The Magic 8 Ball Chooses..

I am currently working on a moodle course block that will randomly choose a student to answer a question in class. Why bother? Well the difficulty in class is that you have a tendency to not question students in an evenly distributed way. There is a temptation to ask the student you know will be able to answer. 

The concept for the block is to devise an algorithm that will systematically ensure that all students answer questions but (and here I confess to being particularly pleased with this rather devilish variation) if a student gets a question wrong a weighting is applied to selection so that they will be selected more often to answer questions. Students who answer correctly will be less likely to be selected. The exact weightings will be set  (or indeed turned off) by the course administrator in a block settings page.

To make the concept more interesting to students I have decided to model the selection on a Magic 8 Ball. The user will select a group from a drop down and then click the Magic 8 Ball graphic resulting in it shaking and a student name appearing in the middle. Buttons will also be provided to say whether a student answered correctly or incorrectly. For students who are absent the Magic 8 Ball will simply be clicked again to select a different student.