.



## Usage



Once Ice Breaker has been deployed (see below), usage is

straightforward. To create a new room, simply point your browser at

`$URL/room/$ROOM/$KEY`. A student key (`$SKEY`) will be automatically

generated from the instructor key, and will be shown in the instructor

view. Student can now access the room using `$URL/room/$ROOM/$SKEY`.

Other instructors can join the room by using the same URL as was used to

create the room. The rooms should also be easily accessible on mobile

phones.



Instructors can see all questions, whereas students can see none.

Questions/notes posted by other instructors will be highlighted in the

question feed, allowing basic communication between instructors. The

instructor feed will automatically show new questions as they come in on

most modern browsers.



**Note**: Since Ice Breaker deployments are not stateful, a server

restart will wipe all rooms, including their keys. To prevent students

from accidentally re-creating an old room with the student key as the

instructor key when accessing an old URL, instructor keys cannot be on

the form of student keys (eight character hex strings).



## Deployment



Ice Breaker is trivial to deploy:



```shell

go install github.com/jonhoo/icebreaker

env PORT=8080 $GOPATH/bin/icebreaker

```



The repository also contains all the configuration files required to

deploy directly to [Heroku](https://heroku.com). Simply follow the steps

for [creating a (free) Heroku

dyno](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/git#creating-a-heroku-remote),

and then [push to

deploy](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/git#deploying-code). If

you already have the [Heroku

CLI](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-command) installed,

you can quickly spin up an instance using:



```shell

git clone https://github.com/jonhoo/icebreaker.git

cd icebreaker

heroku create

git push heroku master

heroku open # opens the deployed install in your browser

```



Beware that Heroku will put your server [to

sleep](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/dyno-sleeping#sleeping)

after a certain amount of time if you are on the free tier service. This

process effectively terminates the application and restarts it the next

time one of its URLs are accessed, so once this happens, all room state

will be wiped.