This week’s journal serves as a look at two websites: Smart Museum and 2Beme.rog.

Looking at SmartMuseum from a critical eye, I like the home page. There are four clear options students can choose from and each offers a different educational path. A trip to a museum with students usually only happens on a school trip where art or museums are the last things on students minds. They are usually thinking about the girls on the bus, what’s in the gift shop or what is for lunch. It’s a play date away from school. This happens because trips are too few and far between. This website could help a teacher plan ahead of a trip – like an advanced organizer to helps students focus on the task at hand. I particularly like the artist’s tour of the site. It is so important to introduce students to careers and hook them up with real world practitioners. This section of the site attempts that.

However, I don’t like the constant popping of things on the site. It is sensory overload, distracting and childish. The sketchbook, parent section and theme-options are a nice touch and should provide students with some level of engagement. I would like to see more video of real museums.

2beme.com is a touching website that helps a niche audience with real emotional needs. Suffering from cancer, one would hope these teens would have had the time to discuss these four issues with their doctors or parents. If not, this site offers an outlet. I like how it is again broken up into four catagories and is artistically relevant. The colors and images are soft and cartoonish and should hopefully convey a feeling of optimism and positivity.

The animations are borderline. They should be tuned down a little bit as they are distracting and provide a little too much extraneous load as someone looks to get information about a serious topic. I also like the catchy titles like “chill zone.” I think it brings some levity to students who may be feeling down about their condition. It may seem callous on the surface to suggest this, but this soft, emotional touches seem to go a long way with the healthy students in my classroom.

This week’s reading offered a contrasting view of educational gaming and the importance of the role of computers in education.  Adams article, Educational Games Don’t Have to Stink, looked at gaming and computers in schools. He contrasted what a good, Socratic teacher can do in school and highlighted how a computer will never be able to live up to that task. He offered some suggestions to make games better – all limited by the notion that games are not the silver bullet.  My favorite part was his comparison to learning facts to beating levels and enemies. The gaming model is flawed because when you beat an enemy you forget him – like how you cram for a test – once its over, you forget about it.

The MIT – MacArthur paper was a great read outlining the concept of 21st century skills that must go on in our new media classrooms.  From personal experience, it seems like we are a generation away from integrating true media skills, participation, meaningful social networking.  I can only speak for my school, but in NYC it is being integrated in small chunks at a time. The call for greater access in every classroom is going to be the crucial component that hopefully ultraportable laptops like OLPC will accomplish.  Once a 1-1 model common place, all teachers and students should find it easier to accomplish the goals of media participation, understanding and production.

For the final project, I would like to create the interface for a single din CD/IPOD/Satellite radio car reciever. All of the sophisticated ones are large, double screen or flat screen models that are over $800.  I would like to create a simple interface that is touch screen with very few buttons.

The challenge in the project would be to create something on a very small screen. Single DIN recievers are only about two inches tall by six inches wide.  But all the ones on the market have clumsy interfaces with many buttons and dials.

Mine would allow the user to achieve these goals:

switch quickly between all audio inputs
scroll through the channels and songs effectively
access song titles / albums / and station information quickly

All these controls need to be manipulated with the left hand while driving.

Below is a sample of what is currently on the market:

JVC:

Pioneer:

Alpine:

I hope to work on a small scale, eliminate the buttons and make a simple, friendly effective interface.

Often times designers have little space to work with. Tablet computers have tiny screens.  Cell phones even smaller ones. As a metaphor and design practice, below is a story I wrote using exactly 55 words.

—

Lesson One:

“I smashed cars,” Jose bragged.

Student-teacher Peter listened. He’s so poor. Born without a chance.

Principal Johnson startled Peter from his sympathetic lull.

“My windshield’s smashed. Heard anything?”

He trembled.

“No.”

Peter felt empowered letting Jose off.

He regretted it in the parking lot later. His first paycheck would have to repair his busted headlights.

—

It took three hours to write this story. I spent 30 minutes coming up with the idea.  The first draft was 187 words.  I feel like some of the story is missing, but the exercise did teach me it is possible to say a lot in a small space.