Multimedia Experience: Class Crossover Final Presenation

Multimedia Experience: Class Crossover Branding

Multimedia Experience: Scenarios

So here are 3 scenarios in our class crossover hub community. Those with ipads focus on the students, having replaced weighty text books, and desktops are used for students and teachers to access the community. I'll have to redraw the first 4 wireframes in scenario 1 to be on desktop rather than ipad since they are teacher actions.

MX: Class Crossover Needs and Solutions

Here is a list of Kelsey and I's needs and solutions based on students in a class crossover online community application. We were asked to think of possible future technologic applications to aid the community and it's students better absorb the content from their curriculums.

Need: Shy student doesn’t like to answer questions in packed classroom.

Solution: Using the online community from home, the student can contribute to their heart’s content, sharing crossover facts, videos, and other media that could relate and assist other students of the community. The student could also option to contribute “anonymously”, where only the teacher could view the students name.

Need: Student would like more group collaboration.

Solution: Students in the community can join a collaborative space. These spaces are online chat rooms with media sharing capabilities. In this case, the students are writing a group paper and can all share and upload information to their “space” to share with each other and view videos and information in real time together. The space would act much like a piece of paper, in that any student could use their tablet to draw and write in the same content space.

Need: Student would like to participate in a study group, but she lives too far to commute to one.

Solution: Using video feeds, a computer could sit in her place with the group, feeding audio and video to the student. The computer could also record the conversations, and assist in any information searching options that could help support the study group.

Need: A certain equation in math class has a student confused.

Solution: Using tablet software, students can write and solve equations together in a collaborative workspace. This process would be recorded so the student could hear their dialogue and watch the process in solving that equation for help in future assignments.

Need: A teacher’s class has been having trouble understanding a recent lesson.

Solution: The class could get on at the same time, and consult an archive of recorded class sections to discuss any confusion. The teacher could also donate her time after school to further the discussion, or listen to recordings of the student discussion to better future lessons. Students digital pens could also record their notes during class, and can upload to the collaborative spaces for other students to read through.

Need: The president of the school board has noticed a drop in the school’s science scores.

Solution: Using the online community, he can visually view the discussion and contribution hot spots in the curriculum, and consult major issues in the students’ learning process.

Need: A parent would like to know which classes their student is taking interest in above the rest.

Solution: The parent can sign in using a parental viewing account, with visual mappings of their son or daughter’s contributions over time.

Need: Student needs help writing a report relating Amelia Earhart and the history of air travel.

Solution: The online community would automatically search video content from sources like national geographic, the history channel, and the science channel, placing related videos as school contributions between class “nodes”. The student could view these videos, and spend less time searching and more time creating those relationships between subject matters. Students could also tag these videos and school contributions to better place them for student viewing.

Need: Student would like to learn facts relatable to classroom subjects as they are out in the world.

Solution: The student could use the online community application on their mobile device, and be notified if any passing landmark or building relates in some way to the classroom content.

Need: School wishes to know which students are having issues with certain subjects.

Solution: A timing device embedded within with online community could measure each student’s time spent in certain subjects online. The students ipad could also track time spent in certain classrooms, during and after class times.

 Need: Schoolbooks are out of date, and there is a budget for new ones.

Solution: With each new version of e-text books, each student’s ipad would update to that new text. The community would receive a notification of this as well.

Need: Student considers homework to be “busy work”.

Solution: The community could send out location based on-site learning opportunities that relate assignments. The could be lectures, historical sites, museums etc. and propose visits to the students when related assignments pop up. These could also be locations found by other students mobile devices.

Need: Student wishes to discuss a class topic further.

Solution: A database of higher academic experts could volunteer to interact as users in the community and discuss topics with willing students.

Need: Teacher wants to extend lesson based on input of students.

Solution: Intuitive collection program analyzes students’ discussions and determines the best new resources to pull from an online database to aid teacher with new lessons.

Need: Parents are concerned for children’s grades.

Solution: Notifications can be sent to Parent’s mobile devices or computers to notify drops in their child’s grade. They can customize the notifications based on the letter grade or standard they expect their child to live up to.

Multimedia Experience: A Sentence

Our proposed sentence description for the Class Crossover online community:


Class crossover is a predominantly after-school online community through which students of a single school, ages 11-14, can discuss the knowledge they gained with other classmates learning other subjects—breaking the boundaries of traditional education through integrating curriculum adds context and breadth to their education, while promoting participation, analytical thinking, and discussion. 

Multimedia Experience: Integrated Curriculum Project

Physical Boundaries

In one school, and at each students home

What’s and who’s involved

Middle/Junior high students

Teachers

Equipment Involved

home computers

internet

(perhaps) video sharing/camera function

(perhaps) scanner (for sharing notes and documents)

printed media and textbooks

digital-format textbooks?

*Ipad Vs. Printed Textbooks
*E-textbooks
*Classroom Discussion Boards
*Benefits of Discussion Boards Vs. Classroom environments

Demographics

11-14

able to afford OR check out computer/laptop (or tablet?)

all genders and races

Wants and Needs (Individual and Community)

individual:

•   want to be social

•   willing to discuss

•   self-motivation

•   open-minded

•   critical thoughts

community:

•   draw connections

•   desire for in-context subjects

•   need for relatability

•   need to make links

•   long-term retention

Symbols

message board icons/conventions:

speech bubbles

plus signs

avatars

online identity

profile

memes

media references

signatures

group/guilds

polls

instant feed?

links (IMG, URL, VIDEO)

clubs

badges?

Motivations for Participating

part of grade

better retention of knowledge

confidence/empowerment through sharing

ability to discuss, rather than introverted learning

casual setting, comfortable

practical, well-rounded education

keeps kids connected, even outside of school (NO isolation!)

Articles on integrated curriculums:
Why Integrate?: A Case for Collating the Curriculum
Integrating Curriculum: The Importance

Multimedia Experience: Blog Posts

The Seven Types of Intelligences
This article discussed psychologist Howard Gardner's theory of the seven types of intelligences found in people, particularly children. These dictate the strengths of a child and how best they learn in an educational environment. The theory itself is fairly solid and the seven types are as follows:

Linguistic- Children with this kind of intelligence enjoy writing, reading, telling stories or doing crossword puzzles.

Logical- Mathematical Children with lots of logical intelligence are interested in patterns, categories and relationships. They are drawn to arithmetic problems, strategy games and experiments.

Bodily- Kinesthetic These kids process knowledge through bodily sensations. They are often athletic, dancers or good at crafts such as sewing or woodworking.

Spatial- These children think in images and pictures. They may be fascinated with mazes or jigsaw puzzles, or spend free time drawing, building with Legos or daydreaming.

Musical- Musical children are always singing or drumming to themselves. They are usually quite aware of sounds others may miss. These kids are often discriminating listeners.

Interpersonal- Children who are leaders among their peers, who are good at communicating and who seem to understand others' feelings and motives possess interpersonal intelligence.

Intrapersonal- These children may be shy. They are very aware of their own feelings and are self-motivated.

Gardner's theory serves as a great basis in understanding that children do learn differently and that the same standardized angle that teaching has adopted won't be effective with every type. However, not every  one lies within a single type of learning, and I find even myself to have learning traits from several types, so I feel this list is better understood as a set of categories that certain aspects of learning can be sorted into.


Media Smarts: Kids Learn to Navigate the Multimedia World
This video was a great listen. It brings to light the issue that children throughout school are typically held to a reading and print based learning system. While this is important, with our digital age today and the vast amounts of media and technology that our kids are exposed to daily, kids need exposure and discussion to the information they recieve over these channels. While it might make things more difficult for the designer, it's important that they learn the process and reasoning behind decisions in the broadcasting process. Newspapers were a great example in sifting through various layers of propaganda and misleading information. As kids grow, particularly with each new generation, they will be exposed to a greater amount of digital-based channels and they need to know how to makes use of them effectively without getting bogged down and confused by media techniques of persuasion.



Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On
I thought this article was fantastic. It was great insight into the evolution of the web and it's connection to the mass media and channels that have become so connected with our lives over the last few years. It amazes me that web 2.0 has turned such simple actions such as searching and communicating to each other, into a tool to further tie data together and better help humanity. With a simple twitter post or search over google, someone not only gains results or enjoyment from an action on the web, but help new technology to better and more efficiently help, and in some cases target us.

While it's true that we are now barraged with wave upon wave of ads that know our interests based on our data contributions to the web, ads are only one of many useful tools in reading trends and actions of mass populations and communities. It's a step in the right direction to speed up and better make sense of our economic condition. With companies like Walmart tracking purchases and translating that digitally to votes on a certain product, products can now be rated without spending the time to sit down and leave a rating or comment. As a collective, today's consumer can make better educated decisions in their purchases by viewing surveyed data from other consumers interested in similar products if not the same ones. The mobile device in particular has become a brilliant evolution in our digital society. With that small screen, a filter in cases of augmented reality, we can take photos of places, scan QR codes, and better attach reality with the digital world.

This passes over into other devices as well. When sensory technology is present in many products, the mobile device in particular, we become an assistant, part of the digitalization process. Our location, places around us, people we know, and things we are seeing and experiencing can all be recorded, shared, and understood by the web. A foreigner can now step foot into a country they no nothing of, and in seconds retrieve their location, where they need to go, and what they can do around them. Drivers no longer have to know the roads, and digital systems can talk with us and aid us in finding our way as well as avoid accidents and high traffic areas.

I believe that web 3.0 will certainly spread further into augmented reality territory. The web itself will likely soon exist in physical space through the camera rather than on a fictional page in digital space. I for one am excited to see the bridge and design for the world in front of our eyes. To be completely surrounded by design and information.