First post on design + education

For many years I've said, "if I could learn everything through song, I would remember so much more than I do."

I watched a movie this morning about KIPP from Oprah a couple years ago as well as one on Teach for India, and it started me thinking.... At KIPP, students are taught multiplication tables by "rolling their numbers" (like the video shows). It is extraordinarily effective. When I think back to my own education, I remember almost every song or rhyme that taught me something traditionally taught through rote memorization (even ones from pre-school: "North America, South America, Auuussttrralliaa!") So here is my big "how might we" for the day:

How might we train teachers to use songs and music to teach fundamental skills and increase student investment?

One of the biggest challenges that low-income teachers face is that their students all come into the classroom with vastly different fundamental skills and knowledge. It is hard to teach a child algebra if he doesn't know his multiplication tables. What does KIPP do? They say, let's use music. Music impacts people across cultures and can be tailored to be culturally relevant. Music is repetitive and catchy. Music can be extremely effective in teaching fundamental skills.

I see two major areas to attack:

1) Information/resource dissemination: As a teacher, I acknowledged the power of song/rap/music in the classroom, but I had no idea how to leverage it. Some exceptional and/or musical teachers devote hours to perfecting rhymes to teach their kids, but it should not necessarily be a teacher's responsibility to come up with rhymes and tunes that already exist. Teachers should have access to music related to the fundamentals of any subject.

2) Training on how to use song in the classroom: So now I have a sheet with the lyrics to "Read, baby, read" sitting on my table. What do I do with it?? It is not enough to provide access to musical tools to teachers. It is also important to provide workshops to train teachers on how to best leverage these songs as a tool in their classrooms.

I guess this is the beginning of my brainstorm about thesis topics..... and s356 ideas!

p.s. thank you to all who have commented (it makes me happy to know when people read) :)

Art: Poster Design

I decided to design for the “Love Your Body Campaign” Poster Contest. Before beginning, I sifted through posters online to find ones that I found especially effective. In particular, I found that I liked clear lines and the use of blocks of color, especially if the blocks of color are used to define the space and draw the eye to certain places. I preferred pictures without outlines and with simple color schemes. I particularly liked an old Bally poster and decided to play off this as inspiration for my own.

Another feature I liked was posters that played with words. I started to play with the letters BODY and soon found that they easily could be manipulated to evoke the shape of a woman’s body. I used this as the base for my poster.

I then determined what emotion I wanted to convey with my poster. The theme “Love Your Body” is about celebration – a celebration of the female shape, in all its forms. I wanted everything about the poster to convey this – the colors, the body shape, the text, the imagery. I started with the body shape… what is celebration about? It’s about dancing, hopping, and letting the limbs be free. As such, I looked for pictures of a woman jumping in the air as a base for my poster. I converted her body into blocks of color in photoshop (and added an arm), but the image still felt incomplete. There were two major issues: 1) It wasn’t explicit enough and 2) a lot of people were not noticing that “BODY” was used to form the shape of her body.

The feedback I received led me to figure out what was missing from the poster: what was she celebrating? She was celebrating a triumph over all of the negative forces related to body image that are out there. It appeared as though her hand could be holding something, so I decided to give her a “love your” umbrella to highlight “body” on the body. It also had a symbolic purpose – she could use it to shield her from “insult rain” filled with negative words describing bodies. I wanted her to hold it up in triumph, so I angled the umbrella a bit, so it feels as though she is triumphantly dancing through the rain with the umbrella as insults bounce off its edges.

Another key challenge I faced was figuring out how to make her look racially ambiguous, since this is a poster that should appeal to a wide variety of people. I combated this problem in two ways: 1) I used a “skin tone” that was not real, a warm gray, to give the girl the appearance of a silhouette and 2) I left off eyes and a nose, as mouths are more universal in shape than either eyes or noses. I’m generally happy with how the imagery turned out and plan to play with the font choice and text placement at the bottom a little more. Here's the final result:

dp2- Teenagers and Collaboration

Our second design project was about leveraging technology to foster collaboration between 12-17 year olds (with a vision for 5-10 years in the future). We focused on 12-14 yr olds, a group that wants to be treated as adults or equals, but are still forming their identities. They spend the majority of the time with their family or those most accessible to them.

The design principles that we settled upon are as follows. We wanted our product to:
1) lower the barrier teens have to trying new things
2) empower teens to teach and learn from each other
3) assist in gaining life experiences to prove improve self-confidence and help build rapport with adults

This story walks you through a day of the life of a teen using our product system: Everywear

I wake up, shower, eat breakfast, and take my uniform shirt off its inductive charging hanger. I scroll through the default shirt images and choose my favorite one: Spongebob Squarepants. My shirt beeps to remind me that I have 5 minutes to leave in order to be on time for school.

My mom drops me off, and as I walk into the building, my attendance is automatically registered. My shirt glows green temporarily with the time 7:23 to indicate that I made it to school on time.

I get nervous as I notice the boy I have a crush on. As I walk near him, our shirts both switch to images of Ne-yo. I notice the picture and ask him if he heard about the concert on Friday. He says that his mom won’t let him go but that he really likes the new cd. Our shirts start to glow yellow and we realize that we’d better get to class before we’re late.

As I enter history class, my shirt glows green again to indicate that I am on time. The walls have been converted to images of Washington DC. I sit down at my interactive table with three other students and my section of the table automatically loads my customized workspace. The warm-up question says "Spend 5 minutes finding something that interests you about Washington DC to share with your peers." I love music and quickly find a Duke Ellington music clip to share with the class since he’s from DC. As I submit my warm-up response, it posts to the white board, next to other students’ clips of the

"I have a Dream" speech and written history on the Lincoln memorial. When the 5 minutes is up, 3 responses are randomly chosen to share with the class.

My teacher begins to present the class material, and pauses in 10 minutes. "Based on we just learned, which is not one of the key points made in MLK's "I have a dream" speech? We all input our answers, and teacher automatically receives the feedback that only 30% of us got the right answer. "Alright, class, we are not ready to move on, we need to spend 10 minutes on additional information about this topic. The 6 different ways you can learn more about this are now on your tables.”

I see on mine that I can watch the speech live, read a transcript of the speech, or watch a youtube re-mixed musical enactment of it, among my options. I decide to watch the musical. I am also interested in a

couple of the other options, so I drag them to the "save to

backpack" icon so I can look at them later. My teacher puts up another similar quiz question, and we are again given the opportunity to respond. This time 90% of us get the answer correct. "For those of you who understood the question this time, submit a way that helps you remember the answer." After class, she goes through the answers and submits one to a nationwide data library to be used for future classes. This registers a collaboration point for our school. The schools that receive the most collaboration points in the city receive money from the government and private sponsors to spend on events during the year, where we get to invite kids from nearby schools. Class ends, I go to my other morning classes, and then I head to lunch.

As I walk to sit down with my friends, I notice Melanie, someone I’ve seen in my classes, but don’t really know. As I approach Melanie, her shirt changes to say she wants to learn piano, so I suggest we meet after-school so that I can teach her and practice some new songs I’m working on at the after-school learning center. "That would be great!" says Melanie. Thanks! I leave to go sit with my friends.

During lunch, my friends start discussing new youtube videos. "Wait, did any of you see the viral video about the dancing mouse?" "No!" I scroll to the still frame of the video that I have uploaded as one of my default shirt images to show my friends. As lunch finishes, I return to class.

After school, I walk to the after-school learning center to work on homework and practice piano. I sit down at one of the collaboration tables, which instantly shows my homework assignments and I start to work on my math. I have a question and looks around to see what other people are working on, which is displayed on the walls behind them. One of the others is also working on my math assignment, so I write a quick digital note asking for help on question 13 and fling the note electronically to the other student. The other student walks over and helps me, which logs a collaboration point for him.

After finishing his math homework, I write a new note, explaining that Melanie and I are about to go practice piano to invite anybody else who's interested. I fling the note into a "pile" in the center of the table, which automatically displays it on the wall near me. When I teach new kids piano, I automatically gets individual collaboration points that will give me money to spend at stores that have joined the school's collaboration point program in exchange for advertising.

At the end of the day, my mom comes to pick me up and it's time for dinner. We go to Dionni's, my favorite pizza place, and I go in to pick up a pizza for the family. I pay for it with my collaboration points because Dionni's is a participating business partner in the collaboration project. As I’m paying for the pizza, the person working at the counter asks him if he'd like a free Dionni's picture upload for his shirt. "Yeah! I love Dionni’s!” The image I chose is attached to his account and now accessible to him when he goes home. I go home, hang my shirt back up for charging and upload the new Dion's picture as one of my new default images.