Assignment:

“The New Coviewing: Designing for Learning through Joint Media Engagement” by Lori Takeuchi and Reed Stevens – December 8, 2011

Response: 

The main research findings can be summarized by the phrase “What goes on between people around media can be as important as what is designed into the media”

What strikes me the most about the article is how little attention has been given to this interaction the design process and creation of media. “Interactive TV” has been a promise for a long time, maybe because it fostered to the interaction between an individual and the content such as voting interactions, choose the ending, choose what film will play and so on. I would even go further a TV show that prompts for social media interactions is still not fully aware of JME potentials. Not only the educational potentials are missed but I believe that this construct could well be applied to marketing and sales where a piece of advertising or merchandising is more effective the more it engages the viewers in JME.

Circling back to education, I think that this is a breakthrough. What if traditional courses on TV were designed with this framework in mind? What if their declared purpose was to be watched with someone else? Would remote learning be more effective? I truly think so.

It seems like this framework has been explored minimally up to now. Maybe some app developers and websites are already thinking about this or catering to this phenomena yet I have seen little evidence that it was part of the original design process of the product.

I see great potential for TV Apps that are coming with the release of the new AppleTV OS. I can imagine educational products designed from ground up using the JME design principles and implemented in a medium that is more naturally social than mobile phones, the TV, and provide direct and individualized interaction in a group setting where each member has a full input device with them – their iPhones or iPads.

Ok – so maybe if you compare the new AppleTV with game consoles, there is not much innovation in terms of the in-room dynamics yet the huge app development community and the lower barrier to entry on AppleTV in comparison to game consoles, will probably create in-medium factors that will enhance JME and create much richer and engaging learning environments.

Notes:

Worked some more on generating ideas today.

Project with OMS taking the following shape:

Needs Statement

“A” is a shy pleaser who needs to practice creating his own words in order to facilitate him communicating with others.

Prototypes

Stimulate “A” to generate words by watching engaging videos he can relate to.

1. Teacher explains that they are going to play a game of making the video even better by adding new  words to it.
2. Teacher selects a video of interest from YouTube
3. Teacher puts headphones on herself and starts a narrating session to model the behavior.
4. Teacher puts headphone on A so that he can listen to the video with the narration.
5. Teacher prompts A to do his own recording and starts a narration session.
6. A listens to narrated video.
7. Option to save session or go again.
8. A is prompted to choose another video to narrate

Questions to ask:

• Does he follow any sport on TV?
• What does he like to watch on YouTube?
• Does he verbalize while watching videos?
• Is he comfortable wearing headphones?
• How well does he type?
• How well does he use an iPad on his own?
• What Apps does he use if any?
• Does he listen to music?
• Does he sing?
• Can he describe objects when prompted?
• What are ‘easy’ things for him to do?
• What are the things that seem ‘hard’ for him to do?
• Does he say no when he does not want or like something?

Some initial videos:

Harlem Globetrotters

Hot Wheels

Back up plan: 

Cartoons where he will fill in the blanks typing in the missing text then repeating what he wrote.

Great class today – looking further into our research about how to make “A” generate more words.

Reading: 

Notes:

Assignment: 

Submit 3 paragraphs synthesizing the article. Describe the big idea, articulate any questions or concerns it brings up for you, and reflect on how it might inform the design of a learning tool.

Bonus: can you think of a time when you yourself developed an interest in this way?  After submitting, take five minutes to read the responses of other students (if you’re first, you might have to come back later”.  “Like” anyone whose story is similar to your own experience.

Response: 

The big idea I got out of this article is that levels of interest can be more easily categorized, described, measured and improved if the described Four-Phase Model of Interest Development is utilized.

The model’s main hypothesis is that the interaction of affect and knowledge along with positive feelings and opportunities are key factors in developing “well-developed individual interest”.

The model makes a distinction between “situational” and “individual” where the first involves interaction with the environment and the latter involves an internal initiation.

Each phase is further broken down into “triggered and maintained” and “emerging and well-developed”.

The model seemed to have quite a practical approach in offering a framework to measure levels of interest in learners. The way that affect and knowledge were intertwined, dependent and mutually feeding made tremendous sense to me.

A personal example: paragliding.

1. Triggered Situational Interest: a friend told me about paragliding and showed me some pictures. I felt like it was something cool to experience but knew nothing about it.
2. Maintained Situational Interest: we went to the launch site and I watched him fly and played around with the equipment on the ground
3. Emerging Individual Interest: I finally did a flight on my own and started asking more questions about flying, techniques to stay up in the air, risks and emergency procedures.
4. Well-developed Individual Interest: 30 years later, I am planning on taking lessons and buying my own equipment to start flying as a real hobby.

Note that in the past 30 years I did not seek to fly on my own.The interest level regressed to the situational interest since, when provided with the opportunity (trip to Cape Town for example), I engaged in a tandem flight.

While reading the article I also loosely correlated the 4 phases into:

1. Kindergarten- expose to information and hopefully we arouse interest
2. Middle and High School – engage in activities and explore interests
3. College/University – choose a field of study and engage repeatedly with subject matter
4. Graduate School / Doctoral Programs – enduring predisposition to reengage

This model could be used to assess interest generation potential of features within the design process of learning tools. You could design the tool to offer specific content/activities directed to each phase of interest the learner is at. You could classify learners into each phase and attempt to ‘promote’ them to the next level with the appropriate actions.

Class Notes: 

Notes Followup:

Sheena Iyengar – Ted Talks

Sheena Iyengar: The art of choosing – TED.com

Sheena Iyengar: How to make choosing easier – TED.com

Assignment:

Choose, and read, any two project reports from the LDT 15 collection on the Stanford Digital Repository (sdr.stanford.edu).  In preparation for class, consider the following questions:

1. Who needs to learn what?  Why?
2. To what extent did this solution address that problem?
3. How did the author(s) leverage research to inform, inspire, and perhaps justify the problem and the project?

Response:

“Aptitude”, Bryan Quintanilla, 2015 – report | video

This morning went with Soren to Open Mind Schools to start our project for this class with them. Amazing opportunity to work directly with a special kid and hopefully make a difference.