sisirnath

My understanding of digital education outside the classroom

Preparation for the context mapping session

Right before the research presentation I have started preparations for the next session, I have planed for a context mapping session and workshop with volunteering teachers. As blogged earlier I have prepared a kit for the two week sensitizing sessions and had distributed the. In this photo I was preparing the Session cards for the workshop.

Context mapping session

A. B. C.

The context mapping session and workshop was planned to be a three part session.

A. Talking about the documentation the teachers have made using the kit over two weeks.

B. Reflecting on the idea of digital teaching, how different/difficult that is from the regular teaching methods.

C. Quick workshop to build their dream application or device using image cards provided, they are allowed to use blank cards to name other technologies than provided.

This session was very fruitful as there was a lot of learning for me, the insights gained during this session supported my idea further.

Look Back – Look Forward: Hfg Ulm and Design Education conference

The conference was a interesting one, a full day of design education related talks and workshops. As the title suggests the participants looked into the past design education and future of design education. The conference was divided in to two halves, each part had two talks and a workshop.

The morning session was focused on the past events related to design education and the afternoon was more about the future. In the morning session the talks were about what was good in those days and what can be taken further, the participants by seating arrangement were divided to 6-10 members and among these groups various issues related to past design education were discussed, cards with key words were also provided to facilitate the discussion. At the end of this workshop styles sessions each group shared their outcome with other members. The same repeated in the afternoon as well with different set of talks and cards.

The general consensus at the conference was the design education must be democratised using various methods and technologies. Some groups strongly suggested the folowing

1. Disruptive classes are the future of design education

2. Designers are just interfaces

3. Using peer study program will enhance the design education experience

Over all the conference and discussions were more related to the methods of design education rather than means of teaching. As a whole its good to see that there is support for technology in design education.

Visit to DJ Academy of Design

Audio/Video room  Photo studio 

I visited my old school for a day, there was a lot happening at the school. Before my camera gave up on me I have managed to take these pictures the school is expanding their Audio/Video lab and setting up a new photo studio, the work is going on in full swing.

That was most of my work in between presentations, some missing pieces can be seen in the presentation posted before.

After the research presentation was over I have spent the next four weeks validating my approach with the experts in the field (teachers, academicians, policy makers etc..)  My first presentation was a collection of all the things I did to understand my focus area of the project. This presentation is a summation of all the things I have done (workshops, conferences, visiting other design schools) to validate my approach with the experts.

During the first presentation I have chosen to present on a white board, and in this presentation too I have selected to present using online non-linear presentation tools “Prezi“. The idea behind selecting this tool was to see how much time a teacher need to spend on learning a new digital tool, plan the content of the course and use to it to deliver a content. I have spent roughly about 12 hrs to learn, plan and put together this presentation. The time was needed due to the slow internet connection I was using at home in India.

I found this tool very interesting, easy to learn and present. I had fun creating it and it was easy to present using this tool, being a flash based software it has limited fonts, and colour palettes and could have little more extra features. Overall I think that this is a good tool for presenting mixed media in a creative way.

This presentation marks one of the four important presentation during this project work. The contents of the presentation will be posted soon. During the presentation I wanted to experience how is it to be teaching and talking at the same time so I choose to present my degree work “Digital Teaching” in a analog way. It was OK but I should have used more illustrations on the white board to support my talk. all is well

The first brain storming session was conducted on the 11th of Feb, in newly created IxD creative space. All of the participants are students from the Interaction design program. There were 10 participants in total including myself, fellow classmates and first year students, I thank one and all for participating.

This early brainstorming was organised to find more ways in which I can focus my research. The session was carried out in two halves. In the first half participants are asked to generate various ideas they would teach their students using digital medium if they were design teachers. In the second half they were asked to pick some products which they feel could enhance the teaching experience.

Over all the brainstorming session lead to a lot of interesting ideas, following are the list of ideas the participants came up during that session.

1. Teachers can pull stuff in to scrapbook like device to create course material.

2. Combining more senses in to teaching to enhance the learning experience.

3. Augmented reality should be used in the process of teaching.

4. Include more fun in teaching.

5. Use hologram projections to stream a teacher in to a classroom.

6. Most of the tools and technologies needed for teaching are out there, one just need to use them properly

7. It would be nice to be able to read body language or facial expressions of the students to assist the teachers.

8. Bringing the teachers personality into the lessons and digital classrooms.

9. On line forums with instructions must be put in place.

10. Buddy teacher: a fellow student comfortable with the subject can stand in for the teacher and mentors his classmates.

11. Students and teachers much be thought methods to scan objects using a regular web cam.

12. Students must be able to receive exercises in 3D form.

13. Form enhanced studies need more focus in developing material.

14. Teachers might use text to create a document.

During the session I have realised that lot of emphasis was put on how to conveying the physical form to students using digital tools. And the some of the suggestions are also related to that. These discussions and suggestions helped me to explore more.

Even though this software is used to generate content from computer, I would like to know more about the work flow of this software. This learning can certainly be used as an inspiration for my project.

Digital Teacher is a set of software applications that enables educators to create and administer interactive, instructional or testing materials on the computer, for deployment either off-line or on-line.

Explanation from the publisher

Lessons can be created from randomly selected instructions and questions from the lesson library databases. Question types supported are Multiple Choice, Fill-in-the-Blank, True/False, Yes/No, Correct/Incorrect, Matching, Sequence, Essay, and Instructional. Tests can be timed and can include pictures, sounds and video. The Web-based lesson can be taken using an ordinary web browser. Results from secure exams can be automatically assessed, analyzed, and reported in 18 filtered variations. The Question/Answer analysis enables educators to determine the difficulty level of a question and overall preference to an answer choice.

“”Digital Teacher supports all languages, and can be used for all education levels – K-12 teachers, college instructors, training professionals for corporations, the military, or the government.”"

Link.

While looking for digital teaching tools for teachers I came across this amazing collection of tools here. For the ease of reading I have copied the contents here. To see the latest list of tools pls visit this site.

I want to highlight some of the online learning resources available for teachers and students.

1. Teacher On Demand (TOD): This webpage serves as one stop site for lot of digital multimedia study material for students. Most of the material on this site is created by “creative teachers” (as the site says), its looks like a combination of both youtube and slideshare but specifically for educational material. Teachers need to register before they generate course content (learning objects).

2. KnowledgeBox (link): This is another web site which offers rich Learning Objects, they have devised a system (in my understanding) known as “Primary Learning Environment”. KnowledgeBox is a commercial venture and it has a library of resources which teachers can use to enhance the educational experience of a pupil. Publishers like BBC Active, DK, Longman and Sherston update this library, and now other teachers can also contribute in building up this library. This site is owned and operated by Person Education.

3. iTunes U (Link): Apple education, thought it might seem like another way to promote, Mac’s, iPods, iPhone and apps there is a lot to offer through this channel. Lots of universities, Schools and free lancers all develop content for students of all ages and put them on iTunes. So all a student has to do is to have iTunes on his computer system (may not be a apple) find iTunes U channel there you have free lectures, videos, films, and other resources from best schools all over the world. This content is not only for students any one can download this content for free.If this is not clear watch the introductory video on their page.

Like many of the companies out there  NOKIA also takes up some social welfare tasks. One of them is distance education.

Text2Teach program they have undertaken in Philippes. The Text2Teach program uses existing mobile communication setup to download and play supporting media for digital teaching. The teachers are allowed to select these media and include them in their course. Later the students conduct practicals about what have learned from the video. This entire system known as Nokia Education Delivery is explained in the diagram below. This is one the good examples of Digital Teaching, by which I mean that this software is specifically designed keeping the teacher in focus.

(Image: Nokia Website)

Another Digital education initiative from NOKIA is Mobile Learning for Mathematics. In October 2008 NOKIA and Siemens have started this pilot project in South Africa to improve students mathematical skills, the medium of mobiles, SMS, Calling have been explored to the fullest to take advantage of this technology in teach kids. Assignments, clues and information all are delivered using SMS, and student can visit a dedicated webpage in case he needs a live support. With in the earlier days of the project there has been a tremounds growth in the number of people who use this service.

You can know more about the NOKIA’s corporate responsibility projects here.

Dharmavaram, a city in southeran India known for its silk sareers has done a little experiment which brought that place in the highlight once again. A Fashion designer P. Mohan managed to make a saree by which can play music for 4 hours.

The saree is named “Swaramadhuri” meaning ’sweetness of sound’, is the out come of two months of intencive work. The saree is woven with micro speakers in the border and small digital music player in the “Pallu” the long end of the saree.

The first saree will be put to auction and soon they will be available in stores. I guess we will see more of the Indian ladies in SINGING and DANCING mood.

full article here